Forum welcomes you to submit essays related to the teaching, working conditions, professional life, activism, and perspectives of non-tenure-track faculty. Faculty and scholars from all academic positions are welcome to contribute. Of special interest are research, analyses, and strategies grounded in local contexts, given that labor conditions and the needs of contingent faculty vary greatly with geography, institutional settings, and personal circumstances.

Essays should address theoretical and/or disciplinary debates. They will go through the standard peer review and revision process. For further information please contact the Forum editor at Kimberly_Bain@pba.edu.

Submit your work electronically to Forum by emailing Kimberly_Bain@pba.edu. Put the words “FORUM article” in your subject line. Submissions should include the following information:

• your name
• your title(s)
• your institution(s)
• home address and phone number; institutional address(es) and phone number(s)
• if applicable, venue(s) where submission was first published or presented previously

__________

Special Issue Call for Manuscripts—Identity and Contingency: When Who We Are Shapes What We Do

Submission deadline: January 20, 2026. Publication: Fall 2026.

Issues of identity shape not only who we are as faculty, but also how we perform and the connections we make in the classroom. Identifying one’s place, not just as an educator but as a person, has unique implications for part-time and contingent faculty in higher learning, both in and outside the academic spaces they take up. In an article published by Inside Higher Ed, Colleen Flaherty points out that “students who identify with their instructors based on certain underrepresented visible identities can benefit from an increased sense of belonging and self-efficacy, better course outcomes and more.” Understanding how identity shapes the work done by part-time and full-time contingent faculty is the first step toward addressing equitable measures of support as we engage with students in the classroom.

Part-time and full-time contingent faculty offer rich real-world perspectives, shaped by identities established inside and outside of their institutions. This special issue invites voices that identify the connections between identity and contingency.

Viable submissions for the special issue will explore considerations of personal and professional identity for part-time and full-time contingent faculty in the field of writing studies. Submission topics might include, but are not limited to, considerations of the following:

• Working-professional-as-faculty identities
• Underrepresented minorities
• Bilingual and multilingual identities
• Faculty evaluations and assessment practices
• Subculture identities
• Accessibility, difference, and inclusion

Submission Requirements

Submissions must be original; 1,500 to 2,000 words long; and formatted in the latest edition of MLA style. Please send your submission via email attachment to the editor at Kimberly_Bain@pba.edu. The cover message should have the subject line “FORUM article” and include the following information:

• Your name
• Your title(s)
• Your institution(s)
• Institutional address(es) and phone number(s) if applicable

Proposals and general inquiries may also be directed to the editor. Forum welcomes you to submit essays related to the teaching, working conditions, professional life, activism, and perspectives of non-tenure-track faculty. Faculty and scholars from all academic positions are welcome to contribute. Essays should address theoretical and/or disciplinary debates. All submissions will go through the standard peer-review and revision process.

Work Cited

Flaherty, Colleen. “Making Faculty Identities Visible, for Students’ Sake.” Inside Higher Ed, 24 Apr. 2024, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/academic-life/2024/04/24/when-professors-share-identities-students-can-benefit/.

 

 

Click here to read the full call for program proposals.

A conversation with Heather Lindenman, Martin Camper, and Lindsay Dunne Jacoby, coauthors (with Jessica Enoch) of “Revision and Reflection: A Study of (Dis)Connections between Writing Knowledge and Writing Practice” (14:01).

 

 

Heather Lindenman is assistant professor of English at Elon University, where she teaches courses in first-year writing and community writing. Her research, which has appeared in Composition Forum and is forthcoming in Reflections, focuses on ways that students connect their academic and non-academic writing experiences and on the consequences of community-engaged writing partnerships.

 

 

 

 

Martin Camper is assistant professor of writing at Loyola University Maryland, where he teaches courses in rhetoric, writing, argumentation, and style. He is the author of Arguing over Texts: The Rhetoric of Interpretation (2018) and is working on a second book tentatively titled How the Bible’s Meaning Changes: Argument and Controversy in the Christian Church.

 

 

 

 

Lindsay Dunne Jacoby is adjunct professor of writing at the George Washington University, where she teaches academic writing courses about climate change and environmental justice. Her research explores the rhetoric of the national parks movement.

 

A conversation with Todd Ruecker, Stefan Frazier, and Mariya Tseptsura, coauthors of “‘Language Difference Can Be an Asset’: Exploring the Experiences of Nonnative English-Speaking Teachers of Writing” (15:19).

 

 

Todd Ruecker is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico. His work focuses on investigating the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity of education worldwide and ways to transform education systems and institutions. He has published four books as well as articles in venues such as TESOL Quarterly and Writing Program Administration.

 

 

 

 

Stefan Frazier is an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics and Language Development at San Jose State University. His research interests include composition pedagogy (first and second language), functional grammar, and the pedagogy of pragmatic competence. He is also active in university governance at the local and state levels.

 

 

 

Mariya Tseptsura is a PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on second language writing, WPA, and online instruction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Downloadable PDF of the full report.

Introduction to the 2017 Annual
Clancy Ratliff

The conversation about copyright and intellectual property has grown and changed since the formation of the CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus over two decades ago. When it began, many of the scholars interested in the issues of authorship, copyright, and intellectual property were techies who were also deeply concerned about internet privacy issues such as security, surveillance, and corporate overreach — reflecting the topics that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has always monitored (and continues to). Read on (full report).

Table of Contents
1	Introduction to the 2017 Annual Clancy Ratliff
5	Net Neutrality Repeal Creates Dark Cloud Over Student and Researcher Internet Access and Equity Wendy Warren Austin
10	Going Bananas Over Copyright: Monkey Selfies and the Intersections of Rhetoric, Intellectual Property, and Animal Studies Amy D. Propen
14	Twenty Years of Turnitin: In an Age of Big Data, Even Bigger Questions Remain Traci Arnett Zimmerman
23	Contributors

Application Deadline: October 10

Purpose: As a scholar whose writings have had a profound impact on the studies of both rhetoric and queer theory, Gloria Anzaldúa’s work continues to encourage us to forge connections across difference and oppression in order to dismantle systems of privilege, whether that be heterosexism, heteronormativity, racism, sexism, or ableism (as a non-exhaustive list). In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa shows us that the act of composition cannot be divorced from our identities:

Looking inside myself and my experience, looking at my conflicts, engenders anxiety in me. Being a writer feels very much like being a Chicana, or being queer – a lot of squirming, coming up against all sorts of walls….. That’s what writing is for me, an endless cycle of making it worse, making it better, but always making meaning out of the experience, whatever it may be. (94-95)

In the legacy of her work as a writer, Anzaldúa reminds us that we have a duty to strike out oppression, build alliances, and fundamentally transform cultures. She underscores that we may achieve these goals through the act of writing.

In this spirit, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) sponsors the Gloria Anzaldúa Rhetorician Award to support scholars whose work participates in the making of meaning out of sexual and gender minority experiences.

Eligibility: Applicants must be accepted to the CCCC Annual Convention program and should currently be enrolled in graduate school or be first time presenters at the Convention.

Award Criteria: All candidates should show potential as scholars of rhetoric and composition. We encourage sexual and gender minority applicants, who may (or may not) identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, or pansexual (LGBTQ2QIAAP), though applicants who do not see themselves reflected in these categories are also encouraged to apply.

The work of a successful candidate should fulfill some of the following criteria:

• Interrogate the intersections between composition/rhetoric research and queer theory.
• Contribute to the discourses between sexuality/gender identification and writing research, pedagogy, and/or theory.
• Address issues of social justice, writing, and sexual/gender identification.
• Forge new conversations in composition/rhetoric and queer meaning-making.

Award Specifics: Recipients of the Gloria Anzaldúa Graduate Rhetorician Travel Award, up to three, will receive $750 for travel-related expenses to present their work at the CCCC Convention. To honor the recipients, CCCC will also host a reception during the CCCC Annual Convention. The Awards Selection Committee will choose up to three winners based on the following criteria: originality of research; critical engagement with and contribution to current scholarship in queer studies and rhetoric/composition; and potential for lasting projects. Applications must be submitted by October 10, 2025, as a single PDF attachment to cccc@ncte.org. Winners will be notified in December.

To apply, interested graduate scholars or first time presenters accepted to the CCCC Annual Convention program must submit the following documents in a single PDF attachment in the order indicated below:

1. A copy of their accepted proposal (NOT the acceptance letter).
2. An expanded 3-5 page abstract.
3. A brief one-page statement of interest identifying the applicant’s research interests, articulating plans for a career in rhetoric and composition, and including a statement of eligibility for the award.

Other Considerations: In the event that the CCCC Annual Convention moves to an online-only event with no in-person component, recipients will receive a complimentary registration for the convention in lieu of any travel funds.

Gloria Anzaldúa Rhetorician Award Winners

2025
Molly Ryan, Virginia Tech 

2024
Erin Green, University of Maryland College Park
Jay Lowrey, Whatcom Community College

2023
Monét Cooper, University of Michigan
Ruben Ruby Mendoza, Michigan State University

2022
Lea Colchado, University of Houston, TX
Cody Januszko, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Olivia Wood, CUNY Graduate Center, NY

2021
Michelle Flahive, Texas Tech University
Anna Zeemont, City University of New York

2020
Samuel Brook Corfman, University of Pittsburgh, PA
Elise Dixon, Michigan State University, East Lansing
B. López, Syracuse University, NY

2019
Wilfredo Flores, Michigan State University, East Lansing
Alejandra I. Ramirez, University of Arizona, Tucson
Marlene Galvan, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

2018
Joshua Barsczewski, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Zarah C. Moeggenberg, Washington State University, Pullman
James Swider, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

2017
Gavin P. Johnson, The Ohio State University, Columbus
Leida K Mae, Oregon State University, Corvallis
Laura Tetreault, University of Louisville, KY

2016
Rachel Lewis, Northeastern University
Casey Miles, Michigan State University
Erika M. Sparby, Northern Illinois University

2015
Alexandra J. Cavallaro, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Maria Novotny, Michigan State University, East Lansing
Jon M. Wargo, Michigan State University, East Lansing

2014
Kendall Gerdes, The University of Texas at Austin
Jessica Mason McFadden, Western Illinois University, Macomb
Neil Simpkins, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In June of 2012, Dr. Martine Courant Rife, a writing professor at Lansing Community College and an active member and former chair of the NCTE-CCCC’s IP Caucus, traveled to Washington D.C. to testify at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) tri-annual rulemaking hearings. Dr. Rife, who holds a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing with a concentration in intellectual property and technical communication, as well as a law degree from the University of Denver, also participated in the last round of hearings in 2009.

Other 2012 panel participants included Francesca Coppa, Associate Professor of English and Film Studies, Muhlenberg College; Tisha Turk, Associate Professor of English, University of Minnesota-Morris; Corynne McSherry, Intellectual Property Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation; Renee Hobbs, Professor and Founding Director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island, as well as many other educators and legal professionals. These educational stakeholder-witnesses were asking the Copyright Office to retain and expand exemptions to the DMCA issued in 2010 that under certain circumstances allow college professors to circumvent technology protections on DVDs in order to access movie clips for educational purposes. Also present at the hearings were corporate media stakeholders who offered counter-arguments to the educational community’s request for educational exemptions.

A formal transcript of testimony given at these hearings eventually will be made available by the Copyright Office, but for the moment summaries and partial transcriptions can be accessed at a blog maintained by Rebecca Tushnet, a Law Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a hearing participant. The 2010 exemptions that are at issue in this rulemaking process can be reviewed here: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/. These existing educational exemptions are set to expire once the Register of Copyright’s final recommendations are issued.

The Register of Copyright’s formal recommendations for possible educational exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions should be out by the end of this year. Currently, an extended question and answer period is taking place in order to further inform the Register of Copyright in her decision making process. Please watch the Inbox postings for further information on this issue.

For information in general on the DMCA hearings, or to review materials submitted in response to a request by the Copyright Office for written comments, please visit http://www.copyright.gov/1201/.

For earlier coverage of the DMCA and its impact on educators and students, see the following IP Reports:

Part One: The New DMCA Exemption for College Teachers and Students 

Part Two: What Teachers Can Learn about Fair Use in Remix Writing from the US Copyright Office

See also the article “DMCA Developments Relevant to Educators” in Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2010.

This column is sponsored by the Intellectual Property Committee of the CCCC and the CCCC-Intellectual Property Caucus. The IP Caucus maintains a mailing list. If you would like to receive notices of programs sponsored by the Caucus or of opportunities to submit articles either to this column or to the annual report on intellectual property issues, please contact kgainer@radford.edu.

Intellectual Property Reports Main Page 

Michael J. Klein, Ph.D.
School of Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication
James Madison University

The Intellectual Property Caucus meets annually at the CCCC convention for a Wednesday workshop that features a series of roundtables intended to provide educators with a forum in which to discuss intellectual property issues as they affect both instructors and students. Last April, the caucus included one such roundtable on the relationship between students’ rights to their own writing and to the writing of others. Discussion amongst the participants focused on two separate yet related issues.

First, roundtable participants discussed the number of new technologies available to faculty that help them discover whether students have turned in work that has material from sources that are not cited in the work. As materials found on the Internet, and especially the World Wide Web, have become increasingly pervasive as source material for students, some publishers have responded by implementing more and more robust (and complex) technologies to identify work coming from such sources. These so-called plagiarism detection services (PDSs) check uploaded student submissions against existing texts within a database. In order for the instructors to make use of these services, students and faculty must allow the newly submitted documents to become part of this ever-growing database of materials. The rationale behind this requirement is that as faculty check more papers, the database they are checked against will continue to grow, which will make it easier to detect future misuse of sources.

The CCCC-IP caucus has already formulated a position statement on the use of these PDSs (this is not an official CCCC position statement). Given that their use complicates the relationship between instructor and student, this position statement addresses issues that educators need to consider before their institutions adopt such services. This brings us to the second, but no less important, matter discussed by the roundtable participants. In creating a potentially adversarial relationship between students who submit work and the instructors who require the work to be checked, the language describing the necessity of such checks perpetuates the notion that students are “guilty” until they prove themselves “innocent.” Students cheat, hoping not to get “caught”; faculty must then “police” the students, seeking to “detect” when students have “committed” plagiarism. Other examples of such adversarial language are easily evident upon continued inspection of descriptions of such services.

As language instructors, we know the way language shapes perceptions, and in some cases, reality. In using terms like “cheat,” “caught,” “get away with,” etc., we have created circumstances in which students are only likely to reduce cheating due to fear of being caught, not through an understanding of why plagiarism is wrong. The effects of this Panopticon-like fishbowl that PDSs providers (and in some cases faculty) have created exacerbate the problem. Thus, the “war” (irony noted) on plagiarism is futile; we may have less plagiarism, but the students still lack an understanding of why plagiarism is wrong. Punishing those who plagiarize might stop some, but it might also encourage others to try harder to avoid detection.

The roundtable participants realized the irony that, as new technologies simplify the process of taking text or images from one medium or genre and relocating them in another, this ease of research also makes it harder for students to discern between valid and invalid utilization of sources—between what is fair use and what belongs to others. People assume that if they can access something, then they can use it freely, which may date back to the precept that possession is nine-tenths of the law. But this assumption is hardly true in the digital age when copies as good as the originals can be produced with minimal effort.

The participants of the roundtable came away with two action items for future roundtables. First, we need to discuss how to respond when the use of content management software or plagiarism detection software is compulsory. Faculty can use PDSs in a positive way by having the students check their own work and then discuss the results in a non–threatening environment, one in which grades and finger-pointing are absent. In this way, faculty and students work collaboratively to discuss the ways plagiarism may occur as well as opening up the discussion to include the reason why plagiarism is not accepted in academic (nor many other) environments.

As for the second action item, the participants decided to develop a student-oriented plagiarism policy that is responsive to new media technology. This process will include roundtable discussions on this topic at future CCCC meetings. Such a policy will be challenging to craft: “what would it look like” and “who would buy into it” are two questions we will need to grapple with. But the participants recognized that a student-centered plagiarism statement must begin with a level playing field, one in which faculty members do not police their students and students do not attempt to get away with cheating. Such a policy would go a long way toward making teaching more about engagement with materials and less about “gotcha” moments.

This column is sponsored by the Intellectual Property Committee of the CCCC and the CCCC-Intellectual Property Caucus. The IP Caucus maintains a mailing list. If you would like to receive notices of programs sponsored by the Caucus or of opportunities to submit articles to either this column or to an annual report on intellectual property issues, please contact kgainer@radford.edu.

 

Intellectual Property Reports Main Page

Earlier this year, YouTube celebrated its 5th birthday, and as seemingly belated birthday “gifts,” courts in the United States and Spain ruled in favor of YouTube in two widely watched copyright infringement cases. On June 23, 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in Viacom. v. YouTube  that YouTube, as an online service provider, falls under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) “safe harbor” protection—and is thereby not responsible for policing copyright infringement on its site. The ruling claimed that instead it is the responsibility of the copyright owners to watch for infringed material and notify YouTube with take down notices, with which the court points out YouTube has quickly complied (Baum and Copland). Similarly, in September, a Spanish court ruled in a case brought by an Italian-based media corporation that “YouTube was not liable as long as it removed copyrighted material when notified by the rights holder” (Pfanner). In both cases, the media conglomerates quickly announced plans to appeal, but clearly it was a good season for YouTube.

While neither case dealt directly with educational uses of YouTube, they impact its availability in the classroom. For those of us who teach away from the stricture of firewalls that bar YouTube from many elementary and secondary classrooms, and who choose to use YouTube in our classes, such rulings serve to protect that resource’s ongoing availability. However, some may ask, why use YouTube in its ongoing state of flux—with its potential for videos here today and gone tomorrow in response to copyright holders’ DMCA sanctioned “take down notices.” Furthermore, there are arguments to be waged against what media professor, Alexandra Juhasz, refers to as YouTube’s “interchangeable, bite-sized, formulaic videos referring to either popular culture or personal pain/pleasure” (“Teaching on YouTube”). Nevertheless, or precisely because of YouTube’s reflective and contributory relationship with popular culture, it provides a rich arcade of videos that take learning to the students and their Web 2.0 world. More than simply supplementing a class with material in a mode popular with students, integrating YouTube videos in a class can also serve to develop students’ critical visual/media literacy skills—critical both in terms of developing analytical thinking and vital in this visually-drenched culture.

Such reasons are some of what prompted Pitzer College professor, Alexandra Juhasz, in Fall 2007 to teach a course solely about and on YouTube, aptly called “Learning from YouTube.” Although Juhasz notes that she “had been studiously ignoring [YouTube] . . . because every time I went there, I was seriously underwhelmed by what I saw” (“Teaching on YouTube”), she decided to create a “‘student-led’ course . . .  to primarily consider how web 2.0 (in this case, specifically YouTube) is radically altering the conditions of learning (what, where, when, how we have access to information)” (“Teaching on YouTube”).  Juhasz has critiqued this experience in blogs, interviews, conference presentations, and in an upcoming “video-book” to be available at no charge from MIT Press in the winter of 2010 (“On the Online Publishing”), but several of her observations in particular touch on the issue of YouTube and intellectual property.

In the US case, the court ruled that YouTube was an online service provider and as such was not responsible for its content. While some legal responses bemoaned the court’s attack on the DMCA, claiming that “the DMCA was never intended to allow service providers to exploit the statue’s safe harbors by designing an entire business model based on improperly profiting from copyrighted content” (Andrews), this is seemingly good news to those of us who use YouTube videos to supplement our courses.

However, for those who use YouTube to deliver course material or as a publication outlet for student work, it might not be time to celebrate. As amateur, “small-time copyright owners,” it isn’t feasible that we would be able to police the use of our videos (DeLong); however, for most of us—our students and ourselves—we are attracted to YouTube as a production and publication venue precisely because our work has the potential to reach a wide audience. In May 2010, YouTube began reporting that two billion videos are watched a day (“YouTube Fact Sheet”), up from one billion videos in October 2009 (“YouTube Beats Prime Time TV on 5th Birthday,” Network World). Of course for that potential exposure, there is a price. For example, Juhasz observed that as the work of a critiquing classroom moved to the open space of YouTube, where “anyone and everyone can see and also participate, . . . students were routinely judged by critical YouTube viewers who we would never see or know . . . [and that we] could not insure were as committed and attentive as were we” (“Teaching on YouTube”).  The thoughtful critiques of the classroom (or at least the ideal classroom) are not a given on YouTube, but one might argue that there’s much to be learned about critique itself from inside the fishbowl.

Despite YouTube’s recent legal victories, it is still important that we reflect on the copyright issues posed there. While we may forfeit some protections and stability there, for most of the millions of YouTube contributors, the price is worth it. And, while YouTube may not get to keep its birthday present from the U.S. District Court, given the number of copyright holders that have supported Viacom in its appeal, the news is still good for us as teachers and scholars who use YouTube in our classes to extend and to exemplify our lessons—and to bring the “real world”—our students’ world—into the classroom.

Submitted by:
Billie J. Jones, Assistant Professor
Director of First Year Writing
The School of Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication
James Madison University

Works Cited

Andrews, Cory. “Viacom v. YouTube: A Setback for Intellectual Property Rights.” 24 Jun. 2010. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

Baum, Andrew and David Copland. “United States” YouTube Winds Safe Harbor in Viacom Copyright Suit.” 29 Jun. 2010. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

DeLong, James. “YouTube Gets the Power of Eminent Domain.” 26 Jun. 2010. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

Ionescu, Daniel. “YouTube Beats Prime Time TV on 5th Birthday.” Network World 17 May 2010. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.]

Juhasz, Alexandra. “On the Online Publishing and Re-Purposing of Learning from YouTube.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture 8 (2010). Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

—. “Teaching on YouTube.” Open Culture 22 Apr. 2008. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

Pfanner, Eric. “YouTube Can’t Be Liable on Copyright, Spain Rules.” The New York Times 23 Sept. 2010. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

YouTube. “YouTube Fact Sheet.” Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

Intellectual Property Reports Main Page

New federal regulations on copyright enforcement for colleges and universities are effective July 1, 2010. These new regulations, released by the Department of Education (DOE) late last year, focus on the copyright “combat” requirements of the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA). To read the act itself as well as review the rulemaking process, see http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html. To read the DOE regulations and accompanying deliberations, see the October 29, 2009 Federal Register (FR) http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-25373.pdf.

The 2008 enacted HEOA contains provisions focusing on illegal filesharing on college and university networks, also known as the “unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material” (7 things, 2010, p.1, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EST1005.pdf). While some colleges may already have measures to monitor and control possible illegal filesharing activities, the new DOE regulations specifically require documentation showing college procedures or efforts. As Educause points out, the new regulations and the HEOA do not change existing copyright law. Instead, they create a clear set of responsibilities specifically for institutions of higher education. The new regulations set forth basic requirements institutions must meet if they wish to retain their Title IV funds. “Title IV funds” generally include the whole range of federal student financial aid such as Pell grants, work study, Stafford, Perkins, Parent-plus loans, and so on. Obviously, since the copyright enforcement requirements are tied to federal student aid, we can expect to see colleges and universities comply with the new regulations by the deadline of July 1, 2010. However, as time passes we might watch the development of policies and procedures at our respective colleges, and of course, look for spaces where we might make contributions as teachers and researchers concerned with writing, learning, and our students’ abilities to access the resources and materials they need to be successful.

The regulations require that institutions of higher education share with students their “institutional policies and sanctions related to copyright infringement” (FR p. 55903). To be more specific:

This information must (1) explicitly inform enrolled and prospective students that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including peer-to-peer file sharing, may subject a student to civil and criminal liabilities; (2) include a summary of the penalties for violation of Federal copyright laws; and (3) delineate the institution’s policies with respect to unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing, including disciplinary actions that are taken against students who engage in illegal downloading or unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials using the institution’s information technology system. (FR, p. 55926)

The information-providing requirement appears relatively easy to meet. It requires students receive information telling them that the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials is illegal, and if they engage in such behavior they could be subject to civil and criminal penalties. This requirement could be met in many ways, but the “warning” that appears at the beginning of most DVDs contains boilerplate language that might be revised or adapted and delivered by colleges and universities to all students in some form (student handbook or digital communication). The penalties for violating copyright law must also be provided to students, but since Title 17, United States Code, commonly referred to as U.S. copyright law, already sets forth the penalties for violating the law, these penalties have been summarized by the DOE in a “standardized version” and will appear in the Federal Student Aid Handbook by the July deadline (7 things, p. 1). The regulations also state that colleges and universities must have their own clear policies and procedures on what they will do if students, using institutional networks, violate copyright law by engaging in the unauthorized distribution of protected material.

Another new requirement is that institutions must have “written plans to effectively combat unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material” (FR, p. 55903). These written plans must have actually been implemented, and, in addition to the requirements to educate students and have an active combat plan, institutions must “offer alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property” (FR, p. 55903). Part of the requirement that institutions have implemented, written plans to combat infringement, states that such institutions “must include the use of one or more technology-based deterrents” (p. 55910). Although, “no particular technology measures are favored or required for inclusion in an institution’s plans” (p. 55926).

As far as offering legal alternatives, the regulations specifically state that the mere availability or existence of legal alternatives on its own does not constitute offering alternatives as anticipated in the new requirements. Instead, “an institution must periodically review the legal alternatives and make available the results of the review to its students through a Web site or other means” (FR, p. 55910). And so, the DOE is expecting institutions to “be active, rather than passive” to the “extent practicable’’ (p. 55910) in providing students legal alternatives to illegal downloading. Also, associations and commercial entities might develop “up-to-date lists of legal alternatives to illegal downloading” that institutions can reference for “compliance with this provision” in the event they decide not to create their own resource (p. 55910). An example of such a resource is currently offered by Educause (Please see http://www.educause.edu/legalcontent).

Educause has taken the position that the regulations will be easy to meet for most colleges and universities, and that although the new regulations “set a higher bar for compliance than copyright law does,” colleges and universities “have always taken seriously their responsibility to educate students about intellectual property laws and the consequences of violation” (7 things, p. 2). Certainly, in composition studies over a decade ago, scholars such as TyAnna Herrington, Jeff Galin, John Logie, Jim Porter, Janice Walker, and even the CCCC Caucus on Intellectual Property, urged us as writing teachers to help our students gain knowledge of/at the place where copyright and writing intersect.

Our role as writing teachers and researchers might be to follow how the implementation of these new regulations unfold, and seek ways that we can contribute to assure that a “policing” environment does not arise in contrast to an educational learning environment. Of course, the regulations will be open for review and revision as they are implemented, and so some writing teachers might wish to become involved in this process. But presently, Educause rightly argues that since a long rulemaking process has taken place prior to the issuing of the final regulations, these new rules “represent the combined efforts of the higher education community and entertainment industries” (p. 2). The upside to these new regulations is that they require institutional-level support for the copyright education of students, and they provide clear delineation and procedures on what institutions can do to reduce their own liability. A really good resource to consult for further information is: http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/HEOA/34600. Another great resource to further explore copyright’s intersection with teaching is Traci Gardner’s June 15, 2010 Inbox blog post: http://ncteinbox.blogspot.com/2010/06/piecing-together-copyright-puzzle.html.

Submitted by:
Martine Courant Rife, JD, PhD
Professor of Writing, Junior Chair CCCC IP Caucus
Lansing Community College
Lansing, Michigan, USA
martinerife@gmail.com 

Intellectual Property Reports Main Page