Category: Uncategorized

Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)
(October 1989, Revised November 2013, Revised March 2015, Revised November 2023)

Statement of Purpose

We writing practitioners, researchers, and scholars find ourselves at a juncture where foundational assumptions about the teaching of writing, its place in higher education, and its ability to help foster a truly inclusive democratic society are increasingly contested. Trust in literacy has been eroded over the past decades, coming to an acute crisis in the most recent years where basic facts are in dispute, meaning has been decontextualized, and information weaponized for political gain. Moreover, technology now threatens real human to human communication in the form of A.I. algorithms trained on Large Language Models like ChatGPT. Indeed, the very premises of what it means to be literate and to teach literacy are undergoing rapid change and it is in this moment we set forth guidance to postsecondary teachers, departments, administrators, policy makers and legislators on what our research expertise tells us about how to move through these changes responsibly, ethically, and with equanimity.

This statement is meant to help support and guide the careful work of professionals in their many different contexts and against many different assaults on higher learning. We know that writing, language, and literacy practices can exclude based on who is literate, which literacies count, and what ways of knowing are considered valid (Baker-Bell et al., “This Ain’t Another Statement”; Baker-Bell, Linguistic Justice; Bell; Bonilla-Silva; Canagarajah; Gay; Gonzales and Kells; hooks; Hubrig; Kerschbaum; King et al.; Kirkland; Kynard “Oh No”; Ladson-Billings “From”; Ladson-Billings “Toward”; Love; Muhammad; Paris and Alim; Tayles; Wilkerson). The world looks and to some degree behaves differently depending on whether literacies are made for you or against you. Responding to texts like the Bible are not a pathway to clear guidelines but always situated within centuries of historical context. Inequities also abound in the labor of teaching and we note that the majority of postsecondary teachers nationwide are now adjuncts without tenure protection, and whose terms of employment rely on them delivering a curriculum in which they have little or no say (AAUP). On top of this, postsecondary reading, writing, and academic learning programs are under growing pressure to produce students who can simply “avoid grammatical errors” as part of occupational training, thus eroding the necessary civic aspects and democratic responsibilities of being literate, critical, and deliberative rather than illiterate, compliant, and passive. These erosions come as part of the many assaults on humanities programs in general: the separation of science and humanities education, the framing of educational outcomes in purely economic terms, and the increasingly precarious employment for postsecondary writing teachers (Childress; Hassel and Phillips; Jensen and Griffiths; Khan; Kezar et al.; TYCA Workload; Welch and Scott).  As such, we hope to respond clearly to this moment by recognizing the material inequities and disparities perpetuated by current conditions, and reaffirm the fundamental necessity for training literate citizens who will not fall for the assaults of the more powerful against the disenfranchised.

It is our hope that this statement can help affirm and support these ideals. We also hope this statement will be of value to those who teach across institutions—before, during, and after postsecondary education—because we understand how we are linked in a common endeavor. These institutions include community colleges, HBCUs, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), tribal colleges, and Hispanic-serving institutions. We deeply hope this statement supports students, from their right to their own language (CCCC, Smitherman, Perryman-Clark, et. al) to demands for linguistic justice (“This Ain’t Another Statement”; Baker-Bell, Linguistic Justice). We do this in the service of sueños—pursuing the light, the many ways language is the tangible essence of human voice, agency, and identity.

Major Premises

Literacy is not a “basic skill” in the sense that it is easy and should be gotten out of the way early in one’s studies, but basic in the sense that it takes an entire career or lifetime to learn to do well and thus must be practiced continually. Language, whether written or spoken, is fluid, wonderfully diverse, never neutral, deeply relational, and entwined with power and ideology. It is central to our lives. It sustains community and belonging as much as it divides and isolates. We understand that abundant knowledges of Black, Indigenous, people of color, and other multiply-marginalized communities bring nuance to deeply enrich our understandings of freedom, rhetoric, writing, and each other.

As such, language and writing bring us together, build community, and strengthen our democracy. Reading and writing are acts of taking ownership of language and the stories that circulate around us and through us. It is therefore vital for American higher education and tertiary education abroad that the postsecondary teaching of writing

• be supported by the selection of highly qualified teachers;
• supports and guarantees security through tenure and pay equity;
• be delivered in classrooms with fifteen students or less and by teachers responsible for no more than sixty students per semester;
• includes instruction in all of writing’s multimodal and multiliterate forms;
• attends to the ways writing has always been a technology;
• explicitly attends to matters of race, gender, colonization, and diversity;
• celebrates student writing and learning;
• supports students’ abilities to choose among options in terms of style, phrasing, linguistic expression, genre, and delivery;
• values the assets each student brings to their work and the classroom; and
• fosters campus-wide understandings of writing and its development as a means of critically creative expression, not just the transmission of thought.

To that end, we detail the following guiding principles and enabling conditions that can help writing teachers, writing program administrators, department heads, library staff, deans, university administrators, and policy makers make decisions that support sound writing instruction. The principles in this document are grounded in the past sixty years of research. This reaffirms our belief that literacy education is part of our commitment to the democratic ideal that we can work among differences toward a better future for all.

Principles of Sound Writing Instruction

Guiding Principles

Sound writing instruction

• recognizes that writing is relational;
• emphasizes reading and writing as sociohistorical, racial, cultural, political, and community-based acts;
• frames reading and writing and its teaching as non-linear, recursive, and rhetorically contingent;
• unsettles language and ideas about writing that standardize and exclude;
• integrates technological developments;
• combines feedback and input from multiple audiences;
• supports academic, civic, and professional communities in their critical thinking and decision-making;
• exposes learners to reading and writing a variety of genres in their social contexts.

Enabling Conditions

Sound writing instruction

• is flexible;
• attends to material conditions (of both learners and instructors, including appropriate class size, offices, and compensation);
• stays connected (to both its intended audience and to the research and theories of writing, including those of writing studies);
• can only be assessed with locally constructed measures.

What follows below is a brief discussion of each of these principles and conditions. Please note how these are braided (Powell and Mukavetz) rather than separate strands. Thus, explanations may attend equally to multiple principles and multiple principles may speak to different explanations.

1. Sound writing instruction recognizes that writing is relational.

To say “writing is relational” is to point out how literacy mediates our social relations. Any written text is only one part in a larger dialogue (Applebee; Nystrand; Beck et al.; Álvarez and Colombo). Relations demand empathy and listening, so part of writing, reading, and literacy is the ability to imagine the conversations in which one participates. Writers both address and invoke their audiences (Ong, Lunsford and Ede), responding to and shaping their audiences through genre, style, tone, and other textual cues. We build worlds together through our reading and writing practices (King; Martinez; Okri) and sound writing instruction invites students to contemplate their world building choices (Garcia, Baca, and Cushman). Teaching writing always begs the question: What kind of world will we build together?

2. Sound writing instruction emphasizes reading and writing as sociohistorical, racial, cultural, political, and community-based acts.

As with principle #4, we understand language use as a richly diverse and complex activity. It is conditioned by one’s culture, one’s language(s), one’s ways of knowing the world, one’s identity and interests, one’s embodiment and physical capacities, and by a host of other variables which all instructors should have training and professional development to pursue. We therefore invite writing instructors, writing program administrators, writing tutors, and assessment designers to adopt an asset orientation regarding written languages rather than a deficit orientation. When we actively and intentionally acknowledge that language is one of the most important aspects of any human group, we honor culture in all its diversity and richness. In doing so, we are also communicating to students—especially those who have traditionally been excluded from higher education—a powerful message: “You matter. You are valued. You belong here.”

We also invite writing instructors to acknowledge that language use is directly linked—in the US and around the world—to racialized understandings of difference and to systems of oppression and violence based on race, gender, class, disability, faith, exposure to trauma, sexual orientation, political orientation, language use, and other variables (Alexander; Cedillo; Hubrig; Kerschbaum; Kinloch et al.; Tayles; Waite). We invite colleagues across institutional boundaries to help subvert and dismantle these oppressive systems.

Furthermore, much of what we thought we knew about language, writing, and literacy is being called into question—especially the hegemony of Standard Written English and the academic essay as the premier form of written communication in our discipline and in our classrooms (see Gonzales and Hall; Baker-Bell et al., “This Ain’t Another Statement”). We invite faculty and curricular planners to think broadly and inclusively about written communication, even beyond alphabetic scripts, and to nurture and support creativity and variety in student written expression for all abilities (see Haas; Kinkead; Romano; Disability Studies in Composition: Position Statement on Policy and Best Practices). We encourage assignments that promote practices in multiple genres of written expression such as creative nonfiction, hip hop lyrics, parodies, poems, recipes, poster presentations, counterstories, allegories, fables, autobiographic reflection, narrated dialogue, personal letters, op-eds, family and community histories, personal reflections, and so many more (Bell; Lujan 56; Martinez; Sirc 2002). Teachers can bring this rich diversity of culture, genre, and literacy practices into their classrooms as one means to counter student “practices of resistance” to standardized instruction like silence or eye-rolling (Kinloch, in Paris and Alim). Following Jamila Lyiscott, we urge educators to regard the multiply situated social nature of literacies as full of opportunity to engage in “linguistic celebration” (“Three” 3:46).

3. Sound writing instruction unsettles language and ideas about writing that standardize and exclude.

Sound writing instruction needs to unsettle many ideas and terms about writing that are commonly used to teach, understand, and assess both writing and academic research (Baker-Bell et al., “This Ain’t Another Statement”; Baker-Bell, Linguistic Justice; Bell; Canagarajah; Gay; Kirkland; Kynard, “Oh No”; Love; Muhammad; Paris and Alim; Wilson; Tuck and Yang; Murray and Tsuchiya; Kirsch et al.). In many ways, as our research listed points out, common terms and methods of teaching and assessing writing often exclude the very sociocognitive developments required for knowledge transfer that is the lynchpin of postsecondary education. Such terms may include, but are not limited to the following:

clear	appropriate	effective
conventional	real audience	good writer/good writing
remediation	authentic audience	formal/informal language use
American/British/ other national language	standard	strong
adapt	expectation	efficient

We are not saying these terms should never be used, but simply suggest them as sites of further local inquiry to examine our own biases and assumptions. We must be aware how such terms are weighted toward certain literacies and their situations. Being mindful of this allows us to examine our own ethics and how they impact members of our local community, which is itself a sound guiding principle for all writing instructors, programs, and managers.

With this, we acknowledge the emerging development of new paradigms for the understanding of language, writing, and literacy instruction. These new paradigms recognize the hegemony and centrality of colonialist assumptions about clarity, language, audience expectations, and standards. While the standardization of such colonial grammars, genres, and expectations has been a source of comfort and surety for many, it has had the consequence of both excluding students and erasing cultural ideas. Some things simply cannot be said in “standard” forms of English, Spanish, French, or other languages. Further, recognizing positionality alone does little to recognize and challenge embodied discourses of inequality (Paris and Alim). We find ourselves in a liberatory place that requires new ways to talk with learners and each other about how and why we communicate, develop new assessment procedures, and integrate new genres and forms of writing other than the decontextualized academic essay. This new paradigm is open-ended, becoming a kind of evolving and iterative conversation where these terms are more carefully thought through, explained, and put into local practice.

4: Sound writing instruction exposes learners to reading and writing a variety of genres in their social contexts.

A significant part of teaching writing is teaching reading (Baron; Blau; Carillo, Teaching; Wineburge et al.; Del Principe and Ihara; Klein; Smith; Sullivan et al., Deep Reading, Deep Learning; Wolf, Proust; Wolf, Reader; Wolf and Barzillai). Related to unsettling our own predispositions and in accordance with the CCCC Position Statement on the Role of Reading in College Writing Classrooms, we invite compositionists to become strong reading teachers as well as strong writing teachers. This can help writing teachers employ strategies to promote critical, creative, reflective, and joyful sustained reading practices. Rather than superficial comprehension, which relies on a “data mining” approach to reading comprehension (Carillo), deep reading engages students with questions and interpretations that have no set answer. The readings themselves elicit and require “perspective taking”—a process that is at the very core of the imaginative critical and creative metacognition we addressed in Principle #1. Such imagining requires self-reflection, social-emotional learning, and recognition of multiple situated interpretations.

Assignment design, text selection, and assessment protocol all become crucial variables as teachers across disciplines seek to promote deep reading and deep learning. If students know that the evaluation process for a course “is going to stress higher order thinking skills—analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—then they realize that they simply must read deeply. If texts and papers allow the student to be successful with only rote memorization (knowledge and comprehension) there is little enticement to read deeply” (Roberts and Roberts 130; see also Klein; Mehta and Fine; Wolf and Barzillai). We encourage teachers across disciplines and across institutional boundaries to design assignments, projects, and learning opportunities that promote (and require) deep reading.

5. Sound writing instruction frames literacies and their teaching as non-linear, recursive, and rhetorically contingent.

Since the 1960s, research has repeatedly demonstrated how writing is a recursive process and that more experienced writers have developed a vocabulary and conceptual apparatus of how they purposefully engage in that recursiveness (Braddock et al.; Emig; Flower and Hayes). Purpose-driven iterations do not necessarily make the end result come quicker, nor do they guarantee a better outcome every time. They are, instead, a practice of writing not unlike practices performed by athletes. In these practices, writers can try different approaches to see what works. This puts the emphasis on the word “essay,” from the French essai, as an attempt in practice and not just an attempt in the production of a coherent thought. In the various repeated attempts engaged in and through practice, learners can be encouraged to take risks, experiment, and comment upon those things which they felt worked for their purposes and those that did not.

This precludes a sense of a “perfect” piece of writing since a writer’s purpose is always in relation to an audience (see Principle #1). It is the contingency of rhetoric, then, that guides the qualitative measure and assessment of both written texts and the language used by students to think through their writing process. Those measures and language cannot be reduced to grammatical correctness (see Principle #4), or rigid genre formulations, both of which can only be learned in rhetorical context to begin with. Learning happens in the process and the process should provide the learning outcomes, not the product (see Principle #12).

6. Sound writing instruction combines feedback and input from multiple audiences.

Because the process of writing is iterative and guided by relational and rhetorical parameters, there can be no single source of authoritative feedback (Yu and Schunn). Rather, multiple sources of feedback shed light on what works in a draft and what other options a writer may have to revise. Students benefit from experienced guidance that purposefully combines rhetorical insights from many different readers. Writing centers, peer tutors, and other academic support staff are often rich sources of feedback to all learners and can arguably be more insightful to postsecondary students simply because they are removed from the grading portion of the class. In class, peers can also be a rich source for both feedback and to help teachers provide guided instruction on reading generously for helpful feedback (Nystrand; Hart-Davidson and Meeks). Teaching others how to read for and provide peer feedback takes a “learning by doing” approach to the writing process since it is the critical, creative, and careful sifting through of possibilities in writing that constitutes the real content of writing instruction.

7. Sound writing instruction integrates technological developments.

Writing has always been a technology, and technological developments are themselves worthy of inclusion and study as part of the practice of writing. Writing teachers are in the best position to handle ethical use of such technologies and demonstrate how technologies can help writing be lively, powerful, and rhetorically effective. Texts are inherently multimodal. Composing draws on rich data sets of knowledge and memory that require ethical frameworks for use, and LLMs like Chat GPT, LaMDA, and Orca extend the need for such frameworks and critical reflection.

For example, economically privileged students have always had the ability to pay ghost writers, so we remind educators that LLMs have not altered the possibilities of academic dishonesty, only changed its socioeconomics and accessibility. Various concerns about A.I. underscores the need for this statement because the concerns often confuse the purposes of writing instruction by placing undue emphasis on the product rather than the process (see Principle #5). Just as mathematicians were wary of allowing the classroom use of powerful scientific calculators developed in the 1970s, writing instructors are currently wary of contemporary computing power and its effects. While academic dishonesty is possible in any system and LLMs can produce highly readable summaries and positions with evidence, an emphasis on process and an ongoing dialogue with students about their reasons for changing drafts is instruction that clearly focuses on student learning rather than rote textual production. As with mathematical problems in trigonometry or calculus, the emphasis is less on the result and more on the ability of learners to show their work.

Because computing power does not show signs of decreasing and since LLMs are being incorporated into search engines and other tools upon which research depends, blanket prohibitions against such tools seem short-sighted and even counter-productive. Instead, teachers should help both colleagues and students critically examine their own uses, collaborate with learners and community members on the ethical dimensions of these novel tools, and develop common community understandings of how these tools affect learning. We expand this to other forms of expression to include multimodal and multiliteracies instruction congruent with the other points we lay out here. Web texts, video, podcasts, graphic novels, and other modes of composition should be included alongside written composition because they require similar composing processes (see Principle #2).

8. Sound writing instruction supports academic, civic, and professional communities in their critical thinking and decision-making.

Reading and writing are acts of taking ownership of the language and the stories that circulate around us and through us. Whether in a professional/technical discourse community or in civic life, the ability to relate through symbolic media of one kind or another is vital. Assignment prompts and practices must acknowledge and include the various purposes of discourse communities. These purposes are always ideological, though that does not make ideologically driven arguments or writing acceptable (Carillo, Teaching). Rather, students must be taught to recognize and distinguish hyper-partisan or ideologically driven forms of reasoning from purposeful work toward a more common goal. This applies to both reading and writing, especially in an age of misinformation and disinformation that is designed and produced to polarize groups and a broader polity. Writing instruction is therefore laden with ethical questions for both local and more distant audiences and the effects of writing for all those involved, especially those obscured from typical group decision-making.

As we affirmed in Principle #1, writing instruction is central to the practice of democracy. It is not only the medium to express one’s own views and thoughts, but the medium to collaboratively examine the options before us (Garcia, Baca, and Cushman).

Enabling Conditions

 9. Sound writing instruction provides students with the support and flexibility necessary to achieve their goals.

Writers come to us with different kinds of abilities, backgrounds, cultures, capacities, attitudes, habits, and other strengths. It must be accessible to all. As writing teachers, we need to meet students where they are rather than where we would like them to be. Writing instruction not only provides the space and means to practice, but attends to the individual learner from early on in its instructional design. Students from disproportionately impacted groups often need additional flexibility, support, and resources so that they can access and fully benefit from the opportunities provided by literacy instruction. This can be achieved, in part, through Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (Dolmage, “Universal Design”), integrating social-emotional learning (SEL) practices, culturally sustainable pedagogies, and other curricular initiatives.

• Institutions should provide support necessary for students to achieve the writing, reading, and critical analysis goals established within their degree programs and also emphasize that this support is available for writers of varying abilities and levels of experience. These institutional resources include:writing classes, writing centers, embedded tutoring programs, and resource centers;
• appropriate local placement procedures that maximize prompt transfer level completion rates (Poe et al.; Toth et al.);
• writing across the curriculum (WAC), writing in the disciplines (WID), writing enriched curricula (WEC) and/or other programs to help faculty identify expectations of FYC or entry-level writing so that they may offer instruction in writing in courses beyond them in ways which align and transfer educational outcomes (Bazerman et al.; Anson and Flash).

10. Sound writing instruction stays connected to both its intended audience and to the research and theories of written composition and writing studies.

Like all academic disciplines and our wider culture, writing studies is an evolving conversation. To that end, writing instructors must be supported in staying abreast of research and pedagogies in the field as well as understanding the changing pressures and interests of students (Kahn; Sternglass). Neither of these can happen within strict pay-by-credit-hour jobs unless those activities are done without pay.

Institutions and programs emphasize this purpose by ensuring that instructors have background in and experience with theories of writing. It is therefore incumbent upon administration to support these critical tasks in material ways such as, but not limited to, travel allowances for conferences and symposia, free access to library databases, sponsoring professional development, providing professional development leave even for contingent faculty, research and mentorship opportunities with students, and stable employment so faculty can know individuals over the span of their college career. Institutions, especially institutions that employ graduate students, early career instructors, and faculty from outside the discipline of Composition and Rhetoric to teach courses in writing, must support development of this background knowledge by ensuring instructors receive sufficient grounding in and practice/mentoring with regard to key concepts associated with theories of writing. Because these resources support the teaching of writing, these resources must extend to all faculty, including faculty at open access institutions, and not just faculty employed at research institutions. This support impacts teaching and learning in profound ways.

11. Sound writing instruction attends to material and emotional conditions of both learners and instructors.

Neither teachers nor learners can operate when their material and emotional conditions are not met. Cases of contingent faculty living out of their cars or being denied medical care because they lacked adequate insurance are simply unacceptable. So, too, are the often under-reported cases of student food and housing insecurity, mental health crises, exposure to trauma, incidents of rape and bullying, racial profiling and daily microaggressions, and the lack of accommodations for not only the physically different, but the neurodivergent learners who are in our writing classes.

Institutions should at all levels take these incidents seriously and provide both meaningful resources and adequate compensation to support teachers and students as they meet the challenges of a society that has scaled back its safety nets. At minimum, writing instructors should be paid a living wage, be entitled to adequate health care coverage that won’t leave them bankrupt, and be given the job security and stability to lead meaningful lives outside of work (Childress; Hassel and Phillips; Kezar et al.; TYCA Workload). This extends to the number of students teachers must work with and that entails class sizes. It is the position of CCCC that

• No more than 20 students should be permitted in any writing class. Ideally, classes should be limited to 15.
• No English faculty members should teach more than 60 writing students a term. Any more than this, and teachers are spread too thin to effectively engage with students on their writing (see also Horning 2007, MLA.org, “ADE Guidelines for Class Size and Workload for College and University Instructors of English: A Statement of Policy.”; TYCA; TYCA Workload).

Institutions should provide resources necessary for effective instruction, including office space to meet with students individually and privately, computers and network access, and office technologies (such as photocopiers). Institutions should also facilitate instructor access to personnel and units that can inform their practices and offer helpful efficiencies such as librarians, writing centers and directors, and teaching and learning centers. Institutions should also foster department and program cultures that recognize instructors—whether in appointments that emphasize research and scholarship or in those that focus fully or primarily on teaching or administration—as scholars and full members of the discipline. Institutions should ensure that all members of a department or program have the opportunity to participate in shared governance.

12. Sound writing instruction can only be assessed with locally constructed measures.

The move to homogenous language is anti-democratic, imbued with an authoritarian impulse because it works to remove the textures of democracy and homogenize us into a single public. Similarly, assessments of writing based on a single audience or a single ideal of an audience are not universally applicable. Rather, assessments must recognize linguistic and rhetorical differences and be derived from the consensus of local readers. Rubrics like AAC&U are good places to start developing local assessments, but they cannot be used in place of judgments made by local readers and stakeholders.

Institutions emphasize that effectiveness is assessed collaboratively and in multiple sites by using assessments that include direct evidence of both instructor practice and student writing performance, such as student writing from the context or class where instruction has taken place (Inoue 2015). High stakes timed tests of writing that focus on scenarios removed from authentic instructional contexts, or even grammar tests, do not provide valid evidence of student learning within or beyond a writing course. We encourage all assessment professionals and accrediting agencies to be familiar with writing assessment practices and intensive writing theory and to support cross-institutional conversations about what is valued in writing, why it is valued, and the many ways those values are indicated.

13. Sound writing instruction is made possible by strong preparation in graduate school to teach at diverse types of institutions

One key area that needs to be addressed in terms of preparing teachers of writing is making all types of higher education institutions—not just research universities—visible to graduate students in English, composition studies, and rhetoric. These principles include HBCUs, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), tribal colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, and community colleges. As an example, the exclusion of community colleges has been a long-standing concern in our profession that dates back fifty years (Kynard; Calhoon-Dillahunt et al.; Hassel and Giordano; Hassel and Phillips; Jensen and Griffiths; Jensen and Toth; Tinberg).

Graduate training institutions should ensure that students are familiar with and prepared to teach at a variety of institutions; as Lovas notes, “you cannot represent a field if you ignore half of it” (276). As the recent TYCA statement, TYCA Guidelines for Preparing Teachers of English in the Two-Year College, recommends, this professionalization would include helping graduate students become familiar with the “distinctive history, missions, and institutional conditions at two-year colleges” and preparing future college writing faculty to teach “the culturally, linguistically, socioeconomically, and academically diverse students who attend two-year colleges” (Calhoon-Dillahunt et al. 556). Community college English teachers are the new teaching majority, and most students majoring in English, composition studies, and rhetoric in graduate school will work at some point in their careers at community colleges (Hassel and Giordano; Hassel and Phillips). This issue has significant ethical, equity, and social justice implications. We urge our colleagues to take up this important work.

14. Sound writing instruction is built on research from our discipline that is strategic, practical, generalizable, built on systematically gathered evidence, and public-facing.

With confidence in higher education down sharply in recent years across the nation, the need for strategic, public-facing research that documents the important work we do as literacy educators is urgent. Our call for replicable, aggregable, and data-supported research (Gonzales and Kells; Hassel and Phillips 37–78; Hesse; Jackson et al.; King et al.; Meltzer 1–5; Sternglass) is especially urgent today when the value of higher education is no longer regarded as self-evident by many Americans (Blake; Brenan; Tough). To move this important work forward, we invite our colleagues to become teacher-scholar-activist-organizers. The exigency for such work is compelling (Jensen and Griffiths; Kahn and Lynch-Biniek; Taylor; Welch and Scott; Adler-Kassner and Wardle).

Institutions should value and fund research in our field that includes the “new majority” of college students—those who attend access-oriented institutions, including community colleges, HBCUs, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), tribal colleges, and Hispanic-serving institutions (Hassel and Phillips; Hassel and Giordano). Such research and sponsored programs, like community engagement and service-learning courses, must be designed to serve the needs of local student populations. Institutions should also take into account issues related to precarity, labor, and material conditions that have become a standard part of most literacy teachers’ working lives—and a part of many of our students’ lives as well (Childress; Kezar et al.; TYCA Workload). This new majority of students “needs to be seen more clearly and described more richly within the research in our field” (Hassel and Phillips 4).

Conclusion

We encourage language arts teachers to create conditions for learning to thrive (Love; Rose). Doing so, we must acknowledge—and address—structural/institutional barriers to college writing. Who are we limiting access to? Who do we consistently leave out? When we cultivate learning with the needed support systems and conditions, we generate change and new possibilities, hope and opportunity, and student success. We also strengthen our democracy and our collective ability toward “a more perfect union.”

We are in a moment of mass misinformation designed to use language to divide rather than unite us and to further increase rather than rebalance the power differential between rich and poor. As such, it is incumbent on language arts teachers across institutional boundaries to provide learners and the nation with critical thinkers, discerning minds, and considerate citizens who can continue pursuing the light, the sueños that brings so many to America and keeps our nation strong, free, and truly equal.

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Acknowledgments

This statement was generously created by the CCCC Task Force to Revise the CCCC Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing. The members of this task force included:

David M. Grant
Trace Daniels-Lerberg
Sara Alvarez
Jasmine Villa
Austin Jackson
Hua Zhu
Ersula Ore
Matthew Nelson
Patrick Sullivan

 

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

 

Author: Jessica Reyman

The availability of digital recording technologies, social networking media, and distributed file sharing systems has forever changed the expectations of everyday users with regard to digital content. At the same time, however, U.S. copyright law has shown a decided trend toward more restrictions over what we are able to do online. As a result, a gap has emerged between the reality of copyright law and the social reality of our everyday creative activities.

Intellectual property scholars in rhetoric and composition and members of the CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus, since its inception in 1994, have recognized the importance of copyright law for writing practices and the teaching of writing. Recently, these scholars have taken an interest in what might be called “the rhetoric of intellectual property,” examining the public and legal discourse that has proliferated in high-profile debates about copyright law on the Internet. Such study is of interest to composition scholars and instructors who want to know, how does copyright law change or impede cultural production on the Internet? And how does the rhetoric of the digital copyright debate shape the future of digital culture?

In an attempt to address these difficult questions, Jessica Reyman’s The Rhetoric of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law and the Regulation of Digital Culture <http://www.routledge.com/9780415999076> (Routledge, 2010) identifies the public and legal stories told about copyright law in a digital age, analyzes the rhetoric behind recent legal developments, and challenges the underlying claims about the role of technology in creative and intellectual activity.Through an analysis of the contemporary legal and public debate about copyright, this book shows how the stories told by participants shape our cultural understanding of the role of the Internet in cultural production.Reyman examines the rhetoric at work in recent and ongoing battles over digital copyright, including the regulation of peer-to-peer technology development in MGM Studios v. Grokster and the anti-piracy messages circulating on college campuses to curb unauthorized file sharing. Reyman argues that the rhetoric of the digital copyright debate, namely the rhetorical positioning of technology as destructive to creative and intellectual production, has profound implications for the future of composition, creativity online, and digital culture.

This book offers a broad look at the history of intellectual property studies in rhetoric and composition and establishes the importance of such work for writing teachers and scholars. Debates about copyright law influence who participates in online writing practices and in what ways. This book offers to newcomers and seasoned intellectual property scholars alike an in-depth discussion of the power of rhetoric in shaping a debate over copyright law that has profound implications for authorship, textual ownership, and writing in a digital age.

 

Intellectual Property Reports Main Page

By Kim D. Gainer, Radford University, Radford VA

Educators and public librarians may want to carefully watch the progress of the Google Book Settlement. This agreement between Google and two groups of publishers and authors will govern the public’s access to the millions of books that have been digitized by Google in cooperation with several publishers and major research libraries. If the settlement is approved in its current form, public libraries and certain institutions of higher education will be eligible to apply for subscriptions to a free Public Access Service that allows students and library patrons broader use of Google’s book database than will be permitted to individuals searching the database through private connections. Those with access to the licensed service will be able to read the full texts of books that are under copyright but not in print; individuals who instead search the database through unaffiliated web browsers will only be able to view short passages of such books. This free Public Access Service will be made available to one computer station in each separate building in any public library system in the United States that requests it. At not-for-profit two-year colleges, the service may be accessed via one computer station per 4,000 students. At other not-for-profit colleges and universities, access will be allowed via one computer station per 10,000 students. (The settlement does not extend to for-profit colleges and universities.)

The Public Access Service does have certain limitations. Although patrons may print pages for a per sheet fee, they may not electronically copy or annotate books. Libraries and colleges may purchase an Institutional Subscription that removes some of the restrictions. At subscribing institutions, patrons may electronically annotate books, may print up to twenty pages of a book at a time, and may copy and paste up to four consecutive pages at a time. In addition, books in the Institutional Subscription Database may be made available via e-reserves or as part of course management systems, providing that the intended users would be authorized to use the Institutional Subscription itself.

The settlement as proposed does not specify a procedure for librarians and university officials to follow in order to request the free Public Access Service for their institutions. Nor does the language of the settlement require Google to notify colleges and libraries that they may be eligible for this service. If the settlement is approved with the provisions described above, presumably more information will be forthcoming, and the NCTE Intellectual Property Caucus and Intellectual Property Committee will share that information with you. A final hearing on the settlement has been scheduled for October 7, 2009, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and a decision should be announced several months later.

For further information, please contact the author, Kim Gainer.

 

Intellectual Property Reports Main Page

Traci Zimmerman
Associate Professor
School of Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication
James Madison University

In September of 2011, just two months after Aaron Swartz was arrested for his open-access hacktivism, a lawsuit was brought against the HathiTrust digital repository and five universities: Cornell University, Indiana University, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, and HathiTrust’s host institution, The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The suit was brought by the Authors Guild, along with The Australian Society of Authors, the Quebec writers’ union, and a small number of individual authors. The substance of their claim is not as interesting as the source of their anxiety: in its filing “the Authors Guild expressed deep concern about what would happen if the millions of scanned texts in the HathiTrust repository—files created largely with the help of Google’s book-scanning project—got loose on the Internet.”¹

It is certainly not surprising that the Authors Guild, which brought suit against Google in 2005, would be interested in this repository, since it was (at least in part) made possible by Google. And with all of the recent focus on large scale digitizing projects, whether for open access or commercial success, it is easy for the individual author to get lost in the digital wilderness, or to feel as if they are “little more than cogs in the vast content machine.”² Up until now, libraries and universities were not counted as part of this “machine”; under this lawsuit, however, they seem to be lumped in with their for-profit counterparts.

HathiTrust is a large-scale digital repository that partners with over 50 institutions to digitize and preserve books and other materials.³ The suit claims that the defendants have engaged in the “systematic, concerted, widespread, and unauthorized reproduction and distribution” of approximately seven million copyrighted works.⁴ It asks that the court restrict “all unauthorized digital copies” currently held by the defendants and that it prevent the defendants from giving Google permission to scan additional works.⁵ Coming just two months after Aaron Swartz’s very public arrest for making “locked up” JSTOR content public, this lawsuit reflects a real anxiety for the security (or lack thereof) of their clients’ intellectual property. Scott Turow, the President of the Authors Guild, went so far as to claim that “these books, because of the universities’ and Google’s unlawful actions, are now at needless, intolerable digital risk.”⁶  Whether the digitizing of books is a “needless” act is quite debatable; as to the “intolerable risk” about which Turow speaks, it stems from the fact that these works are held by universities that “can’t be sued for damages because as state institutions they enjoy sovereign-immunity protection from prosecution.”⁷ This is why the lawsuit does not seek monetary damages, only that the files be seized and future scanning stopped. Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild, noted that suing libraries is not a great way to win friends or influence people: “believe me,” he says, “this is not a lawsuit that anyone looks forward to bringing, but these are real property rights that real authors have. It’s their hard work, and even an institution with the best of intentions that loses seven million unencrypted PDF’s of the world’s greatest literature can do a huge amount of damage to the value of those works.”⁸

Kara Novak of Public Knowledge begs to differ with the position brought by the Authors Guild.  She writes in a blog post about the case: “Instead of fighting for copyright protection where none exists, the Authors Guild should work with the technology that quickly disseminates authors’ works and create new business models that will bring in money earned from digital book sales.  It is time for the Authors Guild to focus less on litigation to impound its works under top security and turn its attention to creating the artistic work it claims to protect.”⁹

Ironically, in a suit that claims to be focused on the rights of individual authors and scholars, the focus is squarely on libraries, and “how far the scope of an academic library goes.”¹⁰  “It’s a very curious suit,” claims Jonathan Band, a copyright lawyer who works a great deal with libraries, because “from the substantive point of view, the legal position of the libraries is extremely strong.”¹¹

This is indeed a case to be curious about. The court has set a deadline of May 20, 2012 for the discovery phase to conclude; a trial will commence in November if the case is not settled or dismissed by then.

¹Jennifer Howard “HathiTrust Case Highlights Authors’ Fears about Fate of their Work Online.”  In October 2, 2011 Chronicle Online.  http://chronicle.com/article/Hot-Type-HathiTrust-Lawsuit/129241/
²Qtd, in Howard, 10/2/11.
³Jennifer Howard.  “In Authors’ Suit Against Libraries, an Attempt to Wrest Back Some Control Over Digitized Works.” In September 14, 2011 Chronicle Online. http://chronicle.com/article/In-Authors-Suit-Against/128973/
⁴Qtd in Howard, 9/14/11.
⁵Qtd in Howard, 9/14/11.
⁶Qtd in Howard, 9/14/11.
⁷Ibid.
⁸Ibid.
⁹Qtd in Howard, 10/2/2011.
¹⁰Qtd in Howard 9/14/11.
¹¹Ibid.

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

Kim Gainer
Department of English,
Radford University

In an office on a quad there lived a professor. Not a crowded, dusty office, filled with stacks of ungraded papers and the smell of stale coffee, nor yet a TA cubicle with nothing in it to sit down on save mismatched chairs from the surplus warehouse. It was the office of a tenured full professor, and that means comfort.

Visiting that office just now was the Dean of the College. With his piercing eyes, bristling eyebrows, tangled hair, and long beard, he looked a lot like Gandalf (or like Dumbledore, but fortunately for J.K. Rowling, you can’t copyright the Idea-Of-A-Wizard). “You are certain that this is Fair Use?” the Dean said worriedly, looking over the previous paragraph.

“I hope so,” the Tenured Full Professor said. “I have repurposed the paragraph, and surely no one can say that I am profiting from it—it will not add one penny to the stipend I receive from Picturesque State University. Moreover, I have made very little use of the original in comparison to the totality of the work, and my piffling paragraph is unlikely to eat into future sales of The Hobbit.”

“You have tried to pass the Four-Prongs Test, then,” said the Dean. Yet he was still uneasy. His unease was quite understandable, for when it came to the subject of intellectual property, Picturesque State University was finding itself beset on all sides.

First there had been the matter of students’ unauthorized downloading of copyrighted material. In response, Picturesque State had tried to educate its students but had also crafted a policy forbidding the use of university resources for the downloading of copyrighted material without the copyright owner’s authorization. Probation, suspension, even dismissal: these would be the fates of students who were egregious or repeat violators of this policy.

Next, Picturesque State realized that its policies governing faculty copyright were written for an earlier Age. For a hundred years faculty had been publishing poetry and prose, and during all that time the University had paid little attention to the issue of the “ownership” of these texts. But now the world had changed. Faculty were creating genres and using tools and media not in existence when the first intellectual property policy had been written. The university’s Intellectual Property Committee began holding meetings, each as long as the Council of Elrond, in which language like that of the Black Speech of Mordor was uttered for the first time. What happens when a faculty member creates something that can be “monetized”? When is a faculty member’s creation considered to be a “work for hire”? What is a “shop right”? If a substantial investment on the part of the university entitles it to reap profits from something created by a faculty member, how is “substantial” to be defined?

The IP Committee wondered in particular about the ownership of elements of online courses. An instructor developing such a course creates content and integrates it into a platform, perhaps to the extent of designing the framework in which the content will be embedded. The effort spent integrating exercises, quizzes, and exams; audio and video podcasts; discussion boards and blogs; case studies and simulations—this effort would have to be duplicated if the faculty member left the university and laid claim to either the content or design of the course. An empty or broken shell, the course might cease to exist in any meaningful way until such time as a new framework could be erected and repopulated. To what extent, if any, did the university have an ownership claim to either the content or the framework of a course built by a faculty member using tools provided by the university? This matter and many such others troubled the Councils of the Wise.

Troubled, too, was the Head Librarian. For the convenience of faculty and students, the library had long offered “electronic reserves.” But word had reached Picturesque State University that another institution was being accused of abusing its electronic reserves by posting copyrighted material in such quantities and with such frequency that the owners arguably had been deprived of revenue. Hearing of this dispute, the Head Librarian decided to phase out the electronic reserves. Faculty instead were directed to post material via their web sites or via the Learning Management System to which Picturesque State subscribes.

Of course, posting material elsewhere might still lead to problems if that material were under copyright. A few weeks after the Head Librarian announced the elimination of the electronic reserves, faculty were notified that automated Trolls that sniff out unauthorized use of copyrighted material had located two such instances at Picturesque State University. In the Halls, faculty gathered in knots to debate what might and might not be posted on Learning Management Systems and on personal and university web sites. In the course of the discussion, faculty were surprised to learn that as authors they might become copyright violators by the mere act of posting their own writing online, for some faculty had unwittingly signed away full or partial ownership of their articles, essays, short stories, and poems as the price of publication.

Hemmed in on every side by questions of intellectual property, it was thus no wonder that the Tenured Full Professor and the Dean found themselves debating whether or not to retain the opening paragraph of this parable. “Context is all,” argued the Tenured Full Professor. “Consider that the nature and the purpose of this article are entirely different from the work upon which the opening paragraph is modeled. Moreover, is it not Fair Use to use a source in order to discuss whether the use of the source is Fair Use?”

“Yes, and how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?” grumbled the Dean, who was not fond of meta-commentary. “If a student had written that first paragraph,” he continued, “I should have pointed out that the sentence structure is plagiarized, and I should have cried, ‘You shall not pass!’” (The Dean had been looking for an excuse to use that line.)

Nevertheless, in the end the Dean conceded that it was likelier than not that the paragraph could be defended as an example of Fair Use. “Although,” he complained, “it is a pity that this sort of thing has to be worked out on a case-by-case basis. Your editor is going to be very unhappy if you are wrong about that paragraph. But I suppose that that is part of your point: sorting out an issue of intellectual property is a complicated matter.”

The Dean was of course correct in his conclusion: intellectual property issues can be complicated. His university is typical of most educational institutions in the way that it has had to face continuing (and often rapid) developments in this area. At his university and others, faculty and administrators have been designing and redesigning programs and policies that ensure that students stay within legal and ethical bounds in their use of the intellectual property of others but at the same time succeed in drawing upon those copyrighted creations in order to grow as readers, writers, and thinkers. Simultaneously, faculty and administrators are continually searching for ways to safeguard faculty rights to their creations while acknowledging and accommodating the vested interests that universities and colleges may have in those same creations. The process involves a never-ending series of conversations, one that is sometimes illuminated by court judgments and regulatory rulings such as those periodically issued as part of the implementation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Taking part in the conversation are two groups with connections to the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). One is the Intellectual Property Committee of the CCCC and the other is the CCCC-Intellectual Property Caucus. The IP Caucus maintains a mailing list. If you would like to join in the conversation or 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

Teachers of language and literature need to be mindful of fair use in the classroom, but they also may need to be mindful of fair use in their capacities as researchers and scholars. One organization that tries to provide guidance to educators as they confront fair use issues as both teachers and scholars is the Center for Social Media, an institute sponsored by the School of Communication at American University. Among the resources the Center provides is a web page with links to codes of best practices developed by professional and scholarly associations whose members are especially likely to confront fair use issues. The teacher-scholar may find especially useful a recently added link that takes the reader to a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication. Developed by the International Communication Association’s Ad Hoc Committee on Fair Use and Academic Freedom, this Code articulates the fair use standards applicable in four situations commonly confronted by researchers who are working with copyrighted materials. This Code, according to its authors, represents the “current consensus within the community of communication scholars about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials” in the four situations under discussion.

Communication is a diverse field, encompassing a wide variety of media, including newspaper articles, radio and television commercials and programs, video games, and computer software. When this “raw material” is in the form of copyrighted content, confusion on the part of both publishers and scholars over what is and is not fair use may hobble research programs. According to the authors, currently “[g]raduate students are being asked by advisors to pick other topics; librarians doubt whether they can archive electronic theses that include illustrative material that is copyrighted; publishers discourage inclusion of evidence that involves copyrighted material.”  The Code is an attempt to address this confusion, at least on the part of researchers and scholars.

Fair use (Section 107, Title 17) is often discussed with reference to the following four factors: “the nature of the use, the nature of the work used, the extent of the use, and its economic effect.” These four factors underpin two questions that determine the outcomes of most fair use litigation:  “Did the unlicensed use ‘transform’ the copyrighted material by using it for a different purpose than that of the original, rather than just repeating the work for the same intent and value as the original?” and “Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?” These two questions largely inform the authors’ discussion of best practices for communication scholars.

The first scenario addressed by the Code is that of the scholar who wishes to comment upon, analyze, or critique a copyrighted work. Such commentary, analysis, or criticism will be most effective if the work in question is reproduced, perhaps even in its entirety, depending upon the medium and upon the nature of the analysis. This reproduction of as much of the copyrighted material as is necessary for commentary, criticism, or analysis is a repurposing of that material. Therefore, in spite of the attempt of copyright owners to obstruct or control such use, “scholars may confidently invoke fair use” when reproducing copyrighted works for the purposes of analysis or criticism.

The second scenario is the reproduction of copyrighted material for the purpose of illustrating “economic, social, or cultural phenomenon.”  As in the case of analysis or criticism, copyrighted material may be reproduced in whole or in part depending upon the nature of the “illustrative context.”  And, again, this use represents a repurposing, for

[…] such uses transform the material reproduced by putting it in an entirely new context; thus, a music video clip used to illustrate trends in editing technique or attitudes about race and gender is being employed for a purpose entirely distinct from that of the original, and is typically directed to an entirely distinct audience from that for which it originally was intended.  This is true even in situations where the media object in question is not subjected to specific analysis, criticism, or commentary.

The next scenario addresses the reproduction of copyrighted material in studies in which scholars expose subjects to media in order to collect data on their responses. Such data may be collected in experiments or via surveys or focus groups or observation. In this scenario, researchers may “us[e] copyrighted material either to elicit a discussion or a response or to analyze discussions or responses occurring in that environment.”  Once again the use is transformative, as this type of research focuses on how the copyright material is received rather than on the content per se.

The last research scenario involving fair use arises from the fact that scholars may not only need to make copies of copyrighted works but may need to retain those copies for a period of time—perhaps even indefinitely—as they continue to pursue their research interests. Again key to fair use is the transformative repurposing involved in the creation of an archive. Since each scholar is creating a “research corpus,” the purpose of the materials in question is “new and fundamentally different.” Given that materials that are being used fairly may be disseminated to others, such personal archives can be shared with others. Other researchers may consult the recordings of audio or video broadcasts, the screen captures of web pages, the photocopies of newspaper articles that one scholar has assembled.

The latter point is applicable to all four scenarios. The authors of the Code observe that “[i]f a use is fair in the course of scholarship, then it is fair in the publication and distribution of that scholarship by any means, including publishing and media distribution, and in the archiving of that scholarship.” Thus, for example, the reproduction of copyrighted material, if fair use in a presentation, is also fair use in an article or a book, or, indeed, in any medium.

Other Fair Use Codes accessible via the website of the Center for Social Media:

• Best Practices in Fair Use of Dance-related Materials, a code created by the Dance Heritage Coalition.
• The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, endorsed by the NCTE, the Action Coalition for Media Education, the Media Education Foundation, the National Association for Media Literacy Education, and the Visual Communication Studies Division of the International Communication Association.
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video, developed by the Center for Social Media’s Future of Public Media Project.
• Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, a guide that has the imprimatur of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, the Independent Feature Project, the International Documentary Association, the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, and the Washington, D.C., chapter of Women in Film & Video.
• Statement of Fair Use Best Practices for Media Studies Publishing and Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use in Teaching for Film and Media Educators, codes developed by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Submitted by
Kim D. Gainer
Department of English
Radford University

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Timothy R. Amidon, Graduate Assistant, University of Rhode Island

This article is continued from the previous month’s IP Report.

Last month I described texts that are created within electronically networked, socially constructed environments. While these ‘little texts’ may be hosted on sites controlled by well-heeled corporations—think Facebook—they have been authored, sometimes collaboratively, by the users of the technology. That fact led me to pose the following question: who has access to, and thus de-facto ownership and stewardship for, this vast sea of information, these giant data-sets?

Put differently, should we conceive of meta-text and spimes as intellectual property? Under Title 17 of U.S.C.—Copyright Law of the United States of America—should these data-units be considered copyrightable works? Section 103(b) states the following about derivative works:

The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.

By analogy with the above, a contributor to a metatext/spime could be considered to have a status comparable to that of a contributor to a compilation or a derivative work.

Metatexts/spimes, currently, do not seem to be explicitly considered copyrightable texts and works in and of themselves—if they are, it is beyond my scope of knowledge about copyright and Intellectual Property law. I’m not a lawyer; I’m a writing teacher. But, as a writing teacher I am concerned that spimes have been legally conceived of as byproducts yielded by the interaction that occurs at a point of interface by at least two distinct parties. In other words, historically it seems these ‘byproducts’ have been considered proprietary data that should be assigned to the companies/makers of technologies themselves. I want to interrupt that assumption. Are banks allowed to collect and distribute information about your purchasing habits? Are libraries? I don’t think they can, and I also think there are reasons why that is so.

Let us imagine, then, that the spimes and metatexts we author may be considered “derivative works.” If so, how should the authorship/ownership be assigned if each individual spime/metatext is the result of a complex interaction between technology user and technology provider? Moreover, what about the massive data-sets that are assembled, mined, and analyzed by technology providers? Consider section 101 of the Copyright Law, which provides a legal definition of “collective work”:

A “collective work” is a work, such a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole.

There is, no doubt, a significant difference between a D.J.’s remix and a spime—between a periodical and a set of spimes. Further, it is not my intent to claim that spimes or metatexts should be considered “derivative works” or “collective works”—although I think that in some cases this may be the appropriate way to approach things.

The point is that we, stewards in the social negotiation of composing in a digital era, should be having conversations about what is being done with these “texts.” The point is that U.S. Copyright Law, as a system that was built to respond to analog views of authorship and textuality, can no longer adequately address the complexity of authorship and textuality that comes with the hybrid system we now inhabit. The point is that Copyright as a system needs significant overhaul to make sense. As Lawrence Lessig and others have been arguing for quite some time, the balance between individual right and collective good is a bit off kilter. This isn’t just a case of music and movies being pirated; there are other complications that are associated with communication in a digital world, and those who promulgate culture at corporate levels are just one of the parties who are feeling the effects of the digital transition.

In close, independent users of new media technologies ‘co-create’ spimes and metatexts using computers and other new media tools. These spimes and metatexts are often gathered in real time, collected and grouped into databases. As Johnson-Eilola and others have noted, spimes and metatexts can be used for both good and bad purposes. Moreover, a technology user is always a co-author at the interface, and, as a result, of the metatexts, the spimes, that detail the interaction. Metatexts and spimes add value to technologies, but do end-users who do a lion-share of the authoring of that value have access to that information? In most cases, the answer is no. I find this a dilemma for which I have no immediate answer—no immediate response. Perhaps, we place too much trust in the technologies we use; perhaps, we haven’t adequately criticized the economies of interaction associated with technology use. It is time we do so.

Ultimately, in my eyes, there is a significant distinction between a program/netservice’s proprietary code and the by-products of the use of a digital space. There is a distinction between tool and tool in use. It makes sense to me that the informational byproducts of use should be in some cases assigned to a company, but in other cases perhaps they should be kept private or disclosed as part of the public record. Nevertheless, I am concerned that there is neither greater public discussion nor greater public concern about who does claim ownership of, let alone who ought to claim ownership to, the metatexts/spimes that are created by a collective body of technology users. As a discipline, we might help begin that conversation through our research, publishing, and teaching practices.

Works Cited

Johnson Eilola, Johndan. “Among Texts.” Rhetorics and Technologies: New Directions in  Writing and Communication. Ed. Stuart A. Selber. U of Southern Carolina P, 2011. Print.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2004. Web. 15 June 2011.

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.

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