Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2009

Introduction: Copyright and Intellectual Property in 2009

Clancy Ratliff, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

The 2009 CCCC Intellectual Property Annual is the fifth issue published and my third as editor. In it, the contributors continue filling a niche in the research area of the intersection between copyright, intellectual property, and rhetoric and composition studies: articles that combine journalism and scholarship. It is our hope to keep the rhetoric and composition community informed of the latest developments in copyright and intellectual property, as it truly is a global issue with high economic and political stakes, with activists who approach the policies from a variety of perspectives. Universities adopt open access policies, new technologies prompt revisiting of copyright laws, and copyright activists think of new approaches to licensing the uses of creative and intellectual work, more and more alternatives to “all rights reserved.” We continually revisit these ideas in the classroom, too, as they pertain to definitions of authorship and plagiarism.

I have decided to keep the Creative Commons license we have been using for The CCCC Intellectual Property Annual in past years. One noteworthy difference between this issue and those past is that the 2009 issue contains nine articles, by far the highest number we have featured. I am pleased to see that the interest in copyright and intellectual property seems to be growing.