Intellectual Property and Composition Studies

Abstract

he time has passed when teachers of composition and communication could ignore debates about intellectual property, if indeed we ever should have. The ubiquitous media coverage of complex issues swirling around question of who owns language-for that is what this debate is finally about-demands a response from our profession, as those most concerned with shaping and perpetuating notions about what it means to read, write, and speak. In particular, compositionists have a compelling interest in how laws governing ownership of language should be adjusted (if at all) to accommodate both new technologies and postmodern challenges to established ideas about authorship. Alarm bells began to sound in earnest within our professional community some five years ago, when composition theorists and teachers participated in an interdisciplinary conference on the construction of authorship, a meeting inspired by over a decade of work in rhetorical theory and in literary and legal studies.' That meeting led to creation, in 1994, of CCCC Caucus on Intellectual Property and Composition Studies (CCCC-IP), chartered to bring salient details of this debate to immediate attention of teachers of writing and reading.2 This essay aims to build on that group's efforts. Our own sense of urgency regarding these issues grew exponentially during fall of 1995, when CCCC-IP Caucus worked to elicit CCCC, NCTE, and MLA participation in a national effort to slow pace of