Composition and Copyright: Perspectives on Teaching, Text-making, and Fair Use

Essential copyright resource for teachers and writers, particularly those involved in electronic or new media.

Drawing on connections between legal developments, new media technologies, and educational practice, Composition and Copyright examines how copyright law is currently influencing processes of teaching and writing within the university, particularly in the dynamic contexts of increasing digital literacy, new media, and Internet writing. Contributors explore the law’s theoretical premises, applications to writing classrooms, and the larger effects of copyright law on culture and literacy. Central to the volume is the question of what may constitute “infringement” or “fair use,” and how the very definitions of these terms may permit or prohibit specific text-making activities. The essays cover a range of subjects, from students’ appropriations of Internet images to using blogs in the classroom to the efforts by universities to claim legal ownership of professors’ teaching and research materials. As new technologies and legislation are overturning traditional notions of intellectual property, this volume offers ways to navigate the issues in terms of pedagogy, research, and creating new media texts within the current legal framework.

“…the thoroughness with which background is established in each essay is meritorious … and the individual contributors deserve praise for their insights.” — Issues in Writing

“…this well-conceptualized and interesting book should be read not only by composition teachers, communication scholars, and others who aspire to teach rhetoric to increasingly digitally savvy students but also by any composer of texts in our new electronic world.” — Rhetoric Review