Why Napster matters to writing: Filesharing as a new ethic of digital delivery☆
Section snippets
Background: Napster, post-Napster, and the emergence of filesharing culture
We situate this article in the techno-cultural time dating from 1999 to the present and extending into the future as well—a time in which (a) Napster first enabled the relatively easy uploading, downloading, and sharing of music files; and, subsequently, (b) the recording industry reacted to this phenomenon by labeling such sharing and distribution as “piracy” and “theft” and sued Napster, then sued individual music downloaders, and used lobbying and litigation to try to stop P2P filesharing.
Copyright and the politics of filesharing
When rhetoric asks questions about audience and purpose—“What is my purpose for writing?”, and “who is my audience?”—it is also implicitly asking questions about delivery, economics, copyright, and credit. What motivates someone to produce and distribute a piece of writing? What motivates someone else to access it, read it, interact with it? These are basic questions of rhetoric, which are also basic questions of delivery, economics, and copyright. Think of copyright not as merely an abstruse
Digital delivery and the new digital economy
Rhetoric has an old term for the processes and issues we have been talking about: delivery (actio or pronuntiatio in Latin, hypokrisis in Greek), one of the five canons of classical rhetoric (Connors, 1983, Reynolds, 1996).23
Plagiarism, academic honesty, and the new digital ethic
When we toss plagiarism issues and academic honesty policies into the mix of Napster as cultural phenomenon and of the dynamics of delivery, we can see more obviously how print-based and limiting most plagiarism policies are. Certainly, the recognition of the punitive and disciplinary approaches of academic honesty policies is nothing new; many scholars in Rhetoric/Composition have challenged punitive approaches to plagiarism.29
(Some) Conclusions and implications for pedagogy
What is this new digital ethic that has emerged in the context of the dynamics of the Internet and the rise and fall of Napster? In sum, we believe it is a positive ethic of filesharing and not how it is usually described as a criminal act of piracy. Not to say that there is no such thing as illegal music downloading, because there is. (We are not trying to argue for an ethic of “filetaking.”) But filesharing is by no means the vast social problem that the music and film industries like to
Acknowledgments
This research project was supported by the WIDE Research Center at Michigan State University (see <http://www.wide.msu.edu>). We are grateful to several colleagues and reviewers who provided us with commentary, including Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Jeff Grabill, and two anonymous Computers and Composition reviewers.
Dànielle Nicole DeVoss is an associate professor of professional writing at Michigan State University. Her research interests include computer/technological literacies; feminist interpretations of and interventions in computer technologies; professional writing; technical communication; computer technologies in writing centers; and gender/identity play in online spaces. Recently she has published in Composition Studies in the New Millennium: Rereading the Past, Rewriting the Future (2004) and
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Dànielle Nicole DeVoss is an associate professor of professional writing at Michigan State University. Her research interests include computer/technological literacies; feminist interpretations of and interventions in computer technologies; professional writing; technical communication; computer technologies in writing centers; and gender/identity play in online spaces. Recently she has published in Composition Studies in the New Millennium: Rereading the Past, Rewriting the Future (2004) and co-edited a collection on behavioral interventions in cancer care, Evidence-based Cancer Care and Prevention (2003).
James Porter is a professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University, where he teaches courses in composition, rhetoric theory and history, and professional and technical communication. He is co-director of the WIDE Research Center which sponsors research projects exploring “Writing in Digital Environments.”
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