Expanding Rhetorical Velocity

I was previously unaware that the organizing server of file sharing sites is referred to as a facilitator, nor was I aware that Swedish law permits piracy. These facts were stated within the film Good Copy Bad Copy at approximately 16:00 and 17:40, respectively. These factors are catalysts in the file sharing process. The piracy of which the film examines is incredibly easy and prevalent. I can recall a time around the turn of the millennium when I pirated music over dial-up. In the flea markets of Tallahassee and St. Augustine, I was aware of merchants who would download songs upon request, and burn them to CD for a nominal fee. The film was a bit dated, but showed similar practices occurring more recently in Russia and Nigeria. Around 37:36, a man who I assume worked with the music industry condemns the ongoing piracy but also admits the necessity for a new business model. I didn’t know the music industry was already considering adapting. Today, we reap the benefits of streaming media as a result. The textuality of the files being shared facilitates their duplication in identical or remixed forms. These popular art forms of music and movies have been reduced to quantities of data, more easily manipulated than putty.

Ridolfo and Rife have developed a concept of proactive design built into intellectual property. This concept of rhetorical velocity is defined as “the strategic theorizing for how a text [intellectual property] might be recomposed by third parties, and how this recomposing may be useful or not to the short- or long-term rhetorical objectives of the rhetorician.” It is no great leap to expand this definition to include (re)distribution instead of or in addition to recomposition. With current technology, this consideration is essential. In Carolyn Miller’s work Genre As Social Action, she incorporates many other theories. Paraphrasing a theory of Michael Halliday’s, she states that “exigence must be located in the social world.”  Rhetorical velocity could also be expanded to incorporate, among its growing considerations, the social exigence I have just outlined. If we assume that genres are seldom intentionally designed, it is possible they are refined by or a result of the said social exigence. In the aforementioned film, the genre of Tecno Brega would be an example of this.