Reinterpretation: What's Right and What's Wrong

In "Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study On Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery", Jim Rodolfo and Martine Courant Rife discuss the case of Maggie Ryan, a student activist who had her work reappropriated by the university that she had attended at the time into an advertisement for the university's front page. Ryan was hurt by the usage and reinterpretation of her activism into advertising. But was the university committing an immoral action?

Not exactly. Ryan had stated her intent to have her group and their activism noticed by local newsgroups and the university, and had committed the stunt for such reasons ("we were .... trying to integrate new ideas because just having a bunch of people gather with signs was getting a little boring and the media wasn’t really paying very much attention when there was like fifteen students with a sign—[but] the media started paying more attention when there was like fifteen students doing something way different."(224)) The stunt had its desired effect, the news noticed, and the university had changed their policies after Ryan's work. However, it had its own unexpected consequences, and the university had reappropriated Ryan's image of her activism into one of her playing around, with a caption of how much fun she was having at the university added to her picture. What has to be considered is privacy and the public area.  Ryan did her work in what was considered a public area, specifically, a school courtyard that's surrounded by people. It's not out of place for people to pull out camera phones and take a picture of a nice tree or a cute dog, or for the university to send out photographers to take pictures of students enjoying themselves and use them in promotional materials. It's not exactly subtle that privacy is very low in the courtyard of this university. As Ridolfo and Rife put it, "Because Maggie was aware of the photographer’s presence and continued with her activities nonetheless, the argument that she had any reasonable expectation of privacy would be weak." (231)

Does this mean that our every creation and action can be reinterpreted as Big Brother wants it to be? Not exactly. Ridolfo and Rife clarify that there are rules that remixers have to follow when creating new images and ideas: they can't use any images or information that is taken from private spaces, and they can't defame the person in question, or reinterpret them in a way that hurts them. Since Ryan was creating snow messages in a school courtyard, regarded as a public area, the university was free to take pictures and use them in the way that they wanted to (231). If, however, the university had taken images from an area regarded as private-say, if they took photos of Ryan in her dorm without her permission and used those on the university website, then Ryan would have a case. Facebook made a similar blunder by using Beacon on their users, which advertises what users had just bought online. They were sued successfully for violating privacy for information and using that information illegally (in this case, to sell stuff and advertising).

Remixers also have to make sure that what they are saying isn't defamation. Wikipedia defines defamation as "the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual person, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation as well as other various kinds of defamation that retaliate against groundless criticism." Ridolfo and Rife also discuss what privacy law is and how it works, saying, "The purpose is to protect someone like Maggie from losing the commercial value of her likeness due to an unauthorized appropriation."(234) This statement means that if Ryan had sued the university, her lawyer would have to prove that the university's reinterpretation of her ideas had ruined her physical, social, emotional, or hiring prospects, which Ridolfo and Rife claim are unaffected by the picture. They write that "Although the institution’s appropriation of Maggie’s image was unauthorized...it would be difficult to argue that she is losing money due to the institution’s appropriation."(235) Similarly, Hustler Magazine, a publication known for a crude sense of humor, was sued by fundamentalist Protestant minister Jerry Falwell for running an ad that was composed of a fake interview of him claiming that his first sexual encounter was with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell claimed that there was intent of inflicting emtional distress and was awarded $150,000 by the court. According to this logic, since the university was not defaming Ryan in a way that hurt her, they were in line in reinterpreting her image.