"Commons culture" in R&R's Case Blog Post Pt. 2

For anyone who doesn’t know, this case study revolves around Maggie, a Michigan State University student, whose picture was taken on the university’s campus during a student protest and then recomposed on MSU’s website and pamphlets that were sent out, sparking controversy about issues of intellectual property and copyright. Jim Ridolfo and Martine Courant Rife, the two people in charge of analyzing and presenting this case study, have some primary and secondary concerns about what is at stake for suggesting a “commons culture”, and I am here to deliberate and sort those concerns and to further unpack them, elucidating what problems a common culture could solve and who it would help, as well as showing the way in which today’s digital culture affects remixing.

I think there are probably a few primary concerns when it comes to Ridolfo and Rife, but for blogging purposes, let’s go with these three. One primary concern with this case study is to seek and define common values, which is “crucial in articulating the commons in this case” (Ridolfo 239). This will help us prove whether or not the institution acceptably appropriated Maggie’s image.

Also, “how legal concerns will increasingly figure into a rhetor’s future practice” (Ridolfo 241) is of primary concern. This relates to how “rhetors can/should strategically compose for the recomposition of their own intellectual property” (241)

In addition, the few paragraphs that discussed Section 107 Fair Use in regards to the Creative Commons website and founder is important as well. The founder argues that creativity is stifled nowadays; “free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less” (237) and we are slowly drifting away from free cultures, which is bad for creativity and innovation.

As for secondary concerns, I believe there are far more. Some that stood out the most to me were as follows: identifying rhetorical velocity; understanding the Orphan Works Act of 2008 and orphan works themselves, which are “copyrighted works whose owners may be impossible to identify and locate” (Ridolfo 232); comprehending Maggie’s agency and how it is undermined; becoming aware of certain “parental rights” that plague the institution; and finally, grasping the right to publicity and contractual rights. Rhetorical velocity is a “strategic concept of delivery in which a rhetor theorizes the possibilities of recomposition of a text based on how the text might later be used” (Ridolfo 229). Orphan works has to do with when a creation becomes disconnected from its origins, and how that becomes problematic. Maggie’s agency, which is the power that she engaged in her political protest, being undermined affects other legal constraints. The subtle exercise of “parental rights” has to do with the university’s casual attitude about the picture being “theirs”, as if Maggie is a child and it is “theirs” for the taking and exploitation of, which arouses the right to privacy – tension between Maggie’s right to privacy and the institution’s right to free speech determines whether or not a reasonable person would have a right to privacy in such a public place.

So how do these primary and secondary concerns relate to or influence the understanding of what is at stake for a “commons culture” and what it is in general? Well, to my knowledge, a “commons” is “a place where what is or once was owned can be re-owned by an author” (Ridolfo 236). In short, Ridolfo and Rife seek a place where sampling and remixing is free from or not riddled by excessive legal issues, so that new artists can emerge through creative and innovative freedom. All of these primary and secondary concerns are now weeds in the way of what should be a patch of blooming, creative wildflowers. But with the weeds in tact, there is no room for growth. While Carolyn Miller is more focused on rhetoric and how it affects genre, and R&R are focused on legal entities and how it affects composition in the digital age, her piece, “Genre As Social Action”, relates to R&R’s work because she says to discover genre we must “take seriously the rhetoric in which we are immersed and the situations in which we find ourselves”. The same goes for R&R’s argument because the rhetoric that surrounded Maggie’s case and the situations she found herself in completely changed the subject, or purpose of her actions, based on the situation and rhetoric. Overall though, Ridolfo and Rife emphasize that composing in the digital age is far different than traditional practices of composing. Thus, we must fully understand how elements of rhetorical delivery intersect with copyright concerns in order to practice great rhetorical velocity, and as Miller would say, “seek to explicate the knowledge that practice creates”.