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In the Public Eye

Personally, I think that the issue with Maggie is one that is more common than the media or society even is aware of. Anytime you put your name, information, face, self or words onto the computer, in the public, or communicate in any way, you become public, which means just that, public; anyone can use your words, your face, your body, etc. Just as with music and books you can get copyrighted or trademarked or patented or some other sort of legal ownership over what you claim is yours, but does that really stop anyone or anything from obtaining what they want? 

          Maggie was aware that her face would be in the media, in fact it was the sole purpose they participated in the protest in the first place … “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…[but] the media started paying more attention when there was like fifteen students doing something way different” (224). For this reason, I don’t think that a “commons” culture would be anymore affective than the laws they have in place already. Legally, ethically and personally, there will always be a pro and con side to having yourself be in the media. When Maggie and the others created the protest, they hoped that the media would be there to take pictures, record it and air it on television because they wanted to be successful. Granted you don’t really think about all the possible consequences of your actions when you create or participate in something, but Maggie was having multiple images of her being taken and she even spotted the sketchy photographer there. If she didn’t want her face being public, she shouldn’t have participated in a pubic protest. On the con side of this, the school should have contacted her with the photo and gotten her consent as to whether or not they could use the photo. In a sense, since her protest was successful, the original purpose of the content, the school is now using that content to make itself successful (228), which is a paradox in itself.

        I think that a law such as the Orphan Works Act (232) would be a more successful option than a “common” culture. A lot of the images and texts on the Internet and in the media do come from an unknown source, and since these have no copyright, it almost eliminates the legal aspect of the situation. Ethically, using someone’s picture without consent will always be wrong, and no law can change that. Personally, if you don’t want to risk having your face be used in a context other than its intention, there should be ways to protect you, but they won’t happen unless they are copyrighted, which are hard to do legally (they are all tied together).

       Strangely enough, I think that the Maggie Case had extreme rhetorical velocity in the hands of Maggie that she was unaware of while whoever took her photo had it as well, aware of their rhetorical velocity. Rhetorical velocity is a “a strategic concept of delivery in which a rhetor theorizes the possibilities for the recomposition of a text based on how s/he anticipates how the text might later be used. The rhetorician theorizes how certain newspapers, blogs, or TV stations may recompose and re-distribute the release both as and in other media…also considers how the release may be recomposed in ways advantageous or disadvantageous to the rhetor’s goals and objectives” (229). Maggie’s known rhetorical velocity was through her protest and the signs she held, shirts she wore, etc. to prove her point. She never intended or thought of the photos being used for purposes beyond it. The school and that one photographer who took the infamous photo had rhetorical velocity to use this photo for any possible purpose they could have, for the school specifically to “promote its Department of Student Life and the university itself” (228).