You Crossed Maggie's Line

In the article called, "Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright" Ridolfo and Rife introduce a few terms and unpack them for us. These terms are rhetorical velocity, delivery, appropriation, and recomposition. For my argument, I am going to track the delivery.


This article tells the story os Maggie Ryan, a student at Michigan State University. Maggie was on campus one day participating in a student protest when a photographer came up and took a candid photo of her. The photo was then uploaded to the school's website where it was used for a reason other than the student protest. Although this doesn't seem serious, it was because Maggie's intentions were different. Although the photo in itself was not harmful to the school, the delivery of it is what recomposed it.

Maggie was aware of her surroundings and that she was being photographed but she did not think about what the photograph was going to be used for. "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). This is where rhetorical velocity comes into play. Rhetorical velocity is when "the rhetoric theorizes the possibilities of a recomposition of a text." This is essentially what the photographer was doing before her took Maggie's photo.

This whole case is a confusing one. For Ridolfo and Rife to say that Maggie doesn't have an argument because she was aware of her photo being taken is not fair. There could have been other extenuating circumstances. Maybe she briefly saw someone taking her photo and then was shortly distracted by something else that needed her attention, like the student protest she was there for. This would mean that she was unable to talk to the man that photographed her in hopes of figuring out what it wad for. This is just one of the many examples of things that could have happened. A student has a right to their own life and business and for someone to take that away from them and change essentially what they are doing in their everyday life is just absurd.

-- Haley Bryant --