Blog Topics for 3/25

Topic 1:

In advance of paper four, as kind of a freewriting exercise, this topic will be similar to the literacy narrative many of your groups constructed for the first blog. In this topic, each of you should write a detailed narrative about a time you creatively solved a problem. Be very specific, even to the point of over-specificity. What made you realize that there was a problem? What were the dimensions of the problem (in other words what were all the aspects of the problem you had to consider when deciding on a solution? What solution did you come up with and how did you come up with it? How was this solution received by others and how did this make you feel?

Now, compare and contrast your story with your other group members' stories. What were the similarities in the stories--in the kinds of problems, the solutions, and how solving the problem made you feel. Again, the more specific the better. Where there any notable differences?

Topic 2:

We have been discussing plagiarism and copyright law as separate but in some ways related concepts. We often think of these as being ethical or moral issues and thus think that they are natural and common sense. After all, don't people have a right to own their work and protect it from use by others?

Read this brief wikipedia entry (yeah, I know, I know) about the history of copyright law. What does this history suggest about copyright? What were the motivations behind copyright laws and do these motives problematize our understanding of copyright as a moral issue.

Also, what about the current popularity of remixing to create new works out of other existing work like this one and even popular and successful ones like those by the Gregory Brothers? These are absolutely acts of plagiarism and could be copyright infringements. But these are also examples of a very popular trend in the new literacies and may be seen as creative in their own right. What does our ability to do these things with technology mean for the future of copyright law? What about for our concepts of plagairism?