Howard - Who “Owns” Electronic Texts?

Who “Owns” Electronic Texts?

Tharon W. Howard

Introduction

In his article, “Who ‘Owns’ Electronic Texts?”, Tharon W. Howard explores intellectual property law from a historic and philosophical perspective to better understand how notions of copyright are being challenged by current advances in mass communication technologies. Most writers, he states, tend to believe that authors “own” their texts, and can assert control over how they are used. The trend toward collaborative writing processes and online distribution of texts has raised many intellectual property issues that writers are unprepared to deal with.

Howard then presents five potential scenarios illustrating the intellectual property dilemmas that modern writers face.

Scenario 1 involves a company that would like to incorporate a famous photograph located in a popular magazine into the cover of their annual report. How should the document designer proceed?

Scenario 2 imagines an individual being asked to install a piece of software on their work computer, even though it has already been installed elsewhere.

Scenario 3 questions if one can legally and ethically quote from an email message posted to a listserv in a scholarly article. Is this an obligation, and who controls such a text?

Scenario 4 explores whether a personal correspondence between individuals via a company email system should be considered private. The computers are owned by the company, but does that give other employees the right to monitor and reproduce such personal messages?

Scenario 5 describes a faculty member compiling a list of hyperlinks to potential employers’ job listings for job-seeking students. If these businesses are derived from a published book of business listings, does the creator have an obligation to pay royalties if their hyperlink system is published?

These scenarios, state Howard, reveal the way in which intellectual property issues are becoming an increasingly large concern in the workplace. In fact, an understanding of intellectual property and copyright in this environment could very well be considered a necessary component of electronic or computer literacy.

A Historical Overview

Unbeknownst to most people, copyright laws did not come about as a means to protect the “natural property rights” of authors. Rather, they represent a limited privilege that is granted to authors by the state for a variety of reasons. Following the invention of the printing press in the 15^th century, stiff competition between publishers established a need to protect their ability to profit from works they had purchased and printed. The easy mass-production of texts also took control of published works away from the Church and the government, allowing the dissemination of dissenting viewpoints. These developments led to the establishment of copyright laws, the purpose of which was to protect the financial interests of publishers and censor dissenting voices. England’s Statue of Anne, and the U.S. Constitution expand on these privileges, but remain grounded in the notion of copyright as “a privilege or license granted by the government for a limited period of time in order to promote not only the right of authors to profit from their labors, but also the enhancement of the public’s collective welfare.”

Major Principles of U.S. Copyright Law

The goal of U.S. copyright law is to strike a balance between the rights of an individual author and the good of the public. For this reason, the fundamental principle of “fair use” has existed throughout our history. In determining whether any particular case represents fair use, there are no black-and-white rules, rather there are a series of factors to take into consideration. Ideas themselves cannot be protected. One reason for this is that ideas are seen as universal truths that are accessible to all and cannot be owned by a single person. Also, because an individual’s ideas are dependent upon many ideas developed by others, an idea is a communal property. Copyright is only meant to protect an author’s specific expression in a fixed tangible form.

Copyrights in the Electronic Environment

Even when they are properly understood, these principles do not always yield clear answers when dealing with electronic texts. However, a broader understanding of copyright principles can still serve as a useful guide for professional communicators.

With this in mind, Howard now returns to his scenarios to see if this informed perspective sheds any light on the issues they embody.

Scenario 1

In the scenario involving the repurposing of a famous photograph, its inclusion on an annual report would likely fail the test of fair use. The document designer should seek to obtain permission and a copy of the original image from the original copyright holder.

Scenario 2

This scenario expresses a common misconception that an individual or company “owns” any software that they have purchased. What is actually purchased is a limited license to use the software in a certain way.

Scenario 3

In scenario 3, it would probably be legal for an individual to quote from an email, but the situation quickly becomes “clouded by the technology involved”. The author of the email may believe that copyright has been violated since she wasn’t able to publish her material through a more traditional means before it was copied, diminishing its value. However, the very act of sending this email to a discussion group would likely be considered a form of publication. Legalities aside, the most ethical course of action would likely be to procure permission from the author before quoting her.

Scenario 4

Usually, a company is the sole copyright holder of the texts produced by those in its employ. In some jurisdictions, there are laws which protect the privacy of personal communications between employees. Regardless, this scenario is less a question of copyright than it is of personal privacy.

Scenario 5

Determining whether the reorganization of data compiled in another source constitutes a copyright infringement is a tricky one, and cases have gone both ways. Howard predicts that this will become an increasingly prevalent issue with the advancement of computerized database systems in which information is automatically stored, manipulated, and accessed in a wide variety of ways. The most conservative course in this scenario, Howard concludes, would be to contact the publisher of the reference materials and attempt to work out a financial arrangement before publishing any repurposed material.

Conclusion

The advancement of electronic information technologies has created many challenges to our current model of intellectual property law. “It may well be,” states Howard, “future copyright laws will need to find radical new foundations.” Today more than ever, professional communicators need a more thorough understanding of the history and philosophy behind intellectual property law.

Barker Chapter 14

Designing Indexes

Manual Indexes:
The basic procedure for creating an index is:

1. Review the user analysis. This will refresh you memory about the main actions and activities in regards to the software and can be used as a reference when deciding on what terms are important.
2. Pick out terms or phrases that you want to index. Typically tables, figures; examples; definitions; acronyms; main topics; important concepts; main tasks; tool buttons; keyboard shortcuts; menu names.
3. Record the locations.
4. Alphabetize and edit the index.

Electronic Indexes

Advantages of using this method are:

• Automatic alphabetizing
• Automatic formatting
• Ease of revision

The process resembles manual indexing but differs in a few ways.

1. Review the user analysis.
2. Mark the index entries.
3. Build the index.
4. Edit the index.

What to Index

• Command and Functions. These include all of the terms that you find on menus, as well as control and Alt key functions.
• Concepts. The ideas related to the subject matter of the program.
• User Terms and Questions. Relating words to synonyms that a user might know, i.e. a user wants to "quit the program", your program calls it "exit".
• Glossary Terms
• Proper Names of Products and Companies
• Tasks and Procedures

Level of Detail

• A light index will have two to three items per page.
• A medium index will have five to seven items per page.
• A heavy index will have eight to nine items per page.

Phrasing and Format

• Primary locator numbers; the page number where the main information occurs. In some indexes this page number is in bold.
• Capitalize terms.
• Make entries sound like sentences.
• Special terms.

History, Rhetoric, and Humanism

In his article “History, Rhetoric, and Humanism,” Russell Rutter looks at a more comprehensive way to define technical communication. He begins his piece by discussing that technical writing is more than just writing proficiency; it also involves problem solving skills and the ability to work with other people (21). Technical communication, Rutter feels, needs to associate itself more with rhetoric and humane learning. Also, technical communicators need to go beyond just being users of systems; they need to be educated human beings.

Being and Knowing Before Doing and Writing: Technical Communication and the Liberal Arts Tradition
The tradition of technical communication asserts the primacy of knowing and being over willing and doing (22). According to this tradition, the person thinking is more important than the tools or systems being used. Rutter goes on to provide research of this tradition, which emphasizes the classical period, the Renaissance, and the nineteenth century. After these three periods, even more perspectives of technical communication were formed.

Scientific Progress Through Crisis and Its Implications for Technical Communication
Science and technology are often viewed as rigid subjects, and therefore most think that when writing about them, the language should also be rigid. However, this is not the case, and this thought needs to be brought into the open. The importance of the scientific method is often exaggerated, and the scientific and technological progress through spasmodic change, serendipitous discovery, and imaginative flexibility are often forgotten (26). Rigid procedures have not always brought about scientific advancement so it is hard to see how they would ensure the advancement of technical communication. Therefore, as technical communicators, if we must mimic science, we should also mimic the imaginative side as well.

The Evolution of Science and Technology and the Reductionism of Technical Communication Theory
As late as the seventeenth century, what passed as science was based on the authority of the ancients rather than experimentation (26). Technology wasn’t even really considered because it rested in the hands of guilds, artisans, and the illiterate. Rutter then goes on to describe more about the history of scientific advancement. Most of the great scientific advancements of the time came from just a few scientists. He notes that professors at Oxford were laid off because they couldn’t fill their science courses. It wasn’t until the Technical Instruction Act of 1881 that it became possible for Britons to study technical education (27). In the United States, the Morrill Act of 1862 brought about technical education by endowing what we now know as land grant colleges (27). With the increased enrollment in technology and science came a need for courses designed to teach about how to write about technology and science. However, these emphasized that the scientists provided the content, and the actual writing was just “frosting” (28). This form of rhetoric emphasized technical writing as a means to fitting facts into content outlines developed long ago. Rutter notes that by providing this history, we should be equipped with the knowledge needed to shape current practice (28).

Technical Communicators as Rhetoricians
“To understand the dynamic nature of science and technology and to discover that the supposed gods of objectivity and pragmatism are just the illegitimate offspring of expediency and misunderstanding is to realize that technical communication is rhetorical above all else (28). Rutter notes that if technical communicators aim to create versions of reality instead of serving as windows to reality, then technical communication must be fundamentally rhetorical. This is valuable in the workplace because communication should be seen as an open system, which is often not. Technical communication has to be rhetorical because its task is not to serve technology abstractly conceived but rather to produce “writing that accommodates technology to the user” (29). “Technical communicators, because they depend on both ‘knowledge and practice,’ because they rely on learning as guide to experience, and because they need to bring eloquence, empathy, and imagination to the world of work are—and should be expected to be—rhetoricians” (29).

The Values and Limitations of Research on the Culture of the Workplace
Rutter writes that the research for redefining technical communication defines a problem that it cannot be expected to solve. Through his reaserach, Rutter has found that technical communicators must do more than write. They must also possess the ability to function productively in the collaborative context of the workplace (30). Writers must be able to focus on the culture as an entity in which they must fit themselves. However, Rutter finds this similar to fitting content into pre-existent content outlines, which will not produce a result of progress (30).

Conclusion
Rutter concludes by stating that he wants to avoid negativism, and that he is not trying to deprecate the efforts of those who have devoted productive lives to writing well and teaching others to write well (31). However, he writes that the best way to advance would be to eliminate the biases against such subjects as rhetoric, literary criticism, and the history of science and technology, and to include teaching training. He notes that if as much effort is put into this as has been for cooperative education, then we will surely succeed in broadening the base of technical communication.

Understanding the Writing Context in Organizations

Linda Driskill

Linda Driskill discusses the importance of communication in written documents, she explains different situations and how communication was handled.


The Importance of the Writing Context

Driskill first talks about a marketing team and the concept they created for their direct mail piece for the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). The direct mail piece was catchy and to the point, however, as procedure they had their lawyer overlook the document and it failed to be approved because of legalities with the wording. She explains how the writers on the marketing did their job, but were not equipped with the legal expertise to successfully create a direct mail piece.


Why Current Models Neglect Context

The next section Driskill discusses in the problem with courses on communication. She states that the courses focus on the means for expressing meaning, no the meanings themselves (p.57).

One of the approaches to organizational communication is structural-functionalism which requires the focus to be on the mechanisms of the organization. This theory which is influenced by the Shannon-Weaver Theory is based on reducing noise in the system and creating a flow rate to channel information. Shannon-Weaver Theory was not concerned with people or why they needed to communicate. Schramm revised the Shannon-Weaver model it was more focused on the environment were communication took place and recognized that people were involved and that feedback is part of communication.


External Sources of Meaning: Mutual Funds Industry Example

Driskill explains external sources of meaning to be influences on the writers they are not absolute some examples of external sources of meaning are money supply and credit availability. Basically the factors that directly affect the business at hand but are not factored into the work are external sources of meaning.


Internal Sources of Meaning: The Challenger Accident Example

The structure, size, and technology of the organization will affect the role people play and the way rhetorical situations are defined (p. 63). Some of the factors of internal sources of meaning are: corporate culture, individuals, and situations. Internal factors deal greatly with people and their perceptions at work and how they communicate and how people receive the communication.


Organizational Situations and Rhetorical Situations

This addresses knowing your audience and knowing that not one particular type of audience is reading your information. Driskill refers back to the example of the marketing team for NASD. Knowing that not such a simple audience will be reading you document, a person who looks deeper into the meaning might be upset with the word choices and deem them unfair or illegal.


Implications for Teaching

Driskill talks about identifying the different situations that occur and how information and communication was handled is the best way to learn for the future and to correct any communication flaws. It is important to recognize the internal and external sources of meaning with teaching communication models.