WRIT 8550 • Topics in Technology and Culture • Fall 2008

4:00-6:30pm Wednesdays • 203 Lind Hall

Class Overview

Despite the increasingly long arms of laws, and the dramatic rise in litigation over copyright and trademark violations, the high-bandwidth Internet connections found on most American college campuses are routinely used by students to download music, films, and other copyrighted materials, for uses that would generally be understood as unethical, and in some cases, illegal. Peer-to-peer software applications are enabling activities described variously as "sharing" or "theft," depending on whether the person doing the describing is a copyright consumer or copyright holder.

This class will examine the rhetoric associated with intellectual property and copyright in U.S.culture. In particular, this class will focus on the relationship between constructions of rhetorical invention and authorship, and the laws developed to monitor and manage the works of authors and inventors. After establishing historical and theoretical frames of reference, we will focus on the increasingly polarized rhetorics rising out of the debates over peer-to-peer technologies, and related Internet technologies for the development and circulation of creative work.