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First direct instance of Intellectual Property
Harry Hastings raises the question of “copyright and literary piracy in professional writing” in a discussion of what were then called “ghost writers” who, at the time, had become so emboldened as to advertise their services in the newspaper. -
Popularity of paperback books
John Frederick, in 1948, charted the emergence and rise in popularity of paperback books, noting that an increase in production and distribution had to do with a lack of international copyright, and thus a glut of British and European titles in the United States. -
“Business” of creative writing
Yet in 1954, Oscar Cargill bemoaned the cost of poetry books due to copyright and permissions charges, and Joanne Wheeler proposed a creative writing curriculum designed to teach students the “business” of creative writing, including attention to such charges and their impacts on authors. -
“Project English"
W. Nelson Francis, in 1965, described a large-scale grant project called “Project English,” which was focused on gathering a “corpus of over a million running words of present-day edited American English” (267). Almost immediately in the discussion of methods, Francis mentions the difficulty that copyright posed in collecting material. (...) Francis notes that some owners refused permission, specifically because “the copyright status of a computer tape is uncertain” (270). -
Teaching does more to promote the sales of authors’ works
Later that same year, Cargill testified to the Register of Copyrights, and his testimony was reproduced in CE (...) The context Cargill described was a graduate seminar of 140 students—a survey course of American literature, in which the students read one book a week (...) Cargill admitted in his testimony that the restrictions were reasonable for anthology permissions, but—for the purposes of his teaching—created an “inadequate presentation of an author” (...) -
Copyright and teaching
Richard Corbin noted that NCTE was one member of an ad hoc committee made up of thirty national educational groups brought together to help chart the revisions to US copyright law under discussion in the mid-1960s (...) He implored the gathered convention that “we must educate ourselves about the whole business of copyright,” noting that “as users of books, it is very much our business.” -
The death knell of the textbook
Arlin Turner reported that the outcry from publishers was that the debated changes in copyright law were the death knell of the textbook—in fact, all books: “They seem to fear that books are going out of use—that the literary works in our courses will reach the students by means of photocopy or film projection or recorded voices, or perhaps by a type of osmosis or—who knows?—by the electronic transfer of literary essences to the reader” (521). -
Break the copyright law
Poulin throws a range of accusations at the entire textbook-publishing industry, one of which is that teachers have to settle for mediocrity lest they “break the copyright law and duplicate material” themselves. The other option, Poulin notes, would be for teachers to require students to buy stacks of pricey books or that teachers go “on the lam” (358). -
Women representations in books
Alleen Nilsen analyzes the representation of women in children’s literature, specifically national award-winning picture books, provides a thoughtful consideration of why girls and women are represented as they are (...) Because of
the nature of many folktales and their historical roots, “men were the doers and the women were the on-lookers,” (925) explaining why girls and women were so often standing aside from the action in the books Nilsen reviewed. -
Copyright and visual arts
Lillian Robinson traced ideologically constructed preferences, predilections, and relationships of subjectivity and objectivity in the critical interpretation of art. As she turns toward a Marxist analysis of art, she mentions, in a footnote, the special status of art objects and notes the complexity of copyright law “and the culture surrounding it,” including the need for certain, special treatment of visual arts (443; original emphasis). -
Anthologies in freshman courses
Peter Nagourney and Susan Gilmore Steiner, in 1975, presented their personal journal entries, documenting the process of producing an innovative anthology for teaching freshman composition. The entire project was a six-year disaster, marred by broken promises, clunky agreements, and awkward conversations. -
Prepublication thefts
Nagourney launched The Journal of Ideas: a journal consisting entirely of titles, abstracts, and bibliographies for articles that would never be written, in order to provide bibliographic material and sources for academics to use without having to expend precious time in reading actual articles. Nagourney notes: "fortuitously, the appearance of this new journal will provide a copyright system for registering original ideas to protect idea-rich scholars against prepublication thefts”. -
Computer software and copyright law
Joseph Bourque explored “The Humanist as Computer Specialist,” very briefly mentioning “the haziness of the copyright laws as they apply to software” (72). At the time, protection for computer software was included in the literary works category of copyright law, but indeed, the margins of programs, software, and code were hazy. -
Purchasing essays
Kolich explored students and plagiarism as well as writing beyond the classroom, discussing issues of copyright and the community. He specifically addresses how and when students “acquire” essays, arguing that in most cases, that acquisition is with permission, thus copyright isn’t really at issue—the students legitimately purchase the essays they present as their own. -
Writing and computers
Joel Nydahl described the ways in which computers have—and have not—had an impact on the writing classroom, arguing that with some tweaking and tricking out, word processors can become more powerful machines. He admits, however, that those who customize will “have to avoid certain legal problems” (913).
