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Conclusion
Taken together, the participants in our interviews offer a range of examples of how they think through intellectual property (IP) issues and teach IP. These examples highlight the four dimensions of IP we argue are necessary to teach: IP Law, Legal Issues, and Stories about Them; Relationships between Economic Systems and IP; The Evolution of IP: The Past and Future; and Personal Identity: The PI of IP. Through their reflections, these writing studies practitioners show that limiting the teaching of IP to citation and plagiarism avoidance ignores the other rich perspectives writing studies practitioners have for understanding IP—and that they and their students need to map themselves onto the IP landscape.
These reflections, we argue, are an essential component to making IP decisions. "How to" guides can be a productive start, but they are not sufficient. In particular, they obscure the contextual nature of IP decisions and the value of flexibility in considering options for orienting oneself on the IP landscape. Not only did participants in our study (as a whole and as individuals) show flexibility in applying perspectives to IP, but one of the lenses they applied is that IP decisions must be flexible. For instance, in response to a question asking what things students should leave writing classes knowing about IP, Diane Kelly-Riley explained
I think that trying to help them [students] develop flexible strategies for recognizing the importance of intellectual property certainly: when you need to cite information, how those things are constantly in flux, how they change based on what circumstance you're in.
The ability to enact this flexibility comes from knowing what options are available and considering one's orientation along the four dimensions we identify.
When we as graduate students and novice members of the discipline are taught to positions ourselves as teachers—that is, to construct and reflect on our teaching identities or personas—we are usually taught to do so primarily in relation to other areas of the discipline (e.g., literacy studies, computers and composition studies, writing center studies) rather than, say, in relation to our other identities, economic issues, legal constructs, or historical contexts. The study participants whose voices we share in this webtext remind writing studies practitioners that teaching identities are necessarily bound up in identity, economics, law, and history. Therefore, writing studies practitioners do well to be conscious of and to reflect critically on them.
Reconfigure the Map
In the Reconfigure the Map page, we offer a visual mnemonic to help readers make their own IP decisions by considering the reflections of our interviewees. Rather than offer readers a fixed matrix for locating IP positions, we offer a space where readers can identify the reflections from our interviewees that they might want to pull into account when considering particular IP circumstances they are facing. Readers, for instance, might ask
• In making this decision, with whom would I position myself? With whom would I align? With whom would I put myself into conversation?
• In thinking through this decision, what issues would I draw together?
My Position
Click & Drag Me
My Position
Click & Drag Me
My Position
Click & Drag Me
To use the visual mnemonic, drag one of the unlabeled pins into the center circle. Then drag pins from other scholars/the interviewees with whom you would align or converse in making your decision. The pins outside the circle are labeled with the scholar's/interviewee's name and a hyperlinked summary of the issue that scholar discusses. The links on each pin take you directly to the section of the video where the scholar addresses that issue.
For instance, consider the following scenario: an instructor receives a forwarded email from a student. The email is from an online source that claims a copyright violation because the student has posted a music clip to a website designed for the class. The student's final project—a remixed visual essay analyzing a current political movement—has been removed by an outside entity. To help think through how to respond, this instructor might position his/her/their/zer pin alongside the following other pins:
• Kyle Stedman's Takedown Notices pin from the IP Law, Legals Issues, and Stories about Them quadrant
• Ellen Cushman's IP Value System pin from the Personal Identity: The PI of IP quadrant
• Joonna Trapp's Student Domains pin from the IP Law, Legals Issues, and Stories about Them quadrant
Positioning these scholars in conversation can help the instructor consider perspectives pertinent to making a decision on how to advise this student.
