Chapter 5 "Legal and Ethical Issues in Cyberspace"

What is perplexing about this chapter is not its form or content, but its position in the book. In Porter's own words, it points "to cases and practices that argue for the necessity of moving beyond law to a more well-articulated cyberspace ethic that understands these issues and problems from a rhetorical frame" (101). It would seem that this rhetorical move would be necessary early on, for it is, after all, one of the major premises of the book. He deals with property issues, from access to distribution, and introduces several of the problematic areas of internetworked writing. Though he does return to his earlier theoretical discussion of "an ethics of caring" (almost as if in passing) this chapter does not draw on its potential to interweave the previous discussions with legal issues.

The focus here is largely historic, and centered mostly on American law, a focus that seems constraining after his powerful discussion of global-based theoretical stances on ethics. Perhaps the complexity of his earlier chapters sets up expectations that had to be cut short, but in the following section, Chapter 6, he picks up from where he left off in Chapter 4 and works with his postmodern map of theoretical positions. If this chapter is meant to be read as a hypertextual digression, it isn't indicated as such and raises questions about Porter's own sense of kairos and phronesis.

Main Page | Porter's Previous Work | Guiding Questions | Rhetorical Ethics | Internetworked Writing | Internetworked Classroom | Shaping a Future Ethics Table of Contents | Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7