Collaborative Literary Creation and Control
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Collaborative Literary Creation and Control A Socio-Historic, Technological and Legal Analysis Benjamin Mako Hill Hampshire College Division III Commitee: Chair. James Miller Professor of Communications / Hampshire College James Wald Associate Professor of History / Hampshire College Stephen J. Harris Assistant Professor of English / University of Massachusettes David Bollier Co-Founder / Public Knowledge Collaborative Literary Creation and Control: A Socio-Historic, Technological and Legal Analysis Division III Commitee: Chair. James Miller, James Wald, Stephen J. Harris, and David Bollier by Benjamin Mako Hill Published unpublished Revision History Revision v1.0 May 7, 2003 Revision v1.0pre1 April 22, 2003 Revision v0.2 April 22, 2003 Revision v0.1 April 14, 2003 Table of Contents 1. Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) ............................................................1 What is Collaborative Writing? .........................................................................................2 Why is Collaboration Important?.......................................................................................4 The Idea of Control / The Control of Ideas........................................................................7 Control as Conceptions of Authorship.......................................................................8 Control as the Technology of Writing .......................................................................9 Control as Copyright................................................................................................10 Collaborative Literary Creation and Control ...................................................................10 2. A Meta-History of Collaborative Literature and Control..............................................13 Introduction......................................................................................................................13 Brief History of Authorship.....................................................................................14 Brief History of Printing Technology ......................................................................15 Brief History of Copyright.......................................................................................16 Early Models of Collaboration Before the Eighteenth Century.......................................17 Imperial Chinese Literature .....................................................................................18 The Talmud ..............................................................................................................20 The King James Version of the English Bible .........................................................22 Conclusions about Pre-Copyright Authorship and Collaboration ...........................24 Collaboration During the Birth and Early Life of Copyright ..........................................24 John Keats................................................................................................................25 Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth................................................28 During the Shift Conclusion ....................................................................................31 Contemporary Collaboration and Control .......................................................................31 Collaboration between T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound on Eliot’s The Wasteland .........32 The short stories of Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish..........................34 Contemporary Industry Collaboration .....................................................................36 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................38 iii 3. Evaluating Collaborative Literary Technologies ............................................................40 Introduction......................................................................................................................40 Defining Collaboration.....................................................................................................41 Methodology....................................................................................................................42 The Product..............................................................................................................42 Access Control: Hierarchical vs Peer ......................................................................44 Decision Making Roles............................................................................................46 Synchronous and Asynchronous Collaboration.......................................................49 Tracking Changes and Version Control ...................................................................50 Intra-Project Communication...................................................................................51 Face-to-Face Meetings.............................................................................................53 Flexibility.................................................................................................................54 Application and Case Studies ..........................................................................................55 Xanadu .....................................................................................................................55 The WikiWikiWeb ...................................................................................................61 Modern Word Processors: Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org.............................67 Conclusions......................................................................................................................72 4. Copyright and Collaborative Literary Production.........................................................73 Introduction......................................................................................................................73 Contextualizing Copyright.......................................................................................74 Twenty-first Century Copyright...............................................................................75 Problems with Copyright in the Context of Collaboration ..............................................78 Copyright is Unreflective of Collaborative Writing’s Effectiveness........................80 Copyright is Unreflective of Collaborative Writing’s Persistence...........................83 Copyright Limits Writers’ Freedom to Express Themselves Collaboratively.........84 Alternatives and Answers ................................................................................................86 Joint Authorship.......................................................................................................87 The Works Made for Hire Doctrine .........................................................................89 Limit the Terms and Reach of Copyright ................................................................91 Free Licensing..........................................................................................................95 The Future of Ideas ..........................................................................................................97 iv Bibliography ...........................................................................................................................99 A. Software (,) Politics and Indymedia ..............................................................................108 Introduction and History................................................................................................108 Learning to Look at IMC Software................................................................................110 Active’s Template and Points of Convergence.......................................................110 Active’s Spin-Offs and Points of Divergence ........................................................112 Case Studies...................................................................................................................112 SF-Active ...............................................................................................................113 Mir..........................................................................................................................114 FreeForm................................................................................................................115 Other Indymedia Software.....................................................................................116 Conclusions....................................................................................................................117 v List of Figures 3-1. Xanadu: link source..........................................................................................................56 3-2. Xanadu: link target ...........................................................................................................57 3-3. Xanadu: “Select Link Type” menu...................................................................................57 3-4. Xanadu: comparison of documents ..................................................................................59 3-5. Wiki: example page (PHPWiki) .......................................................................................61