KNOWLEDGE, CULTURAL PRODUCTION, AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE LAW: AN IDEOGRAPHIC RHETORICAL CRITICISM OF <COPYRIGHT>. Suzanne V. L. Berg A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2013 Committee: Michael L. Butterworth, Advisor Kristen Rudsill Graduate Faculty Representative Victoria Smith Ekstrand Joshua D. Atkinson ii ABSTRACT Michael L. Butterworth, Advisor Copyright is in theory a neutral legal instrument, but in practice copyright functions as an ideological tool. The value of creative content in culture vacillates between the rhetorical poles of progress and profit within copyright law. This study is an ideographic rhetorical critique of <copyright>. Ideographs are rhetorical containers of ideology that publics use to define various aspects of culture. Some ideographs are contained within the dialogue of a topic. I argue five terms that make up the ideographic grammar of <copyright>: public domain, fair use, authorship, ownership, and piracy. The public domain is the space where <copyrighted> material enters when the term of protection expires. The public domain expresses the ideology that creative material belongs to the people who consume content. Fair use is the free speech exception to copyright law that allows for certain types of infringement. Fair Use is the ideology in which the use of creative work belonging to others must be fairly represented. Authorship is how an author creates content and how an audience consumes it. Authorship is an ideology focused on progress towards the process of creating content as motivated by an author. The question at the center of authorship is who controls content: the author or the public. Ownership takes the question of authorship one-step further by invoking material property. Ownership is the embodiment of the idea that management, control, and profit of copyright are more valuable than original creation. The Corporate Public is focused on ownership of content, because ownership is a legal condition of property where a person or group can profit. Piracy, which appears most often in any discussion of copyright law, is an intentional theft of copyrighted work(s). <Piracy> is a battleground between content theft and the people who publically resist copyright. iii DEDICATION To my two William Bergs: The one who got me here and the one who just arrived. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Family Bill Berg- Saying that I could not have done this without you is an understatement. Five years ago I sent you an email broaching the idea of returning to grad school. You knew it would be hard, lonely, and far away from our families, but you didn’t falter. You knew this was my next step well before I did. Thank you for being the definition of a supportive partner and dynamic parent. William Berg, III-The amount that I love you astounds me every day. I could not have you in the office while I tried to work because I just wanted to stare at you the whole time. Thank you for sleeping though the night at such a young age and listening to me read critical rhetoric to you to clear out my head. Mom-I love you so much. Thank you for your constant stream of praise. You have never shied away from showing me how much you love me. Thank you for the cards, frequent visits and for being proud of me even though you are rightly suspicious of graduate education. I hope I am just as clear with my love for you. Dad-You always wanted me to be a lawyer and instead I became a critic of the language of law. I think my route pays better. I know how proud you are of me because other people tell me how much you brag about me. Izzy-Thank you for taking my long, rambling phone calls and indulging my ranting about our shared love of pop culture. Bill and Mary-Thank you for letting me kidnap your son and always being nothing but supportive of our choices. To Jim and Marlene Rudy-I did not know how proud you were of me until I got your phone call after I defended my dissertation. I love you both so much and I know that every hard day of my life, I remember I have never worked as hard as Jim Rudy. To Rae Loen and Carl Taylor-I am a lucky person in academia because I am not a first-generation graduate student. You both provided examples of what graduate work could do for an individual. Thank you for asking hard questions about what I was doing, telling me how proud you were, and always sending postcards from where you were visiting that week. To Nikki, Kristi, Brett, Katie, Megan, and Sara-I know you may have not felt our absence the way we have felt it. But we are sorry for all of the birthdays and hockey games we missed in the last four years. In many ways I was doing this for you. To My Committee Dr. Michel Butterworth-I know I was never your easiest or most fun advisee. None of this comes easy to me and I spent several years trying to bend myself into the rhetorician that I thought I needed to be. It took until the last few months of this project when I finally understood what you were saying the whole time: The models are not always helpful, each person needs to find their own way through, and just be clear about how they got there. It took me a lot of false starts and terrible drafts to figure out what that looked like for me. I learned how to read through your criticism to find the tools to make me a better (but not great) writer and critic. The amount of pride I have of being part of the line of Butterworth advisees cannot be undersold. Dr. Victoria Smith Ekstrand-You are one of the most supportive women I have ever met. I will always keep your email notes thanking me for comments, work, and other little things that we did throughout our time at BG. You always made me feel like I was being seen in a v fundamental way that I did not even know I needed. That being said, you were always the person in the room who asked me the hardest questions and I think I am trying to still answer them. Dr. Joshua Atkinson-Thank you for being a great mentor in academic work. As your research assistant I saw the nuts and bolts of pulling good academic work together for publication. I appreciated the smart political way you view publishing. Thank you for choosing me to be your assistant…even though you spelled my name wrong. Dr. Kristen Rudsill-Thank you for your input on the scope and process of this project. Your detailed copy editing was immensely helpful in the final draft. I look forward to exploring the outlaw hero of piracy in a future draft. Academic Supporters and Friends Dr. Marne Austin-Thank goodness we moved into the same apartment complex! We needed each other so much over the last four years. I am so happy to see the person you have become from the eleven-year-old who sat next to me on the first day of orientation. Your mind is unmatched! Wonda Baugh-Thank you for your easy smile and joyous energy for all things. You made my life easier by simply being close. Your unwavering support of both good and bad ideas made my last three years easier. Dr. Jim Berg-To the Dr. Berg with the three degrees in reading from the Dr. Berg with three degrees in talking, thank you for being a resource to me simply because I married your nephew. Dr. Dan Cronn-Mills-My life would be completely different if it were not for you and a sign I saw in the student union in 1999. Thank you for pushing me forward and rooting for me on all fronts. Thank you for always being a cheerleader. Heather Diersen-Thank you for your willingness to search WestLaw after I got too angry. You have had a big year, which will only certainly get bigger. The notes you sent me were posted on my wall for me to look at every day. Thank you for your quiet text messages that let me know you were thinking of me. Thank you for being such a kind person. Dr. Sandra Faulkner-You were not on my committee, but you did everything short of reading my dissertation. Thank you for serving as a role model and mentor on a range of projects at my time in BG. You challenged me to examine the way I think and approach all of my work. Your guidance fundamentally changed the way I examine the world. Dr. Anne Gerbensky Kerber-First, thank you for your fine editing eye in the waning weeks of this dissertation. Second, thank you for helping me think out all sorts of issues of academic life. You have provided me with a road map of success for over ten years. I am so luck that you are one of my closest friends. Erica Baye Goembel-We met in Pierre in 1991(?), in short, you are my oldest friend. We are forever thankful that you and Dallas (and technically Thomas) came out to visit us that first summer. Over the last few months when I thought I could not do this, I thought of you. If you could work a demanding job, get a nursing degree, and raise Thomas, then I could do this.