TWC 551
Intellectual Property and Copyright
Multimedia Writing and Technical Communication
Fall 2006
Graduate Assignment
For this assignment, you will work in small groups (2-3) to research a scenario related to intellectual property/copyright. In addition to the final product, I will ask that you each complete a self-assessment and peer review of your group members.
Select one of the following options:
- Scenario A: You have been hired as a consultant by large private university which hires part-time faculty to teach courses online. Several designers prepare instructional materials for the courses in both print and electronic format. The company's legal counsel has expressed concerns about the use of copyrighted material by the designers and supplemental materials that faculty members may be distributing to students. The president of the company has asked you to prepare a tutorial on copyright for the designers to use when preparing materials. He has requested that the tutorial cover both general principles of copyright for instructional use and, specifically, the TEACH Act. Your tutorial may be either electronic or print.
- Scenario B: The library and information technology department of a large research university have proposed implementing an open source publishing system for faculty to publish the results of their research and scholarship. The university's legal counsel has expressed doubts about the feasibility of the proposal due to concerns about intellectual property issues. After reading the proposal and listening to the concerns of legal counsel, the university's president decides to hire you to advise him on the issues involved before approving or rejecting the proposal. Be sure that you identify all stakeholders in such a system in order to develop a comprehensive recommendation. Your recommendation should be submitted to the president in formal report format.
- Scenario C: You work for a small Internet Service Provider in the Phoenix area that offers both dialup and high speed connections. As a service to your customers, the company also provides webspace for personal sites at no additional cost and webspace for businesses for an additional fee based on the amount of space used. The ISP maintains the server space but design and maintenance of the content of the sites are the responsibility of customers. However, recently you have received several takedown requests demanding that links be removed from sites hosted on the ISP. As far as you can tell, the links don't violate the ISP's user policy or any decency or privacy laws. However the takedown requests claim that the links violate the requester's copyright. You are unaware that simply linking to an external site is a violation of copyright law and so you investigate whether the requests are legitimate and whether the ISP is liable. Based on your findings, you decide new policies need to be implemented governing websites hosted on your site. Create either an FAQ or tutorial for customers (both those with personal websites and business sites) on their responsibilities as website owners (for copyright only), the new policies you are implementing related to copyright, and actions that may be taken by the ISP if policies are violated by customers. Note: your FAQ or tutorial should go beyond merely stating that website owners are required to comply with federal and state laws; it should be comprehensive and demonstrate your knowledge regarding copyright and the liabilities/responsibilities of an ISP and website owners.
Part One: Topic Selection (due September 3rd):
Email to me your scenario selection. Selections are on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you have not selected a scenario by September 3rd, I will assign you to one.
Once I have all requests, I will set up group areas in Blackboard for you to work with as a group. You are, of course, welcome to use any other technology you may choose to help with your work. You may, for example, wish to set up a blog or wiki for your group.
As graduate students, I am assuming that you have all worked in collaborative groups in other classses. However, you may want to take a look at Group Work and Collaborative Writing, particularly the section on making your group a success. I'm going to take a fairly hands-off approach to monitoring your groups other than requiring a self-assessment and peer review at the end of the semester. I'll go into more about my expectations for your groups once they are formed.
Part Two: Research Proposal (10 pts, due September 24th)
Submit a research proposal for your scenario. Your proposal should include the following information:
- a summary of your scenario with a preliminary analysis of who stakeholders are (if appropriate), what issues of copyright may be involved
- your research strategy
- a preliminary discussion of what you believe you need to find out about your scenario (you may wish to include brainstorming activities, concept maps, or other aids to working out what you need to know as attachments to your proposal)
- how will you be conducting your research (primary, secondary, or both? what types of sources will you use)
- who will be responsible for each aspect of your strategy
- a timeline for completing your research
Your proposal should be submitted to me in memo format.
Part Three: Annotated Bibliography (10 pts, due November 5th)
Submit an annotated bibliography of sources you have found during your research. Your sources should reflect a comprehensive search strategy (in other words, they should not all be from the web). Annotations should be one paragraph summaries of the source, in your own words, and should include how the source is appopriate for use in developing your final product.
The number of sources you include is your decision to make based on your analysis of your scenario and your research strategy. Your grade will be based on the comprehensiveness of your research to date and the quality of your sources.
Part IV: Completed product (final product: 20 pts, participation based on self-assessment and peer review: 5 pts; due November 26th)
Post the completed product for your scenario to Blackboard. In addition, submit to me via email your completed self-assessment and peer review forms.
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Page last modified: 30 August 2006