CCCC-IP Annual Article: Two Competing Copyright Curricula

I'm excited about this year's CCCC-IP Annual. We're looking at having at least six articles in the 2009 publication, which will be my third as editor. I plan on getting my article for it finished in the next week or two. Usually the articles cover the developments in copyright and intellectual property law over the past year; this year will be no different except for a couple of reviews of books that were published in the latter half of 2008 that I decided to make exceptions for.

But for my article, I wanted to cover something that happened in 2009 if possible. I did some reading through the 2009 archives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's blog and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society's site, and then I found the topic.

In 2009, both the Recording Industry Association of America and the Electronic Frontier Foundation released curricula for teaching children about copyright and intellectual property. The RIAA's curriculum, intended for grades 3 through 8, is quite one-sided. The EFF's curriculum seems to be geared toward grades 9 through 12 and examines copyright in a more complex way. I just finished writing a review of Jessica Reyman's new book The Rhetoric of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law and the Regulation of Digital Culture, and I already see so many connections between her argument, which examines the rhetorical workings of the content industries' argument (she terms this "the property stewardship narrative") and the copyright activists' argument (which she calls "the cultural conservancy narrative"), and these curricula: how these narratives are told to young audiences. I love it when I can be invigorated by my research and writing. I'll link to the Annual once it goes live, of course. I expect that will be in early March; I want to publish it before the conference and before my rambunctious little girl is born.