Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion: Rhetoric in the Peer-to-Peer Debates

CONTEXT

To situate Logie’s work, one can separate the field’s research trajectories at the intersection of intellectual property, rhetoric, and composition into four categories. I see these trajectories as 1) Historical studies that examine certain cases in the context of intellectual property and rhetoric (the work of Brockmann, Bazerman, and Durack goes here); 2) Pedagogical arguments that are framed in intellectual property contexts (work by DeVoss, Porter, Herrington, Walker, Rife, and Logie’s other work goes here); 3) General arguments that use rhetorical analysis or rhetorical concepts to examine certain current events or intellectual property practices and make general field arguments -- although Logie himself characterizes this work as “rhetorical historism,” (p. 20) drawing upon Edwin Black and Michel Foucault for his methodological frame, I’d place this book in this third category. I'd characterize Peers, Pirates, & Persuasion as a text which uses a rhetorical framework, or concepts from rhetoric, to analyze current events in intellectual property contexts.

Finally, a fourth category in this area of research is empirical studies in intellectual property contexts (this is a location for new research development). A fifth category might be added here on issues of authorship, but that scholarship tends to focus on discussions of plagiarism, an ethical rather than legal doctrine. Obviously, there is substantial overlap between these categories, but they will suffice for purposes of a providing a general framework for Logie's new book.