Chilling Effects

Martine Rife is a Ph.D. candidate in the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) department at MSU. She is doing her dissertation research on the chilling effects of copyright laws on students and professors in professional writing programs in the U.S. Her question: Does fear of copyright or misunderstanding of fair use chill the speech of writers?

“I’m looking at, ‘are people really scared?’ ‘Are they really completely ignorant about fair use?’ And ‘Is this really impacting students’ abilities to write, their abilities to be educated?’ said Rife. "In the pilot – there were only 26 people – I found out that most of the people had a low knowledge and a low confidence level.”

Rife was surprised to see that the subject with the highest knowledge was a student, not a teacher.

“I found out that one of the things that happens is that people know what the law is but they don’t really care, because they think the risk of getting caught is very low, so they decide to take a chance. These are students that make digital portfolios and stuff.”

Based on the pilot results, Rife devised four questions for the main research that are each measured on a six-point scale of chilled speech:

1) “Have you ever been asked to take anything down off the web?
2) Have you ever taken anything down because you were afraid of copyright, even if you weren’t asked?
3) Have you ever not put something up to begin with because you were afraid you would get in trouble for copyright?
4) Do you generally feel like, if copyright law didn’t exist, and everything was in the public domain, that you could express yourself better or more accurately?”

Rife is also exploring moral and ethical issues behind the decision-making process.

“One question I have in the very beginning is, ‘If the law is wrong, do you think it’s okay to break it and follow your conscience, or should you always follow the law no matter what?’ said Rife. "The last time I checked, like 90 percent of respondents said, ‘You should break the law if it’s wrong and follow your conscience.’”

Other results are currently being tabulated from approximately 420 responses.

 Martine Rife talks about her research on the chilling effects of Copyright Law on students and teachers in professional writing programs around the country. (duration: 9 min. 7 sec., photo courtesy Martine Rife)