The Right To Image: A WebQuest

Title: "Serenity"
Artist: Albert Fennell
Images of Color

The Right To Image

Introduction | Task | The Process & Resources | Additional Links| Conclusion

Introduction

As a writer of the 21st century, visuals are important and so is learning how to use them responsibly as a writer.
Composition as an academic discipline is concerned both with "the visual" as an element of page design and with the visual elements' larger social meanings as they will be constructed by an audience.
This WebQuest takes up in particular your rights as a writer to incorporate image into your electronic writing; specifically, the legalities of using an image will be considered, then for further research, the ethical uses of "the right to image" will be questioned.

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Question & Task

This WebQuest asks you first to study two documents that serve as public contracts for the use of visual elements on the internet:
The Syracuse University Computing and Electronic Communications Policy, and
Graphics by CW Shorty

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The Process and Resources

Read and take notes on the following internet pages:

1. Syracuse Page

http://cms.syr.edu/policy/computepolicy.html

Read the SU Computing and Electronic Communications Policy. Look for answers to the following questions particularly.
What is considered a "Syracuse University record"?
What rights does Syracuse University hold over their records?
Can you put a link to Amazon (the internet retailer) on your homepage?
Can you sell items from your university homepage?
What are the policies for creating entertainment pages that seek high web traffic?
If you are chatting in Instant Messenger with a friend in a campus computer cluster, and someone wants to use the computer to type a paper, do you have to let them?
A friend of yours designs a graphic for her site. You call her on the phone and get her permission to use the graphic. Is this alright?

2. CW Shorty's Graphics

http://cwshorty.com/gbcterms.shtml and
http://cwshorty.com/

Visit CW Shorty's terms page and home page. Click around in the site to get a feel for the images that are offered. Look for the answers to these particular questions:
What kinds of images does CW's site contain?
What permissions are available from CW Shorty for the use of the images?
Are these images for sale?
Are you allowed to use pieces of the site, or must a whole design be used "as is"?
What particular issues does CW Shorty address in the permissions terms?

3. Debate and Discuss What You Learned

Reconvene as a large group and discuss your findings.
Attempt to move class discussion to consider:
what other links were on CW Shorty's page?
Who *is* CW Shorty -- what can you tell about the designer by moving through the webpages?
How does CW control the images on the site?
What kinds of people or businesses are allowed to use the images?
Is there an ethical issue in using these images for particular kinds of sites?
What kinds of sites might CW Shorty object to?

What surprised you about the University's policy statement?
What didn't surprise you?
Can you find sites on the university server that do not follow these guidelines?

4. Write a Response

Once the class has discussed the websites studied, for homework, visit two other sites:
http://www.rupaul.com/index.html

http://www.shirleyqliquor.com/

What rights do these authors / artists have to provide the images that they provide on their websites?
Are these legal rights? Are they ethical rights?
Are they rights at all?
What right does a person have to her own identity "images"?

RuPaul is not hard to find out about: read the site and search Google.

The name of the entertainer that performs the Shirley Q character's name is Chuck Knipp, and you can find his homepage at http://home.earthlink.net/~fcharlesknipp/.

This is a link to the mp3 site that hosts Chuck Knipp's Shirley Q. character: http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/258/shirley_q_liquor.html

Starting from the same sources -- i.e., the artist's homepage and the Google search engine -- what information do you find out about the person behind the character?

Write a 2-3 response that addresses these two sites particularly and takes into consideration the legal, ethical, and moral rights necessary for image use on the internet.

Do you believe that these artists have the "rights" to use the images that they use?

What rights to "perform image" do people have?

How does "image" function in our lives day-to-day?

How does "image" work on the internet?

What functions for image can you find on the internet?

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Additional Sources for Further Research

To deepen and challenge your initial perceptions and thinking about these issues, visit a few of the following websites.

Other Celebrity Home Pages
Marcella Detroit

Jenna Elfman

Earl Scruggs

Analysis of Visual Images
The University of Newcastle's Fine Arts pages

Yamada Language Center
American Sign Language fonts for your computer

Visual Literacy Bibliography
IVLA organization's page

Gestalt Theory and Gestalt Psychology
Enabling organization page.

PsycLine
Guide to journals in psychology and the social sciences.

Visual Thesaurus
Plumb Design sponsors this visual thesaurus.

Semiotics and Informatics: A Bibliography
by PBA hosted on the xx university server.

Visual Programming Languages Bibliography
by Burnett hosted on the xx university server.

Marxist Media Theory
by ?? hosted on the aber.uk server.

Visual Rhetoric in Composition
a bibliography by Joddy Murray.

The Earth as Art
Images of the earth from space, sponsored by NASA.

Web User Reactions to Bearded Men
A hilarious study conducted by Robert Schulman (of How To Write a Research Paper fame), previously published by the ever awesome Hot Air Journal.

Sociology Papers by Topic
On-line papers sponsored by the Sociology department of Lancaster UK university.

Black People Love Us
Critical anti-racism and cutting edge satire.

The NYPL Picture Collection Online
Images from the New York Public Library collections.

Women at William and Mary
A special collection put together by the school.

Getto Sake Entertainment
Comics for the rest of us.

Online Artist Golan Levin
Art 21 Project

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia
at Ferris State University

Video and Audio Archive
sponsored by MyPrimeTime.

Chuck Lorre Productions
Image? Story? All of those Chuck Lorre credit images that flash up just as Dharma and Greg is going off.

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Conclusion

"The visual" can be tricky to address in internet writing: legal complications exist for both the copyright of the image and the storage of the image. Further, ethical and moral complications exist for those who would "mis-represent" themselves by means of an image.
Although the ethical and moral complications are usually open to discussion, this WebQuest should at least have prepared you to deal with the legal implications of using the visual as you continue to think through "the right to image."

This page written by Deanya Lattimore, mdlattim@syr.edu
Last updated December 2002.