Lynne has done some thorough thinking here on the nuances of ownership and shades of copyright issues as well. I especially like the use of the term amalgam. You are right, Lynne, in describing the new age of electronic communications we are entering. Research provides us with an audit trail of the data thread that each of us weaves in our perception or interpretation of theories, policies, and practices. Rather than just "pulling it out of thin air," we need to anchor our thoughts to their sources for the benefit of those who want to follow us.
I'm emphasizing the importance of amalgamation of prior thought with our own and others to spin new threads on the web. I don't think we need to spend too much time quibbling about who said what precisely--just where it came from should be the important question so that anyone can trace us. My point here is that the concept of ownership is changing on the web for two reasons: instantaneous production and universal distribution.
With so many ideas bursting in a shotgun (not linear) mode, and paired or very shortly followed by additional data, and opinions, and research, etc., the effect is standing in the middle of a fireworks display and trying to lay claim to one star burst. Futile in this day and age, don't you think? I believe that our concerns may one day be answered by technology. Perhaps text put on the web may be encoded to link, like hot words, to the original author. That possibility would make the methodology of referencing automatic.
With regards to using someone's text as part of the research, perhaps we can depend upon the generally understood netiquette that you can quote yourself anytime but it's in poor taste to forward someone else's text that was addressed to you personally. However, any text on a listserv is fair game, based upon the definition that a listserv or newsgroup/newsnet is a distributed communication. In writing a workshop for learning the last Spring, I worked with engineers who provide service and as professional veterans of networking they simply advised against putting anything on the net to anyone that you would not want seen by everyone. So if we all know we're vulnerable then we have no rights? Yes--we do!!
One class in Instructional Technology at the University of Central Florida on copyrighting was conducted by a lawyer's multimedia intellectual rights consultant (now there's a great upcoming career!!) and frankly after several hours of discussion and reading, we agreed that we've a long way to go before these issues become clear because the net environment itself and our roles in it have not yet focused either.
Also, ITForum members, all of us, are most likely future electronic publishers and tutorial authors, and should check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation and learn about copyright issues specifically for educators at:
and read a great primer on copyrights, patents, works-for-hire, etc., at:
This is the other side of the coin: many of us will be writing to ITForum or wherever and may be quoted, observed, recorded, etc. It's a whole new world opening up where we are all performers and observers alike--and it's a smaller net world than you might think! Thanks, Lynn, for calling many of the traditional issues to question in this new environment.