Thanks for the comments so far, I'll throw in a few more points of
clarification and I apologise for the length of this post.
Going back to my original post, and I don't recall saying that the Internet
research I referred to was my own research. The reason I posted the list is
because I frequently get asked to referee research papers which involve
Internet research for a number of different journals. It bothers me that the
authors of most of these papers, whilst they cite and reference print texts
extensively, do not usually refer to having asked for permission to cite
from email discussions, nor have they made any attempt to make themselves
transparent as researchers when they conduct Internet research. One gets the
feeling that Internet data is seen to be easy game and therefore not subject
to the same level of reflexivity as 'real' data is. My personal instinct is
to reject these papers on just that point as it seems to me to be against
the 'emancipatory' aims of disability research and insulting to list
participants.
However, my own research |is| concerned with the analysis of disability
discourse. In order for this research to be academically rigorous (according
to the powers that be) I have to work with very large data sets that involve
the participation of huge numbers of people over long periods of time. I am
not interested in the isolated comments of individuals but in the context of
those comments - specifically how disability is constructed in and through
social relations over time between people, both on the Internet and in
'real' life, how particular people and groups of people are disabled by
certain discursive strategies, and how they resist these strategies. I think
there are also institutional structures beyond our control that perpetuate
the disabling effects of these strategies, such as reminders not to do
something after it has already been done and had its desired and usually
dis-abling effect, that also merit research.
Because of the amount of data that is needed for discourse analysis, it is
physically impossible to contact all of the participants involved
individually and this does not always indicate a lack of respect or
courtesy. I presume that one way around the problem is to put a general post
out to the list saying that I am doing some research, what that research is
about, and inviting anyone who does not want me to use their comments, or
who would prefer their comments to be used anonymously, to contact me
off-list. But this is where the public/private issue comes in because to
preserve anonymity of one individual, I presumably have to refrain from
saying which list the data is extracted from. This makes it difficult to
credit the contributions of those people who are prepared for their comments
to be used. As many people have said, and the list administrator keeps
reminding us, 'this is a public forum' and because there is a text archive,
our discussions are effectively published whether we like it or not.
I tend to agree with Ron that there is a difference between copyright and
quotability (though they are of course linked) and, like him, I'm not sure
what netiquette is in this area. If we assume for the moment that the rules
are the same as they are for printed texts, a lot depends on whether the
archive is counted as a single text or multiple texts made up of each
contributor's copyrighted comments. Larry is right that once you consign
something to writing it is your intellectual property, though not
necessarily |original| intellectual property. That is to say, it's clear
from this list and others, and also from printed texts, that there are many
people who have worked and are working simultaneously, but not collectively,
on similar ideas and issues and the question of ownership of those ideas is,
at the very least, complicated.
Personally, I do not join lists for the sole purpose of accessing data sets
or conducting research and I have been an active and transparent participant
in most of the lists for a number of years. If I have been quiet recently,
it is for reasons that have nothing to do with this thread.
Mairian
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