I find myself a little surprised by the Kolko article this week, if only because I simply hadn't thought too deeply about the history of trying to determine "fixity" in MOOs. In some sense, I was amazed that she spends so much time in the article trying to explain the problem of determining intellectual property rights and making the apparently deep (for her) connection to citation issues.

Mark H. can certainly correct me if I;m wrong on this, but issues related to intellectual property focus on who, if anyone, wants to claim a predetermined, monopoly on the use and profit of a particular piece of information or material. Determining "fixity" in an IP sense is more about understanding who has the rights to exploit the material for profit and control over the material (image, content, etc.). Citations issues don't really figure into this this exact equation yet, because now we're talking about an ethical and academic issue, not a legal one. If I want to cite an author in my work, I should try to get it right, but if the law hasn't designated a fixed location for my citation, I'm not going to be be punished--unless I'm sued by someone for ethical reasons. Has there been a case where a citation in an academic article has been inaccurately done (one author instead of fourteen, or failing to include the company who designed the software as an "author")? Perhaps the conclusion that Kolko reaches, that we don't necessarily need to consider legal definitions for our citation practices, just seems obvious to us now.

Incidentally, I think the real issue is what Kolko also considers: what are users' understandings of the "public- or private-ness" of their conversations. Will my conversation be "fixed" on a web site or is it generally supposed to disappear into the ether?