Motivation

Jon – I agree with Erin that your article and Jason’s article are each unique and creative in their own way. I think it would be helpful to acknowledge that the decision to deliberate is not a binary on/off switch (whereas voting is) (you do this a bit in the text accompanying FN 147 and elsewhere). Juries and town halls (both which deliberate) are made up of individual members, each which is different in what he or she believes, but also in his or her style of deliberation, and most importantly, in his or her access to knowledge/information.
You mention that in a deliberation about a policy and its impact on GDP (pg. 24), someone who doesn’t feel strongly about an issue is more likely to be open to persuasion by other group members. I think it would help if you expanded this section here to explain the various profiles of deliberators (I think this would also help tie into your legitimacy/authority discussion earlier):
– those who don’t know anything about the economy (GDP) or the policy, don’t care either way, and are open to persuasion
– those who don’t know anything about the economy (GDP) or the policy, think the issue is probably important, and are open to persuasion
– those who don’t know anything about the economy (GDP) or the policy, already have pre-formed beliefs, and are not open to persuasion
And the list goes on. Take the case of the jury for example. Imagine a jury panel in a medical malpractice case where one of the jurors is a highly-respected and knowledgeable physician. Let’s also say that the rest of the jurors defer to his judgment (because they trust it more than their own), though they still engage in the issues and pay attention during trial. How is this any different from a jury panel who renders the same verdict, but is composed of a panel of jurors that have each equally had their opinions taken into consideration, assuming none of these jurors has any medical knowledge?

Steven – Great article. I really liked reading an article touching on IP (like mine), but taking a different perspective. My comments here mainly focus on your historical arguments supporting the natural baseline as the public domain. Recent scholarship has undermined the long-held assertion that Thomas Jefferson and others viewed information as necessarily belonging in the public domain. See, in particular, Justin Hughes, Copyright and Incomplete Historiographies: Of Piracy, Propertization, and Thomas Jefferson, 79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 993, 998-1046 (2006). In particular, the article challenges the claim by several individuals (including Richard Stallman, Mark Lemley, Neil Netanel, Larry Lessig, etc.) that the use of the term “intellectual property”, or the propertization of copyright (in the form of DMCA, etc.), is a new phenomenon. Articles like this one may conflict with your Liberal Argument (section I.B.), so it may be worthwhile to address. Hughes’ major points: ” (1) the claim that copyright has only recently been “intellectual property” is a much weaker proposition factually than as presented [by other writers]; and (2) regardless, the point is not very useful to their arguments, given that copyright has been recognized as “property” for 200 or more years.” And on Jefferson: “It is widely acknowledged that Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention. He was a “Founding Father” who was not a “Framer”–this, by itself, should largely curtail the use of Jefferson as “a reliable source of the meaning of Article I of the Constitution.” Indeed historians for the period agree that Jefferson had very little influence over the Convention – he was three thousand miles away and “each letter he wrote or received took six to eight weeks to cross the Atlantic.”” He also goes on to say how Jefferson’s views were often fluid and not one-sided as they usually quoted to be.
In any event, this issue doesn’t touch upon the great majority of your article, and the historical perspective may not even be necessary to make your point about the public domain.

Mbabazi – Growing up in LA, I was always curious to learn more about the great murals around the city, so I found the article very interesting. My comment regards Alternative Solution B.i. (Appealing to and strengthening the values in grafitti culture that coincide with mainstream society and leverage the protection of the law to encourage law-abiding behavior). To the extent that graffiti artists write to stake their “claim” over communities, I’m not sure whether it will be easy convince the public that they should accept graffiti and not perceive it “as a threat to the social order”. I think it would extremely difficult to convince mainstream society that they should provide copyright protection for graffiti that they think believe is part of a larger threat to their sense of safety. At least in low-income communities, I would imagine that graffiti is part of a larger problem of intimidation (and violence? not sure about this one) that these graffiti artists exert on society. Obviously, this isn’t the case in all communities, but I’d imagine that in at least some societies, bringing together graffiti culture and mainstream culture will be very difficult.