Breaking and Entering My Own Computer: The Contest of Copyright Metaphors

In the current debate over copyright law, those who support maximum copyright protections have advanced their agenda largely via the metaphor of ownership in physical property. As part of this metaphorical system, they have successfully argued that digital rights management (DRM) systems deserve legal protections befitting locked doors. This article is a discourse analysis of this related system of metaphors and of opponents' metaphorical and non-metaphorical responses. Scholars who oppose the maximalist vision of copyright have devoted considerable thought to the problem of metaphors, including especially the search for metaphors that can challenge the metaphor of property. The article concludes there is work yet to be done on this count. As an incremental contribution to this conversation, the article suggests additional arguments, including additional metaphors in search of a new means to conceptualize copyright law.     

Valence characteristics, costly policy and the median-crossing property: A diagrammatic exposition

Voters value valence characteristics such as honesty and competence. In this paper, we consider the situation where candidates may have more than one valence characteristic of importance to the voters. At the same time we introduce a new concept “the median-crossing property" which differs from single-peakedness and is less restrictive than the single-crossing property. If indifference curves satisfy the median-crossing property, then voting is transitive and the majority's preference rankings coincide with those of the median voter; if the indifference curves violate the median-crossing property, then intransitivity may arise. The framework also allows us to consider elections with costly policy.