I realize I'm coming a bit late to the party with this question, but I wonder how Derek would edit the brief further if he had the opportunity, or if he is happy with the arguments and policy suggestions as is.

For me, while I agreed with virtually all of his arguments, I found his arguments for reform rather unpersuasive and some of his policy suggestions downright off-putting. DJ remixing as the lead argument? Ignoring copyright trolling? Even some of his strong arguments are weakly proffered. His proposal to create disincentives for renewing copyright was wildly convoluted and would've been a lightening rod for copyright holders to attack.

Sure. First off, know that the SCOTUS has specifically ruled the Electoral College skew between states is constitutional, but has also ruled that state elections must be one person one vote. This is important because of the mechanics of the Interstate Compact.

The Compact says that member states will allocate their EC vote based on the national popular vote. Non-member states would continue to allocate however they choose (most by winner-take-all statewide popular vote.) So what happens is that member state votes are counted X times (where X = number of member states) while non-member state votes are counted X+1 times. That's an unconstitutional because the state elections for electors (per Bush v Gore) are counted unequally.

Think of a Democratic CA voter in 2000-like scenario (reversed so that the D wins the EC and the R wins the popular vote) having their 55 EC votes flipped to the Republican which also flips the EC result. Their argument will be essentially, "My state should've gone Y but flipped to Z because it unconstitutionally counted non-member states' votes more often."

And that's part of the problem with the Compact, the supporters don't see how badly it could backfire (much like the R's who were knee jerking for all those allocation changes since the 2012 election.) A popular, effective incumbent verses a horrible, elitist challenger eeked out only a 4 point win. When the R's get another plurality, these solidly-D states that have passed the Compact so far will be glad it never got traction.

(Note: also not a lawyer, but I have read extensively on this issue.)

This is the one I like best. For all the talk of it being a red nation or a blue nation, you see that it's really just a mostly purple nation with hotspots of one or the other color.

AR = 2.03E-06 to NY = 1.48E-06 in the Electoral College. In the House of Representatives, AR = 1.36E-06 to NY = 1.38E-06 (i.e. NY voters actually have very, very slightly more power in the House than AR voters.) Mind you, all of the figures are as true for rural NY voters as urban NY voters and for urban AR voters as rural AR voters thanks to SCOTUS one person one vote rulings (that specifically exempted the POTUS election because that election was specifically designed by the Constitution to not be one person one vote.)

And of those four times, you can't really consider 1824 or 1876 because not every state had a popular vote to determine their EC vote. In addition, there was significant voter intimidation, disenfranchisement, and controversy in 1876.

It's unconstitutional, but not for that.

Not only is it a backdoor way, it'll also open up a can of Constitutional worms that will make Bush v. Gore look like small claims.

Would you rather have a say in 0.5% of the outcome or 10%?

Indeed. In fact, if you look at the 10 smallest states/districts, it's usually a 5R-5D to 6R-4D split.

When you start using scientific notation to measure the "worth" of something, you're talking about something pretty worthless. Is it "unfair" that a vote is worth 5.32e-6 vs. another vote being worth 1.47e-6, perhaps, but neither is particularly valuable (also keep in mind that you're using the absolute extremes to make that point, if you look at Montana vs. Pennsylvania, the difference is down to 2.98e-6 vs. 1.57e-6) At the end of the day however, would you rather have influence over .5% of the election, or 10.2%?

And why a third of the people in Maryland voted Republican, yet only 1 of their 8 representatives is actually Republican. That's why I like Iowa's redistricting, a non-partisan computer draws the lines and the legislature has to vote it up or down.

Would you rather have a say in 0.5% of the vote or 5.4%?

F stops and bulb settings are "cool tricks" that are gone in digital photography!? Sounds like you need to look in to digital cameras again after you dismissed them in 1998.

Other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one. It's a Cartesian select. The real question is why only certain precincts are affected.

Really? How about the artists who produced the 11,000 songs on her hard drive? Someone going in to the music business certainly values it enough to pay for it (although there are legal and ethical ways that she didn't use that would give her to access almost that same library of music for free.)

Look, I get it, her copyright infringement shouldn't be the impetus for increasingly draconian copyright laws (SOPA/PIPA) or result in soul crushing lawsuits (Jammie Thomas-Rasset,) but neither should such wanton infringement be acceptable. Lowery needs to get his head out of his ass when it comes to new business models in music, but he's right to say that it's wrong to rip hundreds of CDs you don't own.