Self-study
Passage A.
P1
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Phenomenon ·
Comedians don't use copyright law to protect their jokes from theft
Hypothesis ·
Filing lawsuits is too expensive to protect jokes
Costs include both actual costs and legal uncertainty about how copyright law applies to joke stealing.
P2
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Phenomenon ·
Despite no legal protection against joke theft, comedians still write lots of jokes
That's unexpected. Conventional wisdom would say that without legal protection, comedians wouldn't write jokes. But conventional wisdom is wrong.
P3
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Hypothesis ·
Social norms protect from joke theft
Norms are enforced by punishments, such as damage to reputation.
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P4
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Intro topic ·
Chefs don't use law to protect their recipes
Intellectual property law usually doesn't cover recipes, and chefs rarely use trade secrecy laws.
Social norms ·
Chefs protect recipes by three social norms
(Just like how Passage A said comedians use social norms to protect their jokes.)
P5
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Norm 1 ·
Don't copy another chef's recipe exactly
Functions like patent protection for something innovative.
Norm 2 ·
If secret recipe is revealed, don't pass it to someone else
Functions like trade secrecy protection.
Norm 3 ·
Give credit to people who developed recipes
Functions like copyright protection.
Passage Style
17.
Which one of the following ██████████ ██ ████ ████████ █████████ ██ ███████████ █████ ██ ███ █████████
a
Intellectual property violations ███ ████ ████████ █████ █████████ ████ █████ ██████
The passages don’t give us enough to compare frequency of violations among comedians and chefs.
b
A more elaborate ██████ ██ ██████ █████ ███ █████████ █████ █████ ████ █████ ██████████
The passages don’t allow us to assess which system is more “elaborate.” Although Passage B describes the chefs’ norms in more detail, that doesn’t imply that the chefs’ norms are more elaborate. The comedians’ norms can be just as elaborate; Passage A just didn’t go into as much detail about those norms.
c
Chefs enjoy more ███████████ █████ ███████████ ██ █████ ████████████ ████████ ████ ██ ██████████
If anything, the passages suggest the opposite, because chefs can rarely use the law to protect their recipes, whereas Passage A indicates that copyright does apply to comedians’ jokes.
d
Most comedians and █████ ███ █████████ ████ ███████ ████████████ ████████ █████
Not supported, because we’re told comedians find legal protection too costly to use. So if anything Passage A suggests comedians probably aren’t satisfied with intellectual property laws; lawsuits are too expensive, difficult, and uncertain.
e
Comedians and chefs ████ ██████ ████ ████████████ ███████ ████ █████████ ███ ██████ █████ ██ █████ ███████████
This is the best answer. Comedians get some professional benefit from adhering to norms because they can assert ownership of jokes, regulate the use and transfer of jokes, and impose sanctions on joke thieves. Chefs get professional benefits from adhering to their norms because they can exclude others from using their recipes.