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.
███████ █
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
19.
The author of passage A █████ ██ ████ ██████ ██ █████ ████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ███████████
a
The social norms ████ ███ █████████ █████ █████████ ████ ██ ████████ ███ ██████████ █████████ ██ ██████ ███ █████ ██████████ ████ ██████████ █ ███████ ████████
This is supported by the fact that the author answers the question, “why do thousands of comedians keep cranking out new material night after night?” with the idea that social norms protect the comedians’ jokes. The social norms allow comedians to have a career making jokes. If (A) weren’t true, then it wouldn’t make sense to offer “social norms” as the answer to why comedians are still able to make a living writing jokes despite the possibility of joke theft.
b
Comedians should increase █████ ████████ ██ █████████ ███ ██ █ █████ ██ ██████████ █████ ███████ █████████
Passage A never suggests comedians should use copyright law more often. It suggests the social norms in place are adequate for protecting against joke theft.
c
Most professional comedians ███ ███████ ███████████ ████ ███ ███████ ████████ ██ ██████████ ███ ███████ █████████
If anything, Passage A suggests professional comedians do care about the cost of developing new material; this is why joke theft is frowned upon.
d
Law-based intellectual property ███████ █████████ ████ ████ ███████████ ████ ███████ █████ ██ ██████ ██████
Not supported, because Passage A discusses social norms in only a single context — comedy. And Passage A doesn’t suggest that the effectiveness of norms in comedy applies more broadly to other contexts.
e
Existing copyright law ██████ ██ ████████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ████ █████████ ███ █████████ ██ ███████ █████ ███████ ████████ ███████ █████ ██████
Not supported, because Passage A doesn’t suggest that there’s any problem with relying on social norms in comedy. Although copyright law is difficult to use for comedians, Passage A never indicates that laws should be changed to make things less difficult.