LSAT 143 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q10

LR Question 10 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Copyright statutes benefit society by providing…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Strengthen

CONCLUSION: Providing copyright protection several decades past author lifetime is too much.

REASONING: Some copyright is justified. Copyright helps society by incentivizing creative works. But copyright hurts society by creating protected monopolies. The additional benefit of longer copyright is outweighed by the cost of longer copyright.

ANALYSIS: This already seems like a good argument. That’s because the LSAT makes a strict separation between fact and morals. If I say “the building is burning down, we should leave” then you likely agree with me. But that’s because you are already adding an extra moral principle “I should not stay in a burning building”.

On “principle-justify” questions, the right answer explicitly states the principle that already seems obvious. The principle will be something like “We shouldn’t do things that have a net cost to society.”

___________

1. This doesn’t match the situation.
   Example of situation that matches: This copyright statute does help authors. But it seems like it hurts authors. Therefore authors don’t like it. We should change the statute’s wording.
2. The argument is talking in the present tense. There has been no change in conditions.
   (A change in conditions is something in the past like “in the past we rode horses, now we drive cars”.)
3. So? This would only let us conclude “Some sort of copyright statute is justified in every country.”
4. This principle adds a necessary condition. Copyright statutes enhance rights to creative works, so they already meet this necessary condition. Therefore this principle has no impact.
5. CORRECT. Copyright statutes are justified due to their benefit to society (see the first sentence). So this tells us that extending copyright decades after author death is a bad thing to do, because that has costs that exceed benefits.