Reading Comprehension

PT149 · S2 · P3 · Q14 Social Norms & Intellectual Property

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Passage A Comedians are not amused when their jokes are stolen, and for that reason we might expect joke-stealing disputes to ripen into lawsuits occasionally.

Topic

The protection of creative content (jokes and recipes) among comedians and chefs, and how social norms substitute for ineffective or unavailable legal protection.

Framework

Answer / Explain

Main Point

Even though comedians and chefs can’t rely on traditional intellectual property law to protect their jokes or recipes, both groups use strong social norms within their communities to regulate ownership, copying, and credit—effectively serving a legal-like function and preserving incentives for creativity. (Passage A, paragraph 3) (Passage B, paragraph 1)

P1: Comedy and Copyright Law

Comedians rarely take legal action against joke thieves, even though jokes can be technically protected by copyright. That’s because the cost of litigation is high, legal success is uncertain, and copyright law just doesn’t work well for comedians in practice.

P2: The Puzzle of Comedy Innovation

But if the law doesn’t protect comedians, why do they bother coming up with so much new material?

P3: Social Norms Among Comedians

It’s because comedians have their own system of social norms—a set of unwritten community rules—backed up by consequences like damaging someone’s reputation. This informal “norms system” does most of what copyright law would do: it lets comedians claim ownership, control use, punish joke theft, and gives them a reason to keep coming up with new ideas.

14.

Passage A, but not passage B, discusses

  1. the relationship of social norms

    Mentioned in B

    The first few sentences of Passage B sum up the available legal protections for the intellectual property of recipes. Then the last sentence of that paragraph say that, "[Chefs very seldom use the trade secrecy laws they could]. Instead, three implicit social norms are operative."

    5% picked this

  2. the evolution of social norms

    Out of Scope: evolution

    Both passages talk about how norms in a given industry (comedy / cooking) work in place of intellectual property laws. Neither passage talks about how those norms have grown to change over time.

    2% picked this

  3. Correct

    the enforcement of social norms

    Why this is right

    In the final paragraph of Passage A, the 3rd and 4th sentences say, These norms are not merely hortatory. They are enforced with sanctions, including simple badmouthing and refusals to work with an offending comedian. Passage B never talks about how the norms are enforced. What happens if you copy a chef's recipe exactly? What happens if you pass information a chef revealed to you to others without their permission, or if you fail to give proper credit to developers of significant recipes? That passage never lists any consequences like badmouthing / blacklisting, etc.

    Skill tested: Locate Detail · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    64% picked this

  4. the limitations of social norms

    Supported by Both / Neither

    This answer, honestly, reads a bit ambiguously. By limitations of social norms, does this mean the way in which social norms limit the behavior of comics / chefs? If so, then both passages cover this, since both passages list out some of the ways in which a comic or chef is limited by norms against copying. If limitations of social norms mean "where can we see that there's clearly a limit to how much protection can be afforded by social norms", then neither passage discussed.

    2% picked this

  5. the impact of social norms

    Discussed by Both

    This answer is a little frustrating because there's more explicit discussion in Passage A. The 2nd paragraph of A is talking about how creative output would suffer if intellectual property does not enjoy formal legal protection. And then the 3rd paragraph reveals that social norms substitute for intellectual property law. So the impact of social norms on creative output is seemingly similar to that formal legal protection. Passage B implies the exact same sentiment about the impact of norms on safeguarding intellectual property relating to recipes. It sounds like chefs, in absence of realistic formal legal protection, do not see their creative output go down, because social norms play the role of upholding their intellectual property rights. Even though it seems like Passage A more explicitly discusses create output ("scant production of creative works"), it never spells out the impact of social norms on creative output. We can infer what impact those norms would presumably have, but we can make the same inference in Passage B. Meanwhile, with the correct answer, we're explicitly told about enforcement of norms in comedy and we don't have any way to infer how norms in cooking are enforced.

    26% picked this

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