Reading Comprehension

PT149 · S2 · P3 · Q16 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.

16.

The author of passage A would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements?

  1. Comedians rarely acknowledge the degree

    Too Strong: rarely

    This isn't any moment in the passage where the author is saying "most comedians don't appreciate enough how much their material is influenced by others". Influence ≠ joke-stealing, by the way, so this is really drifting out of scope.

    5% picked this

  2. Correct

    Comedians would be more likely

    Why this is right

    This answer has the classic "Flip the Causal Difference-Maker" form. For example, if the passage said, "Marie never felt like she belonged in her group of friends, because she was the only one with red hair", then a supportable (though not must-be-true) inference is something like, If the Causal Difference-Maker (red hair) were absent, then the Effect (feeling like she didn't belong) would be less present. Maria would be more likely to feel like she belonged if her hair were a color besides red. Passage A told us in the first paragraph that there were two big reasons why comedians don't use copyright law to protect their material: - it's very expensive - it's pretty hard to win a case (legal hurdles that make success difficult and uncertain in lawsuits relating to joke stealing) So this answer is flipping that and saying, "If it success weren't so uncertain, then they'd be more likely to use copyright law". An interchangeably correct answer could have said, "If the cost of enforcing copyright law weren't prohibitively expensive, then more comedians would use copyright law".

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

    87% picked this

  3. Creative rights to jokes and

    Out of Scope: trade secrecy law

    We never hear about trade secrecy law until Passage B.

    1% picked this

  4. The system of social norms

    Opposite

    The author of Passage A seems to be impressed by the effectiveness of the system of social norms, whereas this answer choice makes it sound he's disappointed in it. The final sentence of Passage A says that "Using this informal system (of social norms), comedians are able to .... maintain substantial incentives to invest in new material", which indicates that they are properly compensated for their expenses in developing new material.

    4% picked this

  5. In the particular context of

    Opposite

    The author of Passage A seems to be impressed by the effectiveness of the informal system of social norms, whereas this answer choice makes it sound he's disappointed in it. The first sentence of Passage A's final paragraph says that "even though there's no effective legal (formal) protection again joke theft ... social norms substitute for intellectual property law. Taken as a whole, this norms system [basically] parallels the formal copyright system." And the final sentence of Passage A again affirms that this system of norms is doing quite well at being an effective enforcement mechanism of IP protection.

    2% picked this

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