Question Type:
Flaw
Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Music-sharing companies aren't to blame for the fact that musicians are getting deprived of royalties they deserve.
Evidence: Other people are also depriving musicians of royalties
(record companies, publishers, managers, etc. take an inequitably large cut)
Answer Anticipation:
"Bob can't have stolen anything from your store. After all, Peter, Paul, and Mary all stole stuff." Pretty silly argument.
To put it into abstract language, maybe something like "concludes that a certain party is not guilty of an offense on the grounds that other parties are guilty of that offense".
Correct Answer:
A
Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Wow! That was pretty close to our prephrase. DOES THIS MATCH THE CORE? Yes, the author concluded music-sharing services aren't blameworthy (for depriving musicians of royalties), and the ONLY premise is (merely because) other people are ALSO depriving musicians of royalties.
(B) DOES IT MATCH? Nope, the conclusion is not "attempting to promote a particular behavior". It is saying "Music-sharing services are not to blame". No need to keep reading.
(C) DOES IT MATCH? Well, the conclusion DOES attack a position (the claim of many professional musicians). But the evidence doesn't attack the character of those professional musicians.
(D) DOES IT MATCH? Well, the conclusion DOES try to show that a position is false (the position of many professional musicians). But the evidence doesn't sound like, "BECAUSE musicians think that music-sharing services are robbing them, THIS negative thing happens to those musicians."
(E) DOES IT MATCH? No, this describes the Conditional Logic Flaw. You can't have the Conditional Logic Flaw unless there was a conditional statement in the evidence, but there was no such thing.
Takeaway/Pattern: This is a good example where people probably know that original argument is bad, but they may struggle to articulate HOW it's bad. The answer choices aren't always abstract on Flaw questions, but we should still try to consider an abstract prephrase in order to build the muscle of thinking of these arguments that way. Our prephrase could be, "Hey, author, the music-sharing services are still depriving musicians of money. You're just making me feel even worse for the musicians, since you're telling me OTHER people deprived them of money further upstream." or it could be "It is possible for more than entity to commit the same offense."
#officialexplanation