Magazine publishers claim that illegal photocopying of articles from

i think it is A), because the author mentions "the econmics of education" and that teachers could not "procure"...

E) when the teacher buys one copy and makes photocopies for his class, it will indeed affect the sales teacher, because otherwise the class would have bought the copy. how many teachers are worldwide ? one teacher teaches at most three classes ! one class with 30 students...that makes a lot of lost revenue.

Ok I agree this argument is silly. Especially because the author didn't specify if the photocopying by teachers are considered as "illegal photocopying". (Perhaps he didn't want to imply that the teachers are engaged in anything illegal, but that is out of the point.) Now let's assume that this is what he meant (at the risk of being criticised by baner for adding assumptions ) because otherwise his argument would fall all apart.

Let's see:
Publisheres believe they suffer great loss due to illegal copying
Most copying are done by teachers who give each student an illegal copy
The teachers have to do so because the schools are poor

Which of the following is most propably the point towards which the author of the above passage is moving?
(In my opinion he could move toward any point, the way he goes.)

(A) Magazine publishers should provide free copies of their magazines to schools.
Sounds a little outrageous. But he may very well arrive this point: Give it to them for free if you don't want them to do it illegally. However this does not say anything about whether the publishers have lost revenue, and would make the first sentence irrelevent. Assuming that this guy is not totally out of loop, let's see if there's anything better than this that he has to offer.

(B) Preventing illegal photocopying would have no effect on magazine sales.
If illegal photocopying are prevented, then the poor teachers would not do the copying. But they are poor so they won't buy the magazines anyway, and thus no effect would be induced on the sales. The only problem with this one is the author only claimed that "most", not "all", photocopying are done by the poor teachers. So it is not very likely that he would claim "no" effect would be induced.

(C) Teachers should be prevented from photocopying magazine articles for their students.
The third sentence obviously shows that he was sympathetic toward the teachers so it is not very likely he wants to be so harsh toward the teachers?

(D) Eliminating illegal photocopying would prevent the magazine's publishers' loss of revenue.
See the first part of (B).

(E) Illegal photocopying does not depress magazine sales as significantly as publishers believe.
This is the most likely thing that he'll say. Not too extreme to both ends.

Ok seriously, the first sentence has determined that his conclusion should be something related to the publisher's revenue loss, so A and C are ruled out. B and D are too extreme to both end considering the fact provided and the way he described it ("most"). So E should be it, I say.

Yes HongHu, OA is (E).

Maybe what the author meant was that the teachers wouldn't buy the magazines anyway?

I'm taking GMAT this saturday, hope everything will be fine!

Good luck Claudine, hope it's not too late to type this.

that is a plausible point. that the teachers and students wouldnt have bougth it and so we couldnt speak of lost revenue, because basically they are not the target group/consumer of the magazine. good luck !!!

E it is . . Magazine publishers is highly exaggerating the data . . !!

Completely clueless on this why E is right??

Posted from my mobile device

Hope it helps

This question is a great example because the official explanation is provided.

Some questions that are characterized as “inference” questions are a bit different than the standard “which of the following statements must be 100% true” type Inference questions.

This question is asking us basically to find the Main Point that the author is trying to get across. In other words, we need to find the “opinion conclusion” the author would have made if he was allowed to continue on with one more sentence.

In a standard Inference “must be true with 100% certainty” type question, we are looking for an answer that must be true based on any part of the passage.

In the type of question given here we are asked to bring together all of the premises provided and find the answer that best expresses what the Main “Opinion” Conclusion would have been had the author made it. The conclusion must be based on the entire passage provided. In effect, it will bring together everything stated before it and wrap statements up into a nice Opinion-type Conclusion that follows logically from the facts.


This is one of those things that took me a while to see. Also, it doesn’t help when every prep company labels these two types of questions under one category of “Inference.”

Maybe the above will help some people.....it definitely helped me.

Posted from my mobile device

The question stem is asking what the author suggests or infer


(E) correct

(A) Cannot be inferred

(B) having no effect is incorrect because it is too harsh. May be 1-2 students would buy the magazine if the teacher had not provided free copy

C & D go against the topic

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