Ramirez: The film industry claims that pirated DVDs, which are usually

Hi GMATNinja AjiteshArun

I got this one correct, but while going through several of your explanations, i started doubting whether my reasonings to remove (A) and (C)were correct.
Below is my evaluation for the two options, please guide:

Premise: consumers want lower prices and faster DVD releases.
Conclusion: Lowering prices of DVDs and releasing them sooner would mitigate piracy's negative effect on film industry profits.

My emphasis was on the ''Piracy's negative effect''. I thought: it doesn't matter whether the company is losing money in any other way as long as it is mitigating Piracy's negative effect.


Even if legitimating the DVDs causes severe damage to the revenue, my conclusion still holds, right? I am still mitigating the piracy's negative effect.
Or is it wayy toooo linear logic?


Even if industry losing money while selling cheap DVD's, my conclusion still holds true? I am NOT LOSING MONEY through Piracy way now.
Yes i am bleeding the way other but my conclusion still holds true!

Hi Contropositive,

Here are my thoughts on your questions.
I like how you've locked on to the phrase piracy's negative effect. That shows you're reading the question very carefully. However, I would not remove A for that reason. There are two reasons for this:

1. Firstly, let's understand what the word mitigate means. Mitigate means to make something less harmful, less unpleasant [1], or less serious (reduce its impact) [2].

In other words, when we wish to mitigate something, we can (a) reduce it and/or (b) offset it. For example, if the impact of piracy is \(-10\) on profits of \(100\), we can mitigate the effects of piracy on profits by (a) making the \(-10\) something like \(-5\) or \(-2\) or (b) increasing profits to something like \(150\) or \(200\). Either approach (or a combination of both) will make the impact of piracy less serious.

Effectively, because we don't want to restrict ourselves to the "reduce" meaning of mitigate, I recommend taking option A out for another reason: If a reduction in theatrical release revenue is more than offset by an increase in DVD revenue, we don't (necessarily) need theatrical release revenue to not go down.

In other words, Ramirez's plan is fine as long as {\(R_{TR}\)↓} is smaller than {\(R_{DVD}\)↑}.

2. I generally don't hold exam questions to a very high standard. Have a look at the discussion here [6:26]:


I don't think I follow. Can you explain your reasoning here?

­
Premises:
The film industry claims that pirated DVDs, which are usually cheaper and become available well before a film's official DVD , adversely affect its bottom line.
But this means consumers want lower prices and faster DVD releases.

Conclusion: Lowering prices of DVDs and releasing them sooner would mitigate piracy's negative effect on film industry profits.

An assumption must be true for the conclusion to hold. An assumption that comes to mind immediately is that lowering prices will have a net positive impact on profit. But let's look at the options.

A. Releasing legitimate DVDs earlier would not cause any reduction in the revenue the film industry receives from the films' theatrical release.

Sounds promising but note that it says "would not cause ANY reduction..." What we are looking for is an overall gain. Even if there is some reduction in the revenue from theatrical release, if the DVD early release more than compensates for it, the profit can still increase. Hence it is not necessary that there should not be any reduction in the revenue from theatrical release.

B. Some people who would otherwise purchase pirated DVDs would be willing to purchase legitimate DVDs if they were less expensive and released earlier than they are now.

Correct. This is necessary. Some people who would otherwise purchase pirated DVDs should be willing to purchase legitimate DVDs (if price decreased and release date pulled up). If not, then profit cannot increase for sure. Those who buy pirated will continue to buy pirated only. Decrease in price will decrease revenue and nothing will compensate for it. 

If you must, you can negate it to confirm:
No one who would otherwise purchase pirated DVDs would be willing to purchase legitimate DVDs if they were less expensive and released earlier than they are now.

This breaks our conclusion. Decreasing the price will not increase profit. 

Note that in some questions, they give an option like:
Everyone who would otherwise purchase pirated DVDs would be willing to purchase legitimate DVDs if they were less expensive and released earlier than they are now
This will not be assumption because it is not necessary that everyone should make the switch. As long as enough people are makign the switch, we are good. 

C. The film industry will in the future be able to produce DVDs more cheaply than is currently the case.

We are talking about how to increase profit by increasing the number of units sold. 
We don't need to assume that cost will go down in future. 

D. Some current sellers of pirated DVDs would likely discontinue their businesses if legitimate DVDs were released faster and priced lower.

This is not an assumption. Our assumption is that their pirated DVD business will reduce. They may or may not discontinue. 

E. Current purchasers of pirated DVDs are aware that those DVDs are not authorized by the film industry.

This is irrelevant. If they are aware, will they want to switch? We do not know. So no point evaluating it. 

Answer (B)

­Videos on Assumptions: https://youtu.be/O0ROJfljRLU

A pair of difficult assumption questions: https://youtu.be/ZQnhC4d5ODU

A Hard Assumption Ques: https://youtu.be/0j4tovGifIg­

To determine which assumption the argument relies on, we need to identify what must be true for Ramirez's argument to hold. Ramirez's argument suggests that if the film industry lowers the prices of DVDs and releases them sooner, it would mitigate the negative effects of piracy on the industry's profits.

Let's break down the argument:

Pirated DVDs are cheaper and available sooner than legitimate DVDs.
Consumers want lower prices and faster DVD releases.
Therefore, lowering prices and releasing DVDs sooner would reduce piracy's negative impact on profits.

For this argument to be valid, it assumes that:

Consumers who currently buy pirated DVDs would switch to buying legitimate DVDs if they were cheaper and available sooner.

Let's evaluate the options:

A. Releasing legitimate DVDs earlier would not cause any reduction in the revenue the film industry receives from the films' theatrical release.

This may be a concern for the film industry, but it is not the primary assumption underlying the argument about reducing piracy's impact on profits.

B. Some people who would otherwise purchase pirated DVDs would be willing to purchase legitimate DVDs if they were less expensive and released earlier than they are now.

This directly supports the argument. If consumers are willing to buy legitimate DVDs instead of pirated ones when the conditions (price and release timing) are improved, then the argument holds.

C. The film industry will in the future be able to produce DVDs more cheaply than is currently the case.

This is not necessary for the argument. The argument is about the impact on piracy and does not hinge on the industry's production costs.

D. Some current sellers of pirated DVDs would likely discontinue their businesses if legitimate DVDs were released faster and priced lower.

This might be a consequence of reducing demand for pirated DVDs, but it is not a core assumption of the argument itself.

E. Current purchasers of pirated DVDs are aware that those DVDs are not authorized by the film industry.

Awareness of the legality is not directly relevant to the argument about changing consumer behavior through pricing and timing.

The correct answer is:

B. Some people who would otherwise purchase pirated DVDs would be willing to purchase legitimate DVDs if they were less expensive and released earlier than they are now.

This assumption is critical because it underpins the argument that lowering prices and releasing DVDs sooner would effectively reduce the negative impact of piracy on the film industry's profits.

Hey,
Can someone help me with why Option C might be the wrong answer choice?
On negating option C we get :
C. The film industry will in the future NOT be able to produce DVDs more cheaply than is currently the case.

If this is the case it does break the conclusion also right?

Whereas with option B:
B. Some people who would otherwise purchase pirated DVDs would be willing to purchase legitimate DVDs if they were less expensive and released earlier than they are now.

We only know about maybe SOME people, that might be 1% or 100% so there is uncertainty.­

­The negation of C doesn't break the argument because we don't know anything about the current markup. For all we know, the cost of DVDs is not a significant factor in their pricing, so studios might easily benefit from following the author's advice, even if cost doesn't go down. (In fact, in real life we know that the cost of making a DVD is extremely low and would make little difference to the argument--that's why people are able to make money selling low-cost pirated editions in the first place!)

As for B, the trick is that the negation of SOME is NONE. So if we negate B, it says that NONE of the people who purchase pirate editions would purchase the early, legit releases the author is suggesting. This is a rare negation that 100% obliterates the argument, rather than just making the conclusion seem unlikely. 

To see why the negation of SOME is NONE, consider what the original is saying: there are people who would do X. ("Some" really just means "more than zero" or "at least one.") So what's the negation? There are NOT people who would do X. If we just put the NOT later, it isn't a negation at all. For instance, if I say that some people are tall, it isn't a negation to say that some people are short. Both kinds of people can co-exist. However, it IS a negtation to say that NO people are tall. 

A good rule of thumb is that mild modifiers tend to have extreme negations, and extreme modifiers tend to have mild negations:

Original: Everyone is blind. 
Negation: Not everyone is blind. (OR) Some people are not blind.

Original: Most puppies are cute.
Negation: Most puppies are not cute. (OR, if you want to be very precise: "Half or fewer of puppies are cute" or "Half or more of puppies are not cute.")

Original: It sometimes rains in Hollywood.
Negation: It never rains in Hollywood.

Original: No one loves me. 
Negation: Someone loves me. (i.e. At least one person loves me.) 

Notice that we could switch the labels on all of these examples. If you start with the "Negation" line, its negation is the "Original" line. The negation of "It never rains in Hollywood" is "It sometimes rains in Hollywood." 

­But what about the modifier "Some" in statement B "Some people who would otherwise purchase pirated DVDs would be willing to purchase legitimate DVDs if they were less expensive and released earlier than they are now."

The statement here is only talking about a few people and not everyone so how does is this correct option?

adgarg, see my post immediately above:
"As for B, the trick is that the negation of SOME is NONE. So if we negate B, it says that NONE of the people who purchase pirate editions would purchase the early, legit releases the author is suggesting. This is a rare negation that 100% obliterates the argument, rather than just making the conclusion seem unlikely."

Put this phrase preceeding the sentence "It is not the case that "...... .this will clear . Also I think opposite of some is most . can somebody explain it please .

Hi
Can someone pls explain why D is incorrect?

Some current sellers of pirated DVDs would likely discontinue their businesses if legitimate DVDs were released faster and priced lower. Suppose the current sellers of pirated DVDs DO NOT discontinue their business. Then however lower the legitimate DVDs are priced, the pirated ones will be priced even lower (cuz that's how the piracy business will have to be sustained ; in other words, NOT BE DISCONTINUED ). If that's the case, then people would continue buying pirated DVDs...won't they?

Anyone?

We don't know any of that. First, we don't know that pirates would lower their prices further. We can't negate D and then tell ourselves a story about how that might happen. That's beyond what the GMAT can ask of us, and in any case, there are other possible ways that negation might play out. (For instance, pirates might operate at a loss for a while, or offer other incentives, or make the product available even earlier.) Second, even if the pirates had the lowest prices, we don't know what the competition from the legitimate DVDs would look like. People might be willing to pay a bit more for the real thing if it is available promptly for a reasonable price. Third, note that the conclusion isn't saying that piracy will be eliminated, just that the threat will be mitigated, i.e. made less severe. So the argument doesn't require the number of sellers to decrease, just for legitimate sales to gain ground.

Hi VERITASPREP/KARISHMA/ANDREWN.... or Any expert

Please help me to understand why D is incorrect.

when I negate option D

No current sellers of pirated DVDs would likely discontinue their businesses if legitimate DVDs were released faster and priced lower. = they are still selling pirated DVDs so this will not mitigate negative effect of piracy on profit. so this weakening the conclusion.

it is also affecting the logic then why Option D is wrong.

I think that between my comments above and GMAT Ninja's earlier response, we have covered a few angles on why D doesn't work, so feel free to look those over and ask for follow-up. But basically, we don't know that just because pirates are still in business, the effects of piracy have not been mitigated (i.e. lessened). If more people choose to buy the real thing, then the effects of piracy have been mitigated, even if all the pirates still exist.