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

Really good question that kind of strikes at the heart of what makes Assumption questions so interesting (and difficult). With assumptions (and I'll demonstrate why in a second):

1) It's really, really rare that extreme/universal words like all, only, never, etc. are required assumptions.

2) The correct answer / required assumption is usually much more subtle than what a great Strengthen answer would be, so you have to treat Assumption questions differently.

3) This is where the Assumption Negation Technique can be so useful in helping show why points 1 and 2 are so important.

Here notice that choice (A) has that extreme/universal language "would not cause any reduction" in revenue from theatrical release. Say that that were not true, and there were at least *some* reduction in the theatrical revenue. A negated choice (A) would read:

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

At this point we don't know whether the decrease in theatrical revenue is offset or overcome by an increase in the DVD revenue they're trying to recoup with this plan. We can't tell whether a negated (A) helps or hurts the conclusion, meaning that it's not a necessary assumption. A small decrease in theatrical revenue overcome by a massive increase in DVD revenue means that the plan still works; a massive decrease in theatrical revenue and a marginal increase in DVD revenue means that it didn't work at all. We just don't know.

With (B), the opposite of "some people who would otherwise purchase..." is "no people who would otherwise purchase." So a negated (B) is:

Some No 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.

Well here if no one is going to buy the DVDs under the new plan, the plan is a complete and total flop: it does absolutely nothing because no one is participating. So a negated (B) absolutely cripples the argument. And that shows why (B) is a necessary assumption of the argument: without it, the argument is worthless.

That's why Assumption Negation is so powerful: by considering the opposite of an answer choice, you get to:

1) Determine whether you really need that assumption or not. If without it you know for sure the argument is powerfully damaged, then that assumption was required (like with B). If without it you can't really tell whether the argument still works or not, it wasn't essential to the argument in the first place.

2) Turn fairly "soft" Assumption answers (like "some people..." in B) into powerful Weaken answers. Assumptions are really easy to make...correct answers don't often jump off the screen to you as "oh yeah that one is absolutely right." But good Weaken answers often *do* jump off the screen. Assumption Negation allows you to turn hard Assumption questions into easy/moderate Weaken questions.

3) See why extreme/universal words like "all" or "none" are so infrequently required by an argument. The opposite of "all" is "not all," and even if not all, but most, people behave a certain way, the argument tends to still work. But the opposite of "some" is "none" and as you can see with (B) if you turn "some people" to "no one" an argument can crumble really quickly. All/none are great Strengthen/Weaken words but not great Assumption words, since you rarely ever need such extremes as required information for an argument to hold up.