The movie production company's estimate of financial losses due to the

Question

Which of the following best completes the passage below?

The movie production company's estimate of financial losses due to the illegal download of movies cannot be correct, because it's a measure of the wrong phenomenon. Most of illegal downloading of movies is done exclusively by people who have a passing interest in the movies but no intention of buying them, as he appears to assume. Thus, the loss to the industry is

A. nothing but harmless downloading done because the files are free

B. better measured in terms of rentals than purchases

C. smaller than his estimate

D. actually equal to the total market value of those downloaded copies times the number of people actually interested in buying them

E. actually equal to the difference between this year's sales and a particular previous year's sales, adjusted for inflation

JatinR · Answer

Nice question. The correct answer should be "C".
Probably for most the confusion would be between Option "a" and option "c".
Below is the reasoning for both.

The movie production company's estimate of financial losses due to the illegal download of movies cannot be correct, because it's a measure of the wrong phenomenon. Most of illegal downloading of movies is done exclusively by people who have a passing interest in the movies but no intention of buying them, as he appears to assume. Thus, the loss to the industry is

A. nothing but harmless downloading done because the files are free
 The argument says "most of illegal download" hence, it is possible that some of it may affect and be part of the losses

C. smaller than his estimate
 It corrects the problem in option "a" and says that the loss to industry is less but not nothing/zero

Keep solving,Keep learning. 
cheers.

TheNightKing · Answer

My Approach : So if you read the argument it is suggesting the fact that downloading the movies is like passing interest and it is probably not going to make a huge effect on the financial loss. Thus,...? A. The author does not say it is harmless. It just says the effect won't be huge. E. The author won't define the loss after saying Thus. He has to conclude something else. B. I feel this is tricky one. But then loss cannot be measured in terms of rentals than purchases. He pointed it out for the downloading. So downloading is more like renting True. But doesn't seem like a proper ending. You might want to park it if nothing else is good enough. D. Again a definition and that too a weird one. C. Even though it is not the most acceptable technical conclusion but it makes sense. Thus, the financial loss to the industry is smaller than his estimate. It definitely is better choice than B. P.S: I evaluate options in the order of AEBDC. You can try it as well. It works for me

Thank you

Bunuel · Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

Reading the question: We have a question of logical continuation: we will complete the passage. Therefore, we'll predict something before checking out the answers.

Creating a filter: We learn from the prompt that movie pirates generally have no real interest in the movies... thus, the loss to the industry is "less than it would appear, because only a fraction of the apparent losses represent what would have been purchases." Not a pretty wording in our prediction there, but that's of no consequence.

Applying the filter: What prompts match? Choice (C) does. Choice (D) is related to what we said, though it's hyper-specific. Choice (D) also misses how the estimate in question is wrong--it doesn't even mention whether it's high or low, the critical piece of the picture.

The correct answer is (C).

IanStewart · Answer

The "Official Explanation" of answer D doesn't seem to understand what D says. Say a million people download a movie that would ordinarily cost $10. Then presumably "the total market value of those downloaded copies" is $10 million. If only 100,000 of those people were actually interested in buying the movie, answer D suggests we should multiply $10 million by 100,000 to estimate the production company's losses. So in this example, answer D would have us estimate a $1 trillion loss to the movie company. Answer D is wrong not because it's "hyper-specific"; it's wrong because it proposes an estimation method that is completely bonkers. Answer D would be a good answer if it suggested multiplying the value of  just one  downloaded file by the number of people who would have bought the file.

arjun221199 · Answer

IanStewart  even if we multiply as you say so wont it be wrong?  as the estimate we don't know ticket price vs the CD price as to compare the losses?

dhruvshawarma · Answer

"as he appears to assume" made me think that the production companies estimation of financial loss has assumed that :-
Most of illegal downloading of movies is done exclusively by people who have a passing interest in the movies but no intention of buying them

Given they made this assumption, their model of loss estimation, would have given a rather rational output

This made me eliminate "C" 
"D & E" anyways are bonkers and "A" looks like a weak conclusion given the premise tree.

went with B here since it was the only option left. 
Let me know your thoughts

VerbalBot · Answer

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The movie production company's estimate of financial losses due to the

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