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Course: LSAT > Unit 1
Lesson 10: Reading Comprehension - Worked Examples- Law passage overview | Cosmic Justice (paired passages)
- Main point | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Recognition | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Inferences about views | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Inferences about info | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Principles | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Analogies | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Law passage overview | Copyright
- Main point | Law passage | Copyright
- Purpose of reference | Law passage | Copyright
- Applying to new contexts | Law passage | Copyright
- Humanities passage overview | Music (paired passages)
- Main point 1 | Humanities passage | Music
- Main point 2 | Humanities passage | Music
- Recognition | Humanities passage | Music
- Inferences about views | Humanities passage | Music
- Principles and analogies | Humanities passage | Music
- Additional evidence | Humanities passage | Music
- Primary purpose | Humanities passage | Music
- Science passage overview | The Sun
- Recognition 1 | Science passage | The Sun
- Recognition 2 | Science passage | The Sun
- Organizing info | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 1 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 2 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 3 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about info | Science passage | The Sun
- Social science passage overview | Wool
- Main point | Social science passage | Wool
- Recognition 1 | Social science passage | Wool
- Recognition 2 | Social science passage | Wool
- Inferences about info | Social science passage | Wool
- Inferences about attitudes | Social science passage | Wool
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Law passage overview | Copyright
Watch a demonstration of one way to use active reading strategies to approach a law passage on the LSAT reading comprehension section.
Video transcript
- [Instructor] Here's a
passage in the Law category of the Reading Comprehension
section of the LSAT. Before I begin reading through it, I wanna call out a few things
that you'll see me doing. First, I'll be paying close attention to the various viewpoints that are presented. Often, in law passages, you'll theories or viewpoints
analyzed and critiqued, and the viewpoint of the author is often at odds with the other
viewpoints being discussed. I'll also circle keywords
and focus on topic sentences in order to keep the
function of each paragraph clear in my mind. Finally, I always pay special attention to contrast words like but,
yet, although, and however. After I finish with the close reading, you can go on and try some of the questions about this passage, or you can stick around
for a couple more minutes while I sum up the passage. Here we go. Proponents of the tangible-object
theory of copyright argue that copyright and similar intellectual-property
rights can be explained as logical extensions of the right to own concrete, tangible objects. Okay, so there is a view being presented that belongs to the proponents of tangible-object theory of copyright. And this might be view that
the author agrees with, or it might not. But this seems to be introducing
just the definition of the tangible-object theory of copyright. This view depends on the claim that every copyrightable work can be manifested in some physical form, such as a manuscript or a videotape. So the view depends on this claim. So again, we don't know whether the author agrees with this view or
agrees with this claim. It also accepts the premise that ownership of an object confers a number of right on the owner, who may essentially do
whatever he or she pleases with the object to the extent that this does not violate
other people's rights. Okay, let's see. One may, for example, hide
or display the object, copy it, or destroy it. One may also transfer
ownership of it to another. So let's go back and just make sure we know what it is. It is the tangible-object
theory of copyright, and it also accepts the premise
that ownership of an object gives all sorts of things to the owner, who may do whatever he or she pleases, and then, we have examples, you know, we have an example of hiding,
displaying, copying it, destroying it, transferring ownership. Okay, so first paragraph defines tangible-object theory of copyright. Let's so to the second paragraph. In creating a new and original object from materials that one owns, one becomes the owner of that object and thereby acquires all of the rights that ownership entails. Okay, that makes sense. But if the owner transfers
ownership of the object, the full complement of rights is not necessarily
transferred to the new owner. Okay, we have a but here
that is pretty critical. If the owner transfers
ownership of the object, the full complement of
rights is not necessarily transferred to the new owner. Instead, okay, another however, instead, the original owner may retain
one or more of these rights. This notion of retained rights is common in many areas of law. For example, the seller of a piece of land may retain certain rights to the land in the form of easements
or building restrictions. So this paragraph is starting
to focus on retained rights. Applying the notion of retained rights to the domain of intellectual property, so there are real estate examples, seller of a piece of land, are gonna extend that to
intellectual property. Theorists argue that
copyrighting a work secures official recognition of one's intention to retain certain rights to
that work, just like with land. Among the rights typically retained by the original producer of an object such as a literary
manuscript or a musical score would be the right to copy the object for profit and the right to use it as a guide for the production of similar of analogous things, for example, a public performance of a musical score. So the author is arguing that intellectual property
does have retained rights. So we have, among the rights
that are typically retained, would be the right to copy, and the right to use it as a guide. Let's move on, third paragraph. According to proponents of
the tangible-object theory, its chief advantage is that it justifies intellectual property rights without recourse to the widely accepted but problematic supposition that one can own abstract,
intangible things such as ideas. Okay, we're gonna have a viewpoint here. Again, we're back to the proponents of the tangible-object
theory, and we hear that the advantage is that it justifies intellectual property rights without having to worry about this problematic supposition that it's actually possible to own ideas. But while this account seems plausible for copyrightable entities that do, in fact, have enduring tangible forms, it cannot accommodate
the standard assumption that such evanescent things as live broadcasts of sporting
events can be copyrighted. Okay, so the author is
starting to find some fault with the tangible-object theory. More importantly, it
does not acknowledge that in many cases the work of conceiving ideas is more crucial and more valuable than that of putting
them into tangible form. Suppose that a poet dictates
a new poem to a friend, who writes it done on paper
that the friend has supplied. There is another example,
here's a supposition. The creator of the tangible
object in this case is not the poet but the friend, and there would seem to be no ground for the poet's
claiming copyright unless the poet can be said to already own the ideas
expressed in the work. So it seems like the author feels like that poet does own those ideas and that ideas are ownable and that the poet does retain those rights in a way that the tangible-object theory does not necessarily allow. So that's the problem
that author is finding with the tangible-object theory, and we have but here, we
have a more importantly, the author definitely finding fault with the tangible-object theory. This passage is followed
by a number of questions. I made videos for each of those questions, so you can go ahead and
take a look at those now. At the moment, I'm gonna go back up, I'm gonna sum up the three paragraphs and what they did in this passage. Paragraph one introduces the idea of tangible-object theory of copyright. It explains the assumptions
upon which the theory rests, including the idea that
every copyrightable work can be manifested in some physical form. Paragraph two focuses on retained rights, that is, the notion of
this transfer of ownership of an object doesn't give all the rights associated with that
object to the new owner. But the author tells us that some theorists argue that
if you copyright something, you are intending to retain some rights. So, here we have this
assumption of some theorists. The theorists are here. Copyrighting the work secures
official recognition of one's intention to retain certain rights. So again, this paragraph is about the retention of those rights. Paragraph three, the
author starts to pick holes in the tangible-object copyright theory in a more explicit way. We're told that it is widely accepted that one can, in fact, own abstract ideas, and tangible-object theory
is at odds with this idea. Ideas are valuable and
tangible-object theory proponents would have us believe that someone who copies down someone
else's idea owns the idea because they created that
tangible object, that copy. The author disagrees with this and gives us an example of a poet who, in the author's view,
clearly owns the ideas in a work that was copied by a friend. So when we see this, the creator of the tangible
object in this case is not the poet but the friend, and there would seem to be no ground for the poet's
claiming copyright unless the poet can be said to already own the ideas
expressed in the work. And again, there's an inference here that the author does believe that that poet does have some
retained rights for that idea because we also hear
that author believes that conceiving ideas is pretty
crucial and pretty valuable, and it's more valuable than
actually writing them down. Okay, let's head to the questions.