One of the supposed justifications for the intellectual monopoly called copyright is that it drives creativity and culture. In the last few weeks alone we have had multiple demonstrations of why the opposite is true: copyright destroys culture, and not by accident, but wilfully. For example, the MTVNews.com site, along with its sister site CMT.com, …
This title is actually false under some logical fallacy. It should be “Yet more examples of copyright destroying culture rather than driving it.”
On itself, a simple claim (like “copyright destroys culture”) cannot be fallacious. It can be only true or false. For a fallacy, you need a reasoning flaw.
Also note that, even if you find a fallacy behind a conclusion, that is not enough grounds to claim that the conclusion is false. A non-fallacious argument with true premises yields a true conclusion, but a fallacious one may yield true or false conclusions.
The issue that you’re noticing with the title is not one of logic, but one of implicature due to the aspect of the verb. “X destroys Y” implies that, every time that X happens, Y gets destroyed; while “X [is] destroying Y” implies that this is only happening now.
No, because OP clearly believes all copyright is bad while your corrected title would be at least some/most copyright has proven to be bad.
Eh. Belief doesn’t really override logical fallacies. I know. In being pendantic, but I hate misleading headlines, especially when its a statistic.
If it’s a beleif the author should state that.
You can say they’re incorrect, but you cannot correct their intentions. Only they can do that.
There is no logical fallacy.
It also is not a statistic. 🤷🏼♀️
As a non English speaker, I can’t tell the difference. Might be the same for OP.
In English, the simple present often implies a general truth, regardless of time. While the present continuous strongly implies that the statement is true for the present, and weakly implies that it was false in the past.
From your profile you apparently speak Danish, right? Note that, in Danish, this distinction is mostly handled through adverbs, so I’m not surprised that you can’t tell the difference. Easier shown with an example:
Note how English is suddenly using a different verb form for the second one.
That is a great explanation, thanks! I understand the difference now.
The title isn’t a mistake.
It’s openly stating that they believe that to be an inherent feature of at least our current legislation.
I don’t think that the title is a mistake either; I was focusing solely on what the title says, on a language level, versus what the other user (Kairos) believes to be more accurate.
With that out of the way: yup, copyright was always like this. The basic premise of copyright is to not allow you to share things under certain conditions, and yet this sharing is essential for culture.
Exists culture Exists copyright s.t. copyright ‘destroys’ culture and not copyright ‘drives’ culture.
I mean, you’re putting an implied universal where the author is only offering existential. That one is on you!
“Copyright always destroys culture” would have the universal quantifier you object to.
Of course, both of these results are formally undecided, mostly because ‘drives’ is not well defined nor decidable in itself!