Question

"The other battle cry you hear from people opposed to open file sharing is that the artist are not making any money. Let's be clear about this. The "artists" people are referring to are famous pop and rock stars. These famous musicians are getting paid. They make millions of dollars a year from concerts, commercials, and other appearances." Why is the passage an example of fallacious reasoning? A. Everyone knows that artists don't really care if people download their songs illegally. B. Everyone knows that artists don't make millions of dollars from their music. C. The author doesn't use any facts to support such a claim, so it can't be proven. D. The author doesn't know the artists personally to state such a claim.

Answer 1

I would say the correct answer is C. The author doesn't use any facts to support such a claim, so it can't be proven. When making this kind of claim, one has to support it with facts, e.g. artists make this or that percent of their income on concerts and commercials, which clearly proves that they don't depend on the money from CDs etc. The options A and B are not correct because they rely on "everyone knows", which is not true, and is also not supported with facts. The D option isn't correct because one doesn't need to know every artist personally to be able to make a claim based on facts.