Exercise:
Prove the following meme is bogus
Given:
The meme consists of text superimposed upon a yellow background with a image to right. The text reads:
Declaring to be an emerging economy the U.S. refused to recognize international copyrights for the first 100 years of its existence. No other emerging economy has been granted this courtesy.
The image consists of nine (9) books, shown a spines with the author’s name, the date of publication, and the book title, all with a copyright logo [©] crossed out with a big red “X”. Several of the pictured books are by authors important in the history of copyright, notably Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo.
Concede:
Copyright was problematic in the early United States
The United States did not recognize copyright on works published in other countries until well into the 20th Century. This led to cheap books by English authors flooding the market, with all profit accruing to the publishers. Since the U.S. didn’t allow foreign claims to copyright protection, the United Kingdom reciprocated in this negative, permitting London publishers to freely bring out editions of Edgar Allan Poe and other Americans with no recompense to the authors.
Argument:
The underlying facts are hidden by confused syntax and invalidated by an objectively false alleged cause.
The statement that “the U.S. refused to recognize any international copyright” elides the fact that copyright was a nascent idea at the beginning of these United States, just emerging from the old system of printing patents and privileges which had existed in countries such as England. International copyright was even more so, as competing ideas and market forces pushed various nations to promote this or that interpretation of the evolving ideas.
Though there are thus underlying facts which deserve broader awareness from the public (thus making this information “meme-worthy”), the ungrammatical opening clause “Declaring to be an emerging economy” is false. The United States never at this time claimed to be an emerging economy.This can be seen by consulting the Google n-gram viewer for this term (and related variants):
The term “emerging economy” is a signal of sloppy argument, as this term really only occurs after 1960. The actual argument used during the early days of the Union relied upon stated appeals to “Freedom of the Press”, though this was an obvious shield for the market forces driving publishers to maintain their source of free content (shades of the Internet!).
Finally, appealing to this bogus straw man “emerging economy” one more time, the meme goes for a knockout punch with its snide assertion that “No other emerging economy has been granted this courtesy.” First, no organization or power could have granted this supposed ‘courtesy’ until at least the Berne Convention of 1886. Secondly, there was no appeal to privilege or courtesy or exception by the United States, just the usual process of nations with differing laws attempting to make the best case for the interpretation of international agreements in such a way as to bolster their own rights and privileges while downplaying any claims that could be made by others.
Conclusion:
This meme is bogus.
A good informational meme should act as the topic sentence for an essay no one will ever read; this case fails that test. By throwing garbage in with the main (and valid) point, the meme makes its assertion dismissible by those opposed, and makes its adherents more likely to make weak arguments for their case.