Griffin debates Dragon on IP issues
"This house believes that the music industry will suffer with the prosecution of users of peer-to-peer downloading software". With the motion so closely related to our daily lives, it was no surprise that there was an above-average audience turnout, although the audience found themselves sharing seats with other library users.
The debate took a while to get started as the adjudicators were busy trying to wrap up their other committments before making their way to the Drum.
The start of the debate was disappointingly docile. The first proposition from Griffin House was barely audible, and because his definitions and parameters were unclear, the audience didn’t really get a good grasp of the key ideas to be discussed. The first speaker of the opposition, representing Dragon House, had no difficulty exploiting the gaps left by the proposition. Based on the nods and grunts of agreement, a clear crowd favorite soon emerged.
The proposition's case appeared weaker as it relied heavily on the assumption that people's usage of P-2-P applications would be limited to downloading only 1 or 2 songs just to 'sample' an album. Moreover, its definition of certain IP laws seemed rather misconstrued. To their credit, they argued readily when the opposition brought up these points against them, and had prepared broad examples to support their position, though again, that brought a tinge of irrelevance to the argument.
The opposition delivered the more concrete argument. The first speaker established a momentum that the second and third could work on. The second speaker was awfully nervous, which diminished her rebuttals somewhat, though they were quite valid.
However, the whole debate tended to veer off-tangent as the points put across by both teams were either valid but hastily constructed, or trivial but over-emphasized. Citations from both teams also seemed lacking.
Overall, the opposition established the superior position and definitely had the upper hand through most of the debate. After all, the opposition mostly comprised college debaters, while the proposition lacked competitive experience. Nevertheless, the proposition’s second speaker was named best speaker, while the debate went to the opposition, Dragon House.
By: Wu Xiaoyu and Tan Haoyi