Resolved: This house would hold authors responsible for offending readers

Normally I try to be as nice as I can when responding to even the poorest of arguments, but the fact is the bulk of the case offered by my opponent is a straw-man fallacy right out of your college logic textbook (Chapter 3, Hurley's logic)Solon is possibly unfamiliar with Parliamentary debate policy resolutions. Nevertheless, Solon's ill-preparedness for this topic DOES NOT constitute a good reason for rejecting the definitions.I have provided a link below to clarify how Parliamentary policy resolutions work. http://www.parlidebate.org...The "Pro/Gov/Aff" side has the benefit or, "Privilege" of defining the terms of the resolution, and the burden of affirming the resolution and providing advocacy that addresses the needs or, "harms" the resolution deals with. More importantly, the Gov side is specifically expected to use definitions of the terms of the topic to narrow the debate, inasmuch as it is used to clarify the agency that will enact a plan, and what harms the plan will address.The burden on the Opp is simply to negate the resolution and the claims made by the Gov case. He needs to show why the plan won't work, or the problem doesn"t need solving/doesn"t exist. In this case, my opponent prefers a fallacious case instead of carrying his burdens. This is all offered to better clarify the complaint my opponent is trying, and ultimately fails to make; that the analysis of the topic I've offered is abusive. The definitions are not abusive, the Gov has not "Stacked the deck" and in fact my opponent shows that in his opening case, by arguing against the level of impact that my case and specifically, "this House: the Big Five publishers," can achieve.Definitions are not abusive if my case provides ground from which my opponent can argue. The negative has not been asked to argue in favor of genocide or against the heliocentric model of our solar system. There is plenty of room to clash with the topic as I have presented it, and my opponent identifies that ground in his own case. He then proceeds to complain that he didn't get to debate the case he expected and devolves into a straw-man fallacy. He also drops everything in my case besides definitions. My opponent lost by attacking what he feels my case should have been (his straw-man fallacy), rather than the case I offered. Then he dropped every argument I actually made. That"s too bad for him! I upheld my burdens and offered a resolutional case, my opponent dropped that case and told us about what he would have preferred to debate, censorship. That entire portion of his case is a straw-man fallacy.He even identifies some of the ground he has in this debate, but then he dropped my case anyways. He dropped solvency, plan and advantages. He dropped the entire debate by instead arguing against something that was never presented, censorship.I never advocated for censorship. I argued for something quite different, a modification within the marketplace that penalizes highly offensive published authors using a plan my agency (this house) can enact. Every word spent by my opponent addressing censorship is categorically irrelevant.I said earlier that my opponent, while trying to complain about the definitions, also pointed out the ground available to argue against my case. Keep in mind, if my opponent has ground to clash with what I offered, the definitions are not abusive.My opponent said: "The USFG is a better representative of "this house" because publishers, and especially the Big Five, no longer have comprehensive control over what is published. As of 2014, on Amazon"s best-seller list, the Big Five account for only 16% of e-books on the best-seller list, while self-published books account for 31% of all e-book sales (1). This is not to mention the plethora of opinion blogs, biased news sites like Breitbart, and YouTube news commentators (like Philip DeFranco), which altogether show that publishing cannot be controlled anymore by the Big Five, and their efforts would not have a lasting impact on the market anyway, given their recent sharp decline.So my opponent claims that the Big Five account for less than 16% of the published marketplace, and as such, a plan using this agency doesn't provide a significant impact (in his opinion)Here we have an argument against the resolution as I have defined it. He argues my case is of low impact. I disagree and will show why. Nevertheless, this shows Solon has plenty to work with. He makes the same mistake in attacking my definition of offending.My opponent claims: "Pro's [definition of offending] is ludicrously narrow, specifically the second half, "racist rhetoric and/or publicity". Let"s consider one of the most famously offensive works of recent times--Salman Rushdie"s The Satanic Verses. This is a book that many Muslims found offensive, so much so that Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the author. Islam is not a race, it is a religion, and there is not even agreement about whether the work even actually insults Islam (2). Yet, the offense is clearly there, and it had a clear, significant impact on Rushdie (who had to be guarded) and the Iranian people. Some people are offended by violent movies. Those are not racist. Some people are offended by insults to their religion. Those are not racist. Some are offended by others calling their favorite movie terrible. That is not racist." My opponent actually shoots himself in the foot twice here, by again showing us the ground he should have argued from, but chose instead to bank on a fallacious case. What's worse for him, is that he also acknowledges the significance and harms my analysis deals with, but offered no solution of his own. He could have offered a counterplan, but never did. He could have argued status quo solves for this already, but did not. He complains about the definitions, yet acknowledges the significance of the issues my analysis raises. He doesn't dispute the significance or the specific harms I cited. All he does is go on a tangent about censorship that has no bearing on the plan I offered. The definitions are not abusive. Rather, they allow us to focus on/solve for a particularly egregious set of harms that status quo does not. Once again, by calling attention to his ground in the debate, he negates his claim that my definitions are abusive. However, even the case of religion (Solon's example), the plan I have offered is not exclusive of incorporating the same principle for intolerant behavior toward religious groups (like a cartoon of Mohamed for example) or any other patently offensive material. This option for the Gov is called, "permutation" and is a well-established affirmative option for all forms of policy debate. My agency can just the same handle bigoted rhetoric towards a religious or gender group as it has already addressed racist vitriol.https://en.wikipedia.org...Solon offers a definition for "Hold responsible," or, "Punish" which there"s no reason to object to specifically. The burden on me is to offer a plan that will "hold responsible" or "punish" authors for offending readers that this agency has the ability to do. (For example, we can"t use publishers to go to Mars and we cannot use NASA to pull print material out of circulation.)The Big Five have the ability to fire consigned authors and pull their material out of circulation. My opponent agrees, but claims that since only 16% of e-books are published by "my agency, the plan has a low threshold for significance. He"s wrong, and here"s why:The best penalty on an offensive author is to fire them and stop selling their work. It hits them where it counts.My opponent said in his opening arguments: "Punishment (holding responsible) for offending requires actions that make offense on behalf of said author less likely in the future, if it is to be effective punishment (if it is ineffective, there is no reason to dole this punishment out)."My punishment is very effective, even if the big five only publish 16% of e-books. This punishment can strip away a lucrative career in moments, and destroy an author's reputation far more than censorship. For example, if Warner Books fired Donald Trump right now over what he has said about immigrants, and stopped shipping out new copies of, "The art of the deal," it would send shockwaves through the airwaves. It would make a glaring example of what authors, however prolific, can expect to reap for such horrible behavior. This example supports my solvency and all of my advantages.My opponent's entire tangent about censorship is not only irrelevant to the debate, it's a straw man fallacy. Below is a link below, but here's what you will find in a google search of the term:"The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position."https://en.wikipedia.org...This is what my opponent deliberately tries to do regarding censorship and the resolution. He's actually the one trying to ignore the resolution, even though he acknowledges the significance of the topic. He's the one trying to shirk convention and weasel around the rules. He's the one trying to stack the deck.You can reject everything regarding censorship my opponent said. My opponent would be better served by offering a counterplan that doles out censorship. Instead he claims I should have advocated for censorship and then proceeds to attack censorship. That's fallacious and it's cheating!The idea that the resolution suggests censorship is absurd. In reality censorship does not impact the author at all. It impacts readers and consumers. Hitting someone's livelihood, limiting their ability to publish offensive, in this case, racist material is a much better way to solve the harms and actually hold them responsible. It's a better plan than censorship, and it's more resolutional, because it impacts authors not readers.