Copyright statutes benefit society by providing incentive to produce original works, so some kind of copyright statute is ultimately justified. But these statutes also represent a significant cost to society because they create protected monopolies. In many countries, copyright statutes grant copyright protection for the life of the author plus several decades. This is too long, since the societal benefit from the additional years of copyright is more than offset by the societal cost. Which one of the following principles, if valid, most strongly supports the reasoning in the argument? ['A statute should not limit rights unless it can be shown that it thereby enhances other rights.', 'A statute should be written in a way that eliminates any appearance of its being inconsistent in its aims.', 'If a statute is to be justified by its benefit to society, it should be designed so that its societal benefit always exceeds its societal cost.', 'A statute should be repealed if the conditions that originally justified enacting the statute no longer hold true.']