Debase is the right term, sorry you don't like it. Go look it up sometime, it means more than you think it does.
Let me give you an analogy to illustrate my meaning...Champagne is a sparking wine, made from grapes from the Champagne region of France. Now, people all over the world grow grapes, and all over the world those grapes get made into all sorts of wine, some of them even sparkling wines. But only the ones from that specific part of France can legally be called Champagne. Why is that, you ask? Tradition. Now, what if the very talented winemakers from California wanted to be allowed to call their sparkling wines Champagne...they use the same grapes, the same techniques to make it, why shouldn't they have the same legal rights? But they don't, because of tradition. So the California growers have to call theirs "sparkling wine". If, somehow, the California growers did and end run around the law, then there would be Champagne from Champagne on the market as well as this fake Champagne from California, which debases the value of the original Champagne by it's mere existence.
Yes, I know wine bottles and people are different, but tradition is tradition.