时间:2018-12-07 作者:英语课 分类:国外媒体新闻


英语课

Technology: File Sharing


技术:文件分享


It has been 10 years since the birth of Napster and the global spread of file-sharing sites.
Back in 1999, Shawn Fanning, then a 19-year-old student, could never have predicted the extent to which his simple computer program would change the music industry forever.


Napster’s peer-to-peer file sharing system was perhaps the most highly publicised of its time and it was not always good publicity 1.


The Recording 2 Industry Association of America (RIAA) was less than impressed at how easy Napster made it for people to download music free of charge. They were quoted in the media at the time calling Napster "an instrument of shoplifting".


The RIAA proceeded to sue Napster saying "Napster knowingly and wilfully 3 set out to build a business based on copyright infringement 4 on an unprecedented 5 scale."


Shawn Fanning says his original intention was never to make money from the site. He claims he had only been trying to make it easier for his friends to share digital music files.


A few years later, the lawsuit 6 was dropped but a new ruling meant Napster was effectively unable to continue legally operating under their existing business model.


One thing Napster had proved was the enormous global appetite for sharing and downloading music. And where there is a healthy demand, there is usually a healthy profit to be made too.


So, unsurprisingly, the music industry followed suit and the big record labels now play a key role in hugely successful ventures such as Apple iTunes, Yahoo Music and Spotify. Napster has also relaunched itself with a more viable 7 and legal business model in which people pay a small fee for downloading songs.


Turning your home PC into a modern-day jukebox has never been so easy. But with illegal file sharing still easily accessible, it is yet to be seen how viable in the long term these new legal music sharing sites are.



1 publicity
n.众所周知,闻名;宣传,广告
  • The singer star's marriage got a lot of publicity.这位歌星的婚事引起了公众的关注。
  • He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick.他不理会这件事,只当它是一种宣传手法。
2 recording
n.录音,记录
  • How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间?
  • I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。
3 wilfully
adv.任性固执地;蓄意地
  • Don't wilfully cling to your reckless course. 不要一意孤行。 来自辞典例句
  • These missionaries even wilfully extended the extraterritoriality to Chinese converts and interfered in Chinese judicial authority. 这些传教士还肆意将"治外法权"延伸至中国信徒,干涉司法。 来自汉英非文学 - 白皮书
4 infringement
n.违反;侵权
  • Infringement of this regulation would automatically rule you out of the championship.违背这一规则会被自动取消参加锦标赛的资格。
  • The committee ruled that the US ban constituted an infringement of free trade.委员会裁定美国的禁令对自由贸易构成了侵犯
5 unprecedented
adj.无前例的,新奇的
  • The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
  • A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。
6 lawsuit
n.诉讼,控诉
  • They threatened him with a lawsuit.他们以诉讼威逼他。
  • He was perpetually involving himself in this long lawsuit.他使自己无休止地卷入这场长时间的诉讼。
7 viable
adj.可行的,切实可行的,能活下去的
  • The scheme is economically viable.这个计划从经济效益来看是可行的。
  • The economy of the country is not viable.这个国家经济是难以维持的。
学英语单词
active high
adamas (diamond)
al hadithah
Aldor's test
anti T-R cell
antimoniacal
aspect ratio of rudder
atrioventricular sequential pacemaker'
azaserine
beaded-insulation line
bearish note
binomial distributions
bottis
bulk carriers
caliduct
capillary hemangioma of skin
car phone, carphone
card input
case shape
cd4 cells
chamfering-machine
chart-drive mechanism
check overdraft credits
contradictions in terms
Corbusier
cross-office transmission
crystal-gazings
cytorheology
detailed regulations on rewards and penalties
Deungseon Falls
differential pressure flow sensor
dotingness
double sliding finger
excommunement
exection cycle
extremely-low frequency
forestfuls
format corners
gas supply assembly
gazprom
guinnessy
headlam
hemodiagnosis
herveys
high-range
horse power loading
kamidana
keatinge
keung
kiddie porns
kingwell
Kurikoma
lenticular papillae
Leymus angustus
Limno biological aeration
macropolitical
Maine Coons
mecholyl chloride
melaniferous
mohole project
Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich
monitoring of pollution
multiple rocket launcher system
on firer
onthophagus (onthophagus) terminatus
outshout
paging activity indexes
paperie
phoenicurus fuliginosus
photoelectric follow-up
phrensying
pinnately compound leaf
pirr
propeller blower
quadrielectron
ragne of metric thread cut
Rathdangan
ratio of lens aperture
Roegneria nakaii
semidiurnal tidal harbor
She Stoops to Conquer
shoulder elevation
space environment forecast
spex
St-Brice-en-Coglès
statutes and regulations
sulfonated coal
super-gentrification
superfriend
synthetic natural gas
take one's own way
talipes supinatus
test specifications
thermal quantity transducer
Thivazol
Underexerted
us vogue
wedge-shpaed groove
well-favored,well-favoured
wieber
Y-class insulation
yellow plant