1、Unit 1Pirates of the InternetIts no secret that online piracy has decimated the music industry as millions of people stopped buying CDs and started stealing their favorite songs by downloading them from the internet. Now the hign-tech thieves are coming after Hollywood. Illegal downloading of full-l
2、ength feature films is a relatively new phenomenon, but its becoming easier and easier to do. The people running Americas movie studios know that if they dont do something-and fast-they could be in the same boat as the record companies. Correspodent: “Whats really at stake for the movie industry wit
3、h all this privacy?” Chernin: “Well, I think, you know, ultimately, our absolute features.” Peter Chernin runs 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in Hollywood. He knows the pirates of the Internet are gaining on him. Correspont: “Do you know how many movies are being downloaded today, in o
4、ne day, in the United States?” Chernin: “I think its probably in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Correspondent: “And its only going to grow.” Chernin: “Its only going to grow. Somebody can put a perfect digital copy up on the internet. A perfect digital copy, all right. And with the cli
5、ck of mouse, send out a million copies all over the world, in an instant.”5And its all free. If that takes hold, kiss Hollywood goodbye. Chernin recently organized a “summit” between studio moguls and some high school and college kids-the people most likely to be downloading. Chernin: “And we said,
6、Lets come up with a challenge. Lets give them five movies, and see if they can find them online. And we all sat around and picked five movies, four of which hadnt been released yet. And then we came back half an hour later. They had found all five movies that we gave them. ” Correspondent: “Even the
7、 ones that hadnt even been released yet?” Chernin: “Even the ones that hadnt even been released yet.” Correspondent: “Did these kids have any sense that they were stealing?” Chernin: “You know its its a weird dichotomy. I think they know its stealing, and I dont think they think its wrong. I think t
8、hey have an attitude of, Its here.” The Internet copy of last years hit Signs, starring Mel Gibson, was stolen even before director M. Night Shyamalan could organize the premiere. Correspondent: “The movie was about to be released. When did the first bootleg copy appear?”6Shyamalan: “Two weeks befor
9、e it or three weeks before it. Before the Internet age, when somebody bootlegged a movie, the only outlet they had was to see it to those vendors on Times Square, where they had the boxes set up outside and they say, Hey, we have Signs-its not even out yet. And you walk by and you know its illegal.
10、But now, because its the digital age, you can see, like, a clean copy. Its no longer the kind of the sleazy guy in Times Square with the box. Its just, oh, its on this beautiful site, and I have to go, Click.” Correspondent: “How did those movies get on the Internet? How did that happen?” Chernin: “
11、Through an absolute act of theft. Someone steals a print from the editors room; someone steals a print from the person; the composer whos doing the musicabsolute physical theft, steals a print, makes a digital copy, and uploads it.” Correspondent: “And there you go.” Digital copies like this one of
12、The Matrix Reloaded have also been bootlegged from DVDs sent to reviewers or ad agencies, or circulated among companies that do special effects, or subtitles. Chernin: “The other way that pre-released movies end up (stolen) is that people go to there are lots of screenings that happen in this indust
13、ry People go to those screenings with a camcorder, with a digital camcorder, sit in the back, turn the camcorder on”Correspondent: “And record it.” This is one of those recorded-off-the-screen copies of Disneys Pirates of the Caribbean. Not great quality, but not awful either. And while it used to t
14、ake forever to download a movie, anyone with a high-speed Internet connection can now have a full-length film in an hour or two.Saaf: “Well, this is just one of many websites where basically people, hackers if you will, announce their piracy releases.” Randy Saaf runs a company called Media Defender
15、 that helps movie studios combat online piracy. Correspondent: “Look at this, all these new movies that I havent even seen yet, all here.” Saaf: “ Yep.” Correspondent: “Secondhand Lions that just came out. Sometimes I feel like Im the only person in this country who has never downloaded anything. Bu
16、t maybe there is a few others of us out there. So Im going to ask you to show us Kazaa, thats the biggest downloading site, right?” Saaf: “Right. This is the Kazaa media desktop. Kazaa is the largest peer-to-peer network.” Its called peer-to-peer because computer users are sharing files8with each ot
17、her, with no middleman. All Kazaa does is provide the software to make that sharing possible. When we went online with Randy Saaf, nearly four million other Kazaa users were there with us, sharing every kind of digital file. Saaf: “Audio, documents, images, software, and video. If you wanted a movie
18、, you would click on the video section, and then you would type in a search phrase. And basically what this is doing now, it is asking the people on the peer-to-peer network, Who has Finding Memo?” Within seconds, 191 computers sent an answer: “We have it.” This is Finding Memo, crisp picture and so
19、und, downloaded free from Kazaa a month before its release for video rental or sale. If you dont want to watch it on a little computer screen, you dont have to. On the newest computers, you can just “burn” it onto a DVD and watch it on your big-screen TV. 5.And thats a dagger pointed right at the he
20、art of Hollywood. Chernin: “Where movies make the bulk of their money is on DVD and home videos. 50 percent of the revenues for any movie come out of home video” Correspondent: “15 percent?” Chernin: “50 percent so that if piracy occurs and it wipes out your home video profits or ultimately your tel
21、evision profits, you are out of business. No movies will get made.” Even if movies did get made, Night Shyamalan says that wouldnt be any good, because profits would be negligible, so budgets would shrink dramatically. Shyamalan: “And slowly it will degrade whats possible in that art form.” Rosso: “
22、Technology always wins. Always. You cant shut it down.” Wayne Rosso is Hollywoods enemy. They call him a pirate, but officially hes the president of Grokster, another peer-to-peer network that works just like Kazaa. Correspondent: “Ok, I have downloaded your software.” Rosso: “Right.” Correspondent:
23、 “Ok, did I pay to do that?” Rosso: “No, its free.” Correspondent: “So who pays you? How do you make money?” Rosso: “Were like radio. We are advertising-supported.” Correspondent: “And how many people use Grokster?” Rosso: “Ten million.” Correspondent: “Ten million people have used it.” Rosso: “A mo
24、nth.” Correspondent: “Every month, ten million people?” Rosso: “Uh-huh, uh-huh. And growing.”10Correspondent: “Use it to download music, movies, software, video games, what else?” Rosso: “I will assume. See, we have no way of knowing what people are downloading.” Correspondent: “Thats just a fig lea
25、f. You are facilitating, allowing, helping people steal.” Rosso: “We have no idea what the content is, and whatever it is” Correspondent: “Well, you may not know the specifics, but you know thats what your site” Rosso: “And we cant stop it. We have no control over it.” Correspondent: “But you are th
26、ere for that purpose, that is why you exist, of course it is.” Rosso: “No, no, no, no, no, no.” Correspondent: “Come on, this is the fig leaf part.” Rosso: “No, no, no, no, no.” Shyamalan:“He is totally conformable with putting on his site a stolen piece of material. Am I wrong in that? If my movie
27、was bootlegged, hed be totally comfortable putting it on his site?” Correspondent: “Because I have nothing to do with it.” Shyamalan:“Yeah, right.” Correspondent: “Because I just provided the software.” Shyamalan:“Yeah, right. So, immediately, how can you ever have a11conversation with him? Because
28、hes taken a stolen material and he is totally fine with passing it around in his house. All these, all these are illegal activities. So, Im not, its just my house, Im not doing anything wrong.” But it is Rosso who has the law on his side. A federal judge has ruled that Grokster and other file-swappi
29、ng networks are not liable for what their downloaders are doing. Rosso: “So we are completely legal, and unfortunately this is something the entertainment industry refuses to accept. They seem to think the judges decision was nothing but a typo.” The studios are appealing that court ruling. And they
30、 may follow the music industry and begin to sue individuals who download movies. And they are fighting the pirates in other ways, with ads about people whose jobs are at risk because of the piracy-people like the carpenters and painters who work on film sets. At the same time, Hollywood is trying to
31、 keep copies of movies from leaking in the first place. Chernin: “ You will very seldom go to an early screening of a movie right now where, probably you dont notice until you pay attention, someones not in the front of that auditorium with infrared binoculars looking for somebody with a camcorder.”
32、12And once a movie is released, or copies do begin to leak, the studios hire people like Randy Saaf to hack the hackers. Saaf: “What were just trying to do is make the actual pirated content difficult to find. And the way we do that is by, you know, serving up fake files.” Its called “spoofing.” Saa
33、f and his employees spend their days on Kazaa and Grokster, offering up thousands of files that look like copies of new movies, but arent. Correspondent: “So if I had clicked on any number of those Finding Nemo offerings, I could have clicked on one of yours, or somebody like you. And what would I h
34、ave found after my hour and a half of downloading?” Saaf: “it might just be a blank screen or something. You know, typically speaking, what we push out is just not the real content.” Correspondent: “What you are trying to do is make this so impossible, so infuriating that people will just throw up t
35、heir hands and say its just easier for me to go rent this thing, buy the DVD or whatever, its just easier.” Saaf: “Right.” Correspondent: “Thats your goal.” Saaf： ： “Right.”13Correspondent: “Does that work? Is that a good idea?” Rosso: “No. It doesnt work. I mean I dont blame them but it doesnt work
36、 because what happens is that the community cleanses itself of the spoofs.” He means that downloaders quickly spread the word online about how to tell the fake movie files from the real thing. Correspondent: “Its like an arms race(军备竞赛）, isnt it?” Chernin: “Thats exactly what its like. Its like an a
37、rms race. There will be, you know, theyre gonna get a step ahead. Were gonna try and get that step back.” Rosso: “But Ill tell you one thing: Ill bet on the hackers.” Correspondent: “That they will break whatever” Rosso: “The studios come up with.” Correspondent: “The companies throw at them.”Hollyw
38、ood knows that downloading off the Internet is the way millions of consumers want to get their entertainment-and that isnt going away. Chernin: “The generally accepted estimate is that more that 60 million Americans have downloaded file-sharing software onto their computers.” Correspondent: “60 mill
39、ion.”14Chernin: “At 60 million Americans, thats a mainstream product. Thats not a bunch of college kids or, you know, a bunch of computer geeks. Thats America.” So, instead of trying to stop it entirely, the studios are looking for ways to embrace it, but get paid too. Wayne Rosso says the best way
40、is to negotiate some kinds of licensing deal with him. Rosso: “If the movie industry acts now and starts exploring alternatives and solutions with guys like me, hopefully they wont have a problem.” Correspondent: “What if they try to buy you?” Rosso: “Id sell it in al heartbeat.” Correspondent: “You
41、 would sell, Grokster would sell to a movie studio?” Rosso: “Sure, call me.” The idea of making deals with what Peter Chernin calls “a bunch of crooks” doesnt appeal to Hollywood. Instead, Fox and other studios have just launched their own site, Movielink, where consumers can download a film for a m
42、odest fee, between three and five dollars. Chernin: “I think you would love the idea that you dont have to go to the video store. You can do this. And thats what were working15on. But in order for that to be effective, we have to stop privacy, because the most effective business model in the world c
43、ant compete with free.” Not that Peter Chernin is interested, but he wont have the chance to buy Grokster, at least not from Wayne Rosso. A few days ago, Rosso announced that he is leaving Grokster to take over as president of another file-swapping software company, this one based in Spain. Grokster
44、 will continue under new management.Unit 2A plan to build the worlds first airport for launching commercial spacecraft in New Mexico is the latest development in the new space race, a race among private companies and billionaire entrepreneurs to carry paying passengers into space and to kick-start a
45、 new industry, astro tourism.The man who is leading the race may not be familiar to you, but to astronauts, pilots, and aeronautical engineers basically to anyone who knows anything about aircraft design Burt Rutan is a legend, an aeronautical engineer whose latest aircraft is the worlds first priva
46、te spaceship. As he told 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley when he first met him a little over a year ago, if his idea flies, someday space travel may be cheap enough and safe enough for ordinary people to go where only astronauts have gone beforeThe White Knight is a rather unusual looking aircra
47、ft, built just for the purpose of carrying a rocket plane called SpaceShipOne, the first spacecraft built by private enterprise.White Knight and SpaceShipOne are the latest creations of Burt Rutan. Theyre part of his dream to develop a commercial travel business in space.“There will be a new industr
48、y. And we are just now in a beginning. I will predict that in 12 or 15 years, there will be tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people that fly, and see that black sky,“ says Rutan.On June 21, 2004, White Knight took off from an airstrip in Mojave, Calif., carrying Rutans spaceshi
49、p. It took 63 minutes to reach the launch altitude of 47,000 feet. Once there, the White Knight crew prepared to release the spaceship.The fierce acceleration slammed Mike Melvill, the pilot, back in his seat. He put SpaceShipOne into a near vertical trajectory, until, as planned, the fuel ran out.Still climbing like a spent bullet, Melvill hoped to gain as much altitude as possible to reach space before the ship began falling back to earth.By the time the spaceship r
