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  3. Picture yourself as a historian in 2035, trying to make sense of this year’s American election campaign. Many of the websites an

Picture yourself as a historian in 2035, trying to make sense of this year’s American election campaign. Many of the websites an

admin2013-09-16  29
问题     Picture yourself as a historian in 2035, trying to make sense of this year’s American election campaign. Many of the websites and blogs now abuzz with news and comment will have long since perished. Data stored electronically decays. If you are lucky, copies of campaign material, and of e-mails and other materials, will be available in public libraries. But will you be able to read them? Already, NASA has lost data from some of its earliest missions to the moon because the machines used to read the tapes were scrapped and cannot be rebuilt. A wise librarian will wish to keep in working order a few antique computers that can read such ancient technologies as CDs and USB thumb-drives. But even that may not be enough. Computer files are not worth anything without software to open them.
    Conscientious institutions already make copies of some web pages, e-books and other digital material, and shift the data to new hardware every five years. As software becomes obsolete, libraries and companies can create emulators—old operating systems working inside newer ones.
    But that effort is hampered by regulation that makes archiving digital artefacts even more difficult than it already is. In America, for instance, circumventing the anti-piracy digital rights management software(DRM)that publishers attach to their products is a criminal offence. If that software disappears, the material will no longer be accessible. In 2010 the United States Copyright Office exempted publishers of online-only works from the duty of depositing a copy with the Library of Congress unless specifically requested. National libraries have the right to demand a copy of every printed book published on their territory. But they have no mandate to collect the software without which much electronic data remains unreadable.
    Regulators are pondering the problem. In early May America’s Copyright Office will hold public hearings to discuss exemptions to the ban on circumventing DRM. In Britain the government wants to make it compulsory for publishers, including software-makers, to provide the British Library with a copy of the finished version of everything they produce within a month of publication. The proposed law will allow the library to harvest web pages and material hidden behind paywalls or login requirements.
    Mistakes 30 years ago mean that much of the early digital age is already a closed book(or no book at all)to historians. Without a wider mandate for libraries, giving them the right to store both digital materials and the tools to open it, historians of the future will be unable to reconstruct our times. They may not even know what they have lost.
Which of the following statements is true according to Paragraph 4?
选项 A、The American and British governments intend to break the monopoly of digital publishers.
B、The American government is reluctant to change the regulation concerning DRM.
C、The British government has punished publishers for not submitting their final products.
D、The British government may make free access of on-line data possible for the library.
答案D
解析 第四段第三、四句指出，英国政府打算(通过法律)强制要求数字出版商提交其最终产品(以存档)，该法律可允许图书馆获得那些“要求付款或登录”的网页和资料，可见，政府这一举措将使图书馆有可能自由访问在线数据，[D]选项正确。
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