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  3. The curtain has risen on the third act of one of the most ambitious French musical productions, one whose goal is to end digital

The curtain has risen on the third act of one of the most ambitious French musical productions, one whose goal is to end digital

admin2013-04-08  78
问题     The curtain has risen on the third act of one of the most ambitious French musical productions, one whose goal is to end digital piracy.
    More than two years after France approved a tough punishment on copyright cheats, the agency that oversees it sent its first cases to the courts last week. Some repeat offenders may temporarily be cut off from the Internet.
    Studies show that the appeal of piracy has declined in France since the so-called three-strikes law, welcomed by the music and movie industries and hated by advocates of an open Internet, went into effect. Digital sales, which were slow to get started in France, are growing. Music industry revenues are starting to stabilize.
    But the curtain has not yet come down for the fallen file-sharers. As a presidential election nears, opposition to the law is heating up.
    Rivals of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who championed the measure, say that it destroyed civil liberties. His opponents, building on the momentum (动刀) from a successful campaign to defeat two U. S. congressional bills aimed at curbing piracy, as well as a swell of protest against an international copyright treaty, want to repeal (废除) or amend the French law.
    The agency called Hadopi that administers the three-strikes system had sent 822,000 warnings by e-mail to suspected offenders as of the end of December. Those were followed up by 68,000 second warnings, issued through registered mail. Of those, 165 cases have gone on to the third stage, under which the courts are authorized to impose fines of € 1,500, or nearly $ 2,000.
    A separate study by researchers at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh suggests that Hadopi has given a lift to legal downloads via the Apple iTunes music store. Since the spring of 2009, when the debate over the measure was raging, through mid-2011, iTunes sales rose much more strongly in France than in other European countries.
    While there is no proof that Hadopi was responsible, the study says the case for a link was supported by the fact that sales of musical genres (类型) that suffer from high levels of piracy, like hip-hop, rose much more than sales of low-piracy genres, like Christian and classical music.  
According to the passage, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s opponents intend to______.
选项 A、destroy the civil liberties
B、beat two U. S. congressional bills
C、abolish or amend the French law
D、resist the international copyright treaty
答案C
解析 事实细节题。根据定位句，萨科齐总统的反对者在击败美国关于遏制侵权的国会法案以及反对国际版权条约中获得了动力，试图废除或修订法国的相关法律，C)含义与之吻合，故为答案。abolish与repeal同义，意为“废除，撤销”。原文提及反对者认为萨科齐总统的做法损害了公民自由，故排除A)；根据定位句，反对者已击败了两项美国国会议案，故排除B)；D)与原文意思不符，故排除。
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