2023年考研英语2摸底测试附答案解析.pdf

2023 年考研英语2 摸底测试附答案解析 9 Text 1A decade ago, in suitably ironic fashion, Amazon reached into customers electronic shelves and deleted copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four which it had sold to them. Now another Big Tech firm is gearing up for a spate of digital text destruction. When Microsoft closes its ebook store later this month, every book it sold will cease to work. These stories of vanishing books reveal the unpleasant reality behind the convenience of online purchases. In the information age, consumers are often renters with limited control of digital products, even if these have apparently been sold to them. The case of the Microsoft store also demonstrates how systems for protecting copyright can penalise customers who have made legal purchases. Microsoft is offering full refunds, plus $25 for users who have annotated their copies. Reimbursements cannot remove the feeling that retailers have been duplicitous in branding. They may point to small print showing they have loaned out books, but in many cases they have deliberately advertised them as being “sold to users. Customers would be shocked if employees of a bricks-and-mortar store pulled physical books from their nightstand on similar grounds. The Microsoft case also shows how anti-piracy measures are not ready to deal with the closure of services. Digital Rights Management (DRM) stops the copying of electronic content and checks if they have been legally purchased. Microsofts decision to shut down its ebook DRM servers means that verification cannot take place. While there are ways to bypass DRM, they remain illegal for most purposes in the US and EU. Given the speed at which tech companies and services rise and fall, the risk of DRM-induced disappearances will only grow. A future in which retailers move to selling customers online products rathe