阅读理解
Face it, movie fans: the DVD is destined to be dead as a doornail.
Only a few Blockbuster stores are still open. Netflix's (one online website for movies) CEO says, "We expect DVD subscribers to decline steadily every quarter, forever."
There are still some downsides to streaming movies—you need a fast Internet connection, for example, and beware the limited-data plan—but overall, this should be a delightful development.
Hollywood movie studios should benefit, too. The easier it is to rent a movie, the more people will do it. And the more folks rent, the more money the studios make.
Well, apparently, none of that has occurred to the movie industry. It seems intent on leaving money on the table.
For all of the apparent convenience of renting a movie via the Web, there are a surprising number of drawbacks. For example, when you rent the digital version, you often have only 24 hours to finish watching it, which makes no sense. When you rent online, you don't get any of the DVD extras—-deleted scenes, alternative endings, subtitles—even though you're paying as much as you would have paid to rent a DVD. Yet perhaps most important, there's the availability problem. New movies aren't available online until months after they are finished in the theaters. Worse, some movies never become available. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, A Beautiful Mind, Bridget Jones s Diary, and so on, are not available to rent from the major online distributors.
And if you don't make your product available legally, guess what? The people will get it illegally. Of the 10 most pirated movies of 2011, guess how many of them are available to rent online, as I write this in midsummer 2012? Zero. That's right; Hollywood is actually encouraging the very practice they claim to be fighting.
Yes, times are changing. Yes, uncertainty is scary. But Hollywood has case studies to learn from. The music industry and the television industry used to fight the Internet the same way—with brute force: copy protection, complexity, legal challenges.
Eventually all of them found roads to recoup some of their lost profit not by fighting the Internet but by working with it. The music industry dropped copy protection and made almost every song available for about $ 1 each. The TV industry made its shows available for free at sites such as Hulu, paid for by ads.
Only a few Blockbuster stores are still open. Netflix's (one online website for movies) CEO says, "We expect DVD subscribers to decline steadily every quarter, forever."
There are still some downsides to streaming movies—you need a fast Internet connection, for example, and beware the limited-data plan—but overall, this should be a delightful development.
Hollywood movie studios should benefit, too. The easier it is to rent a movie, the more people will do it. And the more folks rent, the more money the studios make.
Well, apparently, none of that has occurred to the movie industry. It seems intent on leaving money on the table.
For all of the apparent convenience of renting a movie via the Web, there are a surprising number of drawbacks. For example, when you rent the digital version, you often have only 24 hours to finish watching it, which makes no sense. When you rent online, you don't get any of the DVD extras—-deleted scenes, alternative endings, subtitles—even though you're paying as much as you would have paid to rent a DVD. Yet perhaps most important, there's the availability problem. New movies aren't available online until months after they are finished in the theaters. Worse, some movies never become available. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, A Beautiful Mind, Bridget Jones s Diary, and so on, are not available to rent from the major online distributors.
And if you don't make your product available legally, guess what? The people will get it illegally. Of the 10 most pirated movies of 2011, guess how many of them are available to rent online, as I write this in midsummer 2012? Zero. That's right; Hollywood is actually encouraging the very practice they claim to be fighting.
Yes, times are changing. Yes, uncertainty is scary. But Hollywood has case studies to learn from. The music industry and the television industry used to fight the Internet the same way—with brute force: copy protection, complexity, legal challenges.
Eventually all of them found roads to recoup some of their lost profit not by fighting the Internet but by working with it. The music industry dropped copy protection and made almost every song available for about $ 1 each. The TV industry made its shows available for free at sites such as Hulu, paid for by ads.
单选题
6.What does the phrase "dead as a doornail" in Paragraph 1 most probably mean?
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】含义题。根据题干提示定位至第一、二段。根据第二段的描述，现在只有少数电影大片商店还在营业。Netflix的首席执行官说， “我们预计DVD用户每季度都会稳定下滑，并一直持续下去。”由此可以推断出DVD的销量不好，前景并不乐观，会逐渐淡出人们的视线，因此选C项。
单选题
7.In view of the trend, what does the movie industry intend to do?
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】推断题。根据题干关键词intention of movie industry定位至第五段。综合上下文可以得知，第四段讲到网络租赁可以给电影业带来巨大的利益，第五段的well表示转折，意味着电影业没有获得这些好处，此处关键在于对leaving money on the table的理解，其字面意思很明显，即把钱留在桌子上(不拿走)，也就是“放着利益不去赚取”的意思，因此选D项。
单选题
8.Each of the following is right EXCEPT_____.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】细节题。根据选项关键词定位至第六段。由该段第三句可知，尽管你支付了与租借DVD一样的租金，但是网络上依然无法获得DVD的额外赠送，因此B项的内容错误，为本题的答案。
单选题
9.The result of movie industry's fighting with the Internet may be_____.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】推断题。根据题干关键词result和movie industry’s fighting with the Internet定位至最后两段可知，好莱坞可以借鉴音乐产业和电视行业的先例，他们与网络斗争的最终结果都是合作，而不是更大力度的反击，因此B项正确。
单选题
10.According to the author, the eventual solution to movie industry's fighting with the Internet is_____.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】态度题。作者在文章开头就提出了DVD即将消失的观点，在文章的后半部分说明了好莱坞的禁令反而鼓励了盗版的盛行，在结尾又提出音乐和电视行业解决类似问题的做法。因此，作者认为最终电影业会借鉴音乐与电视业的做法，与网络合作来补偿其失去的利润，故正确答案为A项。