Exchanging music over the Internet is fun and easy. Better yet, it's free, which means you don't have to pay for any more expensive music CDs. Several online file-sharing services make it easy for music lovers to exchange their favorite tunes with one another. However, this illegal sharing of music — a form of music piracy(盗版)— is doing harm to the music industry. Industry experts estimate (估计) that US$4.3 billion in worldwide sales was lost to music piracy last year. These lost profits could force record companies to stop producing the music of many popular artists. That would hurt both musicians and music fans alike. Music producers are puzzled about how to fight music piracy. Their efforts to fight piracy using the law have had only limited success. The music industry did win a legal victory against Napster, a famous music website. The courts ordered Napster to stop giving away copyrighted music from their site. But a number of other music-sharing networks have sprung up in its place. These new networks are made up of thousands, or even millions, of individuals. Unlike Napster, there's no one company controlling the distribution(发行)of music over each network. So it's nearly impossible to stop the illegal activities. Now people in the music industry have decided that " if you can't beat them, join them." They've begun to offer legal alternatives to online music piracy. Major music producers have given companies like Apple Computer permission(许可) to sell their music online. Apple's iTune Music Store allows computer users to legally download any song for 99 cents. Will these new measures save the music industry from piracy? That depends on whether music fans are willing to pay 99 cents fro a song that they can download illegally for free. Unfortunately, many people believe music should be free. The music industry, however, hopes to persuade these music fans to change their tune. 小题1:This text is written to _____.
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