????弗吉尼亞州哈里斯堡的一座溫控倉庫里，1,103臺(tái)服務(wù)器堆放在120個(gè)堆棧上，等待聯(lián)邦法院的裁決，接受最后的處置。這些服務(wù)器每臺(tái)都裝有24塊硬盤。全部加起來，它們總共可以存儲(chǔ)25拍字節(jié)（2500萬千兆）的信息。這么大的空間足以裝下50個(gè)美國國會(huì)圖書館（Libraries of Congress）的藏書，總長(zhǎng)度可達(dá)13.3年的高清電視視頻，或者用這些硬件的擁有方、卡帕西亞數(shù)據(jù)托管公司（Carpathia Hosting）的話來說：“大概相當(dāng)于人類有記載的歷史以來全部文字、所有書面著作總和的一半?！?/p>

????幾年來，卡帕西亞公司一直將這些服務(wù)器出租給一家名為“百萬上傳”（Megaupload，美國著名在線網(wǎng)絡(luò)硬盤服務(wù)商——譯注）的公司。這家公司在荷蘭和法國還擁有另外700多臺(tái)服務(wù)器。據(jù)美國政府稱，曾有一度，“百萬上傳”公司一家就占據(jù)了全球互聯(lián)網(wǎng)流量的4%，在訪問量最大的網(wǎng)站中排名第13位，日訪問量比網(wǎng)飛公司（Netflix）、美國在線公司（AOL）和《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》（New York Times）網(wǎng)站都要大。

????直到最近，“百萬上傳”還是最富吸引力的生意之一，也就是是人們常說的“網(wǎng)絡(luò)儲(chǔ)物柜”。實(shí)際上，它是最新一代模仿納普斯特公司（Napster）的產(chǎn)物。納普斯特是文件分享服務(wù)的先驅(qū)，創(chuàng)辦于1999年，后來在2001年被法院勒令關(guān)停。今年1月，弗吉尼亞州亞歷山大市的一支聯(lián)邦大陪審團(tuán)對(duì)“百萬上傳”及其7名高管提出了指控。他們被控合謀進(jìn)行敲詐勒索，主要是協(xié)助并唆使侵犯版權(quán)的犯罪行為。美國政府方面裁定，以金姆?多特康姆，又名金姆?施密茨，又名金姆?提姆?吉姆?韋斯特為首的被告一行從一項(xiàng)業(yè)務(wù)中非法獲利1.75億美元。這一業(yè)務(wù)主要是為非法傳播發(fā)行至少價(jià)值5億美元的各類受到版權(quán)保護(hù)的電影、音樂、電視節(jié)目、書籍、照片、視頻游戲和軟件提供便利條件。

????各類“網(wǎng)絡(luò)儲(chǔ)物柜”公司——其他諸如Rapidshare和Hotfile——賺錢的方式主要是通過出售廣告、提供高端訂閱服務(wù)。享有訂閱服務(wù)的用戶比免費(fèi)用戶能更快地下載文件及各種流媒體。

????操作方式如下：用戶將文件上傳到“儲(chǔ)物柜”，盡管這些儲(chǔ)物柜往往沒有上鎖（“上傳”意味著，用戶從自己的電腦中復(fù)制一份文件，傳到儲(chǔ)物柜公司的網(wǎng)站上，文件再被存到公司的某個(gè)服務(wù)器上）。大多數(shù)上傳者再把文件名和其在網(wǎng)站上的URL發(fā)布在公共博客或“鏈接農(nóng)場(chǎng)”里，這樣世界上任何人只要通過搜索引擎找到這個(gè)鏈接，就能下載文件或流媒體內(nèi)容。目前，“百萬上傳”的對(duì)手Hotfile正深陷一樁尚待裁決的民事訴訟。該案中，一位電影業(yè)統(tǒng)計(jì)學(xué)家通過調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，此類服務(wù)所提供的下載中有90%都涉及侵權(quán)。這一調(diào)查結(jié)論已獲得眾多法庭認(rèn)可。

????在一份只需點(diǎn)擊就能確認(rèn)、猶如遮羞布的網(wǎng)上協(xié)議中，這些網(wǎng)絡(luò)存儲(chǔ)服務(wù)公司要求用戶同意不可上傳侵權(quán)材料。但是，這類公司多數(shù)似乎恰恰在鼓勵(lì)用戶這么干。直至受到版權(quán)指控前，很多公司甚至還在給用戶提供現(xiàn)金獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)。條件是：按其他用戶下載某位用戶上傳文件的次數(shù)來計(jì)酬，比如說，每下載1,000次，就發(fā)給該用戶15美元或25美元。這類獲酬用戶被稱為“附屬會(huì)員”（affiliate）。政府稱，有一位“百萬上傳”的附屬會(huì)員在6年里上傳了16,950份文件，產(chǎn)生了超過3,400萬的頁面瀏覽量。（自從“百萬上傳”遭起訴后，許多同類公司已經(jīng)改變了這種做法。）

????譯者：清遠(yuǎn)

????In a climate-controlled warehouse in Harrisonburg, Va., 1,103 computer servers, each equipped with 24 hard drives, are piled in 120 stacks awaiting a federal judge's decision about what to do with them. Together, they store more than 25 petabytes (25 million gigabytes) of information. That's enough space to store 50 Libraries of Congress, 13.3 years of HDTV video, or "approximately half of all the entire written works of mankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages," according to Carpathia Hosting, the company that owns the hardware.

????For several years Carpathia leased the servers to a company called Megaupload, which deployed another 700 or so servers in the Netherlands and France. At one time Megaupload alone accounted for 4% of the globe's entire Internet traffic and was the 13th-most-visited site on the web, according to the government, with more daily visitors than Netflix (NFLX), AOL (AOL), or the New York Times.

????Until recently Megaupload was one of a number of lucrative, businesses known as cyberlockers, which are the latest generation of operations created in the image of the original Napster -- the pioneering file-sharing service that launched in 1999 and was shut down by court order in 2001. In January an Alexandria, Va., federal grand jury charged Megaupload and seven top officials with a racketeering conspiracy focused on aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement. The government alleges that the defendants, led by Kim Dotcom, a.k.a. Kim Schmitz, a.k.a. Kim Tim Jim Vestor, made $175 million from a business built on facilitating the illegal distribution of at least $500 million worth of copyrighted movies, music, television shows, books, images, videogames, and software.*

????Cyberlockers -- others include Rapidshare and Hotfile -- make money by selling both advertisements and premium subscriptions. The subscriptions enable users to download or stream files more quickly than free users can.

????They work like this: Users upload files to "lockers," though the lockers typically have no locks. ("Uploading" means copying a file from the user's own computer onto the cyberlocker company's website, where the file is stored on one of the company's servers.) Most uploaders then publish the name of the file and its locker URL on public blogs or "link farms," from which anyone in the world can download or stream the materials stored there, using a search engine to find the link. In pending civil litigation against Megaupload's rival Hotfile, a movie industry statistician whose surveys have been accepted by many courts found that more than 90% of that service's downloads were infringing.

????In a click-through agreement that appears to serve as a fig leaf, cyberlockers require their users to agree not to upload infringing materials. Nevertheless, most cyberlockers seem to encourage users to do just that. Until they started getting hit with civil copyright suits, many cyberlockers offered cash bounties to users based on, for instance, the number of times other people downloaded whatever the users uploaded -- $15 to $25, say, per every 1,000 downloads. Such paid users were called "affiliates." One Megaupload affiliate uploaded 16,950 files to the site over six years, the government says, generating more than 34 million page views. (Since the Megaupload indictment, many cyberlockers have altered their practices.)