????弗吉尼亞州哈里斯堡的一座溫控倉庫里，1,103臺服務器堆放在120個堆棧上，等待聯邦法院的裁決，接受最后的處置。這些服務器每臺都裝有24塊硬盤。全部加起來，它們總共可以存儲25拍字節（2500萬千兆）的信息。這么大的空間足以裝下50個美國國會圖書館（Libraries of Congress）的藏書，總長度可達13.3年的高清電視視頻，或者用這些硬件的擁有方、卡帕西亞數據托管公司（Carpathia Hosting）的話來說：“大概相當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。”

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

????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“網絡儲物柜”。實際上，它是最新一代模仿納普斯特公司（Napster）的產物。納普斯特是文件分享服務的先驅，創辦于1999年，后來在2001年被法院勒令關停。今年1月，弗吉尼亞州亞歷山大市的一支聯邦大陪審團對“百萬上傳”及其7名高管提出了指控。他們被控合謀進行敲詐勒索，主要是協助并唆使侵犯版權的犯罪行為。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業務中非法獲利1.75億美元。這一業務主要是為非法傳播發行至少價值5億美元的各類受到版權保護的電影、音樂、電視節目、書籍、照片、視頻游戲和軟件提供便利條件。

????各類“網絡儲物柜”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。享有訂閱服務的用戶比免費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“儲物柜”，盡管這些儲物柜往往沒有上鎖（“上傳”意味著，用戶從自己的電腦中復制一份文件，傳到儲物柜公司的網站上，文件再被存到公司的某個服務器上）。大多數上傳者再把文件名和其在網站上的URL發布在公共博客或“鏈接農場”里，這樣世界上任何人只要通過搜索引擎找到這個鏈接，就能下載文件或流媒體內容。目前，“百萬上傳”的對手Hotfile正深陷一樁尚待裁決的民事訴訟。該案中，一位電影業統計學家通過調查發現，此類服務所提供的下載中有90%都涉及侵權。這一調查結論已獲得眾多法庭認可。

????在一份只需點擊就能確認、猶如遮羞布的網上協議中，這些網絡存儲服務公司要求用戶同意不可上傳侵權材料。但是，這類公司多數似乎恰恰在鼓勵用戶這么干。直至受到版權指控前，很多公司甚至還在給用戶提供現金獎勵。條件是：按其他用戶下載某位用戶上傳文件的次數來計酬，比如說，每下載1,000次，就發給該用戶15美元或25美元。這類獲酬用戶被稱為“附屬會員”（affiliate）。政府稱，有一位“百萬上傳”的附屬會員在6年里上傳了16,950份文件，產生了超過3,400萬的頁面瀏覽量。（自從“百萬上傳”遭起訴后，許多同類公司已經改變了這種做法。）

????譯者：清遠

????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.)