导读:近日，各大唱片公司和180余位美国音乐人为争取更多的利益，联名签署发表公开信，要求修改现存的《千禧年数字版权法》。
Musicians including Taylor Swift, U2 and Sir Paul McCartney have called for online copyright laws to be reformed.
包括泰勒·斯威夫特，U2乐队和保罗·麦卡特尼在内的音乐人纷纷号召修改网络版权法。
More than 180 artists have signed an open letter criticising the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
180余名艺人家联名发表公开信批评《千禧年数字版权法》。
They claim the law benefits companies that "exploit music for their financial enrichment", but not artists.
他们声称这部法律的受益者是那些“利用音乐作品增加赚钱手段的”公司，而不是真正的艺人。
One journalist said the music industry was "making mischief" to get more money from sites such as YouTube.
一名记者表示，音乐产业为了从Youtube等网站手中赚到更多的钱正在“搬弄是非”。
Falling revenues
效益受损
At the heart of the open letter is a claim that "music consumption has skyrocketed" but the money earned by writers and artists has "plummeted".
这封公开信称“与音乐产业相关的消费额如坐火箭般急速攀升”，可是歌曲的作者和艺人赚到的钱却在“飞快减少”。
Figures from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) show that CD sales in the US fell from $13bn (?9bn) in 1999, to $1.5bn in 2015. Paid music subscriptions and downloads totalled $3.4bn last year, failing to make up the shortfall.
美国唱片业协会发布的数据显示，美国的唱片销售收入由1999年的130亿美元降到了2015年的15亿美元，而付费音乐订阅和下载业务收入总额为34亿美元，完全无力填补两者的差额。
The open letter appears to lay the blame on the DMCA, which protects websites from being sued if users upload copyright music.
公开信直斥《千禧年数字版权法》是造成这一切的罪魁祸首。这项法律规定，如果用户将受到版权保护的音乐传到网站上，网站将不会遭到起诉。
It has been published at a time when the US congress is evaluating the DMCA, and record labels are renegotiating deals with YouTube.
公开信发表时，美国国会正在对《千禧年数字版权法》进行重新评估，而唱片公司也正同YouTube商讨新协议。
The letter has been signed by major record labels and a variety of singers including Cher, Lady Gaga, Engelbert Humperdinck, Britney Spears and Sir Elton John.
各大唱片商加入了这项活动，包括Cher,LadyGaga,英格伯特·汉普丁克,“小甜甜”布莱妮和埃尔顿·约翰在内的歌手纷纷在公开信上署名。
’Impossible’
“不存在可能性”
The DMCA has a so-called "safe harbour" provision that stops websites being held responsible for copyright infringement by their users.
《千禧年数字版权法》中所谓的“安全港”条款令各大网站免于因其用户侵犯著作版权的行为而遭到起诉。
A website cannot usually be blamed if its users upload copyright music or videos - as long as the site removes the infringing content when it becomes aware of it.
网站只要及时发现并删除用户上传的音乐或视频中侵犯他人版权的内容后通常将免于起诉。
The open letter said musicians did not have the resources to search for copyright infringement and then report it to websites.
公开信则表示音乐人根本不具备搜索并上报这些内容的条件。
"It’s impossible for tens of thousands of individual songwriters and artists to muster the resources necessary," it said.
信中说道：“让数万名歌曲作者和艺人掌握必需的资源根本是不可能的。”
The letter comes a week after a US federal appeals court ruled that video sharing site Vimeo could not be held responsible for pre-1972 music recordings uploaded to the site by its users.
公开信发表一周前，美国一家联邦法院做出裁定，视频分享网站Viemo不必为其用户上传的1972年以前的唱片侵犯版权而负责。
Automatic tools
自动审查工具
Critics of the open letter have highlighted the fact that some websites already offer tools that can automatically detect copyright infringement.
反对公开信内容的人称一些网站上早已开始使用工具自动搜索侵犯版权的内容。
"YouTube offers sophisticated tools that not only allow the music industry to zap unauthorised videos but, if they choose, to insert ads to make money off them instead," wrote law reporter Jeff Roberts in Fortune.
《财富》杂志的法律记者杰夫·罗伯斯写道“Youtube提供了精密的检测工具，音乐公司可以屏蔽相关视频，也可用广告链接取而代之。”
YouTube has previously explained that 99.5% of copyright claims on its platform are dealt with automatically, and that in 95% of cases the music industry puts ads on unauthorised uploads rather than blocking them.
Youtube此前解释称其平台上99.5%的版权纠纷是通过自动的方式解决的，其中95%的公司没有屏蔽相关视频，而是插入了广告链接。
Facebook has said it is developing its own content detection tools, which are currently available to selected media partners - and there are third party tools such as Kobalt, which record labels can use to trawl social media sites and detect copyright music.
Facebook称公司正在开发自家网站专属的内容审查工具，可供搜索涉及到入选的媒体伙伴的内容，同时各大唱片公司可以使用第三方工具Kobalt来搜索社交媒体网站，检测自身受到版权保护的音乐作品。
"The bottom line is that the music industry is still coming to terms with how to make up for the loss of CD sales, which provided labels with enormous profit margins they have been unable to reproduce in the digital era," wrote Mr Roberts.
“唱片销售过去可是棵摇钱树，这件事的底线在于音乐公司仍在纠结于如何弥补唱片销量下降带来的损失，数字音乐作品的贡献实在是杯水车薪。”
"That’s a problem for the industry, but not one that will be solved by misguided attacks on YouTube and the DMCA."
“这确实是音乐产业面对的巨大问题，可盲目攻击YouTube和《千禧年数字版权法》绝非问题的解决之道。”
The open letter was printed in a number of publications distributed in Washington DC on Tuesday.
在华盛顿特区发行的数家刊物都在周二刊登了这封公开信。
