شنیدن ۲

Page 104 - Exercise 11

Listening - You agree, don’t you?

Part A - Listen to people give their opinions about current issues in the news. What issues are they talking about?

1 - I see some students are planning to hold a protest march downtown tomorrow.

• Well, there’s no law against protesting, is there?

• No, no of course not.

• What are they protesting about?

• I think they’re trying to get the University to stop all research using animal subjects.

• Oh yeah, I definitely support them. I hate to think of monkeys and other animals being used for research. It’s so cruel and it’s unnecessary as well. I don’t see why animals should be killed just so some professor can publish a bunch of papers and get promoted.

• Well, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that. The fact is that a lot of advances in medical research on diseases like cancer and AIDS depend on animal research. You simply can’t do that kind of research on humans, so they have to use animals. I’m afraid there’s no other way.

2 - I saw a really interesting program on TV last night. It talked about the types of things that people have to be careful about when they download music and movies off the Internet.

• What do you mean?

• Well, they have to be careful not to download things that are protected by copyright.

• How can that be avoided?

• Well, some people download things illegally. They use filesharing services, so they don’t pay anything for them. People should have to pay for their music and movies. Not doing so is unethical and some people would say a form of stealing.

• I don’t understand. Let’s say I downloaded a movie and I paid for it. Don’t I have the right to share this with other people? My friends, for example?

• Not really. Some people think that sharing songs and movies is okay, but it’s not. It’s taking away money from the artists. These people have the right to make money off of their own work. You agree with that, don’t you?

• I don’t know. I think the whole thing is ridiculous. Musicians and actors make tons of money as it is. I mean who can afford to have a good music collection when you have to pay for every single song. And movies have gotten really expensive lately. When music and movies are more affordable. People will stop sharing them or downloading them illegally.