Reading Comprehension.
Directions: Read the following passage. Choose the best answer from the four choices marked A, B, C and D for each question.

     Plastered on the wall of San Francisco's main public library are 50,000 index cards, formerly entries in the library's catalogue. The tomes they refer to may be becoming decorative, too. Not only can library patrons now search the collection online, they may also check out electronic books without visiting the library. For librarians, “e-lending” is a natural offer in the digital age. Publishers and booksellers fear it could unbind their business.  

     Worries about the effect of libraries on the book trade are not new. But digital devices, which allow books to reach readers with ease and speed, intensify them. As Brian Napack, president of Macmillan, a big publisher, put it in 2011, the fear is that someone who gets a library card will "never have to buy a book again''. 

     A printed book can be borrowed only during opening hours and at the library, so many readers save themselves the hassle and buy their own copy. But e-lending is frictionless: any user with the right privileges can download a digital file instantly (at the end of the borrowing period it self-destructs). This raises big issues: must libraries buy many copies of an e-book, or just one? And what about security? A hacker who cracks the library's system could pirate everything it holds. 

     In publishers' eyes librarians are "sitting close to Satan”, declared Phil Bradley, president of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. He was addressing indignant librarians who recently gathered in London to swap tales of e-lending woe. Some publishers have refused to sell their e-books to public libraries, made them prohibitively costly or put severe restrictions on their use.
     Under copyright law, anyone who buys a printed book can lend or rent it, but the same does not apply to digital works. Libraries do not own these outright. Instead they must negotiate licensing deals for each book they want to lend. They put the e-collections on servers run by computer firms such as OverDrive and 3M, which typically charge around $20,000 annually, plus a fee for each book.
     No country has a settled policy on e-lending. Britain has ordered a review; the results are expected soon. Other governments are waiting for publishers to set their terms. In America, where around three-quarters of public libraries lend e-books, each of the "big six" publishers has a different policy. Simon & Schuster refuses to make e-books available to public libraries at all. HarperCollins's e-books expire after they have been lent 26 times. At the 80 libraries where Penguin is offering a pilot e-lending program, licenses for its e-books expire after a year. Other publishers want to apply the limitations of printed books to digital ones. For example，some want public libraries to replace e-books periodically, just as they have to do with real books that get dirty and torn.