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Public Debate Between Valenti and Lessig
An Anonymous Coward writes "There will be a free public debate between Jack Valenti,
head of the MPAA, and Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor tonight at 7pm in the Ames Courtroom of the Harvard Law School. This should be very interesting, especially if a lot of Slashdotters show up :)" It's actually on-going right now, though the quality of the webcast is terrible. There's also some sort of IRC channel for discussion.
Look, you mark him down flamebait, but he's right.
Slashdot articles from the last two weeks:
1. Hey! Come to the Slashdot Party in San Diego in 4 hours!
2. Hey! We're speaking at MIT tonight!
3. Hey! There's a Linux Expo in Denver this weekend!
4. Hey! Valenti's having a debate 36 minutes ago, you can still catch the tail end!
Now, I know Slashdot's more a discussion group than a news group, despite the misnomer "news for nerds". Still, it would be nice to occasionally get a little advance notice of things. I live in Reno, so I actually could have been at that party if it had been posted, say, 48 hours in advance, instead of 4.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Just got back from the live debate--sorry if you missed it, but I did send a message to Rob last week.
I asked a complicated question of Jack, and it flustered him because he didn't understand it--I think two-part questions exceed his short-term memory span. But pay no mind to that--the whole point was not winning the debate, but educating people about copyright and patent, or "intellectual property" as some persist in calling it. And Jack is doing a good job on his end; it's time we did a better job.
My question was if it was "theft" for the owner of a bar or restaurant to evade paying royalties on public performances of copyright music. In the 19th century, two Parisian songwriters demanded that a cafe owner pay them for having the band play one of their songs--the owner declined--the songwriters went to jail--and the French law was changed.
That would sound like "theft" to me, and would be appropriate under the natural rights theory of copyright like the Kantian theory that Jack earlier mentioned, and the later French Republican reinstitution of copyright. And I might personally agree that the authors ought to be reimbursed--I am not one who thinks that everything on the Internet ought to be free, or that musicians should not be paid, nor that copyright has been practically overturned by the Internet.
The point is that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was passed only because U.S. bar and restaurant owners managed to get an exception, allowing them to escape payment. So when Jack dined at a nice Cambridge restaurant before the debate, he was listening to "stolen" music in his words. (In fact, a group of Irish songwriters have managed to sue in the E.U. to declare the U.S. in restraint of free trade, because of this very lack of "harmonisation," and the U.S. is now appealing--otherwise the U.S. may well be sanctioned.)
Jack didn't see it that way, of course. He rapidly abandoned the natural rights theory of copyright, the only one under which it makes sense to say that a copyright can be "stolen" by someone else. He fell back on the statutory, utilitarian, theory of copyright that underlies the viewpoint of the Framers of the Copyright Clause in the U.S. Constitution, that Larry Lessig eloquently expanded on.
So Lessig talked about the Copyright Term Extension Act suit (Eldred v Reno), and Valenti talked about Napster and ICraveTV.com and DeCSS. Still, the education about copyright went pretty well, I think.
What is scary is that Valenti's talk about streaming movies over the Internet, and his ignorance of their complete denial of fair use, because of the DMCA, might come true. Then the only way people could have fair use would be illegal and go underground in some way. Then what becomes of copyright law--I think it doesn't matter at that point--and the courts don't have any guidance on how to decide issues, except to try to do some economic balancing, which will always favor those with the most money.
But this trend to encryption and locking up things will at the same time destroy the movie studios, I think. Theaters, video rental stores, the whole business model of staged releases and so on, would be threatened. I would advise technologists in Hollywood to try to adapt the business model and make works more open and accessible and not fear "piracy." Instead, use technology to make products more valuable, and encourage consumers to buy more attractive and useful products.
Jack if he had the chance to think about this might well agree. I really do think he is a decent guy and it is wrong to make fun of him. I just hope the people behind Jack, the technologists and the ones who control technology, can become a little wiser now and see what the Free Software movement has accomplished.
Meanwhile, the lawsuits are going forward. A moot court at Harvard Law School Oct 2 (Monday) will prepare Lessig for the Oct 5 oral arguments in Eldred v Reno (to overturn the CTEA). Those arguments will be before the US District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. All are invited there to hear the real stuff.
And the DeCSS case is going to appeal. It was a great pleasure to talk with Emmanuel Goldstein at this debate and shake his hand and encourage him. But it would be even better if more of us helped out in the OpenLaw group to help prepare the appeals brief in the DeCSS case.
Right now the lawsuits are our best bet. But we must still continue trying to learn more about copyright and patent law and educate everyone we can, else Jack Valenti will be doing it instead.
Of course he's a shill. He's the head of the MPAA. It's his job to protect the revenue stream of the MPAA members at any cost.
Out of one side of his mouth, he blathers about free speech and art whenever a crusading Representative, Senator or lobbyist launches another broadside at the violence and sex in many current movies.
Out of the other side, he screams piracy whenever someone brings up fair use and interopability. Apparently, redirecting a DeCSS stream to XMovie, or sending it to your (large) hard drive to be played by an MPEG-2 player later is hacking, evil, and should be punished by jail time or massive fines, because a Legit DVD Software Player is coming Real Soon Now (sorry Intervideo, I know you're working hard, I don't mean to attack you, but until the product comes out, it's still not available, and Valenti shouldn't be able to use that argument without questioning it.) And questioning the MPAA's motives isn't "free speech", it's condoning piracy, and should be silenced. You shouldn't even be allowed to link to pages with the software, Kosh forbid you have a copy yourself.
What a fscking mess. I don't expect the MPAA to gain any sense any time soon, but all of this (the 2600 lawsuit, the Johansen arrest) could have been avoided if the MPAA had thrown Linux/*BSD users a bone by at least going after people who use the software for piracy instead of the software and the programmers.
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Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
The webcast has been archived here.
I just caught the last half-hour of the debate, and Lessig's last point to Valenti was an extremely poignant one. It's unfortunate that Valenti chose to ignore it.
Lessig was trying to get Valenti to define "fair use" in response to Valenti's assertion that "fair use" constitutes only what the author explicitly authorizes. To paraphrase, Lessig asked that if he wrote a book and that book included an agreement that by purchasing that book, you agree not to criticize the book, would writing a review of that book violate "fair use" of that work, to which Valenti replied that if such he bought such a book he would turn around and review the book to give the author a "kick in the butt". Lessig's follow-up question was if a person purchased a movie (presumably on DVD or some media type protected by the DMCA) and then proceded to watch the movie on a player that was not authorized by the author, does that go beyond "fair use" of that media. At which point, Jack essentially said "Oh, look at the time! Got to go!" (Paraphrased, but essentially accurate.)
Unfortunately, this tells us nothing new. Media producers are more concerned about maintaining absolute control over their works than they are the principles of fair use. I hope that a transcript of this talk is up soon so that it can be quoted more correctly than my paraphraseology. ;)
- Stealth Dave
Evil is as eval("does");
Back during the GOP convention, Jack threw a party for the rich and powerful that Roll Call listed like so:
This is the party where Dick Armey made a naughty joke that made headlines a few months back. If it weren't for his mistake, that small blurb might have been the only the the press bothered to mention this party. Why bother the sheep with news that their lawmakers are easily bought off with parties?
Every time I hear Jack or one of his flacks suggest that the laws are being made in the interest of the 'vast majority of Americans', I want to vomit. Sorry, Jack, but those laws are only truly benefitting the minority you belong to: The ones with access to the powerful. It's just that most Americans aren't quick enough to catch you at it.
Until this system of legalized bribery is brought to an end, we will continue to be called a thieves every time Jack gets caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
Since technical people tend to be more honest than 'people people' we tend to tell the truth on the stand. Does this get us in trouble? Oh yes. The legal system assumes that one side lies one way, the other side lies the other, and that a jury will find the truth which is somewhere between those two extremes.
Of course that means that anyone who tells the truth is at a great disadvantage in a court of law; since the jury will try to find the truth between the two sides claims - the slant is away from anyone who tells the truth and toward those who lie.
This means that the system favors lies over the truth; that is why "I don't know" is an effective tactic in a court of law. As a lie "I don't know" carries more weight in the MPAA's favor than Mr. Valenti telling the truth:
Attorney: "Did the MPAA ask the Norwegian police to harass the teenager who released the DeCSS code"
Mr. Valenti's possible answers:
The truth: "Of course we did, we have the money, and the power that money gives us. We wanted to intimidate the kid and anyone else who threatens our position of wealth and power."
Plausible lie: "I can't recall."
Which one do you think he is going to use?
--
The law; 100's of millions of lines of code, not one line of which has ever been tested to see if it works.
Jack Valenti is smart. Don't think for a minute that he can't follow your logic or reasoning. He chooses to act dumb.
Top five things "I have no idea what you're talking about," really means:
"I have no reason to answer you truthfully."
"I don't recall." --Ronald Wilson Reagan, Iran-Contra hearings
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To go straight to the webcast, go here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/grou pch at/manual/