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Valenti's "Boston Strangler" Testimony
Seth Schoen writes "'I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' Jack Valenti said this in 1982 in testimony to the House of
Representatives on why the VCR should be illegal. He also called
the VCR an "avalanche" and a "tidal wave", and said it would make
the film industry "bleed and bleed and hemorrhage". This speech is an
important part of history, yet until today it had never been published
on-line in its entirety. Valenti's testimony was published today by Cryptome.
It's essential background reading if you want to see just how little
the MPAA's arguments have changed in two decades." Compare to the Analog Hole document and they're virtually identical (except Valenti was playing on anti-Japanese sentiment then, and today it's anti-pirate sentiment). Of course, the MPAA was unsuccessful in plugging the "VCR Hole" - insufficient lobbying and clueful judges stopped them. The MPAA successfully adapted to the changing times and today sells about 70 million cassettes for rentals and 600 million cassettes for home viewing every year (both numbers are on the decline due to the rise of DVD).
"Blessed are the poor in threshold: for theirs is the Kingdom of the Page-Lengthening and Page-Widening Posts.
"Blessed are they that mourn the death of *BSD: for they shall be comforted with an ultradense Linux server from VA Linux, now sold by California Digital Corporation.
"Blessed are the posters of smug one-liners: for they shall inherit an Account Capped at 50.
"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after The First Post: for they shall have the Third or Fourth Post.
"Blessed are the karma whores: for they shall obtain "Score: 5, Insightful".
"Blessed are those who dismiss out-of-hand: for they shall fail to see the Point of the Original Post.
"Blessed are those who seek to associate themselves with the latest techno-fad: for they shall be called 3L33T for at least Another Half Hour.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for their own self-righteousness' sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of "Ask Slashdot".
"Blessed are the over-eager, who believe that Open Source is a social movement heralding the rise of a new generation: for they shall not realize that There Are No Sacred Cows.
"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for the sake of your Favorite Operating System.
"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in Heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD
yeeehaw!
fp
Watch the world cup instead of salking about bullshit that only GEEKS care about
Senagel 1 - France 0
Here's a useful piece of info that some dumbass moderators will mod down because of my subject. If you want to get trained in the art of public speaking by Jack Valenti, go here: http://residentassociates.org/rap/otojun/valenti.a sp
You only have a few weeks to register.
Long live the RecipeTroll!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Can you please put Sisters of Mercy lyrics into your mighty fine page widening posts. I would highly appreciate that, sir.
Thank you, and please keep up your work.
Hi.
I have oral sex with retarded kids.
Retards are yummy.
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I blame the short little Jewish Boy my high Scholl He was always laughing in the shower room in Pe class while he was twisting a wash cloth in his hands.
*huh* Sig? WTF?
Goddamnit, I hate to laude ol' 22209, but that was a nice turn a phrase the entirely sums up the whole Linux bubble!
One good turn deserves another, so with no further ado, it's time for:
"ESR: Surprised by cock"
I was at my machine, my 386 with 4 megs of RAM running Linux, masturbating to pictures of RMS, when I got an email congratulating me on the success of Slashdot. I was working on my latest small project-- a clever little text parser that takes input from the user and puts it in a little cartoon-style word balloon coming out of-- get this!-- a giant, erect ASCII penis's bulging head! Hahaha! It's called COCKSAY. You can download it here.
"Congratulations? That's interesting," said I to myself. "I didn't think Slashdot was coming out until tomorrow." And I oughtta know; I'm on VA's Board of Directors, recruited by Larry Augustin himself, to be VA Linux's "corporate conscience," and it's public record that I hold a substantial share in the company's semen pool. I tooled on over to Linux Today, chased a link like it was a naked hippy's ass-- and discovered that Rob Malda had taken the fast action we had discussed at the last board meeting. Slashdot had come out first thing that morning with a headline on its own site-- and I had become the figurehead of the Gay Faggot Slashdot Empire while I wasn't looking.
Well, that didn't last long. In the next two hours, 369 VA employees also disclosed that they had AIDS, leaving me with a bit of the proverbial semen on my face.
You may wonder why I am talking about this in public. The first piece of advice your friends will give you, if it looks like you're about to come out of the closet, is: keep quiet! It's really nobody else's business-- you don't want to look like you're lusting for cock, though you may want to be deluged by an endless succession of men dressed up as Navy sailors demanding blowjobs from you; fat, hairy men (the bears) wanting to fuck you in the ass; and sweet, young, hairless boys offering you the beauty of their youth.
Trouble with the "keep it quiet" theory is that I've always solicited gay male faggot sex in a very public way. When you're already a media figure, like myself, and your name is on the Faggot Manifesto your whole organization chose to use to come out, and email from friends and journalists starts coming in like crazy as the gayness of your empire breaks records even on the first day, playing it coy swiftly ceases to look like a viable option.
But it wouldn't be fair to dissemble. I serve the gay community. I'm wealthy today because my efforts to spread faggotry and venereal diseases on behalf of that community helped infiltrate the business world and earned the trust of a lot of young, naive boys. Fairness to the twinks.
You know, I discovered something recently. That you are a fucking flaming faggit. Thank you.