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Jack Valenti's Views On The Digital Age
ditogi writes "The Harvard Political Review did a quick interview with the lord of darkness himself, Jack Valenti. He gives his thoughts on government mandated copy prevention, fair use, and lobbying. In response to his famous 'VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' quote, he responds, 'I wasn't opposed to the VCR.' And what does he think of his current job? 'I think lobbying is really an honest profession.'" My favorite quote: "In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless." Update: 02/05 20:05 GMT by T : Derek Slater writes "I'm the author of the Valenti article you guys linked to. I've made some brief comments about it on my site, and figured I'd send them along."
What about "DVD-rot"?
Bullshit, Jack. It's right here: US Code: Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
He obviously has not read Title 17, United States Code, the statutes that specify copyright law in the United States. If he had, he would have seen section 107, which tells the judge what four factors to look at.
And one of the four factors is commercial exploitation. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. If a work is out of print or otherwise not being exploited, then it'd probably be possible for a defendant's counsel to argue that by taking the work out of print, the copyright owner has admitted that the work has negligible market value, that unauthorized copying could not possibly diminish the market value, and that the use of such material is more likely to be fair.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Depending on how you go about it, a CD can be produced for very little. If I were to record a chorus I would bring my Roland VS-1680 and microphones to their rehearsal hall. I would set up six microphones a few feet in front of the singers and have them go through their selected songs while I recorded everything. I would then, back in my home studio, extract the best performance of each song and mix it down to stereo. I can make small quantities of CDs directly on the VS-1680. When they approve the master I send it to a duplicating house who will make a few hundred for about $1 apiece, including jewel cases and simple jacket art. Total cost is about $2 per CD, less if they want thousands.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I guess he could get the legal eagles to define 'audience' as one or more people or pets.
United States copyright law, 17 USC 101 defines an audience as "a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances".
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is great: "The MPAA tried to establish by law that the VCR was infringing on copyright. Then we would go to the Congress and get a copyright royalty fee put on all blank videocassettes and that would go back to the creators [to compensate for videocassette piracy]."
And of course, the MPAA are the "creators," because who else would ever make a movie? And he's also saying this implies that the MPAA own the right to copy movies period?!
This line, too:
"What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law."
May I point Mr. Valenti to the US Code Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use.
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
And he thinks no one should be allowed to copy anything, ever.
I don't see how anyone can take this guy seriously.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
The width of a railroad track goes back to the width of horse-drawn vehicles that ran on standardized rutted roads, which in turn was based on slightly more than twice the width of a horse's rear end. Let Cecil Adams explain the rest.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I would recommend you do some research on the music production process as a whole, and not base your assumptions of it on a single, very limited case. Your example leaves out a few hundred factors that can affect the cost of production. Many, if not all of these, were discussed at length a few weeks ago on this very board.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
DVD rotting has been stated here in a previous story
The reason you have to sit through commericials is because the film distributors (i.e. Warner Bros, DreamWorks, Sony/TriStar/Columbia Pictures) take about 70% of that $9.00 ticket for the first few weeks the movie is released (which is generally when most of the money is made).
Because of this, you pay high prices for popcorn, soda, candy, etc... and sit through commercials.
All so that the movie industry can continue to pay Nicolas Cage $20mil to star in a shitty movie that barely sqeaked out $40mil (Windtalkers).
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
A lot of people don't seem to realize who Jack Valenti is, or the power he had even before his position with the MPAA.
Valenti was in the motorcade when Kennedy was assassinated -- and was the first person to be given a new job under Johnson (before AF1 even left Dallas!) He had a part in writing most of Johnson's speeches, and was stronly in favor of the war in Vietnam.
The man is over 80 years old.
One thing I definitely have observed is that people over 80 make short-term decisions. (Little old ladies selling farms to be paved over, old politicians milking the last bit of pork from the barrel).
I thought our society was supposed to strongly encourage retirement at age 65? For Valenti, that would have been during the Reagan administration.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
[Thanks Markus]
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English
expatriates built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built
the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools
that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would
break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because
that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and
England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to
match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots
were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of
wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is
derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war
chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a spec and told we have always done it
that way and wonder what horse's ass came up with that, you may be
exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just
wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Jack Valenti is a war hero, is known as smart guy, and has been fighting for the good of the world ever since he joined the MPAA.
HPR: Wanna put an end to the embarrasing 'Boston strangler' anecdote everyone keep bringing up?
JV: Sure. I didn't say that, or it came out wrong, and I were right anyway. And digital is to analog as canned pickles is to a carton of milk or something. Left in the sun.
Anyway.. Here's a five-minute monologue of why piracy will lead to the End of Civilization As We Know It.
HPR: Great. Now, tell us why "fair use" is just whining.
JV: My pleasure. DVDs last forever, and some professor in a school can PLAY the DVD in front of the students, right? For now. That's fair, right?
HPR: Well, that should make things clear, and I can't think of a single question that would make this an interview. Wanna add anything about the war since we still have time left?
JV: Yeah, Vietnam is the only war we lost, because there were no censorship then. Lack of censorship led to lack of support from the American people, and that's why I think censorship in wartime is just neat!
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
This is really laughable, and an idiot like this should not even be ALLOWED to lobby. Sorry Jack, but you don't know Jack. Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107 of the United States Code provides a four value metric for determining whether or not something falls under the fair use doctrine. A very good fair use explanation can be found here.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
There is almost no legal, high quality content available on the internet. -Sen. Ernest Hollings D-S.C.
this
and:
this
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Have a look here...
m
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.ht
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"