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."

Comments

no backups !!!

[Roadmaster]

"In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless."

Wait till his hard disk dies ;)

Re:no backups !!!

[BWJones]

"In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless."

Or what about when media changes? Can I simply transfer digital content from one media to another when I have paid for the right to listen to it? For instance, I purchased and repurchased a significant bit of music first on vinyl and then on CD with many of the albums being duplicates. In fact, some of them were purchased as vinyl LP's, cassettes, and then CD's of the same album. Now they are digital and hosted on my dedicated G4 media server, I don't want to have to purchase them again.

Also, what about all of that vinyl I have that is out of print? Old punk and bluegrass vinyl that I want to rip into iTunes as well. Since I have already purchased this stuff, I should be able to digitize it without having to pay any more royalties.

Re:no backups !!!

[Duck of Death]

"Wait until his hard disk dies ;)"

Or wait until his "Shrek" DVD gets all scratched up. I just found out a couple of days ago that the disc with the widescreen (e.g. correct) version of the movie is mangled and won't play.

I paid for it, and it doesn't work as Jack advertises (i.e. "never wears out"). Will I get a free replacement? No, I will not. So I borrowed a copy from a friend and I'm making myself a copy. And once that copy is complete, I will make another copy. Why? Because I have a small child and they can break the unbreakable and wear out the un-wear-out-able.

I intend to make "kid copies" of all my kid's DVD's and keep the original as backup. Let him throw the copy across the room, or stand on it, or put it into the machine crooked, or play with it in the driveway, or use it as part of an intricate LEGO construction.

JV claims everything he predicted about video tapes and copying came true. Everything, that is, except for the utter destruction of the movie and television industry, right Jack?

DoD

Re:no backups !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

When would he ever do that? He probably receives all the DVDs he wants for free...

Re:no backups !!!

[Eccles]

I wonder if one could sue Valenti for fraud, since he is a paid representative and spokesman of the movie industry and he made a fraudulent claim.

Costs of Production

[mrs clear plastic]

Hi:

I would like to respond to the article's citation
to the costs of producing a CD and a movie.

I believe it cited 250,000 dollars for a CD and
20 million for a movie.

I talked about this with a friend who is doing
a CD for a chorus. He said that the studio
rental and editing costs were about $20,000
to $30,000.

We did not get a chance to talk about the
manufacturing and distro costs, but I strongly
think that the total costs can be done at much
less than the number cited in the article.

Mark

replacing VHS tapes for generations?

[Bloodwine]

My god the VHS tape is barely over 20 years old, but you'd think the way he talks people have been breaking VHS tapes and buying replacements for over 100 years.

Also I never knew it was illegal to copy VHS tapes that you already owned. All the FBI blurb at the begining of almost every U.S.-made movie says is that it is illegal to copy for distribution or showing in front of an audience. I guess he could get the legal eagles to define 'audience' as one or more people or pets.

Obviously doesn't use a PC. :-)

[crovira]

"In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless."

I'd like him to play a DVD from Hollywood Video.

Of the last three I rented,
- one had pits and I had to skip a scene,
- one was delaminated, unplayable and I had to eject it before my DVD drive got munged,
-one was outright unplayable on my TiBook because according to the README.TXT "It doesn't play on a Macintosh."

I can MAKE a DVD on my TiBook with iMovie and a video camera but I can't play one of yours Jack.

Bwahahaha. Somebody buy this poor dumb [expletive deleted] a clue.

He probably believes M$ when they say that their systems are "secure now."

there was one lucid comment

[BigBir3d]

Money, however, is negative--it's corrupting the body politic. Even though money might be the most self-conflicting force in politics today, there are too many loopholes in this McCain-Feingold bill. All these lobbyists in town who are callous to what the bill stands for are going to exploit it. They'll turn to state parties and special interest groups and the money will keep pouring in. It's a tragedy.

Re:he's right you know....

[luzrek]

"Looks like I'll have to buy the White Album again."

According to copyright law, he wouldn't. He had already purchased the right to listen to the music. He simply has to have the music transfered onto the new medium (should be avalible for a nomial cost). The music industry needs to either admit they are selling us the medium only and cannot lay claim to the content, or admit they are only selling us the content and let us listen to it on whatever medium we want.

Re:he's right you know....

[stratjakt]

Ahh, but they claim that the license for the music is tied to the medium. You have a license to listen to the music on *this particular CD*.

They want to have the cake and eat it too. They want to sell it as a product, including the benefit of reselling the product if yours breaks or wears out. But they want your ability to resell, trade, borrow or lend it to be governed by licenses.

Basically they want a legal climate that says "Anything the MPAA can profit from is legal, everything else is not". And it's not news. The digital crap is just another page in a very long and boring book.

Just another greedy bastich

[graikor]

my favorite bit is this gem:

Jack Valenti: I wasn't opposed to the VCR. 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]. I predicted great piracy. We now lose $3.5 billion a year in videocassette analog piracy. It was a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that determined VCRs were not infringing, which I regret. As a result, we never got the copyright royalty fee, but everything I predicted came true.

How does anyone with any functioning brain cells come up with this? The VCR is the sine qua non of the immensely profitable home video industry. Many modern films don't even become profitable until they are released on video, and yet, he ignores the giant profits the video industry has created for him and his cronies while harping on a few dollars they don't get.

According to this ass, the film industry, which is rolling in more money because the VCR exists than they would without it, is still grousing because the SCOTUS decided to allow me to videotape my niece's birthday party without forking money over to his fat-cat cartel.

The e-mail I just sent Jack Valenti

[Speed Racer]

I just sent our friend Jack an e-mail regarding this interview. I made sure to keep the tone cordial, if not academic as I don't believe that vitriol or rancor will do anything but further convince him that he is right. Anyways, here it is:

Mr. Valenti,

I just read an interview you gave to Derek Slater of the Harvard Political Review and I would like to direct your attention to several pieces of information that directly relate to statements you made in that review.

You said, in response to a question regarding fair use, "What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law."

I would like you to have a look at Title 17, Chapter 1, Sec. 107 of the US Code. You may conveniently read this short section online at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html. Please comment on your statement in light of this information.

You also said, regarding media backups, "But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever. It never wears out. In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless."

Please take a look at a recent article regarding "DVD rot" published by the Sydney Morning Herald at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/31/10438045 19345.html. Again, please comment on your statement in light of this information.

A Few Comments:

[Anonymous Coward]

>JV: What is fair use?

Never has the Hollywood lobby's intention been stated more clearly. This astounding display of candor should be read by every librarian, teacher, student, reader, listener, and movie-watcher in the country.

>JV: ... Also, all railroad tracks in this country are the same standardized width.

Wrong both in fact and in inference. Railroad gauges in this country have historically varied from 2 ft. to 6 ft. or more, and the prevalance of one standard gauge today is not because of a federal mandate, but because most of them VOLUNTARILY adopted the same gauge. Why? Because efficient transportation demanded interoperability between different proprietary systems (i.e., load up a boxcar in California and, if most railroads use the same gauge, you can roll it all the way to Maine without having to stop and reload the freight). A few railroads deliberately tried to confine their rolling stock and customers to their own lines through embargoes or by using an odd gauge. They either changed their minds or went broke as the more efficient, interconnected standard gauge lines built around them.

Does this concept sound familiar? It has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright, and everything to do with open, non-proprietary industry standards.

There has never been a US law mandating a common gauge, and to this day, a number of tourist, passenger, and self-contained industrial lines use oddball gauges, ranging from historical tourist lines like the Durango & Silverton *NARROW GAUGE* Railroad (which was built that way because smaller tracks and trains were cheaper and better able to wind through mountain canyons) to San Francisco's BART transit system (which decided that the smoother ride of a wide gauge was more important than interoperability). Nothing illegal about any of them; they just can't ship freight via connecting lines very efficiently.

Of course, the railroad industry's business model eventually ran into difficulties due to improved alternate methods of distribution. Another parallel suggests itself, hmmmm?

What is needed is a little feedback /. style

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Folks,

Don't whine here - a much more effective way to publicize your thoughts on what drivel Valenti spews and how it is reprinted without comment by the HPR is to create a "user name" on the HPR site and send a "Letter to the Editor" and tell them what you think of the interview.

I was amazed at how easily I was able to create an ID for "Elroy Jetson" and send the following letter to the editor:

"

This piece was disturbing in its acceptance of what a short sighted, mean spirited old prostitute had to say without question. You should be ashamed of printing what Valenti vented verbaitim without checking any of the facts (hint, everything he said can be easily challenged).

Fortunately, I live in the future where Valenti and his ilk are just a bad memory. We can copy our digital media easily and are trusted to do so in a resonsible manner.

EJ

"

Maybe after reading through 10,000 letters, HPR will be less likely to send softballs to political lobbyists with no thought to the future (or even reality).

AC

Re:12 Year olds?

[cdrudge]

SmartRipper and Vidomi. Not that I would know. Sure it's more then 1 click...you have to click 10 times I beleive assuming that you don't want to title the rip at the rip time.

Open SmartRipper (1)
Click Start Rip (2)
Wait for Rip to finish. Click OK (3)
Click X to close app (4)
Open Vidomi (5)
Click Add File (6)
Click file to add (7)
Click open (8)
Click Start (9)
Click X to close app (10).

Of course if you may have a few more steps in there to go to the correct directory, change the file name, etc...but I basically consider it a two step process. Once you get the inital configuration down, it's a cinch.

This assumed that you wanted to make a DivX movie. If you just wanted to backup the DVD, you could just stop at the 4th click since you have the VOB already.

Who does he think he is?

[Dot_Killer]

1. First of all where does the movie industry get off trying to mandate the standards in any industry outside the movie industry, they didn't create the TV, CD, DVD or any media to my knowledge. They should suddenly set the standards for hardware that is capable or delivery their content. Then do stop all piracy maybe the MPAA will decide the internet protocols that allow so many downloads, the routers that pass the traffic, the CD/DVD/TV/radio/floppy/hard drive/anything makers that in any possible way could delivery movies.
a. Why should I have to pay a royalty to some "media" guy for buying a blank piece of media that may or may not have something people like him publish.

2. The MPAA is more like a censorship board then a purely rating board, just listen to the commentary on some of you dvds like Gladiator or Scream, they don't rate content, they decide what content is allowed, what happened to the right of the artists.

3. "What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law." I don't remember any copyright law that somebody didn't pay to put it.

4. How would have censorship made the Vietnam War anymore winnable. The government is supposed to win are support for a war without giving truthful information.

Lastly. What happened to the free market, where does it say it is the government's job to protect an industry or business model from itself. It's not the governments job to keep you afloat even if you are sinking, movies are a utility. They don't want change so they pay big money for bill's to stop any.

Standards evolve

[mistifilio]

You have to have copy prevention mandated by the government sooner or later because otherwise everybody's not playing by the same ground rules. For example, the standards of my cell phone have to be mandated by the FCC because everybody has to operate off the same standards. Also, all railroad tracks in this country are the same standardized width.

The "railroad standard" evolved without a gov't mandate (unless of course were talking about Rome)...search google for "space shuttle chariot railroad". Any number of links to the following text:

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? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Roman war chariots first made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels and wagons. Since the chariots were made for, or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder which horse's rear came up with it, 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.

And now, the twist to the story... There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs, Thiokol makes the SRBs at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses behinds.

So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a Horse's ass!