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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."
"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
If Jack Valenti had his way back in 1982 (he almost did as the Sony BetaMax case went all the way to the Supreme Court) we wouldn't have VCRs today, Blockbuster wouldn't exist and 50% of Hollywoods income wouldn't exist.
The guy is a knob.
Your unmatched formatting skills make me all hot and bothered. Take me now, you animal.
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
Cleara
I am so reassured to know that the future advancements of our society are safely in the hands of visionaries such as Jack Valenti. I hope that he plays a major role in the formation of legistlation related to technological concepts, as he is surely one of the most forward-thinking members of this digital age.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
'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.'
From that quote then we can also infer he wasn't opposed to the Boston Strangler. Maybe he is the "Prince of Darkness".
[from the interview:]
Valenti: But in digital piracy, with the click of a mouse a twelve year-old can send a film hurdling around the world.
Hey Valenti, what sites have you been visiting lately? Pete Townshend wants to know...
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
We're breeding a new group of young students who wouldn't dream of going into a Blockbuster and putting a DVD under their coat. But they have no compunction about bringing down a movie on the Internet. That isn't wrong to them. Why? I don't know.
Nowhere in this article did I find any mention of turning "Bringing down a movie on the Internet" into a viable business model.
People download movies becasue it is easy, convenient, and fast.
Attach a cost.
Keep it easy.
Keep it convenient
Make it fast.
and it could become a viable business model for the future...
The music industry still hasn't gotten the clue, maybe the movie industry still has a chance before it eaten alive by Kazaa, IRC(for the moment), and other file sharing applications.
He doesn't have CD eating children running around his house like I do.
Dear Jack,
I work at the bank where your financial information is stored. We were considering backing up your jillions of dollars but decided after hearing your comments that the information is secure because it is digital.
Have a nice day,
A fan
the lord of darkness himself, Jack Valenti.
I was going to make a comment about slashdot, and professionalism, and editorial responsibility to present unbiased viewpoints..
but..
..fuck it. This guy is Satan on Earth, and I hope he goes the fuck out of business.
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.
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.
Be mindful of the Preview button! Save you, it can!
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
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?
"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."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out."
Damn, I wish he banked with my company... I'd make sure we didn't make any backups of his bank account - since they're not needed and all that.
And then I'd schedule a disaster-recovery test involving fire, flooding, and lots of sledgehammer blows to the DASD where his data was stored.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
What's his point here?
"What is not fair use is making a copy of an encrypted DVD, because once you're able to break the encryption, you've undermined the encryption itself."
So what if I've 'undermined the encryption'?
I do know what the DMCA says about it. But it's absurd and wrong that they can wrap a patent around something that copyright law won't let them accomplish.
Through their own legal battles against used sales and mom & pop rental places, they've made the point that I'm purchasing a liscense to the content. Where is the liscense (if there is a standard one)? Is there a term anywhere that says the liscense is tied to the medium and the encryption somehow?
Also I take issue to this quote:
"We're breeding a new group of young students who wouldn't dream of going into a Blockbuster and putting a DVD under their coat. But they have no compunction about bringing down a movie on the Internet. That isn't wrong to them. Why? I don't know."
This is bullshit. 'Young students' surely do know right from wrong. They know getting a movie (or video game or album) they haven't paid for is wrong. They also know it isn't theft, but a copyright infringement. I just hate his insinuation that we're not only criminals, but stupid.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
HPR: The MPAA has backed several bills mandating copy prevention technologies. Critics have lambasted these bills for curbing consumer's "fair use" rights, including the ability to make back-up copies. How can we balance the interests of consumers and the movie industry?
JV: What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law.
If you were prepping someone like JV for a interview like this (you know he had help coming up with answers), wouldn't you tell him not to lie blatantly?
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
-- Bill "Houdini" Weiss
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?
The more serious, non-copyright-infringing projects are cooking, the better defense we have against indefensible legislation.
Wanna talk to a REAL visionary? check out the MAPS project at http://www.kingdomcomeinstitute.com
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The article could be summed up as follows:
Interviewer: blah blah blah
Valenti: I am a back-pedalling, hypocritical, full-of-shit weasel.
blog |
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.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
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?
Local Man Arrested For Violence At Bank
Police Tuesday arrested a local man at a Bank of America branch. Jack Valenti, 46, was charged with assault and attempted robbery for beating the bank president with a spindle of blank CDRs and attempting to take cash from the teller's drawer. According to the teller, Mr. Valenti became upset when he was informed that, due to a computer error, his account had been closed. Due to recent changes in the bank's policies, the IT staff ceased making backups of the bank's data. When asked about the policy change, the IT manager, who appeared to be choking back laughter, said, "We recently changed our backup policies in light of statements made by Mr. Valenti himself that digital information was timeless and, therefore, did not need backed up. The bank president read that interview and told us he could no longer justify the cost of daily tape backups."
Mr. Valenti is being held on $50,000 bond. His lawyer declined our request for an interview. In similar news, the RIAA has filed suit agains Bank of America for copyright violations. When asked what evidence prompted the suit, a spokesdemon replied, "They had CDRs, didn't they? What more evidence do you need?"
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
We've long suspected as much, but now we know for sure. Is there anything in that article that he says that isn't an out-and-out lie? He was never against VCRs? That's doubtless why he claimed that VCRs would destroy the movie industry. Statistics I hear suggest that movie tickets are now selling better than they have at any time since Jack Valenti was still getting into movies at the "child" price.
Backups aren't necessary? I wonder if, when he was a kid, he ever dropped a record on his bedroom floor and watched it shatter into a million pieces. He obviously really believes that if he scratches a CD, trips and falls and smashes a CD in half, has his cassette player or his VCR eat a tape, or anything like that, he (and we) should all just rush out to buy a new one. No way!
Where does his figure "$3.5 billion a year in videocassette analog piracy" come from? How does he "measure" this loss, being as it's really difficult to measure negative quantities. Is he counting the total street value of large-scale bootleg videotapes, or some sort of hypothetical "if Joe Average hadn't taped Star Trek off the tv, he would have bought the box set" figure?
"What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law. " Well, IANAL, but I quote
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.
That looks like there's something in law, all right. In Canada, the similar reservation is called "fair dealing," in case you're looking for it.
Oh, how he do go on. He claims to have been in Vietnam. Was he exposed to Agent Orange? That's the only other explanation I can think of...
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
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.
Now now, it's all a question of what the meaning of the word "facts" is. You know, how a 48x CD burner is "equivalent" to 2.4 regular CD burners?
Turns out that a $100 bill is equivalent to one fact. A $100 bill wrapped into a round tube, is equivalent to two facts. That same $100 bill, wrapped into a round tube, with one end placed near a line of cocaine on a Hollywood fuckgoblet's silicone implant, and the other end placed near a Senator's nose, is equivalent to several hundred facts.
> Yes, Lobbying turns Capitol hill into Capitalism... every dollar has a vote! YAY!
That ain't Capitalism. That ain't even a free market. Hint: If your business model requires that you lobby Congressmen to pass laws that allow people with guns to preserve your business model, what you're doing is so far away from capitalism that it can no longer see capitalism without the help of very-long baseline interferometry.
Studio costs are just one part of production for a typical album. They also usually include a producer to guide the project (assuming you want to be a commercial success) and paying the band an amount to live off of during the process.
Choruses also usually spend less time in the studio than the typical band. The chorus is working from a precomposed score and can sing their parts right the first time. Overdubbing, multiple takes, mistakes, and experimentation all take time.
Manufacturing/distro is in the $2/cd neighborhood. Marketing can be huge.
We always operate on the fact that everybody needs to know that there's a 55 mph speed limit. That's called a standard.
Last time I checked, the 55 MPH speed limit was acknowledged to be a bad idea and repealed, and if not, then Texas sure doesn't seem to care...
and if that's standardization then I have the ass of a boar. Yet again, last time I checked, the vast majority of cars in the United States are capable of driving both above and below 55 MPH, and do not actually require roads to operate (though it is recommended)
And to further debunk the arguement, the 55 MPH was not a 'standard' in that it was a 'regulation', and that anybody could break it without risk of more than a traffic ticket, there were no technological barriers. Then there's always the fact that a state could legally have a higher speed limit in those days, they simply wouldn't get federal transit maintenance money if they didn't.
Please move your hole-filled arguements over to the sink now, jack...i have some pasta to drain.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
That means that he's claiming about $20 worth of losses for EACH blank videotape.
So I guess they're assuming that every single blank videotape sold is used to pirate movies. Nice.
Wait, just kidding. I just totally made up those numbers. Shit, I should be a lobbyist and live with honor.
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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."
So this is the voice of the Status Quo. That's how money is made to him. He doesn't know how the New System will make money, and he doesn't have to think about it. It's easier to fight for the Status Quo. Why? Because he is scared and it fuels his energy.
Who wouldn't sympathize with this creature? The world it has grew up inside of, loved and excelled at, is eroding away. Mentally, this person terrified of a world where information is moved without oversight; copied without permissions.
We all know there is no way to prevent the erosion. When you get to brass tacks, there are mathematical theories about how information cannot ever be entirely "secure". His battle is to do two things:
- Increase the effort to bypass licensing schemes. Make the appearance of an unlicensed copy an obvious flag of misuse and globally "illegal" activity.
- Increase the punishments for conviction of misuse and license bypass. Make them so horrifically outrageous a small percentage of ne'er-do-wells avoid trying to bypass the license.
So, we have the DMCA and all the legal details. Trial lawyers salivating at the chance to walk these through the courts, since they are headlines and precedent-makers. On the side of the status quo, they are also money makers.
But, in the end, digital information, if able to be delivered to the senses, can be recaptured in ever-increasing quality. Reprocessing of this kind skirts most license protection. For others, only a gentle spin cycle takes care of the rest.
This is the crux of his fear. Movies begin to appear on swapped discs the weekend before release, copied from stolen or illegal screenings. On a P2P network, with ever-increasing sizes and trusted agents, the information flows faster and faster. 1.5MB/sec later, I am popping my own popcorn and bypassing the Status Quo.
Oh woe is the Status Quo! The RIAA is first in the lineup for bat, but the issues are the same. Artists MUST eventually build the New Way to directly reach consumers. If they would only band together, they'd have enough strength to do it. Right now, they are too timid. Newbies in the industry still clamor to jump into the status quo. They are so mistaken. But that's all they know, like Jack. He will die an unhappy man, unable to put the genie back in the bottle.
mug
Well, then, Jack, by your own words you might as well just give up already.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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.
When you compound that over the next three or four years, the music industry is dead. I don't see a future for it. After awhile, who's going to produce it?
Independents.
It now costs about $350,000 to produce a CD.
Nope, it doesn't.
We're breeding a new group of young students who wouldn't dream of going into a Blockbuster and putting a DVD under their coat. But they have no compunction about bringing down a movie on the Internet. That isn't wrong to them. Why? I don't know.
Because maybe it isn't. Nice phrase: "Bringing down a movie" Does he mean downloading or does he mean when people download a movie off the net, find it sux, and then don't waste their money by going to a theater to see it?
What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law.
There's nothing in law about my right to breathe air. The law is designed to prevent unwanted behaviors. The law is not meant to be a list of what is allowed, it is meant to be a list of what isn't allowed. Just because my right to fair use doesn't exist on paper doesn't mean that that right doesn't exist. Perhaps lawmakers believe it to be self-evident.
But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever. It never wears out.
He obviously doesnt buy his own products.
Today, it's illegal to copy a videocassette. No one has a fair use to copy a videocassette. If you lose it, you get another one, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's what people have been doing for generations.
Videocassettes haven't been around for 'generations'.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
He's been spending way too much time in the back of a limousine....
"We always operate on the fact that everybody needs to know that there's a 55 mph speed limit."
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.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
[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.
From his comments about not actually wanting to ban VCR's, despite every indication to the contrary:
"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."
Well how nice, he never wanted to destroy the money-making prerecorded video cassette industry that he so astutely predicted, he only wanted to charge us for time-shifting TV shows and making our own home movies.
This guy really takes the cake. He isn't happy with all the money that selling videocassettes made his association. He just whines about the 3.5 billion extra he thinks he should have been able to extract from people.
The prerecorded videocassette industry came after VCR's were introduced (of course). VCR's were invented to record, not just play. At about the time VCR's became popular, prerecorded movies where available on higher quality play-only media like laser disks; but people weren't buying Laser Disk players, people bought VCR's instead because they could also record with them. After a while, when a large-enough number of movies were available on tape, and the studios started charging a reasonable price for them, the market for videocassettes took off, despite some piracy.
I think that not only did the availability of VCR's create a huge market for videocassettes; it also made the sale of DVD's possible. When DVD players first came out, the pundits predicted that people wouldn't buy them because they couldn't record. Yet people did buy them because of the market for prerecorded copies of movies created by the existence of VCR's.
Is this guy really so stupid that he objects to devices that have made his association untold billions of dollars because some people are not paying? If VCR's couldn't record, not many people would have bought them, and the studios wouldn't have made any money at all.
People buy hardware because of the capabilities of the devices. Once enough hardware is out there, then there is a market for software. Software availability drives hardware sales too, of course. These markets are feedback loops that are sensitive to the characteristics of the hardware and quality and availability of the software. If you change the capabilities of the hardware, you are going to affect how many people buy the hardware, and therefore the market for software.
Record companies are going to be disappointed if they monkey with copy protecting CD's (without lowering the price). Movie companies are going to be disappointed if they force us into their preferred rental model where you pay for each viewing. Computer software companies are going to be sorry if they monkey with the computer hardware to prevent unauthorized execution of their software. All of these companies have an overinflated opinion of the value of their software, and are underestimating the backlash that will occur when they try to shove crippled hardware down our throats. They can only play us for suckers for so long. The huge price discrepancy between the cost of making an illegal copy and buying a legal one creates a vacuum that technology will fill. If the copies are more convenient than the originals, that will only add to the pressure. I wish the companies luck in cutting their own throats.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
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.
Euphemism, what is that a euphemism for something.
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:
While the RIAA should be worried about piracy, I don't see why the MPAA/Valenti is so concerned. Here's why.
I often download divx rips of movies. I then watch the movie. If I like the movie I buy the DVD, which offers superior quality of video and audio and usually a plethora of special features, like director commentaries or deleted scenes. The movie probably cost between $75 - $150 million dollars to produce. I feel that $15 is not too much for me to pay for the quality of the movie and the extra features.
On the other hand, I download an album of VBR mp3's. I listen to it, and I usually like three or four songs, assuming I'm downloading an album because I've been exposed to the artist. (Otherwise, I might like one song.) I look at the CD, which (liberally) might have cost $350,000 to produce. The CD will cost me at least $15, and I will get a very minimal increase in quality with no added features. That is simply not worth it to me. By purchasing the CD, I get nothing, and I am sending the message that I like the music on the album. Of course, I have bought around 10 cd's in the last month, but they were albums on which I enjoyed a majority of songs.
The RIAA needs to adapt. Their options, as I see it, are to start producing better music or dramatically drop the price. Wasting efforts on DRM systems and lobbying for stricter laws is myopic and futile.
Sure, copying entire DVD's is possible now, but it is beyond the capability of most people. Spending my time finding and downloading an entire DVD image is not worth the cost, to me.
I was surprised to discover that Valenti is also concerned about the music industry:
"The music industry now is suffering nine, ten, fifteen percent losses in revenue. When you compound that over the next three or four years, the music industry is dead. I don't see a future for it. After awhile, who's going to produce it?"
I think I can answer his question. I suspect that the same producers will still be available if the music industry dies; I doubt that all the producers will be killed.
I think the question he really wanted to ask was "who's going to PAY to produce it?" The answer right now is that the musicians themselves pay to produce; the record companies just front them the money. If the musicians become about as popular as Britney Spears, they can earn enough to pay back the production costs out of their royalties.
So the question really is, who is going to front the musicians production money when record companies can no longer make obscene profits from their control of music distribution?
There are some possible answers to that, which I'll illustrate from experiments done by one of my favorite groups, King Crimson. The band owns its own record label, and they make 10 times as much money per copy on the CD's on their own label, compared to the CD's that they license the Record companies to distribute. Even if the current music distribution system collapses along with Valenti's predicted collapse of record companies, then independent record companies can still use their distribution methods.
Although King Crimson is a popular enough band to be able to provide their own production money, only their new releases are sure to make back the money. They also have a scheme for paying the cost of producing CD's from old concert recordings. They ask their fans to front them the money by contributing to an account, from which they buy for the CD's that they want from the ones that are produced.
Musicians and producers will survive the death of the current music industry. More and more musicians are bypassing the current record companies because of how badly they are being ripped off. I am confident that music will still be produced because either the artists or their fans will be able to front the production costs. If the big multi-national record companies no longer monopolize the distribution and promotion systems, I think you will find that the artists themselves will be able to take over. After all, the current system is really only helping the small number of hugely popular acts that dominate MTV. All other acts are simply getting screwed by the current system, which charges them for all the costs, but gives them only a tiny percentage of the earnings.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
The belief that movies, music, or books are somehow licensed to you is incorrect. It's a popular misconception, presumably because the copyright industry wants people to believe it. Don't fall for it, the debate over copyright is messy enough without people bring incorrect beliefs into the mix.
If you purchase a DVD, a CD, or a book, you have a right to that particular DVD, CD, or book. In general you have every right to that DVD as you do to a chair you purchase. You can sell it, loan it out, modify it, give it away, use it, and let your friends use it. The only restriction of note on your behavior if copyright law. Copyright law says you can't distribute copies, that right is reserved for the copyright holder.
The copyright industry is spending alot of effort to manipulate the language of the debate. Their goal is to make the debate impossible by removing or invalidating the language of the other side. Don't let them!
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Have a look here...
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http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.ht
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
And yet they still participate. According to Opensecrets.org the movie industry donated $20,172,249 to Democrats in 2002 and $713,874 to Republicans in 2002. Most of that money came in the form of soft contributions, the primary targets of the Mcain Feingold bill. See here for details. The Star player in the industry Disney came in at #66 in the all-time top donors list at opensecrets. See here for the list and here for their profile. They too favor a lot of soft money. Jack's own opensecrets link is here.
And yet he favors censoring technologies and code when his clients' profits are at stake. It's obvious that he doesn't consider code or engineering to be speech but still it seems odd to take this kind of firm line on one area of human endeavor and yet to be so closed off in another. Perhaps his speech is more important than other peoples' speech.
However:
In Jack's world of course we would all be happy to pay for new copies whenever this occurs. Here on earth however my wallet and I object to re-purchasing the same thing.
The same way that we always have with books, cd's and movies, by relying on sensible laws. And accepting the fact that the profit models just have to take a hit now and again.
Not completely true. It is illegal for me to copy the Spider man videotape and to share it with a million friends. It is not illegal for me to copy excerpts from it for activities covered under fair use restrictions. I agree with Jack that you cannot legally make backup copied of your tapes (unlike cassette tapes) but I would argue that this is wronmg and that this restriction, in light of the fair-use provisions, exists soley to guarantee a stream of new customers as tapes wear out and to permit hollywood to adopt a two-tier model of pricing whereby video stores pay more than the rest of us for each copy.
Just how old does he think video tapes are?
Seriously, Would I find one if I looked through my grandparent's house?
Other people have pointed this out already but just to rub his face in it the law is here. Since we haven't been using the Internet for generations he may not be used to it. In his testemony before Congress on the VCR he stated "I am suggesting that the copyright royalty fee lives under the canopy of fair use."
Actually he was opposed to the VCR and what he felt that it would do. The presentation before congress is a beautiful read in which he quotes excerpts from peoples' diaries as evidence not unlike the recording industry's current work with phone surveys. He also decries the first sale doctrine as a route to an unstable marketplace, spends time discussing the greed of Japenese companies and his desire to help the American Consumer. He even admits to infringing himself and asserts that the only purpose of VCR's is to "is to copy coyrighted material that belongs to other people".
He predicted:
Where the hell can you download >700mb in a matter of minutes?
Although this isn't in his article but in the testimony above I feel it should be commented on too:
If that is the case, then he has a lot of explaining to do about the DVD Reigon Encoding system.
Final quotes from Jack:
The reason that students are able to pirate videos and music without guilt is that they have transcended the idea that legality and morality are equivalent. Most moral people believe that it is right to pay into the systems from which they partake, but they also believe they're payment should be reasonable. If Hollywood shells out millions of dollars, but profits grossly in the box office, those of us who go to movies in the theatre should have no moral obligation to pay for the movie again when it comes out in DVD format, especially if we're paying for the media ourselves. Morality is very subjective, but I feel that most people would agree this is fair. The MPAA doesn't die from piracy, they are simply less able to grope for more money.
We shouldn't let the issue of morality cloud our vision on the issue of copyright protection, however. The most important issue isn't whether or not piracy is costing record and motion picture companies money. The important issue is the far over reaching effects that technological copyright protection can have. Even if laws may be broken, that is not enough to justify censorship or infringement on our right to privacy in our own digital homes. It is quite impossible for a copyright violation to cause loss of life, except by some convoluted set of circumstances, and the laws made to protect copyright should be just as trivial.
There are those of us who believe that copyright laws shouldn't exist at all, but if they must exist, the limits we place should not be on the consumers of information, but those who sell it. The holders should have only a tenuous grasp on the right to reproduce that can be revoked if they abuse their privilage. That kind of justice will only ever become reality if we the people stop allowing our votes to be purchased.
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The really sad thing to think about is that with all these ideas people come up with, big business would rather invest more in saving the present system than it would probably cost to implement and run a new, improved system that everyone would go crazy for.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The trouble is, they want the best of both worlds. They want to sell you a "license" for the content, so they can place limitations on the product after you buy it that would be legally unenforceable on a purely physical purchase, but they also want the content tied inexorably to the physical media, so you have to buy a replacement from them when the technology changes or your copy wears out.
As far as I'm concerned, it should be one or the other; either you sold me a physical CD and I can do whatever the hell I want to with it (copy it to another media type, reverse-engineer it, give it to my buddy, etc.), or you sold me a license to use a musical album for personal use that is not bound to any physical media, so that I have the right to a replacement (either obtained any way I please, i.e. copied from a friend's CD, or from the licenser for a nominal fee, nominal meaning the cost of the physical manufacturing and shipping) if my physical copy breaks.
DennyK
Mr. Valenti, you've already said that piracy will eventually destroy the movie business- but are there disadvantages to it as well?