MPAA Names Dan Glickman To Replace Jack Valenti

Zordak writes "Fox News is reporting that the MPAA has chosen a new chief to replace Jack Valenti. Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF. Ha ha. Just kidding, Dave Barry style. Dan Glickman is actually a seasoned Washington politician, having served as a Kansas representative and agriculture secretary under President Clinton. He has previously been a lobbyist for the Walt Disney Corporation, and his son is the producer of such quality fare as 'Shanghai Knights' and 'Rush Hour.' Don't be looking for that 'approved' Linux DVD player soon."

Comments

Replace?

[GuyMannDude]

This new guy might be taking the job of Jack Valenti but I ask you who could possibly ever hope to "take the place" of good ol' Jack?

"What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law."

GMD

Re:Replace?

[TheGavster]

The thing that gets me is they *are* salaried. Yet the MPAA propoganda-mercials make it sound like pirating the movie takes away from them. The basic labor gets a salary, the star has a contract. No matter what the take of of the movie is, they get paid the same. The only people who lose when a movie sucks are those responsible, the people in charge. Seems a fair enough system to me.

last time I checked...

[SuperBanana]

Don't be looking for that 'approved' Linux DVD player soon."

I'm sorry, but I just really have a pet peeve for geeks who don't show the slightest business-world saavy.

First off, there ARE approved DVD players running Linux, if I'm not mistaken.

Second, if by "approved" you mean "MPlayer will have the little DVD industry logo", change "not soon" to "never". There are royalties involved, and that's never going to change. The DVD consortium cares about profits from the royalties first and pleasing the movie industry second (what's the movie industry gonna do, go to another format? Stop releasing DVD disks? Uh huh).

"Supporting open source, non-royalty-paying, market-share-stealing-from-royalty-paying-players, pirates-movies-easy-as-1-2-3, bypasses-our-forced-previews-and-FBI warnings software" has never been on anyone's(manufacturers, DVD standard consortium, movie industry, MPAA) list, and if you even suggested it, you'd be blown out of the room by the severe laughing fit that resulted.

Between gasps for air, grabbing their sides, and wiping their tears, they'd say, "oh look, he's so naive, isn't that just the cutest thing in the world".

Re:last time I checked...

[geekoid]

"Supporting open source, non-royalty-paying, market-share-stealing-from-royalty-paying-players, pirates-movies-easy-as-1-2-3, bypasses-our-forced-previews-and-FBI warnings software"

if there is a market for that, you can bet it will be filled. I think the DVD player manufacturers no damn well that tere is a market for skipping anything on the disk, and a few other features.
You don't really think those 'backdoors' are there on accident, go you?

Mod parent troll! You can get An approved Xine

[Anonymous Coward]

For only $4.95! Why are the mods fucked up with crack all the time?

I Work At USDA, And That Ain't Necessarily So.

[saudadelinux]

I work at USDA, and was here during Glickman's time. He's a pretty regular guy.

If he saw you in the hall, he'd say hi. He mostly ate in the regular employee cafeterias, instead of the Secretary's Dining Room (which has pretty the same food, but also wood paneling and table service).

His official portrait on the Patio (just past the Visitor's Center, if you come in the Whitten Building) shows him standing behind his chair, jacket on the back of the chair, with a kind of sarcastic look on his face. All the others have the usual standing-there-button-up-jacket sort.

When 50 black farmers demonstrated in front of Clinton's White House for better treatment from USDA, Bill called Dan, and Dan put together the Civil Rights Action Team (CRAT). This team made 92 recommendations to ameliorate the problem, and they were put into place by the Civil Rights Implementation Team (CRIT).

Glickman gave his full backing to this effort, which, frankly, was resisted in some of the USDA agencies cited in the CRAT Report

He always struck me as a pretty fair, stand-up kind of guy, so it wouldn't surprise me if well-reasoned, non-hostile Linux advocacy were presented to him, a major victory could be won.

Re:I Work At USDA, And That Ain't Necessarily So.

[demachina]

In this case the Medicare administrator was intentionally concealing the known cost and threatening his employees to keep them from divulging it. It had been made clear that it wouldn't pass if over $400 billion so thats what he said it cost. As soon as it was passed the Bush administration announced the real cost. They ate a little crow, but it was passed and all their friends in the drug, insurance and managed care industry had pork for dinner.

Re:Meet the new boss...

[plj]

Well, I'm not an U.S. citizen so I do not vote there, have never even visited there, know that DMCA is not really a democrat v. republican issue (and that Clinton signed it into law), and that this guy is from copyright/DRM enforcement point of view probably as bad kind of asshole as Valenti ever was.

But that said, I'm still always kind a way happy when I'll hear, that some elected/chosen person somewhere in the States was a democrat instead of a republican; every republican happens to get connected into Reagan/Bush -style administrations in my mind, and I think every rep. president of the U.S. at least after T.R. has somehow sucked - save perhaps Eisenhower, who wasn't even a politican in the first place - comparing to democrat ones.

Perhaps it is just, because I'm a foreigner; for me, the republicans always seem to have been those, who seem to have forgotten that U.S. != World. Lately (during Bush admin at least) they also seem to have been those, who do not care anything about the greed of megacorps (or who even run them by themselves).

Re:Anti-piracy

[eliza_effect]

Well, I think part of the issue is where you buy the DVDs. I've become spoiled, I think, from buying DVDs at Fry's Electronics. You can get DVDs the are less than two months old for $15. They have "classics" for less than $10, regularly. Fry's has single-handedly increased my DVD collection by 50%. But I've seen this same pricing model at Target, and I'm willing to bet that places like Costco follow it as well.

Hey, don't rag on Shanghai Knights

[Nova Express]

Shanghai Knights is probably the best (that is to say, least stupid) of all the films Jackie Chan has done in Hollywood. Sure, it's not a patch on his best Hong Kong work, but it has a complete, blessed, 100% absence of Chris Tucker.

Not a problem...

[Trogre]

After seeing the appalling quality of "approved" Windows DVD players, I don't *want* an approved one under Linux.

This is for a number of reasons:

1. You can be sure that such a player would be closed source because of imagined "intellectual property" contained in the DVD standard. Development would be only done by commercial interests and would most likely stagnate.
   
   
2. In order for it to be approved, it will have to obey silly restrictions like DRM, no full-screen and mandatory no-skip tracks (for trailers, FBI warnings, etc).
   
   
3. Putting aside that it's actually illegal in many countries, it will impose DVD zones back into players. Something I haven't needed to deal with for a number of years now.
   
   
4. There will likely be a crackdown on the "unauthorized" players that actually work. This would also include all command-line DVD tools, such as DVD ripping software which lets you back up your movies (so your 3-year-old doesn't get vegemite on your original Ice Age video).
   
   
5. Any free version would be crippled unless you pay $$$ for the "full" version. Another remnant of outdated business models that I haven't had to worry about for a while.
   
   

No thanks, I'll stick with Ogle, Xine and MPlayer.

Reduced prices of DVDs

[Ra5pu7in]

Whether dropping the price would bring additional sales depends on how many consumers put off or don't buy DVDs simply because the price seems high. Those of us who don't see the value in buying most DVDs (why pay for something I won't watch more than a couple times) won't buy even if the price is dropped by half. I'd rather rent them when I want them (at an average of $5 per rental, I can rent it 6-8 times!).

Also, dropping the price does something else. It doesn't reduce the cost of the DVD, marketing, and packaging. It only reduces the net profit earned. You can't drop the price by half and sell twice as many and balance out. It doesn't work that cleanly. You would have to drop the price by half the net profit to get that. (And somehow do this so the store still makes the same profit, or you'll have trouble there.)