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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."
same as the old boss.
The MPAA and RIAA need to realize that they make many billions of dollars each year, even though they charge non-optimal prices for their content. If they charged less, I think they'd actually make more money. I hope this new guy realizes that the cost of the litigation against your average file-sharer is likely more than the gains against piracy. The key here is simple economics: more people would be able and willing to pay if music and movies cost less.
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
watch this
I am going to respect change in the MPAA by changing my downloaded bittorrent movies from...
Movies Downloaded
to
Downloaded Movies
Guess you learn something new every day...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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.
How can you play with my emotions like that, you insensitive clod?
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
You know, paying lip-service to the demands of your 'enemies' (hey! they're not going to see us as friends) is a time-honoured "solution" to a sticky problem. So if the MPAA comes out with 'Linux users can be legitimate users if they do X, Y, and Z", even if this only applies to Linux *vendors* , they could claim a certain amount of brownie points in a courtroom.
"They refused the compromise we offered", "They steal (sic) our IP", "We demand the death penalty", (with the exception of the latter, at least I hope) these are reasonable "court" arguments. Consider the case of the clueless judge (sorry your honour, but it's a fact that most of your kin aren't technically aware), the "industry expert" (read: paid shill), the "compromise offer", and the cold hard law.The 'rock and a hard place' doesn't come into it. Yes I'm aware I'm mixing my metaphors, it's late
Let's hope they continue to deny us a 'reasonable' way of doing what we want - at least then we have a reasonable argument that they're being unreasonable. This is more important than most realise, I think....
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
There's a very informative biography on him here.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
Um, Sonny Bono, not Bono. Please don't confuse people who might think that our future Secretary General (when the world gets all cool and Bill and Ted's revolution comes) might have done something heinous like that!
Be Excellent To Each Other.
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
It looks like this guy knows how to lobby very effectively. The MPAA is an organization whose primary purpose is to lobby for the interests of the motion picture industry. Were you really expecting someone who would take things in a new direction? (he was probably hired based on his ability to keep things the way they are!)
The only thing that's surprising to me is that he doesn't seem to have much connection to the industry. I would have expected an insider to be promoted instead of someone being hired in.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
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".
Please help metamoderate.
Under Glickman's leadership, USDA has restructured and modernized its enormous, decentralized field office structure, helping cut administrative and overhead costs by about $4 billion. He also has taken a strong, personal interest in civil rights. The Department has recently reviewed its civil rights practices for the first time and has dramatically improved its commitment to fairness and equality, in both treatment of its employees and execution of its programs. At Glickman's direction, the Department settled one of the largest civil rights class action suits filed against the U.S. Government.
Unfortunately, I didn't get interested in local politics until nearly the end of his term in office, so I can't say too much about his political leanings...
Microsoft delenda est!
Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF.
When I read that sentence, all of a sudden my heart opened up and I was filled with joy and happiness! I felt incredibly warm and fuzzy all over! :-(
The next sentence almost killed me
How insensitive and cruel some people can be!
Doesn't this seem like a huge conflict of interest? I realize that there's no laws against it, but wouldn't the other MPAA members worry that this guy's kid works for only one of the member companies?
Anybody think we can get an interview/Q&A session with this guy? If we can let him know a little more about our position (was it the journalist from MIT that interviewed Valenti?), maybe we can avoid an out-and-out war, and let him know we really care about this stuff...
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
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.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
He looks like Mr Burns.
.. an "approved" Linux DVD player ? Me thinks not ! When something is made legal, it takes the whole fun out of the game IMHO...
Just a thought
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
This is for a number of reasons:
No thanks, I'll stick with Ogle, Xine and MPlayer.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.)
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Well now that's just fucking mean.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I suggest that those developers involved in software projects which are impacted by MPAA policies get in contact with Dan and present their cases in a reasoned and non-confrontational way. We may be able to partially turn around MPAA silliness.