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Jack Valenti: The Exit Interview
thecounterfeit writes "Engadget has an interview with Jack Valenti, the outgoing president of the MPAA and the object of hatred for many hacker after he took he on DVD Jon, who is retiring tomorrow after more than three decades on the job. Engadget could have been a little harder on him when he says stuff like, "When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies," but it is at least slightly encouraging to hear that he owns a TiVo."
Engadget could have been a little harder on him when he says stuff like, "When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies,"
If there was a way to duplicate a cognac glass for 10 cents each, it'd be a different story.
DVD Jon is retiring?
"When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies"
Since CDs can stop working with a small scratch, unlike Cognac glasses, and the studios prevent back ups then they are the ones to replace it. Give us the ability to back up our software, Jack, and we won't need to bother you about replacements.
"...the outgoing president of the MPAA and the object of hatred for many hacker after he took he on DVD Jon..."
I'm sorry, what? English, please!
...but the cognac glass maker should not prevent me from making my own cognac glasses in case the ones I purchased from them break.
No one asks the stores to do copies for them, they do the copies them self.
What would you say to a mom who wants to make a backup of her kids' DVD movies? When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies. Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever. Haha, for a minute there, that sounded like a real interview with a big name in the movie industry. Oh. It was? Next you're going to try and tell me the RIAA and MPAA is trying to report billions of dollars in losses due to privacy! Oh...
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
...and buy 10 cognac glasses, you'd be pretty pissed if you weren't allowed to get a handful of sand and have a go yourself, or let your friends borrow them.
....Every week J.D. Lasica will speak with someone who is helping shape this crazy world of gadgets and technology that we're all so obsessed with...
reminds me of the search-engine belt buckle..
oh wait.. but who was obsessed with it anyway ?
fifteen jugglers, five believers
"When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies,"
That nice, except Cognac doesn't make sunglasses for toddlers. Many DVDs, on the other hand, are aimed towards children despite the discs being quite fragile.
If your kid's big wheel breaks after only minutes of riding it, I'm sure Fisher Price has a replacement plan for it.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
If you RTFA he says: When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies. Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever. The last sentence is key here. If he really means this, then a backup copy is quite natural as the DVD is merely an imperfect way (easy to scratch) to hold what is actually bought, the digital content which is meant to last forever.
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
>can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it.
Yes, 1000 algorithms is the way to go..? ...how about just using one that works..
After all, if you wait until a crooked cop retires before you blow his head off with a 12 guage shotgun it's not the same as murdering a cop.
Hmmmmmm...
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
He says "When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies," , however Disney offers a replacement fee if you damage your DVD. Which is it RIAA?
Did Slashdot really receive only one submission for this story? It's really a horrible selection to put on the front page, given its horrible grammar.
Engadget has an interview with Jack Valenti, the outgoing president of the MPAA and the object of hatred for many hacker after he took he on DVD Jon, who is retiring tomorrow after more than three decades on the job.
He took he? On DVD Jon, who is retiring tomorrow?
when he says stuff like
Yeah, shame on Engadget, and stuff.
but it is at least slightly encouraging to hear that he owns a TiVo.
This is similar to the MS Security Manager running Firefox news bit. Because Jack Valenti owns and enjoys a TiVo, means he condones all aspects of the technology? No, it's more likely Jack Valenti likes to use a TiVo as a new-fangled VCR.
Let's see what Google turned up:
"The MPAA, NFL and other sports leagues attempted to convince the agency that the devices pose a threat to copyrighted works and could be used to broadcast games where they are blacked out. FCC commissioners disagreed, finding that the fears were unfounded. MPAA chief Jack Valenti, who will step down next month, personally lobbied all five commissioners, FCC sources said."
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
-If- I bought a license to the music, it is not "destroyed" by scratching the disk. -If- I bought the media, I can do with its fysical properties what I like. Like copying.
Make up your mind Jack.
"/Dread"
Do they really believe that security though obscurity is going to help them. For every "genius" they employ to obfusticate their format their will be 100 geniuses out there ready to write software to get round it.
The fact that the media is in the physically possession of the users means that given enough time all security measures can be defeated.
----
A digital "thing"? What the hell is that?
Digital data can be stored on any kind of media. Does the data make the media invincible?
I think not.
It seems the obvious answer is to provide a guarantee. If my guaranteed DVD goes bad, I could return the original for a replacement. Isn't that how most consumer products work? If my Cognac glasses were sold as unbreakable with a guarantee of replacement, it would be the same case.
I really do believe we can stuff enough algorithms in a movie that only the dedicated hackers can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it.
Yes, clearly the man is an expert on the tech side of the issue and we all should listen to what he has to say about the tech.
Seriously, nobody should be surprised of the fuss caused by this guy. I mean, who'd be surprised that a truck driver (or a businessman for that matter) would screw up a surgery? Jack would be better off listening more carefully to the suggestions of his tech savvy advisors.
When you buy a DVD you are buying the media AND the right to watch it. When the DVD is damaged, you still have the right to watch, although now it's unwatchable. Your money bought you both a tangible and an intangible product. You make a backup you are only protecting your right to the intangible product that you paid for. If jack valenti or anyone else wants to deprive you of that right they are stealing from you. I don't know when the systems of the world shifted to the point where consumers stealing from companies are criminal but companies stealing from consumers is just plain good business, but I for one don't like it. But who knows, maybe my opinion would change if I was on the other end of all this stealing. :/
LIE: "Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever."
No it doesn't. CDs rust because of manufacturing defects. DVDs scratch so easily you'd think they were designed to need replacing if the kids get hold of them! Jack's comment is like saying that insurance is unnecessary because houses don't burn down. Software manufacturers will replaced damaged media for a nominal fee. The DVD manufacturers could make the "you don't need a backup" line a reality if they offered $1 replacements for damaged DVDs and $0.50 replacements for CDs that get damaged, and indeed, there should be a legal mandate for them to do so upon production of a scratched original. They could handle it through the record stores - bring in your old CD or DVD, hand over your dollar, and get a bright new shining one. That would make consumers happy about buying such fragile media. At that point, however, they would not be able to say - sorry, run out of copies. They would have to make more copies rapidly if more people come back. This should also last as long as the copyright lasts upon the programme material + 50, just in case. Ofcourse, if you don't copyright it and give it to the public domain, you don't have to supply backups - now that's fair.
LIE "But I visited the labs at Caltech, and they're running an experiment called FAST where they can bring down a DVD-quality movie in 5 seconds. " what's that - about 1GB per second?? Anyone know a hard drive that fast and affordable for my edit suite??? Sure cache it in RAM first..... Seriously Jack...
LIE "There is no fair use to take something that doesn't belong to you. That's not fair use..... Now, fair use is not in the law." It's fair that we get screwed by the MPAA, but not fair when every TV advert for every movie I've ever seen says "own it on DVD" - for emphasis "OWN IT". If I own it, whatever I do with it is fair. If I own it I don't have a right to a free or very cheap replacement of the media. I know I don't own software as it's licenced. But I must own the DVD as you told me - it can't be licenced. Now which way do you want it Jack. If I own it, I'll do whatever the hell I like with it.
LIE "So there are no restrictions that Hollywood wants to place on what people can do with media on their computers?
Well, I can't tell you that. We have to see what the technology can provide." So what you're really saying Jack is that you want Linux and open source OSs illegal, everyone to buy Microsoft and have computers so restricted that they're practically games and entertainment consoles. Jack - you're such a hypocrite.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
The only reason a 'digital thing' lasts forever is because it is, by nature, an idea. It is data, it is not any material. The idea of the movie stays forever, the data of the movie does not change, but, of course, the medium it is placed on can easily be destroyed.
Valenti - You are an awesome figurehead to hate. Don't ever get a clue, and fix all the problems in the industry, because then I might have some moral qualms about downloading movies.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
I guess he is clearly missing the point with that cognac glasses example:
it's not the glas that matter but the contents of the glass!
I buy a glas of cognac because I want cognac, I get the glas with the cognac - not the other way round.
Now my glass breaks - this can happen. No big deal however, because I poured a bit of cognac into another glas beforehand so I can still taste it's fine taste.
(replace "glass" with CD/DVD and "cognac" with movie/music in case you didn't get it)
I guess those people really don't want to see the reality...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
...and, on the seventh day, God switched off his Mac.
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
Jack Valenti, 1982 click me
Having read TFA, it's quite clear to me that the industry is dominated by crusty old men (COM). Whilst they are reasonably happy to tolerate Baby Boomers (let's face it, BBs have created lots of wealth for COMs), they are not particularly happy about the surly behaviour of Generations X & Y. And why is that ? Many of us have an inherent distrust of their abuse of intellectual property. There is exactly ONE solution to the "problem" of copyright circumvention. Namely, make *everything digital* so utterly accessible (i.e cheap & easy to download) so that it's just not worth the effort to pirate it. Most digital "content" falls into the category of luxury (i.e it's nices to have rather then essential). Standard economic theory stresses that luxuries have a very elastic demand curve. i.e. you lower the price and sales volumes increase massively. Result: low price (i.e. $1/CD or $2.50/DVD) = huge sales and bugger all piracy.
It's good luck to be superstitious
But is there anything wrong with making a copy of those glasses you bought? Perhaps you bought some fine china from a store, and then had a device to make a copy of them, even if a cheap mold.
Will you testify that Jack Valenti has infringed the law he stands for by making a copy of Doom 3 ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Because asopposed to those Cognac glasses I bought which are my property, you don't sell me those movies / songs or software - you license them to me.
That is, I pay for the licecnse to use (actually to get it ditributed to me, but who cares) and not for the item I buy.
The MPAA and other robber barons of IP can't have it both ways - if I'd be buying ther songs / movies to do as I please I wouldn't need to ask your damn premission to back them up in the first place.
But of course, you knew that already. The issue here is NOT about backup or even about should I be paying money to the copyright holder (I should) - the issue is that you want to CONTROL what I do with the songs / movies etc.
Gilad
Gilad.
because I have great faith in the technological genius that's out there
Yes, but which side are these technological genius' fighting for?
I have said, technology is what causes the problem, and technology will be the salvation of the problem. I really do believe we can stuff enough algorithms in a movie that only the dedicated hackers can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it. In time, we'll be able to do this, because I have great faith in the technological genius that's out there.
Is it just me, or does this sound really stupid? How are normal dvd players going to be able to play these non-standard dvd's? And besides, if you can play it, it is possible to record.
So they want us to treat DVD purchases like long term rentals? They're not really our property once we've paid for them, we're just borrowing them indefinately?
Ah, this is classic! An old man's uninformed belief that somehow we can protect people from thinking!
"I really do believe we can stuff enough algorithms in a movie that only the dedicated hackers can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it."
Re-he-he-heally. Don't you realize that once ONE person breaks it (out of, oh, maybe, 3 billion hackers worldwide), then you've got the raw data, which you can copy directly to whatever and whomever you want. This is some sort of religious belief in encryption and obfuscation that is not shared by anyone who knows anything about scientific computing. CSS was broken, AES, DES, RCA, VHS, MP3, GTFO, and WTF have all been broken. And guess what? The future ones will be too!
Find a new path.
-Dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
It's like he was just making the answers up as he went along. Most of the inaccuracies were already pointed out so I won't bring those back up.
The licensing issue (digital things last forever) really shocked me. Tech stuff sure, he's old and never had a clue. I'm not shocked he just said "use 1000 algorithims" and then followed up with "only the dedicated hackers will make copies". I'm sure those dedicated hackers won't bother making anyone else copies.
but really the "cognac glass" analogy was something he *should* be able to spell out for us and have it stay consistent with the party line. I don't license cognac glasses! Here's a better analogy jerk weed.
If a lease a car I am essentially licensing it and have to stay within a lot of restrictions. If I BUY the car I can do whatever the hell I like. OK cars may be a little too modern for Jack. I think he might understand a horse analogy but it's 7am and I really need sleep.
Wow, I didn't think "DVD Jon" had even been alive for 30 years, much less working in this field!
Oh, wait. The poster meant that Jack Valenti is retiring after three decades. Hmmm, rather an unfortunate syntactic structure there, isn't it? Wouldn't it be great if Slashdot had editors, who could catch the most egregious bad grammar?
Let's not even get into "he took he"...
Language matter. Words mean something. Diction counts. Try learning some.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
By the letter of the law, my using Bittorrent to download the latest Adam Sandler flick is stealing.
But I don't have equal representation in DC either. Democratic law is the result of agreed upon rules that the entire society has determined to be equitable. Bribeing legistators & judges is hardly inside the bounds of law, and it is exactly how this man creates the laws that make my action illegal. (not talking about morrality)
"10 congac glasses"
The glass maker doesn't tell me what brand of congac I can use in the glasses either. Nor do they stipulate what in country I may drink from those glasses.
If I think that congac glasses are too fragile, I can go out and by a mettal cup (gold electro plated PLEASE!!). I am not forced to drink my congac in one style of cup, that I find inferiour, and fragile.
The only reason these 'illegal softwares' exist is because consumers have demanded it, and his industry has failed to exploit that market. Excuse me while I cry a river of tears. Linux users demanded the ability to view DVDs, they ignored then sued (btw, how much money did they loose by linux users 'illegaly' renting and viewing DVDs on DCSS software?) Internationals demanded to be able to view their DVDs in America or Europe. (only legal DVDs are region encoded) Movie collectors asked that they be able to transport the format of a movie from one media to the next, and not be forced to repurchase their entire collection every 10 years. (or be forced to maintain old media players) Movie fans asked that they NOT be gouged at the theater. Music fans wondered why CD's cost so much, when most of the music on them they don't want.
The technology to solve all of these problems have been around for years. and iTunes long since demonstrated that content deliver online works, as long as you don't price gouge. But that would force the media industry to become competitive, and *shock* *horror* change with the market! Why they would find it so much harder to gauge customers.
Why else would I prefer a grainy lo-res DVD/Cam rip to a DVD with all the features? 'cause I won't spend $30 on a freeking movie.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Am I the only one who after reading "Jack Valenti: The Exit" instantly thought about goat.se? Because, you know, Jack Valenti is quite an arsehole, no doubt about that.
First, this is NOT meant as a flame at all. I would just like to know. Who here actually backs up their DVD's or CD's?
I ask this because I do not back up my media. Nor does my family. Nor does anyone in my wife's family. Nor does anyone I work with or even know. NO one I've met in "the real world" has backed up a DVD or CD. Ever! Sure, back when albums and tapes were the big thing I would make a tape of an album...but to listen to in my car really. But then again, they weren't really back-ups as the sound on analog tape was horrible compared to an album.
So I ask you, are there really people out there backing up all their media like this? By the way, I have kids, my wife's family also has many kids. So far, we haven't had anyone get a scratched DVD...not saying that we won't, but I guess we show the kids how to handle DVD's...not that it takes a genius to grasp the concept.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
And when you break the Cognac glasses, you are probably already drunk anyway, so it seems nearly irrelevant as compared to breaking your glasses when you are in the cinema and you try to watch-- OK, I lost the analogy...
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Oh wait, would that be umm.. the parasitic movie and record industries that have been getting rich suing all the 12 year olds and grandmas for the past 2 years? Yes, I believe it would.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
From the interview:
Seems to have changed eir tune since the 1982 Betamax testimony:
I hope not. I seriously admire this guy.
I remember a recent discussion on Slashdot:
"Does anyone know Jon's doctor?
"I want to know if he really does have testicles made of brass."
"Not only are they made of brass, but he's got five of them."
"I want to meet Jon's tailor. I hear he makes pants that fit like a glove."
A true hero and inspiration for every Slashdotter.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Well considering I have DVDs that are nearly 6 years old now that are dual-layer, I guess that means you should look into taking better care of your media. I mean I almost killed my brother over handling of my discs. I have a few Dreamcast discs that nearly cost him his life.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Was it just me, or did anyone else find the "interview" pathetic?
Where's the followup questions? Jack gives us his crackpot analogy of backup being the same as physical replacement and the interviewer doesn't query him on the differences.
This is a fawning and pathetic excuse of an interview that's only been done because the interviewer promised to play nice in exchange for the exposure his site would get interviewing Jack Valenti.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
That's interesting, because using Cognac glasses certainly gives me a more intellectual look than using beer mugs, though in any case it is rarely free as in beer, even if my speech starts to sound a little-- OK, I lost the analogy...
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
When you go to the department store and buy 10 cognac glasses, you'd be pretty pissed if you weren't allowed to get a handful of sand and have a go yourself, or let your friends borrow them.
When I want to "have a go myself" I usually get a handful of baby oil. I've never heard about sand, though it surely gives the song "Enter Sandman" a hole new meaning...
Thanks, Jack! I used to think camcorder movies were crap, but now that I have your personal recommendation, I'll be certain to avoid such prejudice in the future!
When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies,"
Ouch, it sounds like he doesn't know the difference between intellectual property and physical property.
By extension: if I'm an artist and I sell a song to him, I guess I only sell that physical media with the song, and not the song itself.
Hmmm, or is he saying that intellectual property can only be owned by a corporation and not an individual? Great! Therefore, if I buy a Cognac glass, I can make a hundred exact (or modified) copies. Isn't that OK?
But then again, who runs down to the department store to by 10 Cognac glasses? Who is this guy?
for many hacker after he took he on DVD Jon, who is retiring tomorrow after more than three decades on the job.
who the hell is proof reading this stuff ?
you would think DVD Jon is retiring, there is only one hacker "for many", and I am not sure he who he took he is.
I buy VERY EXPENSIVE CD's with music for my kids. They take them out of the CD player, put them on the floor, walk on them and the next time they play them it's experimental rap music, not Disney songs. No backup = dead within a week.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
A digital thing lasts forever.
Jack Valenti's almost right, yet missing the point entirely. A digital thing will last forever if it can leave the shackles of whatever physical medium it's stored on. If you have two copies, and only one of them is likely to get destroyed at any given time (say, you've copied a CD to a friend with the explicit orders that ey can't listen to it because that would be illegal, just to have an off-site backup), then you'll always have a perfect copy.
But being able to copy and manage the data better is the only advantage digital media have over their analogue counterparts. If you take away the rights to copy them, there is no point in using digital media in the first place.
"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."
Reference is also made to "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes" -- to which "remix[ing] a few seconds of a Hollywood movie into a home movie project" certainly applies, and argument could be made that that remixing constitutes criticism, comment, or even teaching (video editing is a skill, too).
Between Valenti making claims like these, and the American Library Association going head-to-head with the Business Software Alliance to combat their misinformation about copyright, I have to wonder whether these guys realise the long-term damage they're doing to their reputations, since eventually, the truth will out.
Anyway, the law exists, just in case anyone was wondering. Kthxbye.
Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like you're in the shower. Fuck like you're being filmed.
It doesn't have to be untrue, because either way it's missing the point. Wish I had modpoints to reflect that.
rewriting history since 2109
After spending several months searching eBay for a replacement CD after one of those crap Pioneer 6-disc cartridge changers scratched the heck out of one of my favorite discs. I'm in the process of converting all of my CD's to MP3's so that I can make a single CD to listen to in the car for a trip rather than having to carry 15 of them with me. I also make backup copies if I am going to carry a CD wallet just so there is no risk to the originals.
In other words, he is telling me the movie or software or music in the DVD/CD is something I physically own. If I like, I can borrow, give, hire the cognac glasses to whoever I want (I don't think I can hire video to my neighbour. it can get busted by MPAA). I can re-export the item to whereever I like (I don't think I can sell DVD to out-of zone area or there is any zoning issue regarding the use of cognac glasses)....
They can't pick everything only to their advantage. I am talking about play fair. If I am not buying your movie, but buying the right to watch the movie for myself, give me back the goddamned right to make copies. If I am phyiscally owning a movie, I am fine for that. Remove the DVD zoning and the video rental restrictions then.
And good riddance you old cock sucking goat.
Er, Cognac is actually pretty cheap. Can't stand the stuff...
You have been apparently indoctrinated with a great success, but the fact is that you don't need any special "right to watch" a movie, like you don't need any "right to read" a book, at least not yet. The only thing that the copyright law regulates is the right to publish and distribute, not any magical "right to see" which would somehow make illegal the very act of merely looking at publicly available things, which would be completely ridiculous. Please do not spread the FUD. The scums like Jack Valenti want us to think that way, but it does's make it true. Please try to keep that in mind. This is actually extremely important because if all of people think like yourself, then no one will protest when corporations finally put it into law, because everyone will think it has always been that way, which is simply not true. I wouldn't have even answered to this post but it was moderated as Score:5, Insightful so apparently there are more misinformed people here.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
It's not encouraging at all that he has and enjoys a TiVo. Most of the strongest anti-gun pundits have guns of their own, and many have concealed-weapon permits. You're failing to grasp the underlying concept: they want to have all the rights, and leave you with none. The same thing applies here. You can't oppress people if they're in the same caste as you.
but it is at least slightly encouraging to hear that he owns a TiVo."
That's not encouraging. That's hypocricy.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
A majority of my CDs are independant rock, punk or very niche genre CDs that have very small quantities produced and are almost certainly unobtainable a year or so after they're released. If I had the money I'd be making several backups of each.
A digital thing lasts forever???
Maybe after 10 cognac glasses...
diegoT
>"When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and
>two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesnt give you two backup
>copies,"
It's an interresting observation that "after more than three decades on the
job" he hasn't got a clue about what the businesses he was representing
is actually selling! --He, obviously thinks the record/movie industry is selling
silver discs! --That's not what they're selling. They're selling the _rights_
to watch/listen to a given artistical performance.
The comparison with cognac glasses is as absurd as the industry he was
representing.
- K
1) I can take one of the remaining glasses to a friend who is a hobbyist glass blower and see if he can make one for me free of charge (assuming the glass design is trademarked)
2) I can get my own Cognac glass blowing setup and make an myself a new matching glass once I've aquired the skills and materials.
3) After making one or two for myself, I can crank out a whole bunch for my friends free of charge as Christmas presents, anniversary gifts, or wedding presents.
4) I can take detailed measurements of the glasses, bring them to a glass factory, and have them turn out duplicates for me (legal or not, this happens ALL OF THE TIME in industry) so that I can avoid the high costs of buying from the original manufacturer.
5) I can throw a Cognac party for as many people I want, and allow those folks to view and use my legally purchased Cognac glasses without fear of reprocussion.
Now, which of these options are available to me to do legally with CDs or DVDs?
c'mon bunky, you can figure it out if you try real hard
If you bring the reciept, they replace broken glasses at half price...
About a year and three quarters' ago, I was involved in an accident in which my car was written off. The CDs were scratched to hell, and a couple had actually snapped in half. No problem though - all handled nicely by the fact that not a single one was an original. Just reburned new copies and stuck them in our other car.
Well, no problem as far as CDs are concerned anyway. Miss the car though - a nice Jaguar XJR.
By the way, I have kids, my wife's family also has many kids. So far, we haven't had anyone get a scratched DVD...not saying that we won't, but I guess we show the kids how to handle DVD's...not that it takes a genius to grasp the concept.
How old? It certainly takes a genuis ten-month old to grasp the concept. My two and a half-year old mostly remembers now, but still can't actually stretch her hand wide enough to hold a DVD without putting fingermarks all over the back of it. We've had scratches too.
Cheers,
Ian
I don't know when the systems of the world shifted to the point where consumers stealing from companies are criminal but companies stealing from consumers is just plain good business
Pretty much every Dilbert comic/episode makes light of this very fact -- businesses became more afraid of going bankrupt than doing evil, and that is when it changed, when businesses lost their fear of consequences. They can always weasel out after the fall.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
He doesn't sell congnac glasses, he doesn't even sell cognac! He sells the right to drink a particular cognac.
So I am bound to ask Jack : If I have pruchased the right to drink a particular cognac from you, does it still need to be in the glass you sold it to me in to exercise that right? Can I not pour some of the congac in another glass in case I break the original one. I have, afteral, purchased the extra glass.
When Frank Capra was making movies, when D.W. Griffith was making movies, it was all about the story. Today, we have technological changes, and you can do all sorts of digital wizardry, but digital morphing is not a story.
Special effects and explosions and big-name stars aren't a story either. A common attitude in Hollywood seems to be, that most of the moviegoing public are too stupid to follow a complex story anyway, so there's little point in having a good one.
I was in Dallas in the motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, and I saw that day a brave young president murdered, and a new president take over. The president is dead, long live the president, the nation goes on. No one is indispensable, I learned that day in Dallas.
Did this douchebag just compare himself to JFK? Me thinks Jack has a bit of an overinflated ego.
Isn`t buying a CD the same as buying a license. I sure understand that there is a medium I also bought, but does breaking the medium mean I have lost my right to the license?
The superior quality of a CD is far more important than the ability to make a perfect copy.
K
Trueth is, if they were to line all us leet hackers up against the wall they wouldn't need much of a mass grave to hide our bodies.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'd say that cloning's illegal at the moment.
Every CD that leaves the confines of my jukebox gets a duplicate. Car player? Duplicate. My 2 year old's room. Duplicate. At $50 for three Sesame Street discs, you'd better believe that the origianls are going somewhere safe.
Recently, my FLAC backups have saved me. I got a gift of an off-the-wall CD made by an artist in Colorado (Actually, a set of three). I've never heard of them anywhere else. Well, as fate would have it, I broke my own rule and had the disc out of the jukebox. Someone, who shall go nameless, bumped into the small bookshelf where the CD was sitting, and it hit the floor along with several other items. It broke cleanly into two pieces. After a moments panic, I verified that I had ripped - EAC to FLAC - and the content was safely stored on my hard drive. I'm bummed that I won't have the original disc anymore, but I still have the music.
Every DVD that leaves the confines of my jukebox gets a duplicate. Taking a couple of movies to the Beach? Duplicates or rips to the laptop HD. Loaning a movie to a friend/relative? DVD+RW. Want to borrow another movie? Bring back the rewritable and you can "borrow" another. I've also started to rip my DVDs to HD, in hopes of transitioning from the jukebox to a media server. At only 500G in my current serverm I'm still about 1 to 1.5 TB of storage away from being able to store the whole collection, but within two years it will probably all be there.
I have no idea how you've managed to keep your discs pristine. Most of my CDs have (minor) scratches on them from careful use. I even have a DVD or two with a minor scratch, and I have no idea how they got there, as I usually take them out of the shrink wrap, rip them, and put them into my jukebox - never again to be touched by human hands.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The superior quality of a CD is far more important than the ability to make a perfect copy.
If you believe this, then you obviously haven't sat through a vinyl devotee opining the loss of the superior bandwidth and realism of his favorite albums.
(24/96 nothwithstanding)
And, btw - people bought those first CD players 'cause they were cool, the format was enticing (a 5" indestructible disc with 75 minutes of music), and it was NEW. People bought DAT players, too. Now very few use them due to DRM issues, among other things.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
My son is functionally autistic. Sometimes he gets a *little* excited about playing his games and forgets. I wish I could back up his Gamecube games because they somewhat fragile and easily scratched.
:)
We were sticking with the SNES (cartridges are harder to damage), but even at 5 years old he could tell the difference between Super Mario World and Sunshine. (He beat Sunshine last week!)
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I really do believe we can stuff enough algorithms in a movie that only the dedicated hackers can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it.
Here's the problem with that opinion - it only takes ONE hacker to beat the "algorithms". How long do you really think it will take 10,000 hackers all over the world to beat these "algorithms"?
Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's really hard to put it back in.
The "zero tolerance" stance on piracy will never work. Make it difficult for large scale pirates (guys mass producing pirated DVDs all over Asia) by involving local law enforcement. Suing Joe Consumer for copying the latest Soprano's DVD is bad for business and just plain stupid.
-ted
The superior quality of a CD [to vinyl or cassette tapes] is far more important than the ability to make a perfect copy.
They're both important. However, just because a digital, 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo audio stream sounds roughly as good as vinyl, doesn't mean that digital audio inherently sounds better. Amiga .mod files, for example, use 8-bit samples. They definately don't sound as good as records.
If the quality of the audio/video/whatever is about the same, then being able to copy that medium perfectly becomes an important consideration.
Seeing how cognac glasses=DVD, is Jack saying I can go to Amazon, buy a standard DVD and start renting it out then? Great, because up until now, I thought I had to buy an expensive "rental" edition.
Or was the off-license breaking the law by renting out "retail" glasses?
"When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies."
So I own the Cognac glasses then, they are mine and I'm responsible if I break my glasses?
"There is no fair use to take something that doesn't belong to you."
So I don't own the glasses then, they belong to you still?
"Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever."
So I'm buying the digital copy (which lasts forever) and not the carrier its on?
The carrier most certainly does not last forever.
So format shifting is OK then.
" I have a TiVo set."
Lucky for him, if that Jack Valenti had his way, he wouldn't even have a VCR.
What would you say to a mom who wants to make a backup of her kids?
"Chill out, lady, don't you have enough children already?"
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
So, that means that digital stuff is a good substitute for diamonds?
De Beer's is going to have a field day with that one.
I'll feed the troll...
The Google founders aren't masters of coding either. But they did something nobody else did. So did Jon.
If you're so fucking smart, go code something that makes a difference. Then come back and make your claim.
Puuuhraise Jaysus.
people will take you more seriously.
Trying to compare digital music to cognac is a fallacious argument. There are too many holes in
that argument.
so are they selling a product like glass ware? in which case i only want to pay the 10c is costs to produce the cd and it's case. OR are they selling content in which case the cd and the case is irrelivant in the pricing? they can't have it both ways just to suit his arguements.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
If I buy a set of cognac glasses and then move to Belgium, I don't have to buy a special set of Belgian cognac glasses.
When I buy a set of cognac glasses, they'll work with any brand of cognac, even cognac my friends and I made as part of a giant collaborative project.
If I buy cognac glasses and decide to drink milk out of them, the manufacturer won't accuse me of violating the licensing agreement.
If I build exact replicas of the cognac glasses using my own materials, and then give these replicas away, I won't get sued by the Glassblowing Industry Association of America.
If I sell the cognac glasses at a second-hand store, the aforementioned GIAA won't accuse me of stealing profits away from the original cognac-glass-makers, or claim that I probably made an illegal copy of them before I sold them.
I don't have to pay higher prices on glassblowing supplies on the assumption that I'll probably use them to make illegal copies of cognac glasses.
And the #1 difference between DVDs and cognac glasses:
The cognac glass actually contains something I might enjoy.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
I went throught very briefly the article. I don't think we live on the same planet.
/. user remarker. In 1982 in was against tape recorders and now appreciates a TiVo.
First his views on taping movies have changed as another
But when you think about it, using a TiVo is a worse action than copying a CD. When you use a TiVo you can tape a program skip ads, while the program is perhaps broadcasted free for you just because of the ads. By skipping the ads you break the broadcast business model.
But by copying a CD/DVD under fair use (e.g. backup), you just protect yourself. You still have paid for the right to see it. You don't break any model as long as you don't do something like distributing it.
So who's the thief?
Comparing Cognac with digital information isn't at all the same. Anyway most analogies fail, and this one also. We are talking about an easily reproducible thing here. And that changes completely your model. When will folk get it?
I would also like to know where he sees Moore laws being "brought down". I truly don't think so. Wait for the products to reach the masses and you will see that it isn't true at all.
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
Yes. Because morals have stopped college students from doing stupid/illegal things before.
Jackie, you've been alive too long. Maybe if movies were cheaper, they'd go see them. Remember those double features? Remember when 5 cents bought you a feature, a cartoon, some news, and some fluff? Now we spend $7.50 to watch 20 minutes of ads, get chastized for 'stealing' by a poor guy who only makes $75K-$100K/year, then 20 minutes of previews, and then are forced to spend $20 for popcorn and a soda or 'steal' from the movie theatre for sneaking our own (cheaper) food inside under our shirts.
College students aren't focused on moral obligations any more. They're shrewd investors. Why spend $20 going to see a movie that is likely to suck when you can get something similar for free. Then if it doesn't suck, you go spend the $20. Wouldn't you like to have insight into the ROI for your stocks, Jack?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I TOTALLY AGREE!!! A digital thing lasts forever..wait.. well... he's saying it does.. so ideally, IT SHOULD!! Which is why all the cd's which i legally own (some have got scratched, some stolen, no biggie really in my case.. cuz i made mp3's of them and they are on a hard drive).. now when thers a cd a like, i dont even rip the cd to make a copy to listen to on my computer anymore... I just open up bit-torrent and download it... I have 3 (well used to be 4, one got stolen, so i burned a copy from the mp3's i had, and printed a label)... legal offspring cd's... they all are backed up on the hdd in mp3 form... much more convenient that way....
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
It is not really a rocket science. You own what you have bought.
And how exactly does it make you own it any less?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I run a home theater PC, and I rip all my DVDs to hard disk so that (1) they are all in one library location (with summary, cover art, etc), (2) shuffling DVDs won't damage them, (3) I can disable all the skip protection, or rip just the movie if I want.
Technology has made music or film exchange easier than ever but in essence it is exactly the same as creating a tape and giving it to a friend. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act states that it is illegal to download mp3's for financial or other "gains". Then they go on to define that just having an mp3 of a song is a "gain" and therefore illegal. This is BS! I didn't see anybody complain back in the day when somebody gave you a tape. Record companies then try to make p2p users feel guilty saying that they are hurting artists. The ones that suffer the most from this are the companies themselves. Artists only receive a very small amount from each album sold, their main income is when they sign a deal with the company and they get a contract and get payed. But I do see a solution to this whole thing: lower album and movie prices. Basic economic theory clearly states that lowering the price of a good that has few substitutes (ie: any given artist's album) will increase the quantity demanded of that good and will increase total revenue for the firm. Just imagine cd's priced at 5-7 USD instead of your usual 15-20, movie tickets priced at 1-2. I would buy a lot more music and watch more films. One can't fight progress and technology. If the MPAA and RIAA keep trying to fight that battle they are sure gonna lose in the long run.
So is DVD Jon retiring?? Or Jack Valenti??
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
He's like an older, less dyslexic Bush!
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I have a favorite CD that was very badly scratched when a part came loose in my Discman. Luckily, I had made a copy for my brother (yes, naughty but lucky), so I asked him to give me a copy of that. Someday I may try and repair the original, with its deep circular scratch right around the last track... don't know if it's even possible though.
Freedom: "I won't!"
It's encouraging that he owns a Tivo? Why? Because he wants you to do as he says and not as he does? Sorry, but I don't see that as anything encouraging. He's just plain wrong. As consumers. at the price they charge for CDs and DVDs, you're damn right we're entitled to a backup copy, and it's specifically in copyright law that we're entitled to it.
I can see the end of the major record companies in sight. That will definitely happen in my lifetime, and I can't be happier about it. The new order will probably involve online distribution of music and musicians hiring individual promoters to get their music out there. The huge advantage of this is that the enormous cut the record companies get will be gone. Cost of production will be very low, so the music will be reasonably priced. I honestly believe that's the future of the music industry.
What concerns me is that I can't see an equivalent for the film industry. I just can't see any way that you'll be able to do a lot of the more popular types of movies, with their casts and production costs, without the backing of major studios. That's a shame.
Sure, there are low budget movies out there that occasionally get through, but you can't do, say Terminator, on a low budget. And while Terminator may not be my cup of tea or even yours, those kinds of movies appeal to a mass market that will continue to pay for it.
That's distinctly different from music where it doesn't take a great deal of money to record great music. It's just as expensive to record really crappy music. The advantage with this system for music is that it's much more likely that bands with quality music will get noticed whereas flashy, over-produced, non-musicians, like Britney Spears and many others that are popular today, will have a tough time breaking out. So, I personally see that as a good thing.
was press vinyl backups of my vinyl records.
4) Allow people to copy whatever they want and think of ways to make people not wanting to copy stuff (cheap prices for music/movies, good backup possibilities, cheap online selling of music/movies, etc.)
This option is often forgotten alas.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
And buy 10 books at $20 a piece, and 5 of them spontaneously desintegrate over the next month of ordinary use due primarily to the exceptionally cheap manufacturing methods employed, wherein it only costs the publisher 10 cents each to produce...
Beautiful.
--
Will
Since IIRC the EU courts at least have concluded that loading something into RAM for the purposes of displaying it or running it comprises an act of copying.
So, if I buy some MPAA edition Cognac glassses, they would only work in certain countries, and only stay upright on certain MPAA approved tables? Also, I could not take pictures of them or share them with anyone else. Very poor analogy.
I'll say this once, and I fully expect to be flamed: Jack Valenti is the scum of the Earth. This is a man who degraded both women and common sense when he claimed "the VCR is to movies what Jack the Ripper was to women alone at night." How someone with that mindset lasts decades as a lobbyist is beyond me - oh, wait, he's a LOBBYIST. That explains it.
Given the choice between Jack and the warez pups spreading his consortium's movies across the net, I'll take the warez pups every time. At least they're honest about what they do. Valenti's legacy involves lies, deceit, the elimination of consumer rights, and the brainwashing of children in public schools.
Good riddance to him, too bad we'll probably see a replacement that's just as bad.
For many of you, it might read easier this way:
/* the outgoing president of the MPAA and the object of hatred for many hacker after he took he on DVD Jon */
char Jack_Valenti;
Engadget has an interview with Jack_Valenti, who is retiring tomorrow after more than three decades on the job.
He really is a character too.
(mod -5 Bad Puns)
queue Thurston Howell:
Lovey, where are those Cognac glasses we bought from Tiffany's? I cahn't seem to find them ahnywhere!
Is this the same guy that was quoted saying something about "working stiffs" making only $100,000 and that wasn't much to live on?
Yeah, this guy is totally connected to reality.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
This broken glass analogy merely serves to illustrate how out of touch these pigopolists are. Disingenuous analogies (and that's giving him the benefit of the doubt) don't inform the debade, but let's take his own analogy a little bit further since he raised it.
You cannot duplicate a cognac glass at home for a few cents, and the manufacturing and distribution costs of glasses are not insignificant, unlike digital music. Moreover the "cognac glass association" is not given an exclusive and endlessly extended monopoly by congress to produce cognac glasses to the detrement of free markets. Buying an entirely new set of matching glasses to replace the old set at a competitive price is an option with glasses, not so with music, at least not yet.
Hit the road, Jack. And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more!
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Like Bush, once Jack says something, he can't back off from it:
"In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless." (2002 interview with Harvard Political Review's Derek Slater)
(from Wikiquote)
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
I hope that whatever nursing home you end up in you decripit pile of shit, is staffed with people who were sued by the one of the quasi-corporate-police-state entities that has no fucking right to exist in a so-called "free country". Burn in hell you pile of shit. You represent all that is fascist in america.
I don't drink cognac you insensitive clod!
lufo re baje bav coyu co nutez tuc xotenil co mi
What the hell do Cognac glasses and DVDs have in common? Since when can I buy DVDs in sets of 10? When I buy a DVD I get one copy in the box. Often for anywhere from $25 - $35 bucks a pop and I only get ONE copy of the movie. Sure there are some RARE examples like Who Framed Rodger Rabbit that comes with two copies of the movie. But each version is distinctly different.
And when's the last time you got to shop around for DVDs? I don't mean preordering on Amazon. I mean Do we get to choose out brand of movie for a better price? There's a big difference if I want to buy my Cognac glasses from Nordstrom's or Target. Perhaps Jack Valenti is implying we compare prices between DVDs and VCDs and make our choice? I may not get 10 VCDs but at least I'm getting a better price. Not that the quality is anywhere near the same.
I bought CDs because I didn't have to rewind/fast forward forever to get to the song I wanted to listen to at the time.
I bought CDs because I knew cassettes were already a thing of the past. I am always surprised when I see them still in the stores now.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
o/~ And don't you come back no more, no more, no more! o/~
wait, am i going to get sued for copying and pasting the lyrics? Oh, crap...
----
What weirds me out is when this guy preaches to college students about the "morality" of file copying-after the lies and self-serving behavior of the MPAA this just makes me sick.
Where you been since the 1980's? It might be ridiculous, but it's also true. DVD's are encrypted, and thanks to our lovely DMCA it is illegal to defeat encryption to copy the material. Producing illicit DVD codecs is illegal, and a company got sued by the MPAA this week for doing so (story somewhere on /.). When you buy a DVD player, you are buying a device that has been sanctioned by the MPAA.
As such, I would say the guy is right when he says you need the MPAA's permission to watch a DVD. It's already law. Doesn't apply to CD's...yet...thankfully.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
No one ever asked movie companies to give out free backup copies. What we want is to not get sued or put in jail if we copy a DVD, or rip it to an mp4 on our laptop to take on vacation, or do any number of things with the DVD we just bought.
Bascially, we'd like to be treated the same as when we buy a set of glasses: once, we've bought it, we can do anything we want with it. Glassmakers don't try to have people put in jail for post articles on how to blow glass.
When you by a stock you can get a certificate of ownership. The paper is not important it is the information on it that represents what you own. If the certificate is destroyed, you fully expect that for a small fee for the media and records search you can get a replacement. For that matter, no one would question your right to a copy of your certificate. The media is just a way of transferring that information from one place to another. You could even forgo the paper and just deal with the information totally online as a right that you can transfer any time. This is what more like what a CD is only vastly cheaper to create and replace. So why do they question your right to a copy of the music you own and refuse to replace what is essentially the storage medium for your right to it? In reality, they could just put keys on the damn thing and let you download the copy. They are so behind the times it amazes me. They are still thinking industrial age when we are near the middle of the information age. The truth is that the cost to return in music or any information is now such that a new commodity based market and industry needs to evolve to handle it and they, like the auto barons of old, cannot handle this transition. Music can effectively be sold in mass for little or nothing and still make huge profits but the industry has grown fat and weak. Too many people have counted on huge returns with little or no effort but the world has moved on without them. This is what is so amoral about it as they are using their financial power to try to dam the tide of change and getting away with it. It is hard to blame them, but the fact is we cannot allow this and still evolve our economy and culture. What we need is a smaller, sleeker, and adaptable industry with the old timers booted out the door. It is the same old story one more time. God knows you would think some would recognize it for what it is.
This is the real Hippocratic issue:
If you "own it", as the adds say, then you can do what you please. Backup, copy, mix, etc. (minus making $ from copies)
If you actually "license it", then saying "Own it today" is false advertising. AND you should still be able to get replacement media.
The RIAA/MPAA/CRIA all want the same thing: The advantages from both and no disadvantages from either. Also, they want this to work on hardware that you paid for. This is just plain Greed and hypocrisy
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
"I really do believe we can stuff enough algorithms in a movie that only the dedicated hackers can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it. In time, we'll be able to do this, because I have great faith in the technological genius that's out there."
...Now, fair use is not in the law."
Yes, but it only takes 1 of thoes great hackers to break it, then it's a simple matter of adding a GUI jack. Why are your technical experts not telling you that? Job Security?
"We can't afford to let that be copied at that juncture because it's the [home entertainment] aftermarket where you make your profits."
Jack, how could this be? Here's what you said about the home entertainment market earlier in your career:
The growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology," Jack Valenti said, threatens an entire industry's "economic vitality and future security." Mr. Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, and he was ready for a rhetorical rumble. The new technology, he said, "is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone."
This is not about the internet or file sharing, it was in 1982, and he was talking about videocassette recorders. If Jack Valenti had his way back then (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.
Jack, your starting to look like an old fool.
"There is no fair use to take something that doesn't belong to you.
Really? Congress disagrees.
"I have a TiVo set. I truly enjoy it."
Really Jack? Ever FF through the commercials? You know that would be stealing from the broadcast industry? Are you a Pirate Jack?
"Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever. "
It sure does Jack, but as I'm sure thoes great technical minds you have working for you have said, the physical medium doesn't. Plus, you want to make it illegal to create a digital copy, which locks the content to your degradable media.
" I hope people will say I never had a hidden agenda, and I never played it cute around the turns, and that my integrity stayed intact."
Sorry to dissapoint you Jack, but I think your a lying fool who can't see the forest for the trees.
I am not clicking on an unmendable EULA contract either for my conac glasses. What an ass.
DVD Jon retiring? But he's been so productive lately... and 30 years on the job? I thought he was like a young guy?
This stuff gets old after a while.
... yeah, I'll just download the stuff.
Jack Valenti has proven himself to be an ingorant jackass in just about anything that comes out of his mouth. As tons of others have pointed out already, his man's analogies are the stupidest fucking things I've ever heard.
Cognac glasses vs. downloading movies... yeah, those are the same things alright!
In any case, these people need to get lost. Nothing they say or do has any effect on anything. They can go out and sue movie/music sharers all they want, but they can't sue everybody and eventually they'll be called out on their bullying tactics by trying to coerce people into settling.
If anything, all this will do is create alternate methods of redistribution whether it's foreign hosts or anonymous P2P (I personally hope that anonymous P2P will emerge [and work] soon).
Their empty threats and purchased laws mean nothing to me and most people I know. Because of their aggressiveness and ignorance in trying to solve this manner (and in a totally unnecessary and incorrect way, I might add), it has actually caused a significant increase in the amount of media I download. I just simply don't have the desire to purchase anything from em anymore.. and most people will call a boycott, but
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
You're depriving the owner of the IP of the money that normally they would receive when their IP is employed.
For example, look at illegal knock-off toys/dolls. When a company produces a "Shrek" look-alike doll without a license, what are they doing? Must like a software pirate, they didn't actually take anything from the IP owner to make that doll. But they have one thing in common with software pirates, they took away the money that the IP owners deserve when their IP is employed.
Someone will buy that Shrek doll because of the character it represents. And the person/corporation who came up with that character will not receive the money that their creation earned by being so "purchaseable".
Don't pussy foot around it, you're taking away something from someone, you're taking away someone's livelihood. And when you do it, consider how it would feel to have yours taken away.
If they don't they are fools.
Use your CD in the car, it gets scratched from road vibrations.. Warped from the heat.. Perhaps stolen if you are REALLY unlucky...
Even home players have a tendency to cause scratches.. Its impossible to avoid them.
It only makes sense to copy them if you use them often..
I did the same with tapes years ago.. never ran originals in the car or portables.. as they often would get eaten or just stretched from use..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies" Correct but if the purchaser has the tools and the knowhow he can make his own copies of the glasses. They just dont 'get it'...
I haven't RTFA, but "When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies," seems like an argument for copying. A cognac glass is analogous to a blank CD and there are no copyrights on cognac. We are free to purchase cognac from many vendors and even though it is rather difficult to make we are not restricted from masking it ourselves for our own personal use.
He used an analogy about crystal cognac glasses to connect with the common man. I mean really, who have you met that doesn't have cognac glasses?
Look, either you are selling content or you are selling physical goods -- you cannot have your cake and eat it too. When you buy a DVD you are buying content. The DVD is merely the delivery vehicle for the content. If I buy a tune from itunes and then burn it to my CD and it breaks, should I then also not be able to re burn it? It infuriates me that people like Jack Valenti have no problem gouging the public with expensive dvds and then when the medium is no longer useable try to compare it to a pair of cognac glasses. On Thursday night someone broke the window of my car at the West Oakland BART station and in addition to stealing the dvd player in the car stole all of my kids dvds -- about 20 of them which were hidden in the glove compartment. They stole the dvd player even though I had taken the face plate off and it is essentially worthless to them without it. Now Vallenti wants to tell me that I'm SOL and why don't I just go out and drop another $500 buying my content all over again -- and he has the audacity to speak about a "moral imperative."?! This guy is classic. How about this Jack. How about I just download everything I want for free and use any resource I have to avoid ever paying for another dvd for the rest of my life. How about I just copy everything to my PC and burn it to dvd for play in my car in the future and don't give you or your friends another god-damn dime. There is a reason that you are portrayed as a "villian" in cyberspace. And while you may have a modicum of power based on your previous position with the MPAA, the tide is turning and things like you opening your mouth and saying really stupid things will ony bring about both grass roots political change and technological pirating tools faster. You, my friend, are a hypocrite -- someone who talks about the value being the content one day and the form the very next.
Hey, maybe Jack was the mysterious 2nd gunman...
Maybe the reason he got into the MPAA was to alter the film of the shooting...
*don's extra heavy tin foil hat with grounding wires*
Phew, for a second there I thought the second character might have been an N and wondered how you got modded so high.
I don't back up my media so I'll have the backup in case I lose the original: I back up my media so I don't lose the original. I use the backup CDs to play in my car for example, so that I won't have a CD-wallet with $1000 worth of CDs stolen out of my car (not to mention the CDs being scratched and whatnot).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The CDs we buy at the store DON'T come with an EULA. Unless I sign my rights away, then I still have them. That includes my rights under copyright law. I really, really wish more courts would respect this fact.
The *AA are successfully social engineering everyone to believe that when you buy a CD, you are REALLY just buying a license that says: You can use this only in limited ways. You don't own this. You can't lend it out. You can't back it up. You can't give it away. You can't resell it. If you break the media, you lose your rights to use it.
They suck.
I liked how he 'sleeps like a baby'. Of course he does -- his body is cushioned by thousands of dollar bills.
-----------------------
You are what you think.
100% my possesion to do with as I please.
Exactly how does this compare to DVD eh?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Mister Valenti, do you ever feel that being among the few remaining survivors of the Kennedy Assassination makes you a target?
Philosophy aside, it comes down to the new philosophy. We're living in a technological age. I want enhanced features like making my own backups and being able to copy and download.
Payment may be made with a subscription fee attached to media playing devices. As long as the fee is paid up, the user can play anything downloaded or copied. Else the user can only play purchased media or media made with independent equipment. Advertising could be used in lieu of subscription fees.
The cost per capita would not change that much I don't think. People will enjoy simpler interfacing to the new technology.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Paul Robinson
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
A digital thing lasts forever
An abstract notion simply exists without relation to time.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
He started when he was -10 years old. He is 20 now.
Here is the math: Age now - Age when started = term
20 - -10 = 30.
See?
emt 377 emt 4
Everybody, all together now!
HIT THE ROAD, JACK!
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
What I really want the RIAA to realize, is that I PAID them already!
I have purchased every bit of music I like listening to.
Much of the music is on old tapes or records.
Many of the tapes (and a few records) have degraded since my original purchase.
Here is my plan: put ALL of my old, worn out media in a big box, catalog it and mail it to thr RIAA.
Here's the dream part -- the RIAA allows me to legally download ALL of the music that I have already paid for and I get to legally make NEW copies of my OLD media.
Heck, let me get it from a P2P sharing service, I don't want to cost the RIAA an extra dime.
Does anyone else have a ton of old media they would want on CD, but dont want to BUY IT AGAIN?
I live the greatest adventure anyone could wish for. - Tosk the Hunted
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
Will you go back to a store that treated you like a thief? Of course not. Then why the hell are you buying music and games from companies that assumes that you are a thief (via copy protection)? Those guys have absolutly no incentives to get rid of copy protection as long as people keep on buying them.
Instead of bitching at the government to do something about it (they won't), why don't you should buying CDs and games with copy protection? They're not food, water, or shelter so you can live without them, folks! If enough people did this, those companies will either be forced to remove copy protection, or go bankrupt.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
The real cost of piracy is not higher prices as we are told by MPAA, RIAA etc. It is lower prices. I'm not advocating piracy here, but drawing a logical conclusion from experience. Several years ago PC games were all on floppy disks and could easily be copied. At that time the average price for a PC game was about $35.00. At the same time the average price for a game console cartridge (difficult to copy EPROM chips) was nearly $70.00. In a about a three month span of time almost all games for the PC were made available only on CD-ROM. At the same time the average price for a PC game jumped to $60.00 and more. Quite a coincidence there isn't it? But I'm not done yet. When this happened CD burning was expensive and error prone. I don't think there were any non-SCSI interface burners out there and burners were expensive to purchase and not very easy to use. Over the next year the total cost of aquiring and using a CD burner dropped like a rock. Once the burner prices dropped below four or five hundred dollars, the price for PC games began dropping as well. This is more than just a coincidence. This little sequence of events in the real world tells me that as soon as the producers of content think they have an impossible to copy medium(or nearly so), they will jack the price up through the roof. Kind of like the Laffer curve. The higher the financial burden, the more the consumer will seek a way to avoid paying it. You want to curb piracy, improve value by dropping prices and stop producing crap for content (especially the record industry).
You mean the "FBI WARNING" notes, right? They are much older than that, I have also seen them. In fact they were quite common even outside of the FBI jurisdiction. And the stores I've been to in the 60s already contained notes that I was obligated to buy stuff that I broke or the food that I touched. Shocking newsflash: not everything you read is true. Otherwise I would have already written on my car: "By being run over you agree to pay for any damages whatsoever, including, but not limited to, washing your blood from the bumber and windshield. If you do not agree, please stay stay the hell out of my way."
Do you really think that if anyone writes that something is forbidden it automatically means that it is really forbidden by law? A copyright holder has the limited power of controlling the distribution of her work, but somehow when she writes on the CD that you cannot borrow it to your friends, it makes it somehow legally forbidden even if that is completely outside of the scope of the copyright holder's power and FBI will catch you? Sad, very sad.
I have a question for you: If you need a right to watch a movie and to listen to music, how can you watch TV and listen to the radio? And please don't tell me that you are legally obligated to watch the commercials because there is no contract whatsoever between you and public station, and that is because you are not their customer, the advertising companies are their customers, and you are only a product their sell. A very good product, I might add...
Copyright © 2004 Pan Tarhei Hosé. All right reserved. If you have read the above text, you are legally obligated to send $5000 USD to the PayPal account of Mr. Pan Tarhei Hosé. Failing to do so within ten business days is a federal offense and will be reported to FBI and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extend of the law.
This message is intended for the President only. It contains information that is confidential and protected from disclosure. Any review, dissemination or use of this transmission or its contents by persons or unauthorized employees of the intended organisations is strictly prohibited. The contents of this message do not necessarily represent the views or policies of Central Intelligence Agency.
Have a nice day.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Actually I was talking about one day when I broke my glasses when I was in the cinema and I couldn't watch the damn movie, since I can barely see without glasses, while those jerks who worked there wouldn't give my money back. That was a downer indeed, especially when I almost killed myself while driving home from the cinema...
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
When you go to your department store and you buy 10 Cognac glasses and two weeks later you break two of them, the store doesn't give you two backup copies
Either he doesn't keep his receipts, or he shops at a really shitty store.
What would you say to a mom who wants to make a backup of her kids?
"You have been served." (assuming that an off-site backup is intended)
I have quite a number of TV-series DVD box sets that I have purchased over the last few years. Each box set contains 3-6 DVDs. Cost-wise they range from a minimum of $50 up to $100 to purchase. Let's assume that 1 disc gets scratched beyond repair and I need to replace. What are my options? Buy the whole box set again (assuming it is still in print) for the retail cost or take a chance on buying the set second hand. I have no options to purchase the single disc at pro-rated cost. That's why I want to be able to back up my DVDs. $100 for 6 DVDs is a pretty good deal. $100 for only 1 DVD (plus 5 that I don't need) is not.
From the article...
"If everything stayed just as it is right now, we could probably survive it, because even with broadband it takes at least an hour to bring down a movie. But I visited the labs at Caltech, and they're running an experiment called FAST where they can bring down a DVD-quality movie in 5 seconds. The director told me it could be operative in the market in 18 months. Well, my face blanched." So what is this magical technology that lets one download a DVD in 5 seconds? Something to do with Internet2? Anyone?
This is all a waste of breath on both sides... Why? Because me and millions of others don't really care about the RIAA or MPAA... I'm going to download free music from the Internet. I'm not concerned with any moral implications. This is my choice, and it's really that simple.
A "digital thing" lasts forever. - Spoken like a man who has never worn the same socks twice.
Back in days when Valenti was able to spawn they just carved another rock, or painted on another cavewall.
But today if you have young children you almost have to immediately back up a DVD or CD, if you don't it will be covered with fingerprints, crayon, or get used as frisbees.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
As a code monkey, I'm not worried. I understand that anything can be hacked and then ported to an open format.
So I smile, and gently raise my middle finger.
00101010
just puttin' my voice in here too. All my CDs get ripped into 192k MP3s as soon as I buy them. It's kinda silly to have all these CDs lying around, seeing as I listen to songs on my computer most of the time anyway.
When I get a new disc, the first thing I do is rip it into Mp3 format. Subsequently, the Mp3 goes on my local network share which I can:
I think all those fall under fair use. I'm not distributing the song, nor am I using it in more than a given place at one time. My original stays pristine in case a copy is broken/stolen, and my music is readily available whenever I choose.
I tried to post this to engadget.com but for some reason they wouldn't let me. Now I know most of the people here on Slashdot will definitely hate me for this (we all know where the /. crowds buttons are) and I will even admit to that this IS a troll post (targeted at engadget), but I DARE YOU(!) to show that anything I have written is so entirely off=base and untrue or outside of technology and law as we know it.
Keep in mind, the basic tenets are: IP owners get to say what happens with their IP, there is technology that prevents casual copying, stealing is wrong (some will disagree), draconic laws can be used to enforce all of this and don't tell me there isn't even more legislation on the lines of the DMCA in the pipe.
Original title: Clarifications
Most of the people here don't get this:
When you buy digital content such as a movie or a sound recording you have obtained the right to view/listen to the content AS IT IS on the medium it is supplied on (and within other limits of the license, such as not broadcasting, showing it to the public or lending it). That means, if you buy Jurassic Park on VHS which may retail at $5 in your market, you have acquired rendering of the content that is either formatted for analog PAL or NTSC with a resolution of about 500-525 vertical lines and so and so many horizontal dots sans Dolby Digital surround. That is what may get for $5. If you want crisp digital 1000 lines+ interpolated image with Dolby Digital then you can have that too, but that may then retail at $15 or more. "Buying the movie" for $5 on VHS is NOT THE SAME THING as "getting it on DVD", and you have in no way acquired a license to the higher resolution digitally enhanced rendering of the movie just because you bought a low-res analog tape.
Now to answer another question some of you had: Why should I upgrade to post-DVD equipment if I already know it will prevent me from arbitrarily pirating digital content? Content providers will make available digital content that will by far surpass DVDs already superb viewing (and listening) experience. Some day you may have, as a consumer, access to technology that will render digital content at the highest resolution the content provides themselves acquired the content at (for example the resolution of the camera that filmed a scene in a movie, can't go higher than that really). Today, it takes about an hour to steal a 650Mb MP4 transcoded movie today, tomorrow it will take an hour to steal an full-blown DVD and by the time we get to the really hires content it will probably take an hour to steal that too! Would you want to risk that as content provider?? I didn't think you would so don't expect the content providers to take this risk.
Now on to another favorite subject of the online pirate community. I saw that some of you poked fun at Valenti for saying that more technology will stop digital piracy. I'm not sure how well Valenti is into the technological side of this but I for one work in the field. More (and better!) technology will indeed put an end to CASUAL copying. I can personally envision hardware components that authenticate each other with authentication keys deeply buried in the silicon and that exchange only encrypted content where someone with a circuit probe could get at it. Oh and don't think, just because someone uses a million dollar lab and cuts one of the chips into slices and extracts key material that it will do him good. If piracy started to become as rampant again as it is now we would just mark all those compromised components invalid (over the air!) FORCING YOU to go out and buy new uncompromised hardware. (No way to escape that, as your equipment would periodically want to hear from an activation-authority whether or not it is still okay to operate and just shutdown if you don't let the activation authority through). But don't worry. This will not happen very often and I can assure you that those criminals would be __VERY(!)__ sorry if they got caught. For these technological countermeasu
Mr. Valenti is quoted as saying "Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever."
Bullshit. 1s and 0s last forever, recordable media doesn't. I've only downloaded one copyrighted game off of Kazaa in my life: Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. I had to because after reformatting my hard drive, I found my installation CD no longer worked. This probably came from playing the game almost daily for over a year. So I had to resort to illegal activity to get it. Note I didn't say "stealing" or "thievery."
I've had audio CDs wear out too. I bet in 10 years' time, my Monty Python and the Holy Grail DVD will wear out. At that point, I'll either have to fork over $20 more or go through pangs of withdrawal. I need my "Ni!" fix.
I ripped and backed up my Windows XP CD as soon as I bought it. If they're gonna milk me so badly for that piece of software, I'm bloody well going to protect my investment.
Optical discs tend to get severely abused in our house... seven brothers and sisters, ranging in age from 22 to 3, and the older ones are just as bad as the younger ones. They'll leave CDs and DVDs on the floor, and step on them, etc.
Training kids to handle discs properly is one thing, but training them to care enough to actually use this knowledge is another thing entirely.
Since we own the license to "consume" the content, so if we back it up we are fine. If the value of the information is high enough that we rip it to MP3 and share it with the universe, then that should be fine too. The first use is legal, the second is not. That does not change the fact that digital content is a meme that will resist all efforts to contain it.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
The store doesn't sue you if you make 2 replacement glasses yourself.
Anyone has considered the fact that the glass is only the container and what's important is the cognac?. If I follow that analogy, the glass is the music player and the cognac is what you listen to/want to copy, etc. In that case, if you spill your cognac on the floor, you never get a free replacement.... So yes, that analogy was so dumb I cannot believe this guy was head of something different that the head of idiots,
But not the one he helped write, the DMCA. =)
(Actually, there is a reference to fair use; 17 USC 12 sec 1201.c.1 says fair use is still legit, but 1201.a means effectively you can't buy a product to exercise those rights.)
More seriously, there is also extensive case law as well as statutory law on fair use. (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 114 S.Ct. 1164 (1994) was evidently the last time the issue went up to the Supreme Court, leaving aside Eldred v. Ashcroft's indirect effects via public domain limitations.) Admittedly, case law is far easier to change (one twitch from the legislative branch can do that), but that doesn't mean it's any less important while it exists... and it's usually less frivilously made, so some people tend to think when trying to change it.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
We just don't have permission.
So either we act like peasants and stay out of the king's forest because the king said so, or we don't.
"We're trying to put in place technological magic that can combat the technological magic that allows thievery."
.,,.
LOL.,
please mod this funny,
not for me,
but for the sake of this poor old man.,
i bet he imagines those thousands of algotithms drawing their lightsaber and start whacking each other or something.,.,
"take that, you filthy pirate algorithm!", said luke as he disembodie another magical hacker.,
>rules that the entire society has determined
>to be equitable.
Not "the entire society." In a pure democracy, it only takes 50.1% or more of *voters* to create law that the other 49.9% may find extremely inequitable (which also conveniently ignores the fact that only a small fraction of eligible voters help make this decision). In the United States--which is a half-assed democracy--it only takes a few powerful, crooked legislators. I mean, legislators (sorry 'bout the redundancy).
Another part of the analogy that's wrong is that Cognac glass makers are not blocking the rights of consumers to mold glass, and it would be wrong for them to outlaw glass blowing, even if technology made it cheap and easy to do in consumer' homes.
Well, I have to say that the digital things that I have definately don't hold up against a 2.5 year old monster. My son likes to open DVD cases, take the disc out and come up to me and say "See this!". So far, my Finding Nemo disc 2 has been the only shatterred casualty. But this habit of his recently began.
My wife and I have taken the 100+ children DVD's which we own and have purchased blank DVD's to back up the movies on. We even scan the discs and print onto the new discs the same artwork. Basically, we are making what could easily be misconveyed as pirate copies for sale. However we are instead using these copies to let my son watch his films and have fun. We keep the originals in a CD case and until hard drive space runs low, we store the images (averaging 7gbytes each and 150 megs for the disc art work) on the hard drive. This makes it so that we can run off a new copy for him in 80 minutes. Once we get 4x (and hopefully 8x DL) we'll run the copies off in 40 or 20 minutes.
Alternatively, I've been writing a player application using visual basic (actually yes, VB) using the DVD Controls to make an application which mounts images and autoplays them. I've also ordered a 28" (low quality) touchscreen membrane which I'll install on the TV so that my son can choose films and play them automatically.
The fact is that I really don't care what is written in the law, there is right and there is wrong. I have during discussions with music producers on airline flights talked frankly about my backup system. They don't typically seem offended by this. I have also said that I never hesitate to download music or videos which I can't obtain legally online.
I currently own, legally, approximately 350 DVD's, I own legally 200-300 music CDs, I own legally 150-200 VHS tapes (which are now onthe computer and in storage). I have approximately 40 pirated movies on my computer at a given time. I have massive amounts of TV shows which I'm trying to locate for reasonable prices on DVD. I also have about 300 pirated music tracks.
I expect that 20 of the 40 DVD's I've pirated will evenutally be replaced by the real thing. The other 20 will remain on the computer so that I might look at them again at a later point. That may convince me to buy 2-3 more of them.
I expected that of the 1100 TV shows I have, I have recently begun replacing the pirated copies of Stargate, Alias, 24, Band Of Brothers, Buffy and The West Wing. My entertainment budget will allow me to buy typically 3 TV seasons per month. This means that it'll take me quite a while to replace the shows. I typically don't even unwrap the DVD's since I already have them on the computer, so there's no point, I simply buy the discs in order to make sure that I help to support the shows which I enjoy and look forward to seeing.
I also have plans to replace most of the pirates tracks when iTunes comes to countries other than the big 4. For now, I'll simply be satisfied with pirating. When left with no other options, I take the option available to me. The music stores don't carry my taste in music and I am an impulse shopper, if it's not there now, then I won't bother. So I just pirate for now. I look forward to buying the music, but I believe I'll have to wait a long time since the music industry appears to not want my money.
Well have fun and to the MPAA, I'll keep on pirating and to the RIAA, my money is here and waiting to be spent. It really is your fault that you don't have it.
Strangely enough, those aren't even the worst words by Jack Valenti. In a letter to the LA Times, he defended the killing of civilians in war time, especially ex-senator Bob Kerrey, who was part of a terrorist operation in Vietnam (killing civilians in VC territory to terrorize the opposition).
Fortunately all we have to worry about is people smashing our cognac glasses.
-j-
Yeah, I know I'm shallow.
India, uprisings against UK (1919-38) - 23,000 Indian civilians killed.
After the british left:
Bangladesh (1971): 1,000,000-1,250,000 killed.
Should the RIAA and the MPA block the right to preserve the value of the licence that you have paid for, what right should they have to preserve the value of their copyright. This includes the engineering of changes in media format to make your licence valueless and preventing you from transfering to alternate media formats.
The greatest content pirates are the MPAA and the RIAA, they steal from everybody and even shamelessly manipulate the polictical system so that they can attempt legislate the ability to enforce their theft via law enforcement agencies.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen