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Jack Valenti, Dead at 85
saforrest writes "Jack Valenti, a man whose influence in both Washington and Hollywood was profound, died today at age 85. He first became famous as special assistant to Lyndon Johnson: he can even be seen in the famous photo aboard Air Force One. In 1966, he quit this job to become president of the MPAA, from 1966 to 2004."
I say to you that a stroke is to Jack Valenti as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
RIP, Jack!
I won't believe until it's confirmed!
-Nick
pwned
...right on his grave.
Rot in hell, you son of a bitch.
Or, at least, it's a good start.
How we know is more important than what we know.
May Satan put you in a screening room with nothing but heavily blocked and poorly encoded DivX movies playing 24x7xInfinity.
Rest in Peace, sweet prince.
"If you want to have a backup of a movie you should go out and purchase another copy of that movie." "The VCR is akin to the Boston Strangler." - Jack Valenti
There's no point in acting like most of us liked him, even a little. We don't have to celebrate his death, but we also don't have to pretend he wasn't a douche.
Why did the media leave out the part about someone driving a wooden stake through his heart?
Until I see that footage, I'm not going to believe tha...
(Hold on - someone's at the door.)
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH.....
Ahh, poor Jack. A nice guy who liked movies but didn't have a clue about how other people enjoyed them in the 21st century.
Rest in peace Jack.
(In heaven, there's no copyright law to violate. Everything is P2P. For reals!)
Jack Valenti may have been a pro-copyright lobbyists that we all despise, but he was still a human being that had done more in his life for his beliefs than we can only hope to achieve. I send condolences to his friends and family.
He should have been hung as an enemy of our rights as Americans.
I know some people that were sued by the MPAA under his regime, who didn't have any pirated movies, and who were nearly ruined by legal expenses.
I don't care about angry MPAA fans and their mod points, he deserves a long line of people waiting to piss on his grave for the laws he and the RIAA have inflicted upon an unwilling majority of citizens in this country.
It's been ages since I've been to a movie because of him.
It's all anime for me now.
Not a dime to the MPAA-affiliated studios until the DMCA is shot down and buried for good.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
While Jack was quite the luddite in his waning years, he was instrumental in replacing the movie industry's repressive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_Code">Hays Code [no sex, nudity, excessive violence, etc.] with the less-evil MPAA classification system. He also opposed the "clean DVD" proposal which would've seen sanitised versions of films -- a dangerous idea, if there ever was one.
Not all of us are pure evil, and Jack has to be applauded for moving the industry in the right direction. I only hope his successor is a forward-thinking visionary.
"The problem with our economy is that our budget is balanced by people who aren't" - A.E.N.
I know this man wasn't exactly our mascot, but can we please not celebrate the death of another human being?
I'm not asking for a moment of silence or anything. I'm just saying that the man deserves some dignity. He was misguided, at least, but he was a human being.
.torrent?
I'll be sending your wife and children burned copies of my DVD collection to include in your casket. May you be infuriated by them for eternity.
Ads? What ads?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_Code
"The problem with our economy is that our budget is balanced by people who aren't" - A.E.N.
Even though he lobbied for the the DMCA and is a proponent of DRM, he did however start the rating system which replaced the much more militant Hays Code, allowing movies to be less censored.
If you are a part of the RIAA and/or MPAA copyright regimes. Do you want to end like Hitler, Castro, or Valenti with large numbers of people celebrating your death? I don't mean in a HAHA way either. I wanted to be respectful and not to spit on the graves of the dead but I couldn't help but smile when I saw this headline.
I was worried that the /. community would go overboard in their artificial hate for a man they never met or knew.
I'm glad we save our energy to tackle real problems like world hunger, war, government encroachment, etc...
A human being died. Show some compassion.
Oh who am I kidding. He was an asshole.
Are you seriously lumping Hitler, Castro and Valenti together?
REALLY?
Will the textbooks five hundred years from now speak of the great 20th century tyrants and mention Hitler, Stalin, Castro and Jack "PG-13" Valenti?
How would that work? Hitler murdered his millions....Stalin murdered his tens of millions....Valenti was a tool of the MAFIAA....
The man's dead, show some respect. Let's have a moment of silence in his honor. Oh... wait, my moment of silence is actually encrypted using DRM that I lost the license key for. I'd reverse engineer it but I don't want to get in trouble...
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
In an earlier time, Jack Valenti would have been a lord buying favours from the king.
The people would have lived in fear of his insanity.
Thankfully a knight might have challenged Jack and killed him in combat.
In the modern world we just have to wait for old age (or scandel) and hope the next guy to pay off the powers that be will be less effective.
Don't ruin the hope.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I wish his family solace at this time.
Speaking to those of you who have expressed distasteful feelings here, try to remember that there is such a thing as "winning gracefully," "being a good sport" or whatever you wish to call it.
I don't like Valenti on the balance. He did some good things, but his last actions in life were, in my opinion, bad. This isn't the time to debate them.
One of the great measures of a person throughout our history is how they treat their fallen enemies. Take care how you treat yours now. Don't debase yourself, the community or "the cause" with your immature comments.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
It wasn't until he got into politics that he turned evil, and after all, didn't we forgive Darth Vader at the end?
... "
"He's more politician than man now, twisted and evil
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"We don't have to celebrate his death..."
Okay, that's it... You're out of the club!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If you don't get an attorney, do you at least get a continental breakfast and a little mint on your pillow? Those civil suites sound like a total ripoff.
And in other news, Satan has relocated to Arizona. When asked to comment on the change of venue,
he stated : "There's only enough room for one of us down there, and though I invented Lawyers this guy owns them all."
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
For only the third time, the theme of the day is "Encouraging Creativity". Let's all show Jack how creative we can be.
I mean, are there even enough available mod points floating around to tag 99% of the replies here as "Redundant"?
I see both these links were removed. Did that really need to happen? Yes, we all hate Valenti, etc., etc., etc. Does this article really need to be nothing other than a collective bitchfest? The man was a big fat jerk, but do we really need to talk about nothing more than that?
In that case, here is Lord Byron's poem on Lord Castlereagh:
he was at one time a valuable member of the human race, and flew 51 combat missions as the pilot of a B-25 during WWII.
He did his duty and that is admirable, but his record for oppressing others afterwards leads me to believe that his choice of sides was an accident of birth. Good and evil involve more than bravery and sacrifice.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Looks like in the early days of his MPAA presidency, he was fairly reasonable (as reasonable as anybody can be in that job). But he seems to have had a complete inability to comprehend and deal with the realities of 21st century technology. He should probably have stepped down from that job 20 years ago. The fact that the MPAA didn't make him step down 20 years ago tells you how troubled and outdated that organization is itself.
You know, in recent years, I had been feeling that the quality of discourse on /. has been going up. People usually have been taking things in perspective, even when the topic is Microsoft.
/. I've always known and loved! It's back, baby! :) :P
But now there are suggestions of celebrating a person's DEATH, and desecrating his grave, just because he didn't want you to watch some movies for free. Now, I'm a big advocate of copyright reform--I even donate to the EFF--but to show such hatred that you're happy about the end of a human life? Just because you disagree with him about copyright law? Wow.
Just, wow. Now there's the
Okay, we all hate the guy, or at least what the guy stood for: money. But really, all he was doing was trying to keep himself employed. His tactics sucked ass, and his technique was a little bit... sub-par, but what I've seen of this story so far, the reader-base response has been pretty ugly.
The guy is dead. No need to be disrespectful of a dead guy. Don't send flowers, that's fine. But no need to piss yourself over it.
just my opinion, feel free to disagree.. it's your right. Someone out there probably liked the guy..
Tacitus? that punk? I tell you, nothing and no one good EVER came out of Gallia Narbonensis.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
"Advocating a different IP scheme than you" is "a ridiculously insignificant aspect of life"?
I hate to break it to you, but copyright is a free speech issue, and speech is pretty damn important. What he did at the MPAA was no better than advocating any other form of censorship. Should we be sad about the deaths of book-burners too?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
...to everyone at the MPAA / RIAA: We are younger than you, you will die before us. After that, we will change the laws you purchased.
Every time these organizations cycle out officers, there will be younger, 'hipper', more intelligent people taking their places.
Sometimes you just have to let a few generations die off to make progress.
-- lol pwned
Speaking to those of you who have expressed distasteful feelings here, try to remember that there is such a thing as "winning gracefully," "being a good sport" or whatever you wish to call it.
The most disrespectful sentiment is that his death is some sort of victory. It's not because the bad policies and laws he fostered and believed in are still here. His passing brings some hope of change and that is what we celebrate.
This isn't the time to debate them [unAmerican laws].
On the contrary, now is the perfect time to reflect on the man and his beliefs and what he accomplished. What better time will there ever be?
He believed in digital restrictions until at least 2004 and probably went to his grave without understanding the real social cost of such control. To this day, I'm forced to chose between digital freedom and participation in popular culture. There is no middle ground because people like him considered you and me an insignificant minority who should use other options. Rights don't work like that. You can't violate people's rights because few people would bother to exercise them. While many of the things he said have been repudiated for 20 years, the logic he used never changed and he continued to say things we all hate. Those things hurt all of us every day.
The passing of generations is often the only way real change happens. Mr. Valenti was a product of a different time. His loyalties reflect those times but his intransigence is timeless. The run away success of the VCR was helpful to those he professed loyalty toward, and his opposition was harmful to them. It is surprising that he never learned the lesson. We can all feel sad for his family but we can also look at the world as a place that's a little less hostile.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The French, back in the day, had a better way of handling people like that.
It was called the Guillotine.
America's problem is we hate the French and did not learn to emulate them in this case.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
you have made this statement in multiple places in this discussion. I have tried to verify the veracity of your claims, however google finds nothing, and the ny court law server is throwing errors when i query it, but the ny court system web site specifically has a "how to defend myself when i cannot afford a lawyer" pdf, which might indicate you are incorrect (..if a lawyer is free to anybody in any court, why would you even need a pdf guide to defending yourself pro se.. EVERYONE would just take the free lawyer). Unfortunately it crashes both firefox and ie, so i'll never know what it contains.
;) ..(redneck places like.. you know.. CA.. WA..) ...so if you can find a cite (or a new england lawyer can reply and confirm/deny), because this sounds somewhat implausible to me. in my experience, even in CRIMINAL court, getting access to a free lawyer is very difficult unless you are up on very serious charges or completely indigent. for instance, in WA, one must show bank records to the court (etc) to prove one has no means of income, etc.. and even then they provide you with an attorney, you must agree to pay something like $350-500 to their firm for representing you.
and you have the gall (in another post) to call other states "redneck" ? tell your 'redneck state' to hire some better sysadmins from the "crazy redneck" states i've lived in where one is NOT provided an attorney by the civil courts
so, since everyone here seems to disagree with you, I would respectfully ask for you to cite your source.. I am quite interested to find out if this is true. As of yet, I am under the impression that nothing is free in the US legal system.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Well hello Mister Fancypants. Well, I've got news for you pal, you ain't leadin' but two things right now: Jack and shit... and Jack left town.
No sig for now.
.. when ridiculing someone's death nets you +5 insightful. I'm sure many of you have spent a lot of time sitting alone and clenching your fists at people, but no matter how much you disagree with someone's opinions, you just don't marginalise and ridicule his death because of it.
Get a sense of decency.
I find it as funny and satisfying as the next guy, but what's really accomplished? Jack was just a stick figure in the game, take him out and put the next crook, erh, rook in, and the game's on again. It's not like anything changes just 'cause one finally croaked.
... umm... Yes. That's about the best one can say about him: He was.
Yes, it's refreshing to piss on the grave of people we really, really, really hate. Too bad that they don't care about it, or they might stop doing what they are doing. I mean, I for one wouldn't like to have a funeral with a ton of people coming just to check personally if I'm REALLY dead and it isn't just wishful thinking.
But I doubt that Jack cared, or that his successor will. They know we hate them. They know we'd at best offer them a glass of water if they were drowning. Still they continue. If we want them to stop, we gotta make their life miserable, not their death. They don't care about us as long as they're living, how much less do they care once they're dead?
But, you know, nothing but good about the deceased and all that, so I want to end this with something good about Jack: He was
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I know what he's done, but still. Wait at least until after his wake or something. I agree with your opinion of him as a person, but I just don't agree with some of the things people are saying about his death. You know, most people like him end up crying and begging for forgiveness for what they've done in life while they're on their deathbed.
He was also a pilot in WWII before he turned his strong convictions towards "protecting" an albeit sour industry.
I guess my point is, you're lowering yourself to his level when you fling hate towards him at his death, rather than ignore or forgive him. Far better to show you are human (unlike him, as you say) and forgive or let be, than to become like the monster he was in life.
...smothered in hot grits.
$%*&^*^#^!@!# (CONNECTION LOST)
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I know this man wasn't exactly our mascot, but can we please not celebrate the death of another human being? I'm not asking for a moment of silence or anything. I'm just saying that the man deserves some dignity. He was misguided, at least, but he was a human being.
I'm sorry if this comes as a surprise to you, but many of us on Slashdot are assholes, and honest enough to admit it to ourselves. Furthermore, to paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a time and place for everything. I trust no-one here would disturb the mourners at the funeral, but for geeks everywhere, the end of his life merits at least a sigh of relief, and Slashdot is as ideal a forum for such as may be found.
Yes, a human being is dead. He doubtless had personal friends and family, and I feel some pity for the sense of loss they now experience. Losing someone is never easy. On the other hand, I never encountered the man in person. Instead, I encounter the DMCA he championed, the copyright extensions he supported, and the diminishing recognition of the "fair use" he disbelieved in. For those who interacted him as human being, feel free to mourn. For those who love humanity for its own sake, his life was long and rich, and with less to mourn in its ending than thousands who die each day across the face of the world. But for those of us who have only interacted with his legacy as a tool of corporate power, some may choose to celebrate, for having outlived the man, we have a better hope of outliving his ideas.
On the other hand, his ideas are thriving, so there's not all that much to celebrate. Ding, dong, the witch is dead... now, get back to work . There's still a DMCA.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.