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MIT Student Grills Valenti on Fair Use
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Apr 28, 2004 12:32 PM
from the un-something-believable dept.
from the un-something-believable dept.
kcsduke writes "Following a recent speech at MIT on Movies in the Digital Age (streaming audio available), MPAA front man Jack Valenti sat down for a revealing interview with The Tech, MIT's student newspaper. In this entertaining read, Keith J. Winstein grills Valenti on fair use and the right to play DVDs under GNU/Linux. My favorite part is when Winstein shows a dumbfounded Valenti a six-line DVD descrambler he's designed, to which Valenti responds with language inappropriate for the Slashdot homepage. Throughout the interview, Valenti demonstrates his ignorance and misunderstanding of fair use."
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Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Funny)
The Tech: If you type that in, it'll let you watch movies.
Jack Valenti: You designed this?
The Tech: Yes.
Jack Valenti: Un-fucking-believable.
Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
All qrpff does is remove the (relatively simple) CSS encryption. Saying "this'll let you watch movies" was a little disingenuous of Winstein.
Parent
Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that it's not still a really nifty piece of code.
Parent
Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Interesting)
"JV: Well, I can't believe there's not any -- there must be a reason for... Let me find out about that. You bring up an interesting question -- I don't know the answer to that... Well, you're telling me a lot of things I don't know
Parent
Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's the fault of the authors of that code and *not* the language. Nothing makes me more insane than people who talk about how Perl is "write only". No, it's not. It's the people who write crappy Perl scripts and use every obfuscation feature they can to make the thing unreadable. It's perfectly possible to make readable Perl code, just take a look at POPFile [sf.net]. It's also perfectly possible to write unreadable C/C++: just look at the obfuscation contests.
John.
Parent
Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
TT: I'll tell you, because I'm an engineer, I'm an engineering student, and this year I built a high-definition television, from scratch. But because of the broadcast flag, if I wanted to do that again after July 2005, that would be illegal.
JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?
TT: Well, I'm talking about engineers.
JV: Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't do it that way.
Okay. The simple clear response for Congress -- and maybe even JV can understand -- is that those thousand engineers represent the technological future progress of the USA.
And you don't want to keep them from playing in their natural turf. Sure most people don't want to build their own sets. But you let those who do, do so; that is, unless you want a dumbed-down, incompetent populace... down to the very last potential engineer.
In that case, pretty soon, the un-fucking-believable innovations are going to come from other places, that favor freedom.
Get it, Jack?
More to the point, get it, Congress?
Okay, can somebody put this in politer, more persuasive language...?
Parent
Valenti swearing (Score:5, Funny)
after reading the interview (Score:5, Funny)
none whatsoever.
scary.
maybe I should get into the MPAA. im pretty clueless most of the time also, i'd fit right in.
Re:after reading the interview (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. He just doesn't care about the consequences to engineers/tinkerers. This illustrates his attitude rather well: "Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't do it that way."
Of course, he's set up a false dichotomy (100,000 engineers vs. 284 million Americans, when it really should be 100,000 engineers vs. ~100 major stockholders).
Parent
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Forgot some lines... (Score:5, Funny)
[Winstein shows Valenti his six-line "qrpff" DVD descrambler.]
The Tech: If you type that in, it'll let you watch movies.
Jack Valenti: You designed this?
The Tech: Yes.
Jack Valenti: Un-fucking-believable.
The Tech: And look at this thing called Freenet [sourceforge.net], it allows you to publish movies without fear of being caught.
Jack Valenti: Oh my fucking heart, stop! <dies>
Then interviewer is a dipshit (Score:5, Insightful)
But jumping on him because there's no licensed DVD player for Linux? How is that his fault?
Yes, it sucks that to play DVDs, you have to buy a license. But...so?
There are no licensed DVD players for Linux because no one wants to (or needs to, or would) pay for one. End of story.
Jesus. Someone finally gets a chance to grill Valenti and they blow it.
Re:Then interviewer is a dipshit (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the interviewer should have brought up the point that engineers make products for the REST OF US. If engineers can't do something, then than will kill innovation and restrict what the other 299 million people can do.
That's the big hole in Valenti's "make policy for the majority" argument.
As far as jumping down his throat for the lack of a Linux DVD player: Yes he's to blame for that. He set's the policy that the rest of his licensed toadies have to follow. He creates the cartel environment that prevents individual companies from acting truely independently.
There could have been a shareware DVD player by now if not for this cartel BS.
This cartel environment is also something that's "bad in principle". He's also essentially conspiring with Microsoft to help prevent small, innovative software companies from competing on a level playing field. It's one thing for device drivers to be non-existent due to lack of interest and it's another for key multimedia apps to be non-existent due to gratuitous legal entanglements.
This is all due to the fact that DVD is not a genuine open standard.
Parent
Re:Then interviewer is a dipshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the interview actually made Valenti look like a good guy - he had consistent, intelligent responses. The interviewer bordered on whining with his "I rented a DVD at Blockbuster, why is it illegal for me to play it with my 6-line Linux DVD program on my homebuilt HDTV?" argument, repeated ad nauseum.
Parent
Smarter than he looks (Score:5, Interesting)
People like Valenti are paid to have certain beliefs, and they have no incentive to change those beliefs just because they happen to be wrong, moreover, expect Valenti to use every rhetorical technique in the book to obfuscate the real issues.
The value of this type of debate is to point out the inconsistencies in the MPAA position, but you can argue until hell freezes over, Valenti will never (publicly) agree with our position on fair use.
Re:Smarter than he looks (Score:5, Insightful)
The secret is to ask questions that are so simple they are difficult to dodge without being obvious.
Parent
Whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, 6 or 7 articles before this one, was there not an article about Turbolinux shipping with a licensed DVD player, and WMP licenses?
Oh, there's not a "Free as in gimme gimme i deserve it" DVD player for linux.
Lies and horseshit won't help the 'cause'.
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
This interview was from April 16, 2004
TurboLinux made the announcement yesterday and on top of that it mentions the player, but CyberLink does not have a listing for the product [gocyberlink.com]
How is anyone suppose to be able to use a product that does not exist yet?
Parent
Re:Whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
This will probably be applied to books soon. I can imagine how it will work: the text will be printed as a mirror image. This probably satisfies the legal defintion of "effective encryption". The fact that the algorithm for breaking the encyption (ie. using a mirror) is public domain is irrelevant, it is still illegal. The only way to legally read such a book would be to buy a special 'licensed' mirror, which comes with all sorts of additional restrictions.
Now do you see the issue here?
Parent
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
There's langauage inappropriate for Slashdot? News for me.
6-line perl script here (Score:5, Informative)
Circular logic at its finest. (Score:5, Insightful)
Jack keeps arguing in circles. It is illegal to watch DVDs on an unlicensed player because it's illegal.
How can one seriously respect that line of thinking?
LK
Understanding and agreeing are not the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I'd imagine that next time he'll have done a little bit more research and have something of an answer for the Linux DVD player question.
Other than that, I think it's a little bit unfair to say that he doesn't understand the issues. Remember, disagreeing is not the same as not understanding.
Many and Few? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been a while since my civics class, but isn't our entire country founded on the idea that people have certain inalienable rights, even in the face of a majority that wishes to take away those rights?
Re:Many and Few? (Score:5, Funny)
I think the "multi-multi-millions" he's referring to are dollars, not people.
Parent
"You're trying to set your own standard" (Score:5, Insightful)
Valenti and those sharing his views on copyright believe that we (the consumers) should only be able to view works on devices that they approve, at a time and place allowed by them, and how ever many times they want us to.
However, fair use standards CLEARLY state that consumers are allowed to view copyrighted work however they please, as long as they have paid for it. There is no law or statute that allows copyright holders to force consumers to view their work only on certain devices. The DMCA's anti-circumvention provision has this effect, but it would be a blatant anti-trust violation to allow copyright holders to tell consumers they could only view their works on certain devices.
Another notable quote from Valenti is that he is a "great persuader". We need people advocating for consumer's rights who are just as smooth and soothing to technophobe politicians and Valenti is. We need a Good Old Boy to evangelize to the Good Old Boys. Even if Valenti found qrpff "un-fucking-believable", he still left the interview with the opinion that such tools should not be legal. A dialog is most successful when each side can identify with the other on a personal level.
Well spoken. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, really, what is being said is, when you buy a DVD, you are not buying a physical product. What you are buying the right to view some content in a prescribed manner on an authorized device.
That's really the crux of the argument. We are geeks. We like to take things apart and use them in ways the original designers did not intend. That screws with ideas of the establishment.
What WE are saying is, "I got this free Cue-Cat scanner, and it belongs to me, and if I want to take the pieces apart and grind them into confetti or build a moon laser or whatever, I can do that, because it belongs to me."
What THEY are saying is, "You do not actually own that physical Cue-Cat scanner, you have a license to use that device in the manner we have declared, in the same way that you cannot use your cable TV box to get channels you haven't paid for."
Re:Well spoken. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Where are the terms?
2. Where's my signature?
3. Where's my replacement if my current media breaks or is damaged in some way?
Parent
Re:Well spoken. (Score:5, Insightful)
They advertise DVDs as "[INSERT MOVIE NAME HERE]: Buy it today!!!" or "[INSERT MOVIE NAME HERE]: Own it today!!!"
Yet, the MPAA (and the studios) claim that you're not buying it, but licensing it! Has to be a false advertising claim in there somewhere....
Somehow I think "[INSERT MOVIE NAME HERE]: License it today!!!" wouldn't sell so well...
Parent
input please (Score:5, Insightful)
Has ANYONE heard of your rights end where mine begin?
Taking away someone else's rights is NOT your right.
It sucks that pirates use stuff to copy their overpriced pieces of round plastic... but I have the right to play a DVD in linux, build an HDTV, etc. as long as I don't steal content. They shouldn't be able to take that away from me just because its a convenient and easy way for them to fight to protect RIAA/MPAA materials.
Broadcast Flag (Score:5, Interesting)
The broadcast flag -- if you are in your home, then you can copy anything that's on over-the-air television to your heart's content. The only time that you will know there's a broadcast flag is if you try to take one of those copies and redistribute it on the Internet. Then, the flag says, 'No, you can't redistribute it.' But you can do everything you're doing right now -- you'll never know there's a broadcast flag. Well, why would people object to it?
The unspoken assumption here is that you have scrapped all of your existing hardware, and bought new hardware that has support for all of the DRM copy protection. So, the chipset will honor the flags, all the hardware will support the encryption, and the signal will never be available on the system while decrypted.
My current system does a fine job of HDTV recording and playback. So, it's not just a cpu power upgrade requirement. It's a purely manufactured requirement that I need to use their encryption, and have a computer that obeys their commands, not mine.
Also, the interviewer does not do a good job of making the point. He brings up some bullshit point about making his own HDTV, which Valenti easily skewers as being irrelevant to 99.999% of people. He should have made the much more valid point of the millions of TV tuner cards out there today will not be available in the digital TV world without people buying MPAA approved hardware.
(As an aside, WTF was the kid yalking about reqarding his HDTV? I'm pretty sure he didn't create his own CRT or other display device, and all supporting electronics.. that's very difficult from a manufacturing perspective. I would guess that he "made" a HDTV decoder system by plugging in a PCI card from pchdtv.com)
A fundamental misunderstanding. (Score:5, Insightful)
This struck me as being at the heart of Valenti's misunderstanding of the issues important to us. The whole purpose of encryption is to guard the data whether or not it is in a hostile environment. The Nazis didn't go running around screaming "you can't do that, it's not your right" when British intelligence cracked Enigma. Instead, they responded with a stronger cypher.
If your encryption can be cracked, it's not a matter of rights or privileges. It's matter of technology. Your encryption is weak and you need to make it stronger. Then you don't need social laws to prevent people from cracking it. The laws of mathematics do that for you, and do a much better job.
Of course, I cannot speculate on how that would change the dynamics of the situation. It may improve because it might eliminate their motivation to push for bad laws to prop up their weak system. Solving technological problems with technology is better than solving them with legality.
I had High Hopes for This Interview... (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably Valenti tells this same story to his buddies to illustrate how difficult it is to have a dialog with fair-use advocates.
Missing a fact (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Inappropriate language for Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Valenti: You designed this?
Interviewer: Yup.
Valenti: #!$p<>{};!?!!
You can see it might have been misinterpreted as being the transcriber censoring the interview. It's all just a misunderstanding.
Parent
Re:Wasted (Score:5, Insightful)
The downside of this interview is that the kid fails to really achieve anything substantial, other than showing Valenti to be out-of-touch.
The "bypass copy protection" law is directly contradictory to copyright and fair use laws. Valenti doesn't acknowledge that, which is frustrating. I understand his point, but it doesn't make him any less wrong.
Parent
Re:Wasted (Score:5, Insightful)
One of these things is not like the other.
One of these things does not belong.
Polished, smooth, persuasive. Check.
Knows how to argue. Negative.
Valenti: "I never believe in hostile debates. That's not my style. I believe that we ought to talk objectively about it."
Because, after all, Valenti is being objective, therefore anyone who opposes him must be irrational. Why would you pay attention to someone irrational?
Valenti: "But I try to make things simple and clear as I can,"
And the simplest position is to say "Well, this guy says he's being objective, and therefore he must be right."
Valenti: "But you can do everything you're doing right now -- you'll never know there's a broadcast flag. Well, why would people object to it?"
Because everything you're doing is obviously the same as what Mr. Objective thinks "everyone" is doing. And why would anyone object to Mr. Objective?
Valenti: "But there are 284 million people in this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't do it that way. "
No, he's not saying that public policy should be geared towards the 284,000,000 people instead of 100,000 movie industry employees. He's saying "fuck 100,000 engineers over instead"
Because even though a few thousand movie industry employees can somehow create value for 284,000,000 Americans... it wouldn't be objective to assume that a few thousand engineers might be able to do something similar.
You get the point. The gaps in Valenti's logic are big enough to drive a galactic supercluster through. He couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag.
But he is indeed very polished, very smooth, and can be quite persuasive to anyone who has no capacity for rational thought, but a great admiration for polishedness, smoothness, and persuasiveness: Your Congressman.
I loathe Valenti's vision of the world - but I have to give him credit. He's perfect for the job. And he's won.
Parent
Re:My favorite exchange (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:My favorite exchange (Score:5, Informative)
Who needs PowerDVD Linux?
A:Currently, PowerDVD Linux is targeting those IA(Information Appliance, such as Set-top Boxes) developers as an embedded software DVD playback solution. CyberLink is also looking forward to integrating PowerDVD Linux into various Linux distributions. The time frame will be early next year.
2.Is there any trial version available for individual users?
A:Trial version is not yet available for end users right now. Please check back CyberLink web site constantly and we'll publish related news once it is available.
3.Do you have PowerDVD Linux retail version for we Linuxers?
A:Not yet. Due to the variety of different audio and video hardware devices among systems , there are still many details we have to work out. For example, device manufacturer such as NVIDIA has not released their display drivers with Overlay support for Linux yet. That is why CyberLink can not release the retail version right now. We think it is not responsible to release any product until we can ensure the functionality, general compatibility and program stability when running our software.
That was from here [lugos.si] and was also from 2000. Four years later, and we still have nada.
Parent
Re:Don't underestimate Valenti (Score:5, Insightful)
If you've been to the theater recently you might have seen before these short interviews before the movie with a stuntman, camera operator, or some "behind the scenes" guy explaining what he or she does in every film, and how it's their work of art. And how if you trade a movie online, or "download it with a click," you're taking that art for granted and not appreciating its beauty, which should be paid for.
First, that person should never have called all movies art. He or she obviously never saw "Ecks vs. Sever."
Second, whenever one of those trailers plays in a theater with several hundred college students inside, everyone's gut response is laughter. I think the first time I saw one of those interviews was right before Spiderman, and the whole theater was balling.
Also, as an interesting note, the original versions of those short interviews were with big-league directors and actors -- not the small guys on the set. For obvious reasons their pleas not to download movies and avoid paying for them weren't too effective on the test audience...
Also, one thing I noticed from the article:
JV: I don't want to get into the definition of morality.
So apprently, we can't get into the definition of morality, but nonetheless we're going to legislate it?
- sm
Parent
Re:Don't underestimate Valenti (Score:5, Funny)
Errrr....I think you mean bawling, as balling is usually illegal in a theater, and it's unusual to see an entire theatre doing it at once...
Parent
Re:Don't underestimate Valenti (Score:5, Insightful)
The part of this that I find the most hilarious is this "why do they pirate" question is followed by several minutes of TV commercial style SPAM.
These spots should have been nothing more than sympathetic profiles with no references to their actual intent.
Parent
Re:Don't underestimate Valenti (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with any other sort of skill, experience or intelligence. Some otherwise rather dull and ignorant people are rather good at it.
In fact, I was just yesterday reading that observation about Idi Amin. A crude, unintelligent man, with obviously no skills at leadership, but with a certain animal cunning that allowed him to rise up through the ranks, and even remain a free, and in certain circles, even respected man, who died at an old age, in bed.
Simply having achieved some sort of lofty status says little to nothing about a man, and might simply say he's a right bastard.
KFG
Parent
Re:No licensed DVD player for Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
Linspire DVD player requires Lindspire 4.5 or higher.
I don't use Linspire. I use Linux. There is no mention of support for Linux, just endless mention of Linspire.
Before anyone says "but it'll probably work with other Linuxes as well," remember that that defeats the entire point of the argument... alicensed player for Linux... This player is clearly not for Linux (i.e. the set of operating systems collectively known as), and I don't have any evidence without buying the product that the EULA even allows me to run it on anything other than Linspire.
So I don't think this link or product particularly alters my reaction to the article, which was to applaud the student (even if he was a bit ham-handed) and to want to vomit on Valenti.
Parent