Jack Valenti's Views On The Digital Age

ditogi writes "The Harvard Political Review did a quick interview with the lord of darkness himself, Jack Valenti. He gives his thoughts on government mandated copy prevention, fair use, and lobbying. In response to his famous 'VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' quote, he responds, 'I wasn't opposed to the VCR.' And what does he think of his current job? 'I think lobbying is really an honest profession.'" My favorite quote: "In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless." Update: 02/05 20:05 GMT by T : Derek Slater writes "I'm the author of the Valenti article you guys linked to. I've made some brief comments about it on my site, and figured I'd send them along."

Re:Message body

[Anonymous Coward]

Your unmatched formatting skills make me all hot and bothered. Take me now, you animal.

Re:a shed

[mccalli]

If Jack Valenti had his way back in 1982...50% of Hollywood's income wouldn't exist.

Hmmm...

OK, I've switched sides. I'm a fan now.

Cheers,
Ian

Thank goodness...

[bytesmythe]

I am so reassured to know that the future advancements of our society are safely in the hands of visionaries such as Jack Valenti. I hope that he plays a major role in the formation of legistlation related to technological concepts, as he is surely one of the most forward-thinking members of this digital age.

Re:a shed

[Spicy Bisquit]

im not saying that hollywood having more income to produce rapping kangaroo movies is a good thing. just that valenti is a tool.

And by inference

[mcSey921]

'VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' quote, he responds, 'I wasn't opposed to the VCR.'

From that quote then we can also infer he wasn't opposed to the Boston Strangler. Maybe he is the "Prince of Darkness".

Re:Costs of Production

[elmegil]

Obviously he was only referring to a CD that he had to pay Clearchannel to push.

12 Year olds?

[Gizzmonic]

[from the interview:]

Valenti: But in digital piracy, with the click of a mouse a twelve year-old can send a film hurdling around the world.

Hey Valenti, what sites have you been visiting lately? Pete Townshend wants to know...

No backups?

[rd]

He doesn't have CD eating children running around his house like I do.

Dear Jack

[xXunderdogXx]

Dear Jack,

I work at the bank where your financial information is stored. We were considering backing up your jillions of dollars but decided after hearing your comments that the information is secure because it is digital.

Have a nice day,
A fan

Lord o' darkness

[Anonymous Coward]

the lord of darkness himself, Jack Valenti.

I was going to make a comment about slashdot, and professionalism, and editorial responsibility to present unbiased viewpoints..

but..

..fuck it. This guy is Satan on Earth, and I hope he goes the fuck out of business.

Re:Message body

[LMCBoy]

Be mindful of the Preview button! Save you, it can!

Re:no backups !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

" purchased and repurchased a significant bit of music first on vinyl and then on CD with many of the albums being duplicates. In fact, some of them were purchased as vinyl LP's, cassettes, and then CD's of the same album."

"The RIAA, where an ignorant consumer[*] is our best customer!"

[*]sheep, that is

Re:no backups !!!

[levik]

Following this statement, mr Valenti went on to say that the MPAA is looking into the shady activities of the system administrators worldwide, who persist in regularly backing up untold amounts of data.

"All I am saying," he said, "is that there is currently no oversight over the information that is getting duplicated. In other words, for all we know these people could be backing up my clients' protected material. My clients are simply requesting a reasonable amount of access to this data to verify that it doesn't contain any of our intillectual property."

Mr. Valenti then asked the SysAdmin industry can justify spending so much money on "backing up" untold Terrabytes of content even though the data is in digital, format which does not degrade.

"I'm not accusing them of anything, but I think they are stealing content," he concluded.

No backups?!?

[Zone5]

"we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out."

Damn, I wish he banked with my company... I'd make sure we didn't make any backups of his bank account - since they're not needed and all that.

And then I'd schedule a disaster-recovery test involving fire, flooding, and lots of sledgehammer blows to the DASD where his data was stored.

Re:Costs of Production

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, in the article they talked about censorship some. I think that in interviews like this they should censor the amounts he claims to lose due to piracy becausy they are absolutely obscene.

"Yea, last wear we lost *CENSORED* due to internet piracy."

Backups...we don't need no stinkin' backups!

[Slightly Askew]

Local Man Arrested For Violence At Bank

Police Tuesday arrested a local man at a Bank of America branch. Jack Valenti, 46, was charged with assault and attempted robbery for beating the bank president with a spindle of blank CDRs and attempting to take cash from the teller's drawer. According to the teller, Mr. Valenti became upset when he was informed that, due to a computer error, his account had been closed. Due to recent changes in the bank's policies, the IT staff ceased making backups of the bank's data. When asked about the policy change, the IT manager, who appeared to be choking back laughter, said, "We recently changed our backup policies in light of statements made by Mr. Valenti himself that digital information was timeless and, therefore, did not need backed up. The bank president read that interview and told us he could no longer justify the cost of daily tape backups."

Mr. Valenti is being held on $50,000 bond. His lawyer declined our request for an interview. In similar news, the RIAA has filed suit agains Bank of America for copyright violations. When asked what evidence prompted the suit, a spokesdemon replied, "They had CDRs, didn't they? What more evidence do you need?"

Re:no backups !!!

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Maybe ol' Jack can help me transfer the data from my collection of old TRS-80 disks. They're five and a quarter inch, double sided, double density. Most are forty-track, although a few are thirty-five track. They were written using a non-standard doubler -- track zero is double-density too, unlike most where track zero was still single density.

Hell, they don't even have anyone else's Intellectual Property on them, except for a quotation collection I'd transcribed from old Chinese legends and stuff.

3.5 billion dollars a year on videocassette piracy

[Gannoc]

For the record, about 250 million blank tapes were sold in 2001.
That means that he's claiming about $20 worth of losses for EACH blank videotape.

So I guess they're assuming that every single blank videotape sold is used to pirate movies. Nice.

Wait, just kidding. I just totally made up those numbers. Shit, I should be a lobbyist and live with honor.

Most Overlooked Quote

[today]

He's been spending way too much time in the back of a limousine....

"We always operate on the fact that everybody needs to know that there's a 55 mph speed limit."

Re:no backups !!!

[ctellefsen]

"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever."

Even if I stick it in the microwave?

Re:no backups !!!

[the Man in Black]

BWJones: Perhaps because it, with OS X is the best solution that allows me to wirelessly stream audio anywhere in my house to laptops or desktops with a minimum of fuss. And I should also mention that iTunes is a sweet music database application. The G4 also serves up DVD's for viewing enjoyment to a large screen monitor and can do this while someone else listens to music and gets their email or surfs the web among other things. As for the hardware, its actually an older G4 that I installed some big hard drives in to take all of the MP3s I ripped from my (paid for) collection.

Rest of Slashdot: Oh. Well....ummm....Mac's are STUPID! They...they only have one mouse button! Yeah! So NAH!

lol!

The Obvious Question:

[some damn guy]

Mr. Valenti, you've already said that piracy will eventually destroy the movie business- but are there disadvantages to it as well?