Jack Valenti's Views On The Digital Age 441
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."
no backups !!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait till his hard disk dies
Costs of Production (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to respond to the article's citation
to the costs of producing a CD and a movie.
I believe it cited 250,000 dollars for a CD and
20 million for a movie.
I talked about this with a friend who is doing
a CD for a chorus. He said that the studio
rental and editing costs were about $20,000
to $30,000.
We did not get a chance to talk about the
manufacturing and distro costs, but I strongly
think that the total costs can be done at much
less than the number cited in the article.
Mark
Re:no backups !!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or what about when media changes? Can I simply transfer digital content from one media to another when I have paid for the right to listen to it? For instance, I purchased and repurchased a significant bit of music first on vinyl and then on CD with many of the albums being duplicates. In fact, some of them were purchased as vinyl LP's, cassettes, and then CD's of the same album. Now they are digital and hosted on my dedicated G4 media server, I don't want to have to purchase them again.
Also, what about all of that vinyl I have that is out of print? Old punk and bluegrass vinyl that I want to rip into iTunes as well. Since I have already purchased this stuff, I should be able to digitize it without having to pay any more royalties.
replacing VHS tapes for generations? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also I never knew it was illegal to copy VHS tapes that you already owned. All the FBI blurb at the begining of almost every U.S.-made movie says is that it is illegal to copy for distribution or showing in front of an audience. I guess he could get the legal eagles to define 'audience' as one or more people or pets.
Obviously doesn't use a PC. :-) (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like him to play a DVD from Hollywood Video.
Of the last three I rented,
- one had pits and I had to skip a scene,
- one was delaminated, unplayable and I had to eject it before my DVD drive got munged,
-one was outright unplayable on my TiBook because according to the README.TXT "It doesn't play on a Macintosh."
I can MAKE a DVD on my TiBook with iMovie and a video camera but I can't play one of yours Jack.
Bwahahaha. Somebody buy this poor dumb [expletive deleted] a clue.
He probably believes M$ when they say that their systems are "secure now."
there was one lucid comment (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:he's right you know.... (Score:2, Interesting)
According to copyright law, he wouldn't. He had already purchased the right to listen to the music. He simply has to have the music transfered onto the new medium (should be avalible for a nomial cost). The music industry needs to either admit they are selling us the medium only and cannot lay claim to the content, or admit they are only selling us the content and let us listen to it on whatever medium we want.
Re:no backups !!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Or wait until his "Shrek" DVD gets all scratched up. I just found out a couple of days ago that the disc with the widescreen (e.g. correct) version of the movie is mangled and won't play.
I paid for it, and it doesn't work as Jack advertises (i.e. "never wears out"). Will I get a free replacement? No, I will not. So I borrowed a copy from a friend and I'm making myself a copy. And once that copy is complete, I will make another copy. Why? Because I have a small child and they can break the unbreakable and wear out the un-wear-out-able.
I intend to make "kid copies" of all my kid's DVD's and keep the original as backup. Let him throw the copy across the room, or stand on it, or put it into the machine crooked, or play with it in the driveway, or use it as part of an intricate LEGO construction.
JV claims everything he predicted about video tapes and copying came true. Everything, that is, except for the utter destruction of the movie and television industry, right Jack?
DoD
Re:he's right you know.... (Score:2, Interesting)
They want to have the cake and eat it too. They want to sell it as a product, including the benefit of reselling the product if yours breaks or wears out. But they want your ability to resell, trade, borrow or lend it to be governed by licenses.
Basically they want a legal climate that says "Anything the MPAA can profit from is legal, everything else is not". And it's not news. The digital crap is just another page in a very long and boring book.
Just another greedy bastich (Score:4, Interesting)
According to this ass, the film industry, which is rolling in more money because the VCR exists than they would without it, is still grousing because the SCOTUS decided to allow me to videotape my niece's birthday party without forking money over to his fat-cat cartel.
Re:no backups !!! (Score:1, Interesting)
The e-mail I just sent Jack Valenti (Score:4, Interesting)
A Few Comments: (Score:1, Interesting)
Never has the Hollywood lobby's intention been stated more clearly. This astounding display of candor should be read by every librarian, teacher, student, reader, listener, and movie-watcher in the country.
>JV:
Wrong both in fact and in inference. Railroad gauges in this country have historically varied from 2 ft. to 6 ft. or more, and the prevalance of one standard gauge today is not because of a federal mandate, but because most of them VOLUNTARILY adopted the same gauge. Why? Because efficient transportation demanded interoperability between different proprietary systems (i.e., load up a boxcar in California and, if most railroads use the same gauge, you can roll it all the way to Maine without having to stop and reload the freight). A few railroads deliberately tried to confine their rolling stock and customers to their own lines through embargoes or by using an odd gauge. They either changed their minds or went broke as the more efficient, interconnected standard gauge lines built around them.
Does this concept sound familiar? It has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright, and everything to do with open, non-proprietary industry standards.
There has never been a US law mandating a common gauge, and to this day, a number of tourist, passenger, and self-contained industrial lines use oddball gauges, ranging from historical tourist lines like the Durango & Silverton *NARROW GAUGE* Railroad (which was built that way because smaller tracks and trains were cheaper and better able to wind through mountain canyons) to San Francisco's BART transit system (which decided that the smoother ride of a wide gauge was more important than interoperability). Nothing illegal about any of them; they just can't ship freight via connecting lines very efficiently.
Of course, the railroad industry's business model eventually ran into difficulties due to improved alternate methods of distribution. Another parallel suggests itself, hmmmm?
What is needed is a little feedback /. style (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't whine here - a much more effective way to publicize your thoughts on what drivel Valenti spews and how it is reprinted without comment by the HPR is to create a "user name" on the HPR site and send a "Letter to the Editor" and tell them what you think of the interview.
I was amazed at how easily I was able to create an ID for "Elroy Jetson" and send the following letter to the editor:
" "
Maybe after reading through 10,000 letters, HPR will be less likely to send softballs to political lobbyists with no thought to the future (or even reality).
AC
Re:12 Year olds? (Score:3, Interesting)
Open SmartRipper (1)
Click Start Rip (2)
Wait for Rip to finish. Click OK (3)
Click X to close app (4)
Open Vidomi (5)
Click Add File (6)
Click file to add (7)
Click open (8)
Click Start (9)
Click X to close app (10).
Of course if you may have a few more steps in there to go to the correct directory, change the file name, etc...but I basically consider it a two step process. Once you get the inital configuration down, it's a cinch.
This assumed that you wanted to make a DivX movie. If you just wanted to backup the DVD, you could just stop at the 4th click since you have the VOB already.
Who does he think he is? (Score:2, Interesting)
a. Why should I have to pay a royalty to some "media" guy for buying a blank piece of media that may or may not have something people like him publish.
2. The MPAA is more like a censorship board then a purely rating board, just listen to the commentary on some of you dvds like Gladiator or Scream, they don't rate content, they decide what content is allowed, what happened to the right of the artists.
3. "What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law." I don't remember any copyright law that somebody didn't pay to put it.
4. How would have censorship made the Vietnam War anymore winnable. The government is supposed to win are support for a war without giving truthful information.
Lastly. What happened to the free market, where does it say it is the government's job to protect an industry or business model from itself. It's not the governments job to keep you afloat even if you are sinking, movies are a utility. They don't want change so they pay big money for bill's to stop any.
Standards evolve (Score:4, Interesting)
The "railroad standard" evolved without a gov't mandate (unless of course were talking about Rome)...search google for "space shuttle chariot railroad". Any number of links to the following text:
Re:no backups !!! (Score:2, Interesting)