MIT Student Grills Valenti on Fair Use

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."

Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[ghettoboy22]

[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.

Inappropriate for the Slashdot homepage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause it's spelled right?

Whee

[OttoDestruct]

All your DVD are belong to Tux?

Valenti swearing

[Anonymous Coward]

Valenti is 82 years old. I have a hard time believing he said "un-fucking-believable." More likely he called Keith a "good for nothing whippersnapper" and then hurled his cane at him.

inappropriate?

[sulli]

Valenti responds with language inappropriate for the Slashdot homepage.

Valenti replies with ascii-art pr0n? Cool!

after reading the interview

[JeanBaptiste]

thats truly amazing how Jack Valenti has no clue about the position he is taking.

none whatsoever.

scary.

maybe I should get into the MPAA. im pretty clueless most of the time also, i'd fit right in.

Forgot some lines...

[Famatra]

[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>

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Huh?

[AceCaseOR]

Valenti responds with language inappropriate for the Slashdot homepage

There's langauage inappropriate for Slashdot? News for me.

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack Valenti: Un-fucking-believable.

Did you misunderstand? He's saying it's unbelievable that a DMCA violator would show him proof right to his face!

MIT student grills Jack Valenti. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . .and serves him in a white wine sauce.

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[ameoba]

That's actually a very common reaction to seeing your first Perl code & being told that it is not only human readable but actually performs a useful function.

JV: Un-fucking-believable.

[Queuetue]

I just like repeating it.

JV: Un-fucking-believable.

Imagine the look of wonder in his eyes.

JV: Un-fucking-believable.

Re:MIT student grills Jack Valenti. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

How about with fava beans and a nice chianti?

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[Frizzle Fry]

There are people who've been writing perl code for years and still don't believe the language is "human readable".

Re:Many and Few?

[superflippy]

You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved.

I think the "multi-multi-millions" he's referring to are dollars, not people.

Re:6-line perl script here

[WormholeFiend]

that looks more than 6 lines.

MIT Class A network..

[mschiller]

Being an original Arpanet site hath it's privledges. Of course it also helps to have a major internet routing site on campus as well.... I guess the folks running the network back when just had the forsight to realize that holding ON to their class A would be worth something someday [either to sell portions of it for added endowment or to just have plenty of IP addressess.. At MIT every building has it's own class B! Nothing like have fixed IP's for every one of your computers...] Matthew Schiller Class of 2002 Course 6.2

Re:Don't underestimate Valenti

[Spazholio]

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. (emphasis mine)

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...

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[Omega1045]

A fellow programmer once called C++ a "write-only" language. I guees this could be extended to PERL.

MPAA rating: R

[dacarr]

This interview with Mr. Valenti has been rated "R" for explicit language. Nobody under 17 will be permitted to read this without an accompanying adult. Reader discretion is advised.

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[3terrabyte]

Yea! Unfucking believable that the FBI didn't swoop in and shoot the violator!

Re:6-line perl script here

[Weird O'Puns]

Great!

I just started learning perl today. I should have never seen that code...

Totally irrelevant...

[TomorrowPlusX]

This is completely irrelevant; but about a year or so ago I was invited to a women-in-film "gala" thing. I'm a graphic designer, and I work with people who do lots of video, as in filming, editing, post-processing, etc. They invited me, since I'm so damn cool, or good looking, or something. I went, because I knew there would be hot chicks there.

So, I'm at the gala ( which was in a swinging hotel in Georgetown, DC -- no problem, I live within walking distance ), and I have to take a leak. When I'm at the urinal who walks up besides me than Jack Valenti himself, also needing to piss.

Now, say what you will about Jack Valenti being a good lobbyist, or an out-of-touch asshole, or a shill for big money -- Jack Valenti is NOT a tall man.

I'm not a tall man either. I'm 5' 11". But Valenti, he was like, tops, up to my belly button. Think "bite-sized". I've never seen such a short man with such power. He's like some sort of crazy media-mogul Napoleon.

That's all. I just thought I'd share.

Un-Fucking-Real

[Trolling4Dollars]

The langauge in that story was certainly Re-fucking-printable based on how-fucking-much that fucking-word "fuck" is so-fukcing-overused on fucking-Slashdot.

Now we'll see how much of a sense of humor the mods REALLY have. ;p

Why Valenti was shocked

[BlightThePower]

I hope I'm not being too cynical in the suspicion that Valenti (who rechecks how many Linux users there are) was shocked that he was missing 2 million customers, not that 2 million people apparently have to do something controversial to (or do without watching) DVDs.

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever. -- Code

[axis-techno-geek]

The quote goes something like this:

"If we wanted you to understand it we wouldn't call it code."

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[Anonymous Custard]

looks like there are just a lot of hard returns missing where, in any other context, any sane programmer would put them in.

No one claimed that Perl is sane.

Re:Don't underestimate Valenti

[Cranx]

It's your right, but you're laughing at someone defending their livelihood.

What do you do for a living? I'll assume you roof houses.

What if some religious group who was against people charging for labor started roaming the streets fixing people's roofs for free? What if it put a lot of people out of business?

What if we met on the street, and you said to me "I wish those freaks would stop fixing people's roofs for free, it's going to put me out of a job soon" and then I LAUGHED IN YOUR FACE?

What? Not funny?

The truth is, the movie industry is far from going bankrupt. But if you reduce profits, you reduce jobs. That particular worker you laugh at might never be out of work...or he might be the next person to find himself unemployed. Regardless of his situation, when fewers movies are made, when profit margins drop, people lose their jobs.

That's just how it is.

So, laugh at the guy if you want to. But know you're laughing at a working man who is making a statement to protect his livelihood.

You're my hero.

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[jmpresto_78]

Perl isn't sane??? No WONDER my scanner doesn't work!!

(I couldn't resist...)

Licensed Linux DVD Player

[Platypii]

But if someone did that, we would all be revealed to be hypocrites when no one buys the licensed player!

...On the other hand, it would be justified with "it's not that I wouldn't pay for it, but it's closed-source!"

Re:Valenti swearing

[abe ferlman]

This interview has not yet been rated by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Re:Agreed

[DickBreath]

The DMCA isn't all bad. In time, the parts that are unconstitutional will be repealed and the parts that are vague will be clarified.

Don't you mean: in time, the parts of The Constitution that conflict with the DMCA will be clarified.

Re:Agreed

[Martin Blank]

He's saying "un-fucking-believable" because he realizes the kid he is talking to is a living circumvention device, and the only successful solution is to legalize killing such people.

I wonder if the economics of tracking down and executing violators are better than the economics of suing them.

Might be time for a career change soon. With the number of violators, I'd be guaranteed a job for life!

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[dasmegabyte]

It's also possible to make code that is perfectly readable, but doesn't do anything. These guys [microsoft.com] have been experimenting with it for years!

Re:Many and Few?

[Dun Malg]

Thank you! The Ninth is my favorite Amendment!

The Ninth Amendment: "Even if we didn't mention them here, all your rights are belong to you!"
The Tenth Amendment: "If we didn't say here that they can, then the Feds can't do it."

Heh. Those are my favorites as well, and boy have they been ignored! I used to say that what we (the people) ought to do is walk through Washington DC with a molotov in one hand, and a copy of the constitution in the other; then, when we come across a federal gov't building, we check the constitution to see if the duties of the agency therein are enumerated and, if not, in goes the molotov.

Just an amusing fantasy, I suppose.

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[AndroidCat]

He's a four hundred year-old vampire, he's never seen a DVD before and it boggled him. Eventually he'll understand those, then he can start on Linux, and then why six little lines are cool.

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[billcopc]

If 6 carriage returns means six lines of code, then if all the code is in one long burst without carriage return, is it a 0-line program ?

Re:Agreed

[Martin Blank]

All I'd need is a list of addresses and photos from the MPAA/RIAA, a rifle and scope, and immunity from prosecution. No hit list for me to be on -- except maybe those of the ACLU, EFF, and Slashdot. :)

Re:Best. Excerpt. Ever.

[imaginate]

It's worse than that - they couldn't even buy their own ramps because it would be illegal.

Great point...

Re:linux and DVD

[Guppy06]

How else are they going to make money? Make good movies?