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MPAA Names Dan Glickman To Replace Jack Valenti 307

Posted by timothy from the mouthpiece-is-a-euphemism dept.
Zordak writes "Fox News is reporting that the MPAA has chosen a new chief to replace Jack Valenti. Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF. Ha ha. Just kidding, Dave Barry style. Dan Glickman is actually a seasoned Washington politician, having served as a Kansas representative and agriculture secretary under President Clinton. He has previously been a lobbyist for the Walt Disney Corporation, and his son is the producer of such quality fare as 'Shanghai Knights' and 'Rush Hour.' Don't be looking for that 'approved' Linux DVD player soon."
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MPAA Names Dan Glickman To Replace Jack Valenti More

MPAA Names Dan Glickman To Replace Jack Valenti

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  • Meet the new boss... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wizzy Wig ( 618399 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @05:55PM (#9587179)
    same as the old boss.

    • I Work At USDA, And That Ain't Necessarily So. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by saudadelinux ( 574392 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:19PM (#9587414)

      I work at USDA, and was here during Glickman's time. He's a pretty regular guy.

      If he saw you in the hall, he'd say hi. He mostly ate in the regular employee cafeterias, instead of the Secretary's Dining Room (which has pretty the same food, but also wood paneling and table service).

      His official portrait on the Patio (just past the Visitor's Center, if you come in the Whitten Building) shows him standing behind his chair, jacket on the back of the chair, with a kind of sarcastic look on his face. All the others have the usual standing-there-button-up-jacket sort.

      When 50 black farmers demonstrated in front of Clinton's White House for better treatment from USDA, Bill called Dan, and Dan put together the Civil Rights Action Team [govexec.com](CRAT). This team made 92 recommendations to ameliorate the problem, and they were put into place by the Civil Rights Implementation Team (CRIT).

      Glickman gave his full backing to this effort, which, frankly, was resisted in some of the USDA agencies cited in the CRAT Report

      He always struck me as a pretty fair, stand-up kind of guy, so it wouldn't surprise me if well-reasoned, non-hostile Linux advocacy were presented to him, a major victory could be won.

    • Re:Meet the new boss... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by plj ( 673710 )
      Well, I'm not an U.S. citizen so I do not vote there, have never even visited there, know that DMCA is not really a democrat v. republican issue (and that Clinton signed it into law), and that this guy is from copyright/DRM enforcement point of view probably as bad kind of asshole as Valenti ever was.

      But that said, I'm still always kind a way happy when I'll hear, that some elected/chosen person somewhere in the States was a democrat instead of a republican; every republican happens to get connected into R
      • Your perception is mostly incorrect, being colored by the media. Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower benefit from the haze of history- and left-wingers are still very angry that Reagan's policies ended the cold war and saved the U.S. economy.

        • Re:Meet the new boss... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by plj ( 673710 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @07:13PM (#9587825)
          Colored by media my ass. You're probably somewhat right about Teddy and Dwight D, but there are many of Reagan's [wikipedia.org] policies I still cannot agree with. Some of them were good, though, but most of them not. Still, nobody's perfect, either.

        • Re:Meet the new boss... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Jonathan ( 5011 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @07:40PM (#9588002) Homepage
          Your perception is mostly incorrect, being colored by the media. Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower benefit from the haze of history

          Let's see -- TR started the Forest Service and many national parks [nps.gov] -- no Republican since has ever been so environmentally conscious. Your beloved Reagan said "If you've seen one Redwood, you've seen them all.".

          Eisenhower, despite being a career soldier, was intelligent enough to realize the danger of the military industrial complex [utexas.edu]. Reagan just gave bottom-feeding scum corps like Lockheed and Northrop everything they asked for.

          and left-wingers are still very angry that Reagan's policies ended the cold war and saved the U.S. economy.

          Communism collapsed of its own accord, helped by the struggles of people behind the iron curtain, which the US never helped despite their desperate pleads (We also screwed over the Czechs and Hungarians by not lifting a finger when they rebelled in the 50's and '60s) Read up on East Germany's "Swords to Ploughshares" movement, for example. Without those protests, the Berlin Wall wouldn't have fell.
        • And the critical faculties of someone who posts a comment consisting mostly of inflamatory rhetoric fashioned from the buzzwords, clicheed slogans, and truisms masked as facts repeated ad nauseum on talk show airwaves across the country are not in any way impaired?
      • That's brilliant. "I know virtually nothing, but at least he's not a Republican, so yay!"

        For what it's worth, he's a Kansas Democrat. Most of them are probably more conservative than the Republicans of California and New England, especially given the district he represented. He was elected in the 4th Congressional District [haysareafyi.com], which contains Wichita (a conservative industrial town) and lots of rural farmland, and very few liberal bastions like college towns.

        • That's brilliant. "I know virtually nothing, but at least he's not a Republican, so yay!"

          First: I told that I'm a foreigner. It'd be rather hard to follow internal politics of every 51 states. But I think I still know things rather well as a foreigner.

          Second: I didn't say "yay!" I just said that I think a known-to-be asshole D. is probably better than a known-to-be asshole R.

          For what it's worth, he's a Kansas Democrat. Most of them are probably more conservative than the Republicans of California and N
          • Actually, that's a problem both parties have suffered, particularly in the Senate. Zell Miller, a conservative Democrat from Georgia, often sides with the Republicans on issues. I believe he's even scheduled to speak at the Republican Presidential Convention this fall. Likewise, Jim Jeffords used to be a liberal Republican from (I believe) Connecticut, but he redeclared as an independent and allied with the Democrats in 2001 in order to give them control of the Senate.

            This issue can also be seen in aborti

    • This change is really symbolic of a change in tactics. That is, the media industries previously tried to lock in their copyright monopolies by microregulation of all the hardware industries, who are now revolting.

      So now they've switched gears. They are now going to try to lock in their monopoly by using total DRM, and probably resort suvere hardball tactics - which may even include mafia style physical violence and sabatoge of people or companies that are found trying to bypass it. Seriously, if a few b

  • DVD Player (Score:2, Informative)

    by margal ( 696859 )
    I thought there was already one...

  • Anti-piracy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chitinid ( 635983 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @05:56PM (#9587192)
    The MPAA and RIAA need to realize that they make many billions of dollars each year, even though they charge non-optimal prices for their content. If they charged less, I think they'd actually make more money. I hope this new guy realizes that the cost of the litigation against your average file-sharer is likely more than the gains against piracy. The key here is simple economics: more people would be able and willing to pay if music and movies cost less.
    • Actually, the MPAA seems to be doing quite fine with charging people exhorbant fees for DVDs. Amazingly enough, people keep paying them. Overall, I'd say the MPAA hasn't been doing *too* bad up until now. The biggest thing they've done to piss everyone off was the DeCSS fiasco.

      • Re:Anti-piracy (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Chitinid ( 635983 )
        As a simple economic matter of optimization, while they would make less per DVD, say, they would sell more DVDs overall, and make a greater profit. If the movie companies were to do so, not only would their customers be happier, but so would their shareholders. I suppose they're going for the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" way of doing business.

        • Reduced prices of DVDs (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Ra5pu7in ( 603513 ) <ra5pu7in@@@gmail...com> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:42PM (#9587600) Journal
          Whether dropping the price would bring additional sales depends on how many consumers put off or don't buy DVDs simply because the price seems high. Those of us who don't see the value in buying most DVDs (why pay for something I won't watch more than a couple times) won't buy even if the price is dropped by half. I'd rather rent them when I want them (at an average of $5 per rental, I can rent it 6-8 times!).

          Also, dropping the price does something else. It doesn't reduce the cost of the DVD, marketing, and packaging. It only reduces the net profit earned. You can't drop the price by half and sell twice as many and balance out. It doesn't work that cleanly. You would have to drop the price by half the net profit to get that. (And somehow do this so the store still makes the same profit, or you'll have trouble there.)

  • Replace? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @05:56PM (#9587198) Journal

    This new guy might be taking the job of Jack Valenti but I ask you who could possibly ever hope to "take the place" of good ol' Jack?

    "What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law." [google.com]

    GMD


    • His wiki entry has a few more choice quotes:

      Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

      I actually read the EW article (waiting to get haircut or something) where he made the quote about $75,000-$100,000 being "not much to live on." Talk about being out of touch with reality!

  • Respect to MPAA (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01, 2004 @05:57PM (#9587201)
    I am going to respect change in the MPAA by changing my downloaded bittorrent movies from...

    Movies Downloaded
    to
    Downloaded Movies

  • Well that's a new one (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) * on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:00PM (#9587236) Homepage
    Huh... I've heard Satan, Lucifer, Old Serphant, Mephistopheles, The Lord of the Flies, Samael, Old Scratch, the King of Lies, Iblis, Mastema and Beelzebub, but Dan Glickman is a new one by me.

    Guess you learn something new every day...

  • Dan Glickman (Score:5, Funny)

    by theJerk242 ( 778433 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:00PM (#9587237) Homepage Journal
    Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF. Ha ha. Just kidding, Dave Barry style.

    How can you play with my emotions like that, you insensitive clod?

  • Maybe, maybe not. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:01PM (#9587247) Journal

    You know, paying lip-service to the demands of your 'enemies' (hey! they're not going to see us as friends) is a time-honoured "solution" to a sticky problem. So if the MPAA comes out with 'Linux users can be legitimate users if they do X, Y, and Z", even if this only applies to Linux *vendors* , they could claim a certain amount of brownie points in a courtroom.

    "They refused the compromise we offered", "They steal (sic) our IP", "We demand the death penalty", (with the exception of the latter, at least I hope) these are reasonable "court" arguments. Consider the case of the clueless judge (sorry your honour, but it's a fact that most of your kin aren't technically aware), the "industry expert" (read: paid shill), the "compromise offer", and the cold hard law.The 'rock and a hard place' doesn't come into it. Yes I'm aware I'm mixing my metaphors, it's late :-)

    Let's hope they continue to deny us a 'reasonable' way of doing what we want - at least then we have a reasonable argument that they're being unreasonable. This is more important than most realise, I think....

    Simon.

  • Biography (Score:4, Informative)

    by jm92956n ( 758515 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:01PM (#9587251) Journal
    There's a very informative biography on him here [usda.gov].

  • he's a good lobbyist (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pedantic bore ( 740196 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:05PM (#9587287)
    Well, what did you expect?

    It looks like this guy knows how to lobby very effectively. The MPAA is an organization whose primary purpose is to lobby for the interests of the motion picture industry. Were you really expecting someone who would take things in a new direction? (he was probably hired based on his ability to keep things the way they are!)

    The only thing that's surprising to me is that he doesn't seem to have much connection to the industry. I would have expected an insider to be promoted instead of someone being hired in.

  • Wha...?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Caraig ( 186934 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:08PM (#9587318)
    Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF. Ha ha. Just kidding, Dave Barry style.
    Urge... to kill... rising....
    • Urge... to kill... rising....
      Must...control...fist of death....
    • Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF. Ha ha. Just kidding, Dave Barry style.
      Damn you, Zordak. Damn you straight to hell.

      [grumble grumble]

  • last time I checked... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:10PM (#9587343)
    Don't be looking for that 'approved' Linux DVD player soon."

    I'm sorry, but I just really have a pet peeve for geeks who don't show the slightest business-world saavy.

    First off, there ARE approved DVD players running Linux, if I'm not mistaken.

    Second, if by "approved" you mean "MPlayer will have the little DVD industry logo", change "not soon" to "never". There are royalties involved, and that's never going to change. The DVD consortium cares about profits from the royalties first and pleasing the movie industry second (what's the movie industry gonna do, go to another format? Stop releasing DVD disks? Uh huh).

    "Supporting open source, non-royalty-paying, market-share-stealing-from-royalty-paying-players, pirates-movies-easy-as-1-2-3, bypasses-our-forced-previews-and-FBI warnings software" has never been on anyone's(manufacturers, DVD standard consortium, movie industry, MPAA) list, and if you even suggested it, you'd be blown out of the room by the severe laughing fit that resulted.

    Between gasps for air, grabbing their sides, and wiping their tears, they'd say, "oh look, he's so naive, isn't that just the cutest thing in the world".

    • Re:last time I checked... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Okay, here's some background to catch you up on things (you've clearly been on vacation for a while).

      1) Watching a DVD in the United States is ILLEGAL, unless you're using an approved player. Fines and jail time. Not enforced, but it's the law, and it makes people skittish. I find that skittishness reasonable.
      2) There is one approved DVD player for Linux, called LinDVD. It's been available for years, except nobody has ever managed to get a copy of it. It's vaporware. Seriously--try to buy this softwa
    • "Supporting open source, non-royalty-paying, market-share-stealing-from-royalty-paying-players, pirates-movies-easy-as-1-2-3, bypasses-our-forced-previews-and-FBI warnings software"

      if there is a market for that, you can bet it will be filled. I think the DVD player manufacturers no damn well that tere is a market for skipping anything on the disk, and a few other features.
      You don't really think those 'backdoors' are there on accident, go you?

  • A summary of his Ag tenure... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Einer2 ( 665985 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:11PM (#9587359)
    ...can be found at the USDA website. [usda.gov] It's a little dated, but it has an interesting excerpt:

    Under Glickman's leadership, USDA has restructured and modernized its enormous, decentralized field office structure, helping cut administrative and overhead costs by about $4 billion. He also has taken a strong, personal interest in civil rights. The Department has recently reviewed its civil rights practices for the first time and has dramatically improved its commitment to fairness and equality, in both treatment of its employees and execution of its programs. At Glickman's direction, the Department settled one of the largest civil rights class action suits filed against the U.S. Government.

    Unfortunately, I didn't get interested in local politics until nearly the end of his term in office, so I can't say too much about his political leanings...

  • Damn! (Score:5, Funny)

    by JuliusRV ( 742529 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:12PM (#9587367)

    Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF.

    When I read that sentence, all of a sudden my heart opened up and I was filled with joy and happiness! I felt incredibly warm and fuzzy all over!
    The next sentence almost killed me :-(

    How insensitive and cruel some people can be!

  • conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kallahar ( 227430 ) <kallahar@quickwired.com> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:14PM (#9587379) Homepage
    Doesn't this seem like a huge conflict of interest? I realize that there's no laws against it, but wouldn't the other MPAA members worry that this guy's kid works for only one of the member companies?

  • Ask Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spaceman40 ( 565797 ) <blinks@a[ ]org ['cm.' in gap]> on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:16PM (#9587398) Homepage Journal
    Anybody think we can get an interview/Q&A session with this guy? If we can let him know a little more about our position (was it the journalist from MIT that interviewed Valenti?), maybe we can avoid an out-and-out war, and let him know we really care about this stuff...

  • The similarity is astounding (Score:5, Funny)

    by jdkane ( 588293 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:24PM (#9587454)

    He [google.com] looks like Mr Burns. [google.com]
  • Because it will be even harder to justify the use of any other player.
  • Shanghai Knights is probably the best (that is to say, least stupid) of all the films Jackie Chan has done in Hollywood. Sure, it's not a patch on his best Hong Kong work, but it has a complete, blessed, 100% absence of Chris Tucker.

  • Approved linux player (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Cow007 ( 735705 )
    The playstation II runs linux AND plays DVDs... Most people know this but I felt like pointing it out anyway. Also I am pretty sure the M$ XBox that also plays dvds runs linux as well.

  • Lobbist (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thogard ( 43403 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:31PM (#9587511) Homepage
    Since we pay former congresscritters a fortune to do nothing after they get fired or quit, is there a reason we can't tie their pension into their future income? Once someone leaves congress, they should be given a choice, never work again and collect the cash or never collect the cash and work for whoever but the tax payer isn't going to be giving any handouts.
    • how about end every term with an execution.
      • How about combining two popular initiatives, hard time for repeat offenders and term limits. It could be called "Three Terms and You're Out" where anyone serving three terms in Congress is assumed to be guilty of enough stuff to put them away for life.

  • do we really need .... (Score:4, Funny)

    by nomad63 ( 686331 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:34PM (#9587536)
    .. an "approved" Linux DVD player ? Me thinks not ! When something is made legal, it takes the whole fun out of the game IMHO...
    Just a thought

  • Not a problem... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:37PM (#9587559) Homepage
    After seeing the appalling quality of "approved" Windows DVD players, I don't *want* an approved one under Linux.

    This is for a number of reasons:
    1. You can be sure that such a player would be closed source because of imagined "intellectual property" contained in the DVD standard. Development would be only done by commercial interests and would most likely stagnate.

    2. In order for it to be approved, it will have to obey silly restrictions like DRM, no full-screen and mandatory no-skip tracks (for trailers, FBI warnings, etc).

    3. Putting aside that it's actually illegal in many countries, it will impose DVD zones back into players. Something I haven't needed to deal with for a number of years now.

    4. There will likely be a crackdown on the "unauthorized" players that actually work. This would also include all command-line DVD tools, such as DVD ripping software which lets you back up your movies (so your 3-year-old doesn't get vegemite on your original Ice Age video).

    5. Any free version would be crippled unless you pay $$$ for the "full" version. Another remnant of outdated business models that I haven't had to worry about for a while.



    No thanks, I'll stick with Ogle, Xine and MPlayer.

    • Okay, I think four of your points are valid, but I take issue with this:

      In order for it to be approved, it will have to obey silly restrictions like DRM, no full-screen and mandatory no-skip tracks (for trailers, FBI warnings, etc).

      Okay. Why would a Linux player be restricted from having full-screen playback? In addition to just being stupid, it would be inconsistent with the fact that approved players with full screen for other platforms abound; why would it be any different for Linux?

      And also, re. #5
  • You know the old saying "You can't teach and old Dog... Blah, Blah, Blah."

    Like we are all suprised. I mean come on, you Didn't think thay would pick someone, that actuaqlly gave a DAMN, or actually understands something other that the party line.

    Begin Snippet-- Before his election to Congress in 1976, Secretary Glickman served as president of the Wichita, Kansas, School Board; was a partner in the law firm of Sargent, Klenda and Glickman; and worked as a trial attorney at the U.S. Securities and Exchange

  • Yay! (Score:3, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @06:52PM (#9587669) Homepage Journal
    Well I, for one, am very pleased with the change we'll see with Dan Glickman in charge. His name is SO much easier to make fun of than Jack's.
  • Hang on everyone, we are in for a rather scary political ride.. expect more anti-consumer draconian laws to be proposed, and enacted..
  • The punch line made me cry!
  • Check www.linspire.com for a license to do DVD playback with xine. You can get a full, legal license. I think the companies responible for the DVD standard are required, either by law or by their own contracts, to license DVD to all comers willing to pay.
    • Check www.linspire.com for a license to do DVD playback with xine. You can get a full, legal license. I think the companies responible for the DVD standard are required, either by law or by their own contracts, to license DVD to all comers willing to pay.

      None of this would be required if the MPAA and DVD/CCA had a modicum of common sense. It's just data! I should not need a license to transform 1's and 0's into viewable images, skip the ads, watch it in a different country, or create a backup.

      Those a

  • You guys got my hopes up that Jack Valenti had died. That would have been a great vacation destination. Going to stomp on his grave. I guess I'll have to wait on that one.

  • Damn (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @07:52PM (#9588082) Homepage
    Dan Glickman is an avid Linux user, a well-known consumer advocate, vehemently critical of the DMCA and a member of the EFF. Ha ha. Just kidding, Dave Barry style.

    Well now that's just fucking mean.

  • According to The DVD Copy Control Association [dvdcca.org], there's a company called Sigma Designs [sigmadesigns.com] who are supposedly working on a licensed DVD player for Linux.

    There seems to be no indication of this on Sigma's website, but I filled out an inquiry on their site a few days ago, just to see. No response yet...

  • About Glickman (Score:5, Informative)

    by LongShip ( 6698 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @08:40PM (#9588355) Homepage
    During the 1980's and 1990's I lived in Wichita, KS and was very active in Democratic politics. In conjunction with those activities I got to know quite a bit about Dan Glickman and his family. In short, he is a compassionate person who is as far from being an ideologue as one could want. I cannot think of anybody as MPAA director who would be better for the free software movement.

    I suggest that those developers involved in software projects which are impacted by MPAA policies get in contact with Dan and present their cases in a reasoned and non-confrontational way. We may be able to partially turn around MPAA silliness.

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