Jack Valenti (1921 – 2007)
Influential American lobbyist and a long-time president of the Motion Picture Association of America.
I really do believe we can stuff enough algorithms in a movie that only the dedicated hackers can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it.
When my son is taping for his permanent collection, he sits there and pauses his machine and when he is finished with it, he has a marvelous Clint Eastwood movie and there is no sign of a commercial. It is a brand new movie and he can put three of those on one 6-hour tape.
In a sometimes unreasonable business, Jack Valenti was a giant voice of reason. He was the greatest ambassador Hollywood has ever known and I will value his wisdom and friendship for all time.
I don’t know any other business that tells you not to go in and buy their product.
Jack works across the aisle because he doesn't see an aisle. It is the root of his success and what others ought to emulate.
I hope people will say I never had a hidden agenda, and I never played it cute around the turns, and that my integrity stayed intact.
We count it crucial to make regular soundings to find out how the public perceives the rating program, and to measure the approval and disapproval of what we are doing... The rating system isn't perfect but, in an imperfect world, it seems each year to match the expectations of those whom it is designed to serve — parents of America.
No one today knows what is indecent.
I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright.
On-line service providers and others have a key role to play in freeing cyberspace of the taint of copyright lawlessness. Accountability for copyright violations committed by users is as essential for advancing this indispensable goal.
Who is responsible if a valuable copyrighted work is downloaded from a provider, and then copied on a digital video machine from which thousands of copies can be made, the last copy as pure and pristine as the first? And if no one can be held responsible, then who and what is to prevent the flood that will surely follow? This is a loophole larger than a parade of eight-wheelers through which a dam-busting avalanche of violations can rupture the purpose of your bill every day.
I found the most convincing part to be the working stiffs, the guys who have a modest home and kids who go to public schools. They make $75,000 to $100,000 a year. That's not much to live on. I don't have to tell you that.
Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law.
By summer of 1966, the national scene was marked by insurrection on the campus, riots in the streets, rise in women's liberation, protest of the young, doubts about the institution of marriage, abandonment of old guiding slogans, and the crumbling of social traditions. It would have been foolish to believe that movies, that most creative of art forms, could have remained unaffected by the change and torment in our society.
The result of all this was the emergence of a "new kind" of American movie — frank and open, and made by filmmakers subject to very few self-imposed restraints.
I think politicians and movie actors and movie executives are similar in more ways than they’re different. There is an egocentric quality about both; there is a very sensitive awareness of the public attitude, because you live or die on public favor or disfavor. There is the desire for publicity and for acclaim, because, again, that’s part of your life... And in a strange and bizarre way, when movie actors come to Washington, they’re absolutely fascinated by the politicians. And when the politicians go to Hollywood, they’re absolutely fascinated by the movie stars. It’s a kind of reciprocity of affection by people who both recognize in a sense they’re in the same racket.
You've already got a DVD. It lasts forever. It never wears out. In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless.
The Ninth Circuit Court decision was lucid, unambiguous, and consistent. The logic was clear and it said when you use copyrighted material on a video cassette recorder, it is an infringement of copyright.
A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film's quality?
A huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair.
If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one.