08.04.04
valenti at mit
motion picture association of america (mpaa) prez jack valenti, who is planning to retire after 39 years at the helm, talked to a crowd at the mit media lab tonight. he performed a not-too-long and usually amusing spiel and then answered questions from the floor. if you want to call a combined evading-ignoring strategy "answering", that is.
contrary to the facade he put up, it was obvious that he was not really comfortable discussing the future of the movie industry in a world of digital media technology (hey, the guy is in his mid-80s). valenti seemed much happier to talk about the good-ole-days when he was huddling with l.d.johnson in the oval office than he was analyzing the dmca.
nonetheless, jack is a fine texan gent with some nice manners and good stories. he didn't say many innovative things, and avoided all the interesting questions, but still, here's some quotes:
(to a row of mit geeks dressed up as pirates to protest the mpaa's war on media duplication): "i'd like to thank johhny depp and his people for being here"
"when you build a table, you own that table. and if someone comes into your house and steals that table, that's wrong. so why should it be any different with a creation of your mind?"
(ahem, because when i copy a dvd the director still owns the movie? and - mr. v - isn't it the case that when i buy a table i can damn well do with it as i please? why should it be any different with the dvd i buy? in short - because it's different. deal with it.)
"in the next two years we will find out if it is possible to be creative in this great and loving country and to own what you create" (whoa on the overdramatization here)
"what happened in the music business i simply cannot allow to happen to the movie business."
"i dream of the internet being what it should be: the greatest and most effective distribution channel in the history of mankind [...] and we're meeting with people at microsoft, caltech and little garage start-ups to figure out how to make this happen"
"there's a danger in me making a speech about 'digital' [... this] is like a fella peeing down his leg: it makes him feel warm but nobody else knows what the hell is going on (laughter). that's the way i feel now telling mit people about 'digital'. it's like i'm in the 3rd grade and you are in graduate school"
and my favorite quote:
"if people will pirate movies, investment in movies will go down and the little people working on the sets, the carpenters, the drivers, people with mortgages to pay off and families to feed, will be out of a job [...] and with job loss comes a sinking feeling of anxiety, a feeling you can only relate to when you lose your own job."
i'm sure jack valenti is very connected to the burden of feeding your family and paying off your mortgage. and that "sinking feeling" he speaks so solemnly about, he must have felt it hundreds of times in his carreer.
please note that these quotes above may be paraphrased since they were scribbled down in mid-speech and not transcribed from a recording. i promise to not have distorted the intention of the quotes. for a full audio version check the mit communications forum website soon
update: audiocast is online. now you can bug me for misquotes if you're so inclined.
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content here by guy hoffman .. as seen times since march 2004
