Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever. No enterprise in the world gives you a backup copy of anything. You go buy a suit of clothes and you tear it and you come back and the guy says I'll try to sew it up for you, but he doesn't give you a backup pair of trousers. If you need a backup copy of a DVD you can go out and buy another one."
Posted Jun 13, 2005 14:54 UTC (Mon)
by huffd (guest, #10382)
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Posted Jun 13, 2005 15:45 UTC (Mon)
by rcbixler (guest, #11917)
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Posted Jun 13, 2005 17:44 UTC (Mon)
by emkey (guest, #144)
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So the question is, when if ever will they stop repeating the same idiocy?
Posted Jun 13, 2005 19:38 UTC (Mon)
by euvitudo (guest, #98)
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Posted Jun 13, 2005 15:19 UTC (Mon)
by jwb (guest, #15467)
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So it's a bit strange for Mr Valenti to come in here with the suit-of-clothes argument. If a CD is like a suit, then I can duplicate it, alter it, resell it, distribute it, and do anything else I might like to do with it. Is that your new angle, Jack?
Posted Jun 13, 2005 16:02 UTC (Mon)
by ccchips (subscriber, #3222)
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Posted Jun 19, 2005 1:37 UTC (Sun)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
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Where do you get that? While it's possible to license music without owning anything but the license, I'm pretty sure when you buy a CD at Walmart, you become the owner of the CD. You can do anything you want with the CD except those things that are specifically reserved by copyright law to the copyright owner. You can destroy the CD, use it for a coaster, give it to a friend, rent it out to the public, etc.
When home video was new, movie studios wanted to do a license thing with video rental dealers like they do with movie theaters. They wanted therefore to say that when you "buy" a video tape, you're buying only a license to watch it personally, and if you want to rent it to someone, you need a different license.
The US Supreme Court said that as long as you structure the deal such that someone hands over money in exchange for a tape, the buyer owns the tape. (And indeed, the studios stopped offering new-release videotapes for sale at consumer prices in order to get a piece of the rental action). It must be the same for music CDs.
Posted Jun 13, 2005 16:37 UTC (Mon)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (1 responses)
Because the film is good and I want to show the creators my appreciations? I think the movie/record industry doesn't really get it - people still buy music/movies but also download some. The difference between the number of bought and number of downloaded music/movie is the stuff that doesn't worth paying for.
Posted Jun 14, 2005 0:43 UTC (Tue)
by emkey (guest, #144)
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So long as they can't beam this stuff digitally into our heads there has to be a time when media can be copied with one analog generation. And if that is done right, then frankly very few of us will be able to notice any sort of quality loss.
Posted Jun 13, 2005 23:47 UTC (Mon)
by bignose (subscriber, #40)
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> [Valenti:] Well, if you can make a perfect copy of a silver plate in front
What utter hubris. He's just used *exactly the same argument* that shows copyright infringement is not theft -- and he's still trying to twist it to some kind of support for his view.
Yes, if you can make a perfect copy of a silver plate, Tiffany loses a sale. Whose fault is that? Should the person who makes perfect copies of plates, *without depriving the owner of the original*, be considered a criminal? Valenti makes a leap that says he believes so, but shows nothing of his reasoning to get there.
Posted Jun 14, 2005 1:45 UTC (Tue)
by jonabbey (guest, #2736)
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Posted Jun 14, 2005 5:03 UTC (Tue)
by fozzy (guest, #7022)
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Where Jack and his cronies get confused is thinking they own property. They don't and referring to it as property is where the confusion enters this debate.
Is society better served by Jack being given a monopoly? I would say no.
Posted Jun 14, 2005 7:32 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
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If you need a backup copy of a DVD you can go out and buy another one.
I've lost a CD I bought some time ago. Given the chance, I would go out and buy another one. But they're no longer available :-(
Dud argument!
Cheers,
Posted Jun 14, 2005 11:28 UTC (Tue)
by zotz (guest, #26117)
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Uh, a lot of my dress shirts come with backup buttons. Do you homework. OK?
Would he be happy if the cookbooks his servants used to cook him dinner had a per use fee as well as a purchase fee? (Excuse the assumption.) I mean, why should the inventor of a dish not be paid everytime someone prepares and eats the dish in question? Right?
As people have pointed out, he is trying to have it both ways here. A CD is like a suit of clothes? OK, you don't have to give me the backup, just like the store doesn't give me a backup suit. Then don't complain when I go to my tailor for alterations or to have a copy made.
all the best,
drew
Posted Jun 15, 2005 8:01 UTC (Wed)
by lypanov (guest, #8858)
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Posted Jun 16, 2005 11:02 UTC (Thu)
by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033)
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Damaged clothing can sometimes be repaired, or else chopped up and the fabric used to create something else (patchwork quilts, collages, dolls clothes, etc. etc.). You can sell these creations as your own work.
What happens if you chop up (sample) a CD and assemble various bits into a new musical work of art, whether or not there are any new notes of your own creation in there? You get sued.
And now they're trying to say we don't even have the right to repair (backup copy) the content! Bleugh.
Posted Jun 16, 2005 18:42 UTC (Thu)
by ronaldcole (guest, #1462)
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Remember when they tried to outlaw taping TV programs? Better yet when the portable reel to reel tape recorders came out and 33's and 45's were taped before 8 tracks or cassettes? Before that they overplayed songs over the radio to boost them up the charts but had a canary if you recorded them to play for your friends at your next in-home dinner party.Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
They can dictate the rules but won't guarantee that the media technology will be here in a few years for you to enjoy your investment. Their analogy doesn't hold water, you can take out your pants and examine them for wear, if you drop them you still have pants if you dropped your record, well..
This is the third interation of media frenzy that I've witnessed in my life time.
I'm sure the media industry will outgrow this phase too.
It's even more amusing to consider that one of the reasons the American Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
movie industry moved out to Los Angeles was to escape Edison's patents.
No doubt they had what Valenti calls a "rationalisation" for that move
too.
Yeah, the sad thing about all this is it has happened many times before and each time, A, the media producers have "lost" while B, going on to record ever increasing revenues and profits.Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
So the question is, when if ever will they stop repeating the same idiocy?
Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
Only when B is no longer true.
Whoops, I think Jack is off the reservation a bit. Remember, we don't actually own anything when we buy a CD, we only license the music. That's why a CD is *not* like a suit of clothes, or so the MPAA has been telling us for 25 years. The MPAA has variously attempted to prevent us from copying or reselling CDs, thereby distinguishing them from normal trade goods.Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
To a wealthy control freak, anything is whatever he wants it to be, when he wants it that way. The United States today is being run by such people, so get used to it, or get a different government which doesn't sell out every time we turn around.Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
we don't actually own anything when we buy a CD, we only license the music
Any time you make a perfect copy, why would you want to go to a Blockbuster store and rent or buy that DVD?
Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
And because people don't care if its a perfect copy. Quality really doesn't matter to your average person. If it did then MP3's never would have become as popular as they are.Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
> [Darknet:] I hear from a lot of students that they dont consider it theft or stealingInterview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
> because youre merely making a perfect copy. What do you say to a student
> with that view?
> of your home, why would you want to go to Tiffany's to buy one? Any time
> you make a perfect copy, why would you want to go to a Blockbuster store
> and rent or buy that DVD? So if you have 50 million perfect copies and
> subtract 50 million sales from the Blockbuster-type stores, thats a
> serious decay.
Um. This interview is from November of 2003. Not much news here.Old Interview
The thing that interests me with the whole copywrite debate is that the most fundamental point is forgotten - it's a government imposed monopoly to encourage innovation. In most of the debate I see, that question is lost. When one looks at the innovation in music/movies over the last few years, one would have to argue that their monopoly is not deserved.Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
Wol
"No enterprise in the world gives you a backup copy of anything."Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
dunno why everyone is trying to think so hard about a defence when Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
this argument its so flawed in such a trivial way.
a cd costs nothing to make. and a suit? far from. the mark up they
ask for on a cd is just plain stupid.
Alex
The important difference is that you don't own the content of a CD.Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)
Next time my kids scratch a DVD, I'll be sure to send it to Jack so that he can sew it back up for me.... especially the out-of-print ones!Interview: Jack Valenti (Darknet)