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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Bye Bye Valenti
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Phil Hill
I love my cootie bug
Posts: 7595
From: Hollywood, CA USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 07-01-2004 03:47 PM
From Variety
Posted: Thurs., Jul. 1, 2004, 12:30pm PT
Valenti steps down
As expected, Glickman named successor
By SUSAN CRABTREE
WASHINGTON -- Jack Valenti relinquished the reigns of the Motion Picture Assn. of America and named Dan Glickman as his successor this afternoon.
Valenti, 82, will officially retire Sept. 1, the same day Glickman will take the helm as Hollywood's top lobbyist and new man on the Potomac.
Announcement was made at a press conference at the Hay Adams hotel in Washington
But white-maned Hollywood icon has no plans to ride off into the sunset and leave the industry entirely. Instead, he will remain in charge of the movie rating system that he implemented and shepherded for decades.
"I know a lot of you have been wondering when that son of a bitch is going to leave," Valenti joked during the public announcement. "Today I am announcing that I am formally retiring as president and CEO of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. It's been a long ride, a great ride, and I never failed to wake up in the morning eager to get about my chores."
The selection of Glickman culminates more than a year of speculation and interviews conducted by the seven studios heads that comprise the MPAA. Executive search firm Spencer Stuart was brought in to assist four and a half months ago after Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) turned down a formal offer and Sen. John Breaux (R-La.) declined interest in the glitzy post.
Glickman served nearly two decades as a Democratic member of Congress from Kansas and later as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture during the Clinton administration. He has spent the last several years as the director of the prestigious Institute of Politics at Harvard. His son, Jonathan Glickman, is a partner in Spyglass Entertainment.
"I am honored to be succeeding --no one can replace -- Jack Valenti," Glickman said. "He is a legend, and someone who brought the cinematic and creative communities issues to the forefront of national policy."
Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/story.asp?l=story&a=VR1117907297&c=13
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John Hawkinson
Film God
Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 07-02-2004 01:43 AM
Err, Phil, why do you think he is out to lunch?
I had the chance to talk to Jack in April, and it was interesting. He definitely did not seem to be confused or out to lunch where piracy was concerned, nor have I detected that in his public statements.
I'll post more about my conversation with him when I close out the issue with him...
As for Jack's tenure on the ratings board, as I understand it he is staying on to do that for less than a year, and then he is going to focus his attention on charity work (fighting AIDS), as well as a political commentating contract for a cable network. This was in one of the myriad of articles I read yesterday, not sure which, sorry.
--jhawk
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Paul G. Thompson
The Weenie Man
Posts: 4718
From: Mount Vernon WA USA
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 07-02-2004 02:24 AM
Bon Voyage, Mr. Valenti. We wish you high winds and heavy seas. Don't let the door hit you in the butt as you leave your office. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Just a slice, I know....But Mr. Valenti had the guts to stand up for what he believed in - that being our industry. I do admire him for that. I may not have agreed with everything he said or did.
However, the basis for many of those decisions was from documents and facts that were considered "privilaged or confidential information" that had no business being in someone else's hands.
I know he would have had more of our support if he was to release documents to us that we never saw or ever will see.
I'll bet Mr. Valenti was swamped with decisions like that, and I know from experience many that I made in my line of work would be very unpopular decisions. I had the documents and facts, including the full story - not just hearsay, half-lies, half-truths and false rumors or one-sided stories to make those decisions.
Unfortunately, too many use hearsay, half-lies, half-truths, false rumors, and one-sided stories to make a decision. Those always turn out to be pure crap!
What frosts my butt is what seems to be the norm...guilty before proven innocent.
Brad, MPAA said 92%. The paper didn't say Jack said it. Why should we crucify Jack for that? We don't know who in the MPAA said it. It could have been a disgruntled janitor in the MPAA as far as we know. Everyone probably knows how the media gets some of their BS..by someone they interview that does not have the slightest idea what they are talking about.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-02-2004 07:39 AM
The issue that I have with Valenti is that he doesn't seem to understand many of the issues on which he advocates so strongly. Whenever he is asked any sort of remotely technical question about film piracy, for example, he appears totally clueless (I'm sure that jhawk has read the interview with the MIT campus newspaper, for example...sorry I don't have a link to it). Whenever the film ratings system is questioned, he always seems to respond along the lines of "it's perfect as is and we don't need to change a thing." This lack of understanding substantially weakens any arguments that he tries to make. This makes him look like a puppet (which he mostly is), rather than one who has deeply studied every issue before making public statements about it.
I do give him credit for being a good politician (which is what he is) and a good advocate for the industry in general. I also give him credit for keeping the US government from regulating motion picture content (which would be a far greater disaster than any voluntary ratings system). Still, I'm happy to see him go, although I'm not convinced that the new guy will be any better.
quote:
MIT newspaper interviews Valenti
Real Dialogue: The Tech interviews Jack Valenti
By Keith J. Winstein
SENIOR EDITOR
Jack Valenti, the iconic 82-year-old who has headed the Motion Picture Association of America for the last 38 years, spoke at the MIT Communications Forum last Thursday. The MPAA offered The Tech a chance to ask Valenti questions after his talk, and -- as a former Tech news reporter interested in technology and copyright -- I got drafted.
Valenti is an incredibly polished advocate for the movie studios. He has numerous legislative and regulatory successes to his name, and his stated commitment to honest debate (he spoke passionately several times about his commitment to the “ideal of civic discourse” and his disgust at Washington, D.C.’s lack of it) is admirable.
But we don’t have a real debate on copyright issues. We have rival camps that rarely understand each other. Virtually everybody I know and encounter on the Internet thinks Valenti’s signal accomplishments are bad. He can claim credit for the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which make it illegal to build your own DVD player and well-nigh impossible to watch DVDs legally under the GNU/Linux operating system, as well as the Federal Communication Commission’s Broadcast Flag, which will make it illegal or virtually impossible to build your own digital television receiver or, again, watch HDTV under Linux.
Everybody in Hollywood, and everybody in Congress, seems to love these things. There is little compromise, meeting of the minds, or mutual understanding, between these two sides.
Three years ago, I organized an MIT IAP class and invited Valenti to come. (He politely declined.) When the MPAA called to ask if I wanted to talk with him for ten minutes last week, I finally had my chance to take a shot at reaching some tiny mutual understanding.
I found Valenti woefully unfamiliar with the arguments of “our side” -- the same arguments that “we” wank about every day on Zephyr, on Slashdot, and in 6.805 (Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier), the class I TAed for Professor Hal Abelson.
A compromise, or at least a solution to these issues that doesn’t involve outlawing all tinkering and all independent engineering, seems to be possible: we’re just not getting through to each other. The dystopia of Richard Stallman’s “The Right to Read” at www.gnu.org/ philosophy/ right-to-read.html is not an inevitability. But if we can’t manage to have a real conversation with “the other side” -- and a longer one than my ten minutes with Valenti -- that’s where we might be headed.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation:
The Tech: You’re described by various people as the best lobbyist ever. Do you have any tips for the other side, about how they can achieve better victories in the legislative area?
Jack Valenti: I hope that I’m a good persuader, that I’m able to make advocacy of a cause that people say, “You know, that makes sense.” ‘Lobbyist’ has a connotation to me that gives me little shivers. But I like to believe that I try to make things simple to understand. And frankly, if I can understand it, then I figure everybody else can understand it, because I am not a technologist. ... But I try to make things simple and clear as I can, and I think that helps you persuade other people.
TT: Everybody I know thinks the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Broadcast Flag are awful. And everybody in Congress disagrees. This does not lead to good debate and good public policy, when people can’t even talk to each other. How can we have a good debate on these topics?
JV: I don’t know. I go on forums, and panels, and Rich [Taylor, an MPAA spokesman] does the same. We’re available to anybody. I never believe in hostile debates. That’s not my style. I believe that we ought to talk objectively about it. I think for anything that I’m advocating, I’m willing to be in an open debate with anybody about it. Because if my ideas have no bottom, then they ought not be even heard.
The broadcast flag -- if you are in your home, then you can copy anything that’s on over-the-air television to your heart’s content. The only time that you will know there’s a broadcast flag is if you try to take one of those copies and redistribute it on the Internet. Then, the flag says, ‘No, you can’t redistribute it.’ But you can do everything you’re doing right now -- you’ll never know there’s a broadcast flag. Well, why would people object to it?
TT: I’ll tell you, because I’m an engineer, I’m an engineering student, and this year I built a high-definition television, from scratch. But because of the broadcast flag, if I wanted to do that again after July 2005, that would be illegal.
JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?
TT: Well, I’m talking about engineers.
JV: Let’s say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in this country. You can’t have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can’t do it that way.
TT: Okay, let’s take a different example. Four years ago, you said that people who use Linux, which is about a million to two million people, who want to play DVDs, should get licensed DVD players and that those would be on the market soon.
JV: And we have those now.
TT: But today, you still cannot on the market actually buy a licensed DVD player for Linux.
JV: I didn’t know that.
TT: So the question is, do you think people who go to Blockbuster, they rent a movie, they bring it home, and they play it on Linux by circumventing the access control, are those people committing a moral transgression?
JV: I do not believe that you have the right to override an encryption. Because if you have the right to do it, everybody can do it. For whatever benign reason you have, somebody else has got one even more benign. But once you let one person deal in a digital copy -- and I don’t have to tell you; you know far better than I that, unlike in analog, the ten thousandth copy is as pure as the original -- it is a big problem. So once you let the barriers down for your perfectly sensible reason, you gotta let it down for everybody.
I don’t want to get into the definition of morality. I never said anything was immoral in what I was saying. I said it is wrong to take something that belongs to somebody else.
TT: Indeed, but are you doing that when you rent a movie from Blockbuster and you watch it at home? ... I run Linux on my computer. There’s no product I can buy that’s licensed to watch [DVDs]. If I go to Blockbuster and rent a movie and watch it, am I a bad person? Is that bad?
JV: No, you’re not a bad person. But you don’t have any right.
TT: But I rented the movie. Why should it be illegal?
JV: Well then, you have to get a machine that’s licensed to show it.
TT: Here’s one of these machines; it’s just not licensed.
[Winstein shows Valenti his six-line “qrpff” DVD descrambler.]
TT: If you type that in, it’ll let you watch movies.
JV: You designed this?
TT: Yes.
JV: Un-fucking-believable.
TT: So the question is, if I just want to watch a movie--I rent it from Blockbuster--is that bad?
JV: No, that’s not bad.
TT: Then why should it be illegal?
Rich Taylor, MPAA public affairs: It’s not. ... You could put it in a DVD player, you could play it on any computer licensed for it.
JV: There’s lots of machines you can play it on.
TT: None under Linux. There’s no licensed player under Linux.
JV: But you’re trying to set your own standards.
TT: No, you said four years ago that people under Linux should use one of these licensed players that would be available soon. They’re still not available -- it’s been four years.
JV: Well why aren’t they available? I don’t know, because I don’t make Linux machines.
Let me put it in my simple terms. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, that’s wrong. Number two, if you design your own machine, you can’t fuss at people, because you’re one of just a few. How many Linux users are there?
TT: About two million.
JV: Well, I can’t believe there’s not any -- there must be a reason for... Let me find out about that. You bring up an interesting question -- I don’t know the answer to that... Well, you’re telling me a lot of things I don’t know.
TT: Okay. Well, how can we have this dialogue?
JV: Well, we’re having it right now. I want to try to find out the point you make on why are there no Linux licensed players. There must be a reason -- there has to be a reason. I don’t know.
[Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the MPAA, later pointed to one company, Intervideo, that has a license to sell GNU/Linux DVD software, although the company does not actually sell a product that Linux users can purchase. Linux users who want to watch DVDs should “perhaps buy a DVD player instead,” Taylor said, or “write to Intervideo and others, encourage them that they’re the market,” he said. Will Linux users ever be able to view DVDs on their computers without breaking the law? “I’m sure that day is not far away,” Taylor said.
A spokesman for Intervideo, Andy Marken, said the company’s product is only for embedded systems and that Intervideo has no plans to release a software player for end users.]
This story was published on Friday, April 16, 2004.
Volume 124, Number 20
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John Hawkinson
Film God
Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 07-02-2004 10:50 AM
* Brad, I wish you had phrased that a bit less pointedly. No, I do not assert to represent Film-Tech. Though perhaps Scott and I should go and visit Glickman, since the KSG is in our backyard.
I'm not really sure which "ranting bitch-fests" you mean, or where Jack has been seen "blaming theatre owners." Could you be more specific? (I don't think that blaming camcorders for piracy, however accurate, is blaming theatre owners.)
I would be a bit careful about attributing stats to the MPAA just because newspapers claim them. But in this case, I suspect that is a stat the MPAA distributes. Curiously, though, the closest I could find on their web site is "In 9 out of 10 cases, that first release is from a camcorded copy."
(That statement seems even more suspicious than the 92%, and it is curiously narrow. You'd certainly think the "first release" would more likely come from pre-release sources. Anyhow, it comes from http://www.mpaa.org/PiracyFactSheets/CamcorderPiracyFactSheet.pdf
)
I have a call in to the MPAA public affairs office asking them whether they stand behind the 92% stat that the Associated Press published (in Paul's link).
* Paul asks if it is fair to attribute to Jack what the MPAA has said. Well, yes and no. Jack is the mouthpiece of the MPAA--its head spokesman. It's very difficult to seperate what he says from what the MPAA says. Jack tends to cite MPAA press releases and statistics in his speeches, and he relies on his staff to get it right.
* Joe asks me what issue I was discussing with Jack. I'm not comfortable talking about it publically until it's done, sorry. I was trying to express that, after meeting him in person, I do not think the man is confused about piracy or how it works. He may see his priorities differently, but those are not exclusively his to choose, either. Above all, he strikes me as an honest guy who is legitimately trying to solve a very hard problem.
* Scott raises the point that Jack does not have the most technical of backgrounds. It's certainly true, and I think it is probably the strongest criticism of him. He depends very much on the accuracy and reliability of the information he is given by his staff.
Another point is that he has a set of stock answers to common questions that he provides, and he occasionally answers a question thinking that it is a slightly different one.
I have to say, though, I think that Keith's interview (in The Tech) was a little bit unfair. Keith only got to talk to Jack for a very short period of time (literally about 10 minutes), about questions that Jack didn't really know the answers to, nor did Keith really get a chance to explain all the technical issues. I think it's to Jack's credit that he tried to answer as best he could, and didn't just say "No comment"; he also admitted honestly the things he didn't know and was surprised by ("Un-fucking-believable").
--jhawk
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....at least he was a public face to prevent government regulation and censorship of the business.
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