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List:       politech
Subject:    FC: Politech members from Duke describe Jack Valenti's speech there
From:       Declan McCullagh <declan () well ! com>
Date:       2003-02-26 0:02:09
[Download RAW message or body]

As for Valenti talking about Hollings' CBDTPA bill, Valenti is correct to 
say that it has not been reintroduced yet. But in a statement last month 
(http://www.mpaa.org/jack/2003/2003_01_14.htm), Valenti said: "We are not 
prepared to abandon the option of seeking technical protection measures via 
the Congress..." He's parsing his words mighty carefully, don't you think?

-Declan

---

From: "Grant Yang" <grant.yang@law.duke.edu>
To: <declan@well.com>
Subject: RE: Jack Valenti will speak today (Tuesday) at Georgetown law  school
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:21:32 -0500

Actually,
	Howard, the guy who picked you up for the talk at Duke asked
that question (about copy protection in chips), and Valenti vehemently
denied that the MPAA was currently supporting any legislation.  So then
Howard mentioned the CPBTA (whichever legislation you mentioned) and
Valenti said that that was last Congress term and that there is no
actual current legislation out there.  Then he kind of evaded the
question on this matter.  Oh and you don't have to post this, just
letting you know that asking him is useless.  He is very stubborn.  You
should see his talk.  His entire speech is basically about morals, and
if you ask him anything about copyright extension his reply is the
Supreme Court with a 7-2 decision has spoken.  End of discussion on
that.  However, if it had gone the other way I don't think he'd be
citing the Supreme Court.  The IP Society got a private discussion with
him after his talk, and let's just say it was very frustrating.

-gc

---

Subject: Re: FC: Jack Valenti will speak today (Tuesday) at Georgetown law
	school
From: [deleted --DBM]
To: declan@well.com
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030225112640.075f4e50@mail.well.com>

[please withhold my name/email if you post this - as the [deleted --DBM] 
for Duke, I really shouldn't take a public position]

Hi Declan,

I attended the Duke Valenti Lecture yesterday
(http://www.law.duke.edu/features/news_valenti.html).  For those who are
interested, a video of the hour long talk (10 minutes of introduction,
20 minutes of Valenti speaking and 30 minutes of Q&A) will be posted
online from a link off of the announcement page above.

The audience was fairly skeptical of Valenti's claims and did try to
press him on the issues of the morality of his association's actions.
However, Valenti managed to avoid directly answering the majority of
these questions.

Two of the more interesting moments were his statement that you have no
right to copy a DVD - ever; and the admission that the purpose of dvd
region encoding is to protect their distribution model - if you want to
watch legally purchased Japanese Anime in America you should buy a
($400) Japanese DVD player.

For anyone planning to go to one of the lectures in order to debate
Valenti, a couple of suggestions:

Valenti is a demagogue and will not argue points logically.  When
debating he will change topics rapidly in order to avoid being pinned
down.  Try to stick with simple issues (yes, it is a complicated topic,
but Valenti won't interact at that level).

Valenti argues by metaphor and analogy: copying isn't just illegal, it's
piracy (ahoy mateys); you can't make backup copies of crystal goblets
and if you break them, waterford won't replace them - why should we let
you make backups of DVDs or why should we replace them.  Anyway, you
should plan alternate metaphors and analogies in advance. 




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