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Jack Valenti is the man in power of the film industry. Being the Chairman
and the managing director of the Motion Picture Association of America, he
became particularly known in the years 1983-84 when he relentlessly fought
against the new invention of the time, the home video. He brought a suit against
Sony, the overpowering due to the Betamax system company in the market at the
time, and demanded from the American courts of law that they ban these devices
on the grounds that they were the media to the “expropriation of intellectual
property”: anyone possessing such a device could copy (steal as he had
put it) a movie shown on TV without imbursing the copyright to its creators
and naturally to the companies he himself represented. The case reached the
USA Supreme Court, which ruled out his plaint taking under consideration the
fact that copying a movie shown on TV for personal use was justifiable and
furthermore, a technology was not to be banned just because it had a negative
impact on a branch of industry. Valenti was taken aback not so much by the
definitive judgment of the court as by what was to follow in the market: the
VCR became a second golden goose to the film companies which, through video
clubs sold the same product for a second time-cash flowing into their tills,
at lower prices though. As for the ones who copied films, they finally were
proved to be a minor threat to the profits of the film industry.
Years passed by, Sony, from a technology producer has become a film producer
as well, Jack Valenti remains the man in power of the industry and a new threat
has started baring its teeth against the film companies’ tills. Digital
technology allows all users to replicate exact copies of every intellectual
product and the Internet helps to their immediate exchange.
Content-selling companies indulged in ruthless judicial conflicts: the Record
Companies Association versus Napster, the Motion Picture Association versus
the users of the program that unlatches DVD discs. Apart from all these, a
huge public relations campaign was launched to persuade the public that “what
is to the Warner Brothers benefit, is America’s welfare too.”
“The copyright industry (record companies, cinema companies and publishing
houses) has opened three times as many work places as the rest of the American
economy”, claims Jack Valenti in the Newsweek desktop version, “its
exports are larger than the ones accomplished by the aviation industry, agriculture
and the automobile industry. It has achieved commercial benefit with all the
countries of the world, when the rest of the economy bleeds due to commercial
deficits amounting the unholy sum of 277 billion dollars.
What amazes mostly, is the fact that the copyright industry is universally
acceptable. America’s productions are pleasantly assimilated by every
civilization, doctrine and country on this planet. American cinema is omnipresent
throughout the world…
“Now the Internet has turned up. American film producers have welcomed
this novel miracle. For the film industry, it has a huge potential as a new
system of distribution…
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But, for the time being, some alarming trends seem to be in conflict with
this future…there is this pagan philosophy being created on the Internet claiming “ since
it’s on the net its free”. It is the Napster syndrome that shook
music industry. The law courts declared “enough is enough” and
Napster, as a provider of free music is counting its days. Yet, new, more difficult
to
trace sites will take its place, because the mentality has not changed. To
convince someone to pay for something that is on the Internet is becoming more
and more
difficult.
The blow musical companies have received is felt by cinema as well. Nowadays,
300,000 movies are illegally downloaded from the Internet every day, defying
both permission and pay. By the end of the year, the illegally downloaded movies
will reach 1,000,000 per day! From the moment when millions of homes yet to
come will have obtained really fast wide range connections on the Internet,
with compression programs, everyone will be able to illegally download a good
quality movie every day. That will be committed by sensible people who would
react at the thought of lifting something from a supermarket. Yet, these people
will use products that will not be licensed and they will not have to pay for
them; this is the supposedly new decorum on the Internet.
This fact constitutes a complicated as well as catastrophic threat, which
can minimize if not dissolve a unique creative and economic American prize.
It is a source of danger for the copyright industry as a whole… Considering
Talleyrand’s saying, “it will be worse than a crime, it will be
a mistake” to let the most valuable product to be exported die away and
decay just because technology makes its “theft” easier. But that
does not make it the right choice.”
“Now”, Jack Valenti notes, “ a large number of film studios
are getting ready to join the online distribution by the end of the year, offering
movies at reasonable prices (as defined by consumers). Some members of the
Congress have pointed out that access to lawfully provided films will operate
to counterbalance the “everything’s free” Internet philosophy.
We will soon find out whether they are right. Secondly, film companies in tandem
with top technology specialists will move on to “encoding the content” of
their movies as well as to digitally print watermarks (Author’s Note:
to tell whether a copy is either legal or illegal)… Yet, devoted “hackers” will
be able to by-pass them all. But 99% of the Americans are neither hackers,
nor will they act against the law if legal copies are available at reasonable
prices on the Internet. I believe that…”
Jack Valenti…
…
graduated from high school when he was just 15 years of age. Born in Texas
in 1921, he obtained his Bachelor Degree from Huston University and his MBA
from Harvard. In 1952 he set up an advertising company that was in charge of
USA President John F. Kennedy’s public relations in Texas. After JFK’s
assassination he became the next President’s, Lyndon B. Johnson’s
councilor, a post which he resigned from to become the third in a row Chairman
of the Motion Picture Association of America. He has written four books: “The
Bitter Taste of Glory”, “A Very Human President”, “Speak
up with Confidence” and the political novel “Protect and Defend”.
By Pashos Mandravelis.
email to P. Mandravelis