Jack Valenti: Copyright

“Copyright term extension has a simple but compelling enticement: it is very much in America's economic interests.”

Jack Valenti

A Plea For Keeping Alive the U.S. Film Industry’s Competitive Energy (1995)

“On-line service providers and others have a key role to play in freeing cyberspace of the taint of copyright lawlessness. Accountability for copyright violations committed by users is as essential for advancing this indispensable goal.
Who is responsible if a valuable copyrighted work is downloaded from a provider, and then copied on a digital video machine from which thousands of copies can be made, the last copy as pure and pristine as the first? And if no one can be held responsible, then who and what is to prevent the flood that will surely follow? This is a loophole larger than a parade of eight-wheelers through which a dam-busting avalanche of violations can rupture the purpose of your bill every day.”

Jack Valenti

Testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives on copyright immunities for ISPs. (7 February 1996) http://www.judiciary.house.gov/legacy/461.htm

“The Ninth Circuit Court decision was lucid, unambiguous, and consistent. The logic was clear and it said when you use copyrighted material on a video cassette recorder, it is an infringement of copyright.”

Jack Valenti

Testimony to the US House of Representatives (1982)

Decision

“A huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair.”

Jack Valenti

Comments on the Cable television industry, in testimony to Congress (June 1974); quoted in "What Jack Valenti Did for Hollywood" by Richard Corliss in TIME magazine (27 April 2007) http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1615388,00.html

Thinking

“I wasn't opposed to the VCR. The MPAA tried to establish by law that the VCR was infringing on copyright.”

Jack Valenti

Interview in Harvard Political Review (2002)
Context: I wasn't opposed to the VCR. The MPAA tried to establish by law that the VCR was infringing on copyright. Then we would go to the Congress and get a copyright royalty fee put on all blank videocassettes and that would go back to the creators.

Law