Jack Valenti, former long-term chair of the Motion Picture Association of America, died at the end of April. His passing made me reflect on a number of issues.
For years Jack Valenti lead the charge for copyright holders championing copyright term extention, especially for motion pictures. He was a well known figure in copyright law and is remembered fondly by many. Valenti presided over the MPAA from 1966-2004, a remarkably long tenure punctuated by amazing technological changes.
I remember him primarily for some of his more outlandish statements which may have contained a grain of truth.
(1) After the Sony decision, Valenti announced that the Betamax would be the death of the motion picture industry. He totally missed the video rental business that played a major role in ensuring the continued economic viability of the movie industry.
2. In support of the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, Valenti testified before Congress that a copyright term "one day short of eternity" satisfied the limited times provision of the U.S. Constitutution. Many of us believe that a much shorter term is called for by the Constitution.
Mr. Valenti's stalwart efforts on behalf of the motion picture industry sometimes resulted in interesting jokes. After the CSS encryption code was broken and MPAA members successfully sued website owners who even linked to the DeCSS decryption code (see Corley)
programmers found many interesting ways to use the code to produce other copyrighted works such as T-shirts, haiku, square dance songs, dramatic readings and my favorite, a stenograph with the DeCSS code embedded on a his photograph.
While those of us who work in the public interest for strong fair use privileges for users of copyrighted works may have disagreed with Valenti on almost every issue, it is clear that he served his community long and well.
His autobiography, This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood, is due out this fall.
