Some excerpts from the 1982 congressional testimony of Jack Valenti, MPAA President, on the evils of the VCR:
But now we are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright.
Of course it turned out to be no such a threat. Indeed, the studios make huge amounts of money from videotapes, TV companies track “time shifting” of their shows on video, and copyright holders monitor the (small but real) bootleg industry of material out of print in order to determine what the public might like to see.
Because unless the Congress recognizes the rights of creative property owners as owners of private property, that this property that we exhibit in theaters, once it leaves the post-theatrical markets, it is going to be so eroded in value by the use of these unlicensed machines, that the whole valuable asset is going to be blighted. In the opinion of many of the people in this room and outside of this room, blighted, beyond all recognition. It is a piece of sardonic irony that this asset, which unlike steel or silicon chips or motor cars or electronics of all kinds — a piece of sardonic irony that while the Japanese are unable to duplicate the American films by a flank assault, they can destroy it by this video cassette recorder.
Valenti repeatedly brings up the specter of the Yellow Peril during his testimony, painting the issue as one of patriotic Americans (exemplified by Clint Eastwood, the one star he keeps naming over and over) vs. those sinister (yet uncreative) Japanese types. The testimony was in regards to a court decision against Sony, of course.
Now, I don’t have to tell anybody in politics — I have spent most of my adult life in politics and you learn one thing. Nothing of value is free. It is very easy, Mr. Chairman, to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else’s property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled. That is what it is all about.
Well, I guess this puts this free blog (as well as most of the Internet) into its place. “Free” = “worthless.” Huh.
Now, the question comes, well, all right, what is wrong with the VCR. One of the Japanese lobbyists, Mr. Ferris, has said that the VCR — well, if I am saying something wrong, forgive me. I don’t know. He certainly is not MGM’s lobbyist. That is for sure. He has said that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had.
I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
Which is why, of course, we need Clint Eastwood to protect the helpless-woman-who-is-the-American-public-and-Hollywood from the sinister Japanese rapist-murderer.
But, and here is an explosive political fact, Mr. Chairman, two-thirds of U.S. households will not own VCR’s, Mr. Chairman. One-third of VCR households will not be on cable or won’t have access to cable. Now, if there is a scarcity of film and television entertainment, it won’t be the well-groomed and the well-heeled that will suffer. It is going to be, as always it is, Mr. Chairman, the less-affluent, the disadvantaged people pressed against the wall, out of work, who can’t afford these expensive machines, and free television to the sick and the old and the poor will remain the primary source of home entertainment.
See? It isn’t about the profits of the fabulously wealthy film and music industries. Jack’s just interested in the poor, working slob who couldn’t afford cable or a VCR.
Now, when a producer takes in less from these other markets, he is going to invest less. When your profit potential shrinks, you pull back. You produce less and you stay as long as you can in markets where you think you can make some money without having a VCR lay waste to your profit.
The loser will be your public because they don’t have these expensive machines. And that is what I am saying, sir. The public is the loser when creative property is taken and here is the reason why. The investment of hundreds of millions of dollars each year to produce quality programs to theaters and television will surely decline.
Right. We’ve seen investments in movies and TV drop precipitously since 1982, right?
Now, read those bits again, and read the testimony in full. Now read the things that Mr Valenti and the movie/music industries are saying about digital rights management and the Evils of the Internet (the Home of Hackers and Terrorist and Godless, Un-American Pirates).
Like all good Hollywood types, Mr Valenti knows when it’s cost-effective to recycle a script.
(Via BoingBoing)