Flashback: Valenti’s Broken Record Speech

A Shashdot reader made this interesting post: “‘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.’ Jack Valenti said this in 1982 in testimony to the House of Representatives on why the VCR should be illegal. He also called the VCR an ‘avalanche’ and a ‘tidal wave’, and said it would make the film industry ‘bleed and bleed and hemorrhage’. This speech is an important part of history, yet until today it had never been published on-line in its entirety. Valenti’s testimony was published today by Cryptome. It’s essential background reading if you want to see just how little the MPAA’s arguments have changed in two decades.’ Compare to the Analog
Hole document and they’re virtually identical (except Valenti was playing on anti-Japanese sentiment then, and today it’s anti-pirate sentiment). Of course, the MPAA was unsuccessful in plugging the ‘VCR Hole’ – insufficient lobbying and clueful judges stopped them. The MPAA successfully adapted to the changing times and today sells about 70 million cassettes for rentals and 600 million cassettes for home viewing every year (both numbers are on the decline due to the rise of DVD).“