More on Films/DVDs and Piracy

By Jack May 17, 2000 10:46 AM

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MPAA chief Jack Valenti warned Tuesday that the Internet, as a possible conduit for pirated films, poses a peril to the creative community.?Interviewed by Cannes Market News, a daily internal publication of the Cannes Market, Valenti said: "Copyright is an issue which is drawing all content providers together.?Europeans and Americans cannot protect their valuable works on the Internet if they cannot dispatch those works to people around the world in a safe and secure environment." Valenti has been leading the battle against the DeCSS program which overrides the copyright protection code on DVDs.?(Promoters of the program say that it is aimed at allowing users of the UNIX operating system to view DVDs on their PCs and that it is impractical to use it for making copies of DVDs -- and that in fact there is no evidence that it has been used for that purpose.) Valenti appeared to target the DeCSS in his Cannes interview Tuesday, commenting: "There are still a lot of people who believe that anything on the Internet is free to take and even find it suitable to circumvent encryption on the absurd argument that is part of their freedom of speech."

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The MPAA is evil.   reply

Posted by A random shemp (No Email) on May 20, 2000 2:51 AM

A recent internal MPAA memo:

"Things to do:
1: Linux/Unix users now have the *possibility* of pirating copyrighted works with DeCSS. Sue the hell outta them. 

2. The internet is bad--some people use it to transmit/pirated copyrighted works. Get rid of it. 

3. Most people have the ability to think about pirating copyrighted works. Enslave and/or kill them."