Jack Valenti's 1982 Betamax hearings testimony is finally online. This is the source of the "VCR is to the American film industry as the Boston Strangler is to a woman alone" (yes, Jack, releasing new technology is just like commiting a series of brutal rape/murders), but the actual testimony is even more egregious, racist, and repetitive than that. As my colleague at EFF, Seth Schoen, has noted, Jack Valenti's on a twenty-year loop, with phrases like, "The avalanche of [VCRs|P2P]" cropping up to demonize whatever technology-bogeyman has gotten up his analog hole today.
Now, my first card, Mr. Chairman, deals with what I consider to be one of the essential elements that you cannot ignore and, indeed, you must nourish. The U.S. film — and I will read this — "The U.S. film and television production industry is a huge and valuable American asset." In 1981, it returned to this country almost $1 billion in surplus balance of trade. And I might add, Mr. Chairman, it is the single one American-made product that the Japanese, skilled beyond all comparison in their conquest of world trade, are unable to duplicate or to displace or to compete with or to clone. And I might add that this important asset today is in jeopardy. Why?
(via Vitanuova)
