brainwagon

Tim Wu has a long list of idiotic quotes by Jack Valenti on Lawrence Lessig’s blog. I particularly like

On the VCR, 1983
“We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault … and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape.
We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry … whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine [the VCR].”

and the incredibly idiotic…

On the public domain, 1995
“A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film’s quality?”

It is a good thing for Jack and his constituents that the Supreme Court didn’t buy his hyperbole: they would have missed out on the exploitation of a powerful new market for their creative works. As for public domain works, there is no lack of potential parents who are eager to adopt such orphans.