[wordup] Jack Valenti's 1982 Betamax testimony is online

[Adam Shand]

The actual procedings can be found here:

  http://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm

From: http://boingboing.net/2002_06_01_archive.html#85136011
More: http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/latest.html

Sunday, June 02, 2002
Betamax testimony online at last

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. 

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