[wordup] Speaking of the Boston Strangler ...

[Adam Shand]

... is this a man you would trust to look after your daughter?

  http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-23/jack-valenti-1.html

Funny how "evil" looks evil sometimes. ;-)

Adam.

From: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/19962

Second Stacked-Deck DRM Roundtable
Groups stand up for your rights
Written by Karl Bode

The Second Roundtable Discussion on "Digital Content and Rights
Management" took place yesterday in Washington DC. It was standing room
only at the event, with a Commerce Committee rep saying "We've never had
anything like this before". With a stacked-deck panel, industry
heavyweights from AOL/Time Warner, Vivendi, Microsoft, MPAA Spokesman
Jack Valenti, and others had full control of the microphones ...for a
while.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the progress and future of
digital rights management, in particular to discuss how the government
can assist in moving DRM further down the tracks. Critics have
consistently charged that DRM erodes the small slice of 'fair use'
rights media consumers have left. The Electronic Privacy Information
Center has amassed an impressive collection of resources to assist those
who aren't aware that this battle has been raging for quite some time.

The event, originally scheduled to be a back patting event between big
business and Uncle Sam, quickly evolved into something much more, as
consumer rights activists flooded Washington D.C. and the meeting
chamber. When Jack Valenti's rhetoric reached an intolerable level, one
fair use advocate stood up and made his position heard, complaining
about the obvious lack of public representation at the event. It was
asked that Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (who was
present) be afforded the opportunity to speak, and counter the one sided
argument that had been presented so far.

After the initial outburst, a committee member asked the individual to
"shut up and sit down". The protests continued unabated however, and
after some work, panelists and some attendees convinced the committee to
have additional consumer representation. The event was stacked twenty
three to one in favor of corporations, with Graham Spencer of
digitalconsumer.org, being the only officially recognized public
advocate at the event, and he said very little.

Who was responsible for making your voice heard? You can thank both
members of NYLXS and NyFairUse for representing the public at the event.
Brett Wynkoop of NY for Fair Use actually nudged his way up to the
table, and commandeered the microphone to get his point across. A move
Phillip Bond, undersecretary for Technology in the U.S. Department of
Commerce later criticized, noting that "We have a structure here." A
structure, apparently, that wasn't working: Seth Johnson of the
Information Producers Initiative stood in the back with his hand raised
for over an hour, never receiving acknowledgement from Bond.
Representatives like Robin Gross, intellectual property lawyer for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, were told not to show up at all.

Even the corporations present acknowledged the light consumer
representation, with representatives from Phillips Electronics and IBM
both criticizing the lopsided panel, which contained absolutely no
representatives from the free software community, no technology
journalists, no programmers, no professors.....(you get the picture).

Jack Valenti, spokesman of the MPAA, continued to make himself an easy
target by insisting at one point that his group did not oppose the VCR.
He was quickly nailed on this by another panelist, who remembered that
Jack's group had tried to get an injunction on the VCR, and had proposed
royalty rates of $25 to $50 on blank tapes. He was also quoted by the
press, and as is widely known as saying "the VCR is to the American film
producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman
home alone".

Posted 07-18 10:20 See: business Radio Fileswapping