Jack Valenti quotes - Page : 2

" If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one. " # Imitation # Books - Reading # Money

" If you design your own machine, you can't fuss at people, because you're one of just a few. How many Linux users are there? " # Computers # Time and Time Management # Leaders and Leadership

" We want to tell American parents that they and they alone have total power to control every hour of television programming that comes into their home. " # Television # Control # America

" No one today knows what is indecent. " # Disability

" In a political struggle, never get personal — else the dagger digs too deep. " # Politicians and Politics

" Nothing of value is free. It is very easy, Mr. Chairman, to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else's property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled. " # Children # Illusion # Freedom

" The Ninth Circuit Court decision was lucid, unambiguous, and consistent. The logic was clear and it said when you use copyrighted material on a video cassette recorder, it is an infringement of copyright. " # Crime and Criminals # Decisions # Mind

" My own home, we do it in our on home. I know about that. Anybody that has a VCR, talk to them, and I ask you to use your own commonsense... If you had the power to sit on a playback of a recording and you could wipe out the commercials or not wipe out the commercials, what would you do? ... We all do it. But when you do it, you strip away the reason for free television. ... As far as I am concerned, I am going to continue taping because the plaintiffs have said they aren't going to do anything to me. I am not committing any crime. They know that. " # Argument # Television # Love

" Mostly, filmmakers complain that they must work against muddled or moving boundaries. And parents’ groups grouse about “ratings creep,” a perceived tendency for a category like PG-13 to permit ever more violence, sex and profanity over the years to reach impressionable youth. Yet it was Mr. Valenti’s genius to have devised an apparatus that is not bound by precedent, changes its definitions at will and, ultimately, serves the motion picture industry by becoming, at any given moment, as permissive or restrictive as the prevailing climate seems to demand... for nearly 40 years, Mr. Valenti’s raters have largely kept politicians and busybodies out of the film business, even if that meant playing somewhat unpredictable busybodies themselves. They haven’t always been fair, and not entirely pleasant to deal with. But in the end, theirs was no mean achievement. " # Politicians and Politics # Love # Writers and Writing

" I thought Jack Valenti was wrong about most of the tech-policy issues that he spoke about, but I'm going to miss that guy... One of the lingering regrets of my career is showing up a few minutes late to a Post boardroom luncheon with Valenti that had started with him denouncing a column I'd written about the MPAA's "technological totalitarianism." When I sat down, then-managing editor Steve Coll leaned over to summarize Valenti's opening statement as "he took your name in vain"; I felt like I'd missed the whole show. " # Business # Totalitarianism # Love