Cryptome.org has a transcript of federal hearings on "Home Recording of Copyrighted Work". These hearings took place in 1982 as a result of a decision in the case of Universal City Studios vs. Sony Corporation of America. Universal had sued Sony over whether private individual users of VCRs were infringing copyrights by recording copyrighted television broadcasting without permission. While Sony won the original case, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the judgment and remanded the case to a lower court for establishment of a compensation scheme for copyright owners. Bills were quickly initiated in the House and Senate to overturn this decision. The bills typically prescribed either free recording for private non-commercial users or a compulsory license with compensation via royalties paid on recording devices and blank media.
Here are a couple choice quotes from Mr. Valenti:
"But now we are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape."
"Because unless the Congress recognizes the rights of creative property owners as owners of private property, that this property that we exhibit in theaters, once it leaves the post-theatrical markets, it is going to be so eroded in value by the use of these unlicensed machines, that the whole valuable asset is going to be blighted. In the opinion of many of the people in this room and outside of this room, blighted, beyond all recognition."
"Now, these machines are advertised for one purpose in life. Their only single mission, their primary mission is to copy coyrighted material that belongs to other people."
Notice how he makes two false statements, then backtracks with a probably true statement about the "primary mission" of the VCR, though I'm not sure who merits the role of final arbiter on the primary mission of the VCR. Since elsewhere he refers to rental and purchase of pre-recorded videotapes, even he knows that recording of copyrighted material is not the VCR's "only single mission." Much of his testimony follows this pattern of lies or exaggerations, which he then subtly blurs with statements that are mostly true, but usually only after being challenged on the lies or hyperbole.
"Now, we cannot live in a marketplace, Mr. Chairman -- you simply cannot live in a marketplace, where there is one unleashed animal in that marketplace, unlicensed. It would no longer be a marketplace; it would be a kind of a jungle, where this one unlicensed instrument is capable of devouring all that people had invested in and labored over and brought forth as a film or a television program, and, in short, laying waste to the orderly distribution of this product."
Similarly to the situation for webcasting and p2p file sharing, "orderly distribution" is proffered as the reason to give the copyright owners maximum control.
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
This is probably the most famous quote from the hearing. This is only one of many ridiculous hyperboles that Valenti offered during the hearing.
"They show an astonishing lack of the copyright law. They know good and well that that is not a criminal infringement unless you do it for profit."
This was Valenti's response when asked if he felt like a copyright infringer when he and his family recorded copyrighted material. Valenti had just talked about how his son paused the VCR during a live broadcast to edit out commercials. After first trying to avoid the question, he appears to state that personal copying when not done for profit is legal. The "they" he is referring to are the defendants, Sony.
"... because I have been saying it in public when trying to pick a number when people want to talk about numbers as being fairly reasonable, a $50 on the machine and a $1 fee on the blank tape."
Even in 1982, I suspect these numbers would have been a fairly high percentage of the costs at that time. Obviously, they would constitute a huge percentage of today's prices for VCRs and blank tapes. He then tries to argue that manufacturers will eat virtually all the cost, passing through only 1 to 2 percent to consumers.
Then, Valenti uses misleading comparisons in an attempt to argue that Japanese corporations are even fatter, greedier pigs than American TV and Film producers have been widely charged to be. Valenti presents the combined profit for "Hitachi, Matsushita, Sanyo, Sony, TDK, Toshiba, Victor" and then states that 6 out of 10 films don't produce a positive return. Well, but do the four profitable films make up for the six negative ones by a huge margin? We can't tell from Valenti's argument. What if 7 out of 10 of Matsushita's products aren't profitable, but they make up for it by a huge margin with the other 3? If Jack knows, he certainly wouldn't admit it. Fair comparisons are not part of his arsenal.
It's been nearly two weeks (Monday, Sept. 2) since I had an unfortunate run-in with a suicidal steak knife.
Sandra and I were splitting a frozen dinner (Marie Callender's chicken parmigiana pasta with a marinara sauce, for the morbidly curious). The included chicken breast wasn't particularly tough, but we were using a steak knife to cut it. Not just any steak knife, though. We were using a sleek, all steel Henckels steak knife. Slender, attractive, and an utter ergonomic disaster. To hold the knife comfortably, you need really small hands, say like the hands of a four year-old. Pre-schoolers seem like a strange target market for steak knives, but who am I to tell them how to design knives? After all, we bought a set of four. After using them for a couple months, we bought another set of four. What were we thinking?
Anyway, while slicing off a succulent piece of reconstituted chicken, I lifted the knife up and away from the partitioned serving platter and the knife slipped backward through my hand.
Everyone knows that you don't reach for falling knives. I bet you believe you wouldn't reach for a falling knife. But in that fraction of a second as the knife starts its downward path, rational thoughts don't tend to win the battle to get commands sent through the nervous system out to the hands. Hands seem to have their own set of instincts, many of which we live to regret.
The knife fell downward heel first, toward the top of my thigh. The heel of the knife landed on my thigh, leaving the sharp, pointy end aiming straight up at the ceiling. As I moved my right hand down and back, it headed directly into the path of the perfectly balanced knife. The point of the knife entered my palm about an inch directly below the base of my little finger. Since the knife was resting on my thigh, it did not move very much after contact was made. My hand had been moving pretty fast. Ouch.
I leaned my hand slowly to the right and gazed in wonderment at how wide the knife blade was at the point where it intersected with my hand. Then I realized that this meant a substantial part of the knife was inside of my hand. This period of wonderment lasted approximately 34 milliseconds. I moved my hand away and the knife fortunately dropped away to the floor. I quickly grabbed my palm hard with my left hand as the blood started to flood out. I ran to the sink and managed to get there before blood dripped down from my hand.
After about ten minutes standing over the sink and pressing very hard on the wound, Sandra helped me slip a big wad of gauze in between my left palm and the wound. I then headed into the living room and laid down on the floor as my legs started feeling all wiggly.
This story is even more fun when you know that I'm pretty squeamish about the various bodily contents that lie beneath my skin. When I get a shot, I get all cold and clammy and woozy. I would be an absolutely awful heroin addict. I even passed out once during the blind-you-with-the-blue-light-and-poke-you-in-the-eye glaucoma test. But that's another story.
After about 45 minutes of pressure applied with the gauze, Sandra cleaned out the wound (remember that part about the marinara sauce?) and dressed it with a large bandage. I am so lucky she lacks any squeamishness in this regard. While I think it wouldn't affect me so much if it weren't my blood, that's just a theory. Of course, Sandra once stitched up her own finger with a needle and thread after accidentally deeply cutting her finger while slicing what turned out to be a still partially frozen bagel. But that's another story.
One thing I was really lucky about is that the cut was lengthwise in the direction of my fingers. This greatly reduced the chances of severing large vessels, tendons, or muscles.
After a couple days of greatly reduced flexibility, my right hand slowly started to return to normal. It's been 11 days, and there is still a slight tenderness when I press on the wound and a little stiffness when I flex my hand. When riding my bike today, I had a slight bit of discomfort when climbing a steep hill with my hands on the tops of the bars.
Tonight I decided to try to figure out how deep the cut was. Assuming the knife went straight in, which I'm pretty sure it did, comparing the length of the cut to the width of the knife would tell me how deep it went. The knife starts out at a sharp point, and then widens along the serrated edge side as you move away from the point. The cut is 5/16'' long. At the point the knife width reaches 5/16", the length from the point is just over 1/4". For my metric pals, that would be 0.64 cm.
It seems the referee who made so many bad calls against Italy when they played South Korea in the 2002 World Cup has been suspended for 20 games for manipulating an Ecuadorean league game. He added 13 minutes of extra time (while reporting the game lasted the regulation 90), enabling Liga de Quito to come from behind and win 4-3. Of course, he just happens to be running for City Council in Quito. Clearly, he doesn't meet the bipartisan standard claimed by FIFA for the World Cup referees.
He was pretty bad in the Italy-South Korea match, but the ref for the Spain-South Korea match was even worse.
This is all quite reminiscent of the US vs. Russia Olympic basketball match where the referee added time to the clock until Russia finally scored to "beat" the US.
Now, I'm happy that Sandra talked me into going to the A's game tonight. The A's beat the Kansas City Royals to run their win streak to 20 games. Suhweet! Over 20,000 tickets were sold the day of the game to make for a sold out crowd of over 55,500 people.
After three innings, the A's had put up a 11-0 lead. The possibility of winning their 20th in a row by a 20-0 score seemed realistic. At this point, the A's could do virtually no wrong, and the Royals looked totally hapless. In the next five innings, though, Oakland was scoreless while the Royals put up 10 runs. In the top of the ninth, the Royals did the unthinkable. Sweeney drove in a run off Koch to tie the game at 11-11.
In the bottom of the ninth, Tejada was far down in the order. He had won the last two games in the ninth, so someone else would have to be the hero. Howe must have told everyone to go for the quick run via a homer. Jermaine Dye took a couple strong cuts before driving a deep fly out to right. Howe pinch hit Scott Hatteburg for Eric Byrnes. I turned to Sandra and said that Hatteburg had a high percentage of home runs in his at-bats. Hatteburg then smashed a 1-0 pitch over the right-center wall. WooHoo! Lately, the A's seem determined to see that we get our money's worth by leaving it up to the very end. It was definitely the most exciting baseball game I've ever attended.
