Nerd Stumps Jack Valenti
BoingBoing points us to this article from MIT's The Tech, in which 82-year-old former Motion Picture Association of America head/digital rights management Kool-Aid drinker Jack Valenti is made to look borderline, um, senile. Not Charlton Heston at the end of Bowling for Columbine senile, but still.
TT: ..[A]re you [stealing] when you rent a movie from Blockbuster and you watch it at home? ... I run Linux on my computer. There s no product I can buy that s licensed to watch [DVDs]. If I go to Blockbuster and rent a movie and watch it, am I a bad person? Is that bad?
JV: No, you re not a bad person. But you don t have any right.
TT: But I rented the movie. Why should it be illegal?
JV: Well then, you have to get a machine that s licensed to show it.
TT: Here s one of these machines; it s just not licensed.
[Winstein shows Valenti his six-line qrpff DVD descrambler.]
TT: If you type that in, it ll let you watch movies.
JV: You designed this?
TT: Yes.
JV: Un-fucking-believable.