[BrooklynGOP]

Well, I am not going to have my money supporting these anti-american celebrities. Just got my Pioneer dvd burner 2 weeks ago... and 20 blanks...

[DrDavid]

I wonder, if taxes were lower, perhaps people would have more money to spend on legal copies of movies...

[BlkConserv]

Valenti is addressing a problem that, for the most part, hardly exists.

You buy any motion-picture now on DVD for under $20. Besides, there is video on-demand, the premium channels on cable and satellite, the video rental stores....who is going to waste time trying to download a movie and wait about 10 hours? Even so, the quality wouldn't be as near as good if you just went to Walmart and bought it.

If anyone should be shaking in their boots, it should be the myopic RIAA and the stupid record companies.

[nononsense]

The only time entertainment industry cares about morality is when it hurts their pocketbook.

[TADSLOS]

Much to do about nothing. Valenti is just being Valenti, the Hollyweird's mouthpiece.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

When will pompous dinosaurs such as Valenti and the record suits are going to pull their heads out of the fricking sand and realize that the digital asteroid is coming to blow them to smithereens?

[mikeb704]

I trace the deterioration of the quality of films to the late 60s when Jack Valenti moved from being a toady for Lyndon Johnson to head up the Motion Picture Association of America. The first thing he did, he boasts, “was to junk the Hays Production Code, which was an anachronistic piece of censorship that we never should have put into place."

Much of what Hollywood now turns out is coarse, demeaning and depressing.

IMHO.

Michael M. Bates: My Side of the Swamp

[ServesURight]

Valenti is just blowing fart through his mouth. If Hellwood can solve the dilemma about people copying movies in their VCRs, then they should be prepared for the digital age.

BOYCOTT THE 75TH ACADEMY AWARDS SHOW!!

[Sloth]

Valenti is a vile excuse for a human being.

[wizzler]

Once again, the attitude here regarding this issue is dismaying.

The justifications used to rationalize stealing (i.e., I am not going to have my money supporting these anti-american celebrities) are sadder still.

Don't like the politics of certain celebrities? Then, sure -- don't spend your money on their products. But to take the leap to stealing those products is something else altogether.

[HamiltonJay]

Not to defend digital theft... but I have a hard time when a group that has been guilty of gouging for years, stands up and calls others theives.

I don't 14 crappy songs for $17.99 for the 1 song I want... I'll pay you the $1 for the one song I want... CD production cost is well under $1 per disk to copy... yet the price of a CD hasn't changed one iota since they were introduced.... DVD's have come down, and I damn well know it costs more to produce a movie than a record..... but I can go buy a brand new release DVD for $15 or less...

Your sales are off, because your product sucks and your prices are too high... that's the facts. Sure pirating hurts, but its not your major problem... poor product quality and too high a price point is your problem.

[meadsjn]

"Too many students don't believe it's wrong to steal these movies," Valenti told students at Georgetown University Law Center. "It is fracturing the moral contract to take something that does not belong to you." ... the president of the Motion Picture Association of America ...

Are these the same liberals who feel it is acceptable to tax working Americans to death for every liberal pet cause, while at the same time choking off every means of making a living in the country?

[Schnucki]

What are they doing teaching morality at the university? I thought the university was the place where everything is tolerated except morality. ;)