Jack Valenti autobio: Creative Commons fodder? Will life+70 really serve MPAA exec’s memory?
The MPAA’s Jack Valenti had his nice points—he even gave a gracious blurb for a XyWrite book I wrote a few stray eons ago. There was more to the man than just his support of eternal copyright short of a day, or whatever the lawyerly twist was. And I don’t take pleasure in a New York Times report that his autobiography so far has been a dud in the stores despite a 100,000-copy printing. Amazon as of now carries only one review from a reader (hyperpositive).
The ironies
Still, I can’t resist contemplating the ironies. Locked up in copyright for life plus seventy years, his book probably won’t reach nearly the number of readers that it would if the Valenti-favored Bono Act hadn’t extended individual copyright from life+50. If only I could be alive when the lock comes off Valenti’s memoirs. I’d love to see how many people cared about spreading around a public domain e-book of This Time, This Place. Of course, that assumes that Jack doesn’t win. What if copyright by then is eternal? In the same vein, not a few copyright lawyers, activists and studio executives will remember Valenti’s warning: “The VCR is to the American producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.” This is the same guy, moreover, who worked for Lyndon Johnson and said he slept better because LBJ was in the White House.
Bono-hampered memories
Regardless, or because of that, the Valenti book would appear to have historical value for future generations. From the reader’s positive Amazon review: “The first 50 pages of the book speak of the Kennedy assassination and how Jack was thrust into the White House, first hand eye witness view of how that day and days after unfolded. How he lived in the White House with LBJ and family. Some of the anecdotes were priceless, like when he was being interviewed to get into Harvard or the Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando stories. At age 22 he is a bomber pilot in WWII, flying over 20 missions. Any part of his life could have been a book unto itself.”
CC as a remedy
So what might be the remedy if Bonoesque terms persist? Well, to Jack Valenti’s credit, he was well-disposed toward the Creative Commons idea of allowing authors to explicitly authorize noncommercial uses of their work. Like me, Valenti believed in copyright—but also in the freedom of authors to do with their works as they chose. If the Valenti autobiography fails in the long run and if there are no legal obstacles, perhaps his family can consider the CC route for This Time, This Place.
Related: Los Angeles Times review. There was some confusion over the book’s official publication date, and perhaps reviews like the Times’s will help move all those leftover copies.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
[...] Here’s a fallacy that in these fast moving times I observe on a regular basis: people on the internet arguing that everything on the internet is wrong. People using free software to argue that free software sucks (a recurring occurrence at Slashdot). Jack Valenti arguing for eternal copyright, yet nobody wants to read his book. [...]