File-sharing is just as bad as walking into Blockbuster, doing “the Wynonna Ryder thing” and slipping a DVD into your jacket, Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti said at a forum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Bartos Theatre Thursday evening.
Big name actors are not the only people involved in the production of movies and when people download films, they are hurting “ordinary people who have mortgages and colleges to pay for,” he said.
People under a certain age seem to have the perception that file-sharing is not the same as stealing, he said, because film “flourishes in the seabed of imagination,” and is not physically tangible. He said people are more willing to put “that DVD inside their digital jacket” because they do not equate it with stealing.
In addition, file-sharing will lead to “less investment in film because of the ease by which [movies] can be pilfered,” Valenti said. He added that the “wholesale takedowns” of movies will dramatically limit the numbers of films made in the future and trigger job loss.
“The digital world has come with a rush of velocity,” he said.
Valenti said the continuing promotion of new technology that allows people to download movies may make it harder to control piracy if it is not reined in now.
According to Valenti, the California Institute of Technology has developed a program called FAST, which is capable of “bringing down a quality movie in five seconds,” a dramatic jump from the hours it usually takes.
Valenti said that if CalTech made a push, the program could be on the market in approximately eight months.
“We cannot let that kind of pillaging occur,” Valenti said.
Valenti did not discuss specific methods for preventing piracy, but he said he has been visiting many colleges to discuss the issue, including Duke University and New York University.
In addition to file-sharing, Valenti spoke about the censorship of movies.
“It’s the rights of [filmmakers] and no one else,” he said. “People have the right not to watch.”
Valenti said that film censorship infringes on First Amendment rights – rights without which “we would not have the loving land we have today,” he said.
Brian Jacobson, a 23-year-old Comparative Media Studies graduate student at MIT, said he is not a file-sharer, but added after the forum that he believes it is not immoral.
However, he said that he is concerned about copyright laws. It is a “really big issue” which often leaves out the “other side of the coin – fair use,” he said.
Fair use is important because it helps educators teach more effectively, Jacobson said.
Valenti spoke briefly about the 1998 Sonny Bono Copy Right Term Extension Act, which adds 20 years to the copyright protection in the United States. He acknowledged concerns about “huge conglomerates” controlling the media and fair use, but said the act was passed to stop the European Union from reaping benefits from U.S. movies.
During the open discussion, another MIT graduate student, 26-year-old Christian Buekkelund, said two piracy terms made him squeamish: loss and stealing.
Countering the Blockbuster analogy, he said downloading is not equivalent to stealing: “When I make a copy of that movie, they still have that copy,” he said.
In reference to the losses the film industry has suffered from file-sharing, he said “that’s not money that you had – it’s money that you thought you could have gotten.”
Buekkelund said he rarely downloads movies and when he does, they are those that he would never pay money to watch.
“I would have never paid money to see a Pauly Shore movie,” he said.
Valenti, who is also known for founding the movie rating system, is expected to step down from MPAA this year.