WASHINGTON – Jack Valenti doesn't seem to know much about technology.
During a recent deposition in a case over DVD viewing software, the legendary lobbyist for the motion picture industry and former presidential confidante refused to say much at all.
Lawyers for 2600 Magazine, accused of illegally distributing the DeCSS utility, tried their best to get Valenti, who heads the Motion Picture Association of America, to admit that a controversial federal law is so broad it would put students and teachers in jail for viewing portions of DVDs. Eight motion picture studios in January accused 2600 of violating the law, called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
"If a student wants to do a term paper, let's say do a video presentation on the Holocaust ... and wants to take two or three minutes from a DVD from Schindler's List to put into that Holocaust presentation and she has to de-encrypt the DVD to do that, is that illegal?" asked 2600 attorney Martin Garbus.
Valenti ducked the question. "The student could do that by getting an analog version of Schindler's List, because that's not encrypted," he said.
That non-answer was one of his more verbose ones. Valenti said "I don't know" 62 times, "I don't recall" 29 times, and "I'm not aware" 16 times, according to a transcript of the deposition released Wednesday afternoon.
He also refused to admit that he ever heard of DIVX, a pay-per-view method for DVDs that flopped last year, or had talked to anyone in the industry about the 2600 suit.
A large part of the deposition, held in Washington last week, was devoted to defense attempts to get Valenti to answer hypotheticals about the DMCA. The law – which Valenti lobbied Congress to pass – restricts attempts to "circumvent" some forms of encryption products, including what is used to encode DVDs.
Garbus asked: "If any system plays a DVD without a license from DVD CCA, that in your estimation is against the law?"
Replied Valenti: "I believe it's a violation of the law. The law is very clear and very plain."
The eight movie studios that filed the lawsuit, including Time Warner and Disney, argue that they should have the right to protect their copyrighted works through encryption and make it illegal for anyone to circumvent it. Linux users and the hacking community say once someone buys a DVD, they should be able to watch it in any player they want – not just those licensed by the movie industry.
"Let's assume I buy a DVD, pay a price on it. Then I play it on a piece of hardware or a computer that doesn't have (playing software that was licensed from the movie industry). Is it your view that that's against the law?" Garbus asked.
"I believe it's against the law," Valenti replied.
Garbus also asked: "If a librarian, for example, wants to use two to three minutes for a lecture, is she required to get a license from ... the MPAA to use those two or three minutes?"
"The answer is, if there's a legal conclusion to be drawn, I don't know," Valenti said.
During a hearing last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that reporters may not attend depositions, but the transcripts would be released three working days after the motion picture industry attorneys received them.
News organizations had asked to be present when Disney's Michael Eisner and Valenti were questioned.
But an angry Kaplan said the presence of journalists would give both sides an additional reason to squabble over what is confidential or not and delay the start of the trial, which is scheduled to begin next month.
Representatives of Wired News, Times Mirror Co., the Village Voice, and E-Commerce Law Weekly had asked for open depositions, saying that the public interest demanded it and the law allows it.
