Talk:Jack Valenti

Butt Cancer

"I have butt cancer" - 2007. I am somewhat skeptical of the above quote, an can find no citation for it in any news source, website, blog, etc. Surely if he'd said this, someone would have picked up on it? DewiMorgan 15:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Verified

There's a commented out section for verified quotes. What constitutes verification? At least the '82 quotes should be able to go there fairly easily, given the references and all. DewiMorgan 15:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• Here's some verification for ya though, and the entry under "attributed" can probably be deleted, as http://instructors.cwrl.utexas.edu/~martin/Valenti.pdf is a better ref, with the original quote (ie, the author is Valenti rather than an indirect attribution).

Headings

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Guide_to_layout#Sections_.28people.29 lists the ideal sequence of categories as: Sourced, Unsourced, Misattributed, Criticisms (or About), See also, External links.

We don't have these here, so I'm splitting "unknown" into "Sourced" and "Unsourced", and following the recommendation on that page of splitting his '82 hearing quotes under a level 3 heading - should get rid of the linkage-spam that I introduced when I added those quotes.

I'm not sure there should be an "attributed" section separate from "unsourced". Either we have a reference to the original work, or we don't. If we don't, it's unsourced, and who attributed it is just info for a sub-bulletpoint under the "unsourced" heading. DewiMorgan 16:26, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Removals

Removed because its already in "sourced" as a more accurate quote.

• Public domain works are orphans. No one will invest in their preservation, no one will make them available without IPRs

  Attributed by: Pamela Samuelson

Removed because it's totally unsourced, unreferenced, unlike Valenti, and there is no reference on the net of him ever having said this, other than in copies of this page - so removed before it becomes falsely believed to be true. I think someone may be confusing him with Bart Simpson.

• I have butt cancer.

  Year: 2007

Quotable quotes

The sections from the 1982 testimony have been extended from quotes to paragraphs.

What is the definition of a quote? I had been assuming it was something which was "quotable". Will anyone ever quote those large blocks of text which merge three separate concepts? Or will they instead quote just that section which relates to a single concept?

"My own home, we do it in our on home. I know about that. Anybody that has a VCR, talk to them, and I ask you to use your own commonsense... If you had the power to sit on a playback of a recording and you could wipe out the commercials or not wipe out the commercials, what would you do? ... We all do it. But when you do it, you strip away the reason for free television. ... As far as I am concerned, I am going to continue taping because the plaintiffs have said they aren't going to do anything to me. I am not committing any crime. They know that."

The above is one, perhaps two quoteable quotes, intermixed with waffle.

"We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright."

The above is a quote predicting dangers from VHS, combined with a quote about what copyright is, and some filler.

As I understand it, Wikiquote is to there give quotable quotes, not large excerpts from people's speeches.

So the above two paragraphs are IMHO better as four quotable quotes:

"If you had the power to sit on a playback of a recording and you could wipe out the commercials or not wipe out the commercials, what would you do? ... We all do it. But when you do it, you strip away the reason for free television."

"I am going to continue taping because the plaintiffs have said they aren't going to do anything to me. I am not committing any crime. They know that."

"We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape."

"[T]he life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend [...] is called copyright."

If people want these quotes in the full context of the surrounding text, the link is there. The line between a quote and an excerpt is whether the text is "quotable". Just because two quotable points were made in the same paragraph does not mean that the entire paragraph becomes a "quote".

I extended the quotes mentioned because I thought the context was not clear enough in the original form, and a quote can range from a short comment one might make in conversation to a long one which one might cite in an essay. How the quotes are presented has always been a matter for debate of those concerned, upon the pages where they are presented — within the rules that have become established and the general guidelines which remain in development. ~ Kalki 16:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. They may be less "snappy", but that's no great sin I guess :) DewiMorgan 19:41, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Jack Valenti. --Antiquary 18:16, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• In Hollywood, you're a veteran if you've had a job of more than six weeks' tenure with one company.
  • Valenti's tenure with the MPAA was 38 years.

• We hit Jamaica over the head with a two-by-four.
  • The U.S. restricted foreign aid until Jamaican studios began paying royalties to the MPAA. (1984)

• Will a democratic society allow just three corporate entities to wield unprecedented dominion over television, the most decisive voice in the land? There are now only three national networks... There will never be more than three national networks.
  • (1984)