Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA, testifying before Congress in 1982: “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as

Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA, testifying before Congress in 1982: “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” For context: months before Valenti said that, in 1981, Sony’s creation and sale of the VCR had been declared contributory copyright infringement by the Ninth Circuit. An appeal to the Supreme Court was in progress. Months after Valenti said that, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit decision—by a 5–4 vote. If a single justice had voted the other way, the VCR would have been ruled illegal across the entire United States. Unfortunately, the movie industry was crushed by the weight of home recording and fast‐forward, and never recovered. Oops, sorry, I meant to say that after their attempt to make the VCR illegal failed, they embraced the format they had tried to destroy, and as a result earned billions and billions of dollars over the subsequent decades. Some Boston strangler!