But that was before Valenti catalyzed a pair of high-profile lawsuits that threaten to curtail some of the freedoms that coders and Net entrepreneurs have been taking for granted. One case centers on iCraveTV.com, a Canadian site that promises free access to live TV programming -- mainly from U.S. television networks whose broadcasts it intercepts and streams online; the other case aims to prevent people from using DeCSS, a program that can unscramble encrypted digital video disks (DVD) on computers running Linux-based operating systems.

"The principle occupation [of the MPAA] is to make sure that American movies move freely and unhobbled around the world," says Valenti, defending the cases. "And in the last several years, we have been intentionally, seriously and energetically concerned with combating theft of our intellectual property."

Valenti is no stranger to conflict. In World War II, he flew 51 combat missions over Italy, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross and other honors. He also worked his way through college at the University of Houston, and after getting his MBA from Harvard, Valenti handled the television advertising for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. When President Kennedy was gunned down, Valenti was six cars behind him. A few hours later, while flying back to Washington on Air Force One, President Lyndon Johnson named Valenti his first special assistant.

A little over three years later, in 1966, Valenti joined the MPAA. He has been there ever since, managing a fair share of technological tempests. Video, cable, the debate over ratings, and the increasing prevalence of piracy -- Valenti has steered the motion picture industry through all of these storms.

Some of your arguments against DeCSS and iCraveTV sound familiar: whenever a new medium arises, the old hesitates. In the 1970s, movie studios sued Sony on the grounds that its Betamax technology would allow people to illegally tape and copy movies -- causing huge losses to the movie industry; but the studios lost. If you had won, companies like Blockbuster -- which provides the movie industry with billions -- would never have arisen. Why are these cases different?

Yes, I know that argument. But if you think about it a minute, you will see that the digital world is as far away from the analog world as the lightning is from the lightning bug. For example, in analog you have to go down to a Blockbuster store, then you have to copy it, then it has to be sent physically. Somebody's got to take a truck or a car or DHL and get it to another country. There is a brutish kind of awkward distribution system. Not so on the Internet, where some obscure person sitting in a basement can throw up on the Internet a brand new motion picture, and with the click of a button have it go with the speed of light to 6 billion people around the world, instantaneously. It's totally different, totally different.

So you don't fear that you're cutting off a potential revenue stream with these suits?

No. We want to use the Internet. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested by the movie companies, by the broadcasters, by other companies, by sports -- by everybody -- who believe the Internet has the greatest work potential in the memory of man. This is an extraordinary new delivery system. And we certainly want to take advantage of it. But there has to be some assumed rules of the game, otherwise everything you have can be pilfered.

How do you propose to stop "pilfering?"

I don't know. All I know is that 18 months from now the technology today will seem very primitive. Technology is just baffling everyone in the celerity with which it's looping, so the answer is, I can't give you an answer. But by God, we're going to find one. We're devoting a lot of resources, with our kinsmen in the copyright arena.

We formed what is called a copyright assembly just two weeks ago, in which every single enterprise in this country to which copyright protection is vital -- professional baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, NASCAR, NCAA, broadcasters, television stations, cable systems, music songwriters, movies, television programs -- they've all banded together to try and make it clear to the Congress that if a hosting or thievery or absconding or illegal use, or unauthorized use of the property of all these enterprises -- which, by the way, dominate the world -- is allowed to go untended by some kind of a protective shield, the nation's economy is the loser.

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