Hollywood's lead lobbyist steps back from limelight

What I had to do was to get the courts to say that it infringed copyright. Then what I wanted to do was what they do in Europe right now, which is to have a modest copyright royalty fee placed on every blank videocassette, so when you bought a videocassette, there would be a small fee that would go back to the creators of the film, to the owners of the film, to partially compensate them for the pirating of their films. And I predicted mass piracy, and we have it. VCR analogue today and disc piracy is over $3.5bn a year in lost revenue.

Do you see the Internet or peer-to-peer or DVD copying, if appropriate safeguards are made, as potentially allowing the kind of expansion in revenue we've seen with VCRs?
I think the Internet is the greatest distribution system ever struck off by the hand and brain of man. It will be a huge, huge success story. When we can send out movies sturdily protected, tens of thousands of titles flooding down to people's homes, so they can see what they want to see when they want to see it, at a price that a consumer would see as fair and reasonable. So I think the Internet is fantastic. All we need to do is protect our product, and we can get it on there fast.

We do have alternative ways now. There is Movielink, there is CinemaNow, and there are others that will grow -- alternative ways of watching movies on the Internet. So we are anxious to use the Internet. Very greatly anxious to use it.

What will you do after you leave the MPAA?
Well, I've got a lot of things cooking. I'll be involved in a number of things that I haven't announced yet.