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Sony CEO Proposes "Guardrails For the Internet"
Posted by
timothy
on Tue May 26, 2009 07:50 AM
from the red-light-cameras-too dept.
from the red-light-cameras-too dept.
testadicazzo writes "Micheal Lynton, the guy who said 'I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet. Period.' has posted an editorial at the Huffington Post titled Guardrails for the Internet, in which he defends his comment, and suggests that just as the interstate system needs guardrails, so too does the information superhighway. The following is pretty indicative of the article: 'Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it, and those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible. But what has happened online is that if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want. Freedom without restraint is chaos, and if we don't figure out some way to prevent online chaos, the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.'"
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rossturk writes "Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said, 'I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet, period.' Why? Because people 'feel entitled' to have what they want when they want it, and if they can't get it for free, 'they'll steal it.' It's become customary to expect a somewhat limited perspective on things from old-world entertainment companies, but his inability to acknowledge that the Internet has changed everything makes me think he's a very confused man. Is this when we all give up hope that companies like Sony Pictures can adapt? Will we look back on this as one of the defining moments when the industrialized entertainment industry lost touch for good?"
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Mozilla Jetpack and the Battle For the Web 280 comments
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I'm a guy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm a guy (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I'm a guy (Score:5, Insightful)
He published in the huffandpuffington post. Are you all that surprised it, like everything else on that site, is just mindless garbage?
I mean, seriously. I have seen not ONE good article there except the stuff they plagiarize. It seems to be a site that exists solely to push stupidity.
For example:
And my point is this: the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.
Obviously what he really means is that the Internet is stopping the gatekeepers from controlling who can get published. There are more people publishing their own books independently - rather than having to go through, say, Del Rey - than ever before. The comic pages of the newspaper have been replaced by webcomics but that's not necessarily a bad thing either - either you adapt, like Scott Adams, or you don't and you perish.
The Internet has brought people with no regard for the intellectual property of others together with a technology that allows them to easily steal that property and sell or give it away to everyone, with little fear of being caught or prosecuted.
He doesn't give a shit about "theft." He hates the idea of the Internet because it removes the need to keep his dumb ass as the distribution "gatekeeper" and skim money off of the hard work of others.
Prior to bittorrent, there was Samba sharing as enabled by several crawler-search setups. Prior to those, there was Napster. Prior to those, there were a zillion sites running FTP (ratio or otherwise). Prior to "the internet", there were BBS'es all over. Prior to that, there was sneakernet.
Go back ~100 years, and dumbshits like this Sony retard were "protesting" and trying to lobby Congress to forbid municipalities from keeping lending libraries (you know, the public library system we all have the right to use for free) because it would "impede sales if people could simply borrow the book instead."
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Re:I'm a guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Have a little empathy. What we have is a group of rich, powerful and intelligent people who imagine a changed future in which their personal fortunes may not grow as fast as they do currently. Realizing that an argument like "The Internet is bad because I may not be as wealthy as I'm used to" is not a very persuasive they modify the argument to be: ""The Internet is bad because it means the END of CIVILIZATION as we know it" or something similar.
As far as I can tell there is fortunately hardly any correlation between creativity and monetary rewards. Great works of art, literature, music etc are far more often created by the impecunious than the wealthy.
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Re:I'm a guy (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet he posts his views ... on the Internet. Period.
He then refers to the "blogosphere", trying to reduce all criticism to a single entity: "Now, the blogosphere does not take so kindly to provocations like that"
Lynton may have been privileged to have been offered a publication in a traditional news site, on account of him being CEO of some company, but his words written on the Internet are no different to any kind of blogger. Period.
On what basis does he claim that newspapers have been harmed? Even if we accept that Internet piracy is causing harm, where is all the newspaper-piracy? Are people distributing copies of the Huffington Post on bittorrent? Is there a Napster for Broadsheets?
Period.
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Re:I'm a guy (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand this guy, he's complaining that people are making it really really obvious what they'd like to buy. If I were running a company, I would quit complaining and sell it already!
People don't want DVDs with copy protection notices, and DRM and region coding? Don't sell them! Sell DRM free downloads for a sensible price - that is after all what people are saying they want!
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Re:I'm a guy (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been wondering the same for ages.
Take an immigrant from Scotland selling Haggis. You know, those delightful dishes made of liver, heart and other selected throwaway parts of sheep, seasoned in a blend of secret spices, kept secret to protect the guilty. He's convinced that this is the best dish ever. And he is complaining without end about those burger joints next door that steal his customers.
Fortunately, nobody could understand him through his accent, so we were spared with the big burger chain crackdown and today we don't have to resort to eating nothing. Because nothing beats haggis. Read that however you like...
DRMified content is the same. Their argument is that everyone would buy it if it wasn't for those pesky places where you can get it without (i.e. the way you want it). No. We wouldn't. Believe it or not, content is not like food, water, light or air. We don't need it.
YOU need US. Not the other way 'round.
Instead of complaining that those pesky customers don't like your product and demand that the customer has to change his tastes, produce what he likes and he will gladly buy it.
It's not "pirating is communism". Communism, actually, is producing what you deem "right" and expecting your customer to buy it because you deprive him from any alternatives. Ask anyone who grew up in the "Soviet states".
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I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Funny)
I would say its a government subsidy for commerce
Silly Sony. Don't they know they have to first run their business into the ground and ensure that it's all but worthless before they'll receive a government subsidy? ;)
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Funny)
Cut them some slack, they've been working on it for ages. Minidisc recorders with a useless, crippled format, DVDs that put trojans on your computer, they've done everything in the book to alienate their customers and lower their business. Not their fault that they even fail at failing.
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yeah. He even says "It's hard to sell a legal DVD when it can be stolen without any repercussions." If the pirates gave away DVDs for free, and Sony charged a reasonable price for DRM-free downloads of new content, then Sony would have a fantastic business model.
DVDs are a pain to store, use and purchase, when compared with a network solution. But the studios stubbornly continue to tie their own hands with their arcane marketing and distribution 'rules'.
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
Culture is much more than what you can sell.
That's it exactly. Did Michelangelo lock the doors to the Sistine Chapel and stand outside charging $20 a head (sorry, no cameras or sketchpads allowed) to come in and see his masterpiece? No.
Did Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart charge each symphony that wanted to play his pieces a separate fee for each concert they performed? No.
Did Leonardo Da Vinci hide digital watermarks in Mona Lisa so he could make sure no one was stealing his work? No.
Does Sony think The Fugees are in the same caliber as any one of the above artists in terms of culture?
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Funny)
Does Sony think The Fugees are in the same caliber as any one of the above artists in terms of culture?
Without Sony, we wouldn't have classic movies like Angels and Demons, Fired Up!, Obsessed, The Pink Panther 2, Quantum of Solace, or the International.
Now in all seriousness - those movies all came straight from the front page of their web site... this is apparently what they are most proud of. In that list, there is only one movie that provokes any kind of interest in me at all, and it is yet another rehash of the old Bond series. Where, exactly, is all of this creativity that he speaks of?
I look at that horrific list, and when he says that output will be reduced all I can think is, "Good!" Maybe people will go outside instead of watching this dreck.
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
He does not want guardrails at the edge of the highway, he wants them across the highway so you can only go where he wants you to ....
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You see chaos, I see a level playing field (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You see chaos, I see a level playing field (Score:5, Insightful)
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Let them eat DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Let them eat DRM (Score:5, Funny)
Woo-hoo! Cake!
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Imagine that (Score:5, Insightful)
"Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it"
Not at all like rich CEOs, no.
Giving people what they want (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it
Natural effect of Capitalism. If Sony's CEO would rather live in a Communist economy, I heard Cuba is still accepting immigrants. He might have to take a cut in salary and status, though.
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Re:Imagine that (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, we did. Yes, we got used to instant delivery of digital content to our PCs. We got used to being able to use the content to display on multi purpose machines (like, say, PCs) instead of having to buy a few dozen different boxes to achive the same results. We got used to ease of storage, being able to put hundreds if not thousands of songs, movies, books and other content on a single hard drive, taking up the room a single book or two CDs in jewel cases would.
Now some bozo comes in and says you can't have that. My only response is "why?". Why not? Because you don't want me to have it? You can't always get what you want, I, for one, would want people to have a clue before they're allowed to open their mouth.
But then we wouldn't ever have heard that gem from the Sony CEO. Which would be a shame. I dare say it has the potential to become about as powerful as the 'internet tubes' meme.
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Because we were here first! (Score:5, Insightful)
We were here first, dammit.
(And your track record precedes you, thief.)
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We don't need Sony though! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wolverine was leaked. Maybe it did reduce its potential sales, but it certainly didn't make it impossible to sell tickets for it. The movie industry seems to be able to survive pretty well. Hell, Amazon seems to be doing okay with its mp3 store, even though it's easy to get everything they sell for free.
I'm happy for regulation to exist that enables you to have a profitable business providing things that consumers need. But I'm only willing to allow that much. We have no obligation to maximise your potential profits.
great example of sony thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Great example of why sony hasn't been doing well. As opposed to changing or modifying their business model to meet the demand "after store hours" the customer should change for sony, not sony for the customer.
Michael Lynton, CEO Troll (Score:5, Interesting)
And my point is this: the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.
This is the equivalent of a shock statement followed by "Now that I have your attention ..." and is only appropriate when trying to address an auditorium full of teenagers.
I respect you no more than I would respect someone saying
The entire world is burning. Everyone is going to die soon. Period.
Now that I have your attention, I would like to discuss the occasional forest fires that threaten many homes in my state.
Piracy is a problem but it's your problem, not mine. And it's not on the scale you make of it. I am in no way a party to it so I don't want to hear you bashing the greatest communications tool to date nor do I want to hear suggestions of curbing the freedom I enjoy daily on said communications tool.
... yeah, I think we've been down this road.
You had to pack up your home DVD stores in South Korea? Do you think that your supposed "guard rails" will be readily implemented world wide and embraced? I'm sorry, go ahead and sue the whole country or pressure the government to crack down on it or stop releasing Korean dubbed movies or--horrors of all horrors--lower your prices to something people are willing to pay? You effectively prevent me from owning any of your DVDs when the technology to digitally duplicate them is readily available and dirt cheap. That's your choice and you're free to opt for that.
Your comparison to the Interstate Highway System is laughable. Please, do me one favor. In the future, when you draw comparisons of physical theft and huge undertakings like the Interstate Highway System to file sharing and "the Internet" do not confuse physical materials with information! There are major differences--for example: information can be freely replicated with no transfer of resources between the two parties involved! You draw a poor analogy and then *wave of the hands* we need protections like this. What "guard rails" do you suggest for the internet? I mean specifically, what do you have in mind? Have you thought this out at all? I'm sure you don't know but your engineers could suggest a small program from Sony that every internet user has to install on their computer to access the internet that has access to kernel space and
Re:Michael Lynton, CEO Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest difference between the real "guard rails" on highways and the proposed ones on the internet is maybe that the real ones serve me, the user of the road, to guard me and to keep me safe.
I can't see how such "internet guard rails" would serve me. I could well see how they could put me in a straightjacket and limit my freedom.
If anything, "speed bump" would be the suitable analogy. Wonder why he didn't choose speed bumps. Maybe because they are as popular amongst motorists as those internet speed bumps would be amongst internet users? But even the (real) speed bumps serve a sensible purpose. You have to slow down and thus fewer accidents occur, and those that occur are less severe.
We don't put them on highways for very logical reasons, though. We put them where pedestrians are crossing the road. Kinda like, say, laws concerning the internet that outlaw pyramid schemes and the like?
But last time I checked there were little if any laws, regulations or guards on roads that protect trucks from pedestrians or convertibles. Maybe because trucks hardly need protection from those.
Quite the other way 'round...
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That horse has bolted (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only has that horse bolted from the stable already, but it is now married with 10-year old kids. Trying to stop it now will work about as well as prohibition did back in the 20's, which was ill-founded for the same reason: EVERYONE was already doing the thing you're wanting to make illegal!
Who else smashes windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony saying this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this the company that is losing billions of dollars, that is notorious for cheating their customers, installing rootkits, running their MMORPG's in an unethical manner? This is a company that for 15 years has been living off their name and the fact that it used to make rock solid quality products.
Yeah, I as a consumer SO need to be lectured on ethics by a stuffed shirt from Sony.
Re:Sony saying this? (Score:5, Informative)
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From the guys that hack your computer... (Score:5, Insightful)
/. users propose (Score:5, Funny)
metal bars for entertainment CEOs
A real live abuse of an association meme! (Score:5, Interesting)
In the very clever book "Virus of the Mind", the author defines an "association meme" as a social idea about how one thing goes with another. Examples of association memes include: "Cereal is for breakfast", "Muffins are for breakfast", and "Chocolate cake is not for breakfast". Merchants wishing to sell chocolate cake for breakfast (including Starbucks) must work within these memes, which is why they bake their product into a muffin shape. Quite a clever little manipulation.
Turning now to the summary:
To extend "Virus of the Mind"'s ideas, guardrails are an association meme. We associate them with benevolence, with keeping us safe, and with an obvious danger. Lynton is invoking that meme, muffin style, to manipulate us into accepting something we otherwise would reject. The chocolate cake he is selling for breakfast should properly invoke the meme of a school principle, but if it did, nobody would accept it.
I will contribute a dollar to any charity raising money to put Lynton onto a ship and dump him onto a deserted island, never to return. Let's see how he, a professional influencer who, in influencing the movements of billions of dollars, has never produced so much as a grain of wheat, fares alone.
Cars (Score:5, Funny)
I think he's actually right. One time, when my Cat6 cable had too tight of a bend, I had packets breaking through and slamming against the wiring closet wall. It was... terrible.
Get with the program, Michael (Score:5, Interesting)
The guy does have a point.
However, I have seen precious little from the entertainment business to meet this demand. Shopping for music online has become somewhat better, with reasonable prices, good selection and less DRM. But online movies? There's few choices there, if any. And the focus is still very much on DRM and/or streaming (the Pay-per-view model that they love so much), as evidenced by recently emerged standards such as HDMI and Bluray.
Many consumers are willing to pay for content. Especially if they get a better product by paying: encoding and compression rate to order, and no DRM. I want to select the quality, easily download the file, and then be able to play it on any of my PCs, my iPhone, and on my TV using a media streaming device. Guess what? Pirates are offering the better product, as things stand today. AllofMP3 let me select encoding and compression, and movies are generally available in various levels of quality, if you take the time to look for them. The movies provided by pirates can be played anywhere, anytime. Pirated movie downloads offer more convenience even than physical Blurays; perhaps Michael should start to understand why that is, and think about ways to offer a competitive product.
My advice: open an online store for movies, offer various download types (for starters: DVD, 720p and 1080p HD, perhaps also lowres files for PSP or iPhone), encode in formats that are generally accepted as the standard (just use what the pirates use), do not require any special players or software (so that the files can be viewed on any device), and do not add any DRM.
Severe Tire Damage (Score:5, Interesting)
If one, for the sake of discussion, were to accept the bad analogies in this message: don't forget that Sony are the ones who shipped CDs with that caused "severe tire damage" to people who didn't even touch them... without so much as a warning that they were going to install a rootkit on your computer. If Sony's proposing guard rails, be sure they'll be electrified to 270 kVA with spinning tungsten-carbide blades and proximity-fused claymores.
The Most Damning Comment I Can Make (Score:5, Insightful)
If you sent this guy back to 1999 with all the knowledge of the last 10 years at his disposal - I think he still screws it up and history repeats itself in terms of how the market plays out. This is a guy who cannot and will not change. The industry could have OWNED online distribution but instead decided to put its head and the sand now it deals with its gatekeeper and arbiter, Apple. Good job there sparky.
Creators? Inconceivable! (Score:5, Insightful)
"That word, you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means."
Labels, studios, newspapers, and book publishers are not "creators of content".
The creators of the content are actors, artists, composers, directors, writers, journalists... not the companies that distribute that content. The Internet makes distribution easier and cheaper, so of course it's going to cut into the business of less efficient distributors. That's going to happen no matter what guard-rails you put on the information superhighway.
wait, didn't he get the analogy memo? (Score:5, Funny)
Why S.Korea isn't buying what you're selling (Score:5, Interesting)
Lynton refers to how Sony has essentially closed shop in South Korea because those sneaky Koreans can download his DVDs too fast, so they have no incentive to buy them. Well, I'll tell you why people in South Korea and elsewhere are bypassing Sony. It's your fault. And I'm going to explain why it's your fault and I'm not even going to go down the path of telling you that American movies mostly suck. While that's certainly true, that's not why South Koreans and others aren't buying from your stores.
Hollywood, which includes you Mr. Lynton, is its own worst enemy. Let's take a look at what you release to foreign markets. There's a huge demand for region 1 (USA/Canada) DVDs around the world. Know why? It's because region 1 DVDs mean quality. Region 1 DVDs typically use progressive video and high quality audio (DTS for example). Region 1 DVDs often have extras and while personally I'm not real fond of extras most of the time, the marketplace here seems to want it. Let's look at what you give to people in South Korea, which is region 3 for those keeping score. Well, you often release a film with zero extras. You sometimes give them interlaced video and lower quality audio choices (AC3 only and at low bit rates). I have no idea if the subtitles you give them are any good or are as bad as some of those bad English subtitles we used to get on Hong Kong movies in the past. And here's the best part of all - you and your cabal have "persuaded" almost every single DVD manufacturer to stop making DVD players that can have the region settings changed. So now Samsung, a very large company in, hmmm, South Korea, simply does not make a DVD player anywhere in the world now that can be made region free. They are not alone in this. I participate in a large video forum and you know what one of our most popular questions from new members is? How can I make my DVD player region free? You know what the answer is? Often it is "You can't". So you, Mr.
Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all.... (Score:5, Funny)
reedom without restraint is chaos, and if we don't figure out some way to prevent online chaos, the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.
As a scholar, I attest that this is absolutely true (boldface mine). If we put our scholarship up for free, the following will happen:
So, to hell with this unrestricted Internet thing.
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Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Freedom without restraint means there's nothing stopping you from murdering me. By the same token, it means there is nothing to stop me from murdering you. Since you consider being murdered a bad outcome, the steps you'll take to reduce the likelihood of it would restrict your freedom - a lot more than having cops who'll arrest you if you murder me.
It's illegal to break into Sony's Web site. It's illegal to copy their material. But I don't recall any law giving potential theft victims a pre-emptive right to search vehicles for stolen goods. If Sony's CEO wants that, he's allowed to wish for it.
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Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but we're not talking about murder here. He's complaining that consumers want the products on fair terms, and this guy is basically complaining, "the free market is a chaos which doesn't allow us to guarantee that we get to sell whatever products we want on the terms we want them."
The restraint we're talking about here isn't like, "You can say whatever you want, just so long as you don't kill me." It's more like, "You can have the car in any color you like, just so long as you like black."
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Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, let's keep the car-analogy meme going here...it seems that this joker's viewpoint is a little more like this:
You can have this car in any color you want, as long as it's black. Oh, and paint, brushes, spray guns and air compressors are now illegal, and if we suspect you may be inclined to change your car's color, we can preemptively search for and seize afrementioned equipment which surely is only useful for committing unauthorised car recoloring.
Or something...
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Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hitler...
Ok, done. Now can we just stop giving this dipshit publicity?
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Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all.... (Score:5, Funny)
GTFOMP.
Get The Fuck Off My Poland ?
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Re:Sometimes "piracy" is only option! (Score:5, Interesting)
I got into an argument with an IFPI (our version of the RIAA) representative about the same thing. The topic was anime and the fact that it's near impossible to get them in any kind of timely manner (read: within 3 years of release in Japan) in Europe. No matter what you'd be willing to pay.
Their reply "Well, you want a TV with a built in toaster, but it doesn't exist".
No, sorry. It does exist. If it doesn't exist, why don't you build it, your customer wants it. Last time I checked, what drives the free market economy idea is that the supplier builds what the customer wants and those that don't will perish while those that do will prosper. But it does already exist. You just refuse to sell me that TV with a built in toaster. Me and a lot other people would gladly go and buy it from you. You don't offer it. Others do. Yes, they buy it from some backyard hack that just slapped together a TV and a toaster and sold it as a new gadget (I'm not kidding here, people, the discussion got to this inane level), but what if the customer just doesn't effing care?
The customer wants what he wants. Sell it to him or he'll find a way to get it. Period.
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