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Sony Pictures CEO Thinks the Net Wasn't Worth It
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?"
Capitalism can't produce common goods. Internet would've never had existed if it weren't for the US government. It was created in an academic environment, by passionate people that cared about the advance of technolog (indirectly: of mankind). Internet advanced quickly, different protocols appeared, once replacing the other (Gopher, SMTP, HTTP, POP, IMAP, NNTP, etc.).
Then the companies came. Those set of protocols froze, some began to fade. Companies didn't care about "what's right". They didn't care about advance the network. The HTTP/1.0 -> 1.1 transition took years, and still hasn't finished (e.g. http pipelining). IMAP mail stalled, and got replaced by webmail. Multicast was never deployed at large. Newsgroups got replaced by phpbb.
These companies hate Internet. If they praise it, it's only when they realize they can't afford to ignore it (or destroy it).
I know I've given up on Sony laptops at least. I purchased a Sony Vaio SZ right as it was released, hoping it would be a good lightweight laptop that also delivered some power so that I could play at least some Windows games (when I was booted into Windows and not Linux, of course, which doesn't happen very often).
As soon as we ordered it, the warranty started ticking. If they had shipped the laptop as soon as we ordered it, that would not have been that bad. But they didn't. For about a month we waited for it to ship, because one part was consistently out of stock. Please, make sure you have the parts for your laptop in stock when you release it, okay Sony?
Well. Finally, it shipped. Okay, so now I have one month less on my warranty than I should. No. This is not the end of my story. Yes, it continues. When it arrived, with its brand new Core Duo processor, I popped open the task manager in Windows because it was acting funny and laggy. Wouldn't you know it, one of the cores was constantly being consumed by some unknown process. It hadn't been shipped with a virus--rather, the motherboard was defective on arrival. Yet more time I have to go without this laptop! So we shipped it back, and they eventually got back to us with a working motherboard. All was good, right?
Yeah, my story still isn't over. Come February of the next year, my battery just stops working. It's no longer recognized by the OS. At all. Well, okay, we have an extended warranty. But it's still under warranty. Right? Wrong. The battery was under a different warranty, which had just expired. Fine, okay, this is getting absurd, but I'll buy another outrageously priced battery. I have a laptop, after all? Come 362 days later, the battery dies AGAIN. Fortunately, this time around, I had a warranty on the battery (for three more days). Well, okay. This is getting suspicious.
Wouldn't you know it. The next year (this year), the battery died again. Very little research told me that this happens to EVERYONE. Right after the warranty expires (hopefully for Sony)...
Well yeah, in the mean time, I'd bought a new laptop from Apple and had no problems with it, so I didn't bother to replace the $200 battery again. I'm never buying a Sony laptop again. I think I had more problems that I've forgotten in the 3 years since I got the laptop, so this rant may be incomplete.
Not exactly true. Artists such as Ian Anderson and Cliff Richard wanted to extend copyright to 95 years in the UK.
I stopped listening to Jethro Tull when I heard Ian Anderson talk about copyright. I have quite a few albums, but I feel sick whenever I think of this millionaire crying how he's being robbed, not by pirates, but by copyright laws.
I'm happy he's made a lot of money from his talent (better than making money by fraudulent banking), but trying to extend his copyright while stealing Bach's Bourree in E minor is a bit hypocritical (and I'm sure that wasn't the only piece for which he needed some "inspiration", just like any other artist - be it a writer, a poet, a painter or a composer).