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Sony CEO Proposes "Guardrails For the Internet"
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.'"
Who doesn't see anything good having come from Sony
Just saying.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"Guard Rails" sounds like "Insurance for Commerce". Culture is much more than what you can sell.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
After this and his other comment, I have decided to not buy anything Sony from now on. A healthy, vibrant culture comes from having low barriers of entry to public discourse, not from having a monopoly on the public discourse held by the rich. Why can't these elitist motherfuckers just die already?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Queue Godwin's Law.
-THE END-
the cat's out the bag dude. you're either too late, or your business model is fucked.
move along, nothing to see here...
I'm glad people are stealing your shit, Sony.
Either let us pay for DRM-Free content, or watch us steal it.
Numa Numa guy
I can't see me buying much from Sony as long as this ass hat is working for them.
bleeding revenue?
Business model outdated?
lack of forward vision?
regulate the intardnet!
profit !
Interesting how some people think that the internet shuts down when they're not looking... Analogy FAIL.
Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
I guess we could just use some of those tubes for that?!
"Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it"
Not at all like rich CEOs, no.
Hitler...
Ok, done. Now can we just stop giving this dipshit publicity?
I am not stubborn. I am right!
If you can't provide what we want, someone else will. Capitalism fills these niches.
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.
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.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
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.
Actually, they are called "Guide rails." I believe PENNDOT got sued a while ago for using the term Guardrails and when they did not guard a car from flipping off the highway they had to change the name.
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
My work here is dung.
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!
stuff |
What he doesn't seem to understand is the little shop that is the internet is open 24 hours.
Only on bridges and other places where they are specifically needed to protect the well-being of the motorists. The internet already has these; they're called firewalls.
...frakk himself, instead of attacking the biggest anti-elitist tool mankind has ever created?
The RIAA and MPAA, who smash our home windows and front doors to come and riffle through our things looking for evidence that we're all bandits out to rob them blind so they can sue us for hundreds of thousands the moment they find a single downloaded song. Oh, the irony.
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.
Corporatism != Free Market
[...] if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want.
Except on a web page it never need be "beyond store hours!"
I legally buy my Torchwood episodes off iTunes (despite the repugnant DRM) because it is available and the right thing to do. I cannot buy (AFAICT) old Dr. Who episodes (William Hartnell era), so I torrent them. If the BBC doesn't like it, put 'em on iTunes and I'll pay for 'em!
Do you mean Cue?
This request for censorship comes from the guys that sold malware infected CDs to unsuspecting customers. (And passed the blame to someone else.) I wonder how they avoided criminal prosecution...
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
I stopped reading after "Someone stole a copy of X-men Origins and posted it on the net". I guess if someone robs a bank and gives the money to the public, there needs to be some type of control of public donations? ...um ok.
metal bars for entertainment CEOs
I am very fond of Sony equipment, their products have always performed to my expectations.
So it's a shame that the head the company can only see badness in the internet
Maybe he can talk the shareholders into producing...
nice..
safe..
rotary phones?
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.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
"'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."
As long as you're happy downloading DRM-locked copies of movies that generally only work on windows computers, and forget about putting them on a mobile video device like something made by archos.com or cowanamerica.com . If I get more functionality (whether legally or otherwise) by hiring a dvd from a bricks and mortar rental store and watching it on my linux or mac machine, or transferring it to my mobile device and watching it on the move, then you're not trying hard enough, and claiming that "those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible" is disingenuous at the very least.
I call him Captain Non-Sequoiter.
Interstate needs guard rails ->
Information superhighway needs guard rails
O.K., I'll give him a moment to make sense of this for me.
People want stuff 24/7 (internet users) ->
Online shops are not open 24/7
Wait, wait, wait. I thought that the internet was a shop that was open 24/7. Especially if you are talking about distributing media. O.k., lets give him a bit more working room.
People "break window(s)" to get what they want ->
Guard rails prevent accidents on the road ->
The "Information Superhighway" needs guard rails to "prevent chaos [...] protect culture"
Woah there, buddy. The laws which govern vehicles prevent chaos on the roads. Road signs, vehicle standards, etc... Guard rails are a device which are designed to protect from accidents. Is he trying to say that people "infringe" on accident? If that's the case, this guy is pretty cool after all!
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.
This has no relevance to online commerce, "store hours" do not apply that is the whole point of digital content delivery, it's on-demand. I think this chap needs to think it over a little more as the type of thing he is proposing is more like, taking the highway analogy, creating individual lanes all of which go through toll booths and drive-through's and rest areas without giving the driver a choice of direction. A more accurate description of his idea (as I understand it) would be a subway-style train which stops where the operator wants it to stop and takes away choice of direction of travel; you're either on or you're off.
Taking away liberty for "the greater good" or because we can't handle the freedom afforded to us by the great and merciful content providers is to turn us into children. I'm not saying that anarchy should rule but neither should dictatorship. Most of us are smart enough, big enough and dumb enough to make our own decisions/mistakes without being cosseted along the way
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.
Hitler...
Ok, done. Now can we just stop giving this dipshit publicity?
Yes? You rang? What do you want? GTFOMP.
It's great how big companies really care these days. We should feel privileged to have such vigilant guardians of our "healthy, vibrant culture".
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.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Its called AOL.
In the words of Terrence and Phillip, "Fuck You Buddy!"
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.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
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.
But with a complete absence of broken glass, property damage, or theft.
One doesn't have to condone copyright violations to object to lousy metaphors.
Obligatory
Freedom without restraint is chaos...
And restraint without freedom is fascism. Last week's Hour of Slack had a jarringly coherient monologue done by Joe Paulino that reminds me of this. It starts about 14 minutes in.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Original poster nickname is "testadicazzo", which in Italian means "dickhead".
Michael, is that you?
I just don't buy that the CEO of Sony has altruistic motives for protecting artists. This is all about the losses that continually climb from their Entertainment branches due to box office flops. They need a place to put blame, and since piracy is the big boogey man in the closet, it's become the reason for falling earnings.
It warms my heart whenever I see a hollywood or big music employee or executive complaining about the socialistic view of property that is increasingly common with their goods. For decades, they've promoted left-wing politics through music and not-so-subtle bias in many movies, not to mention giving huge campaign contributions to left-wing democrats.
Guess what? The chickens are coming home to roost. The kids now believe your shit about The Man(tm) and you don't like it. Tough cookies.
Corporate Dissonance at it's finest. That is what happens when you become CEO because of who you know rather than what you know. So lets see - Sony one of RIAAS premier benefactors - chooses to litigate instead of innovate and it's the Internet's fault. Perhaps Sony would be better off with a CEO with a little more vision.
Hope is the currency of fools
When they decide to start wearing pants I might pay attention to them.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Based on what Sony has shipped in the past (e.g., CD rootkit), Sony's business model is to attach a ball-and-chain to every product after it is purchased and before it goes out the door, and the ball-and-chain has a monitoring camera attached that will turn on a siren and flashing red light if it thinks the user is doing something with the product that they shouldn't, or if you merely tilt the product the wrong way.
"Guardrails" aren't what this guy wants. He wants shackles.
Here's a free clue: legitimate purchasers of your product don't want to be unnecessarily restricted in the use of that product. Stop treating consumers like they are all criminals.
With that kind of inconsiderate treatment at a store front, the honest consumers will step in the door, take what they want, and toss the money behind them as they leave. You'll get your money from the honest ones, but the moment a store opens with a better experience your customers will leave to buy elsewhere. They'll also recommend "anything but that store" for equivalent prices and features.
"Anything but Sony" has certainly been my recommendation ever since the rootkit fiasco (it's not solely based on that, but the long-term pattern of always favoring Sony lock-in schemes over generic ones and always having over-the-top DRM schemes on hardware and media). If I'm not the only one doing that, perhaps this could have something to do with Sony's long-term financials?
... even describe the stupidity involved here?
...defend the original comment at all. He sidesteps the whole issue to get to his REAL point which is some blathering with horrible analogies etc etc...
There are lots of people who choose not to exercise self-restraint on the internet, but it has thrived as a medium for years because of the self-restraint of the users.
It's not perfect, but I think his problem is that internet users don't want to pay what he wants, for what he wants to sell when he wants to sell it, so he wants them restrained (forced to pay) his way.
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.
" 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."
Oh Noes! If we can't figure out how to sell the latest Britney Spears album at overly inflated prices, humanity will be robbed of one of its greatest cultural achievements!
Look at history. Major technological innovations that make it easier for people to copy and disseminate information (like say the printing press) have improved the " quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need." The internet is like the printing press on speed, and the openness of the information exchanges on the internet will enhance our culture, not stifle it.
"Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it"
True. And that's what's good about the internet. It's a community/environment that is what it is on its own, with no input from business (in this, I'm thinking more the online community that's existed since the late 70s, before the "strip malls" started setting up on the web around 1996).
"those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible."
False. Like all businessmen, what you really want is to make as much money with as little effort as possible. And saying self-serving things like this is a part of that, not an objective statement of either your actual beliefs or of reality.
Those who use the net and enjoy it for what it is are fundamentally different from those who want to do nothing but make a buck off of it. That's why Lynton sees nothing good in the internet, and that why those who do see nothing good in DRM and other Sony-like business practices. Nothing wrong with business, but don't pretend that trying to exploit the net for contrived profit is anything more than that, Mr. CEO.
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.
Ummm, most of the interstate system doesn't have guard rails. Sure, there are guard rails in the dangerous or highly populated spots, but most of the network doesn't have guard rails.
Let me know how that works out for you Lynton. This is not the first time a CEO who needs the internet for his business (playstation, anyone?) shoots it apart. Apparently there is no "logic" class in college business programs.
is made by artists who don't do it for money and fame, but for the pleasure it gives people, or for the need to express themselves freely, to spread their message.
/., entertaining me with their awesome comments! =)
Its as one of my favorite street poets, Mr Lif said: "Poetry ends when money contends."
Good examples are:
The artists on Jamendo, Deviant Art, Youtube, and of course the funny, intelligent people posting on
What I'm trying to say is...I can entertain myself pretty well legally without having to pay big corporations. Free alternatives keep the competition high forcing competitors, be they commercial or not, to produce quality stuff =)
I like that metaphor. Especially because of the ultimate fate of such overtly greedy monarchies has been well documented throughout history :)
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
... are the unethical profit margins of the mob of middlemen who thrive at the direct expense of both creative people and the people who would be consumers of that creativity. Those middlemen are the true "useless eaters" that early Twentieth Century eugenicists should have been targeting with forced sterilization. Nobody likes parasites, least of all the intended hosts of them. Just as the Italian Mafia were parasites on the economy, so too is the RIAA and its clientele parasitic. They themselves produce NOTHING of tangible value to the world, yet those corporations harbor some of the wealthiest people in the world. Useless eaters all, deserving of sterilization....
The title for the article is wrong and misleading, probably on purpose since Sony bashing seems to be the hottest thing a zealot can do these days.
The guy who made the comment is not Sony CEO (Howard Stringer is) but CEO of Sony Pictures the movie company. Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Pictures, Sony Music etc. are different companies, and fairly independent too.
The actual CEO of Sony has very different views about the Internet and it's possibilities.
This is why a lot of these old-school industries aren't going to make it through the digital transition. They're still trying to treat the Internet as if it was no different than opening up another storefront. They aren't understanding what automation and digital distribution can do for them. Instead of embracing the technologies, they're fighting them tooth and nail.
You can also see this playing out in the video rental industry. BlockBuster is having a hard time dealing with the Internet. Their brick & mortar stores actually have business hours and eventually close up for the day. But BlockBuster was smart enough to offer an on-line rental plan similar to Netflix. So people who want their movies don't even have to wonder whether the store is open... They just click a few buttons and their movie is on the way.
Or if they've got Netflix they can click a few buttons and stream it right to their screen.
And other companies are springing up in the gaps between the Internet and traditional brick & mortar stores. We've got RedBox movie vending machines showing up all over town. You don't need a computer, you don't need a subscription, you don't need to wait for the mail - all the benefits of a traditional brick & mortar store. But you just walk up to a vending machine, push a couple buttons, and get your movie - no store hours to worry about.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Well naturally. There was no such thing as vibrant culture before western capitalism appeared, right?
the internet has changed the world and people are no longer willing to pay the high prices for the crap that they are trying to deliver.
The implication that the internet could somehow destroy art really just exposes how out of touch with reality he is.
"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.
It's not a matter of needing 'guardrails.' It's a matter of who decides what and where they are used.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
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.'"
Yes I always felt that what my freedom has been lacking is a Person or group of semi-elected officials filtering what information and data I am allowed to access. I feel that the view spewed forth by the Article author is one that believes that some form of "culture" or "art" is better than other forms; and that a group within the state or economic system should filter and decide what is allowed and what isn't. I understand the fear and panic some that might come when you realize that your current distribution model for certain products is quickly going the way of the Dodo. But certain things are inevitable.
There is no doubt, or at least I hope, that there will arise a new system that will allow people to, in some way shape or form, pay those that produce literature, music or other forms of entertainment or art. But even so I expect those with a real interest in such to continue creating. If for nothing else then for the fact that most bands make most of their money of gigs and concerts (and some from merchandise). And I guarantee that regardless of how easy or how cheap it is to download; people want to see bands they like LIVE. And people don't mind paying for the privilege. However this is money that goes almost directly to the band (in many cases) and the Distributors don't get to leech of a significant cut like they do with record sales.
My point I guess is that some things will change, through technology and social changes, fighting them will only push people harder and further into groups that oppose an insistence upon holding on to ageing distribution models. As many bring in to these debates; Musicians are almost to a man holding their tongue in the arguments; simply because there are very few among them that want to sue or otherwise antagonize their own fans. There might be fans that download songs illegally; but if that person later goes to one of their concerts, buys one of their shirts, or even buy their albums when the person in question have the economic capacity to do so; then it is a net profit for the band. Even if it might be appear like a loss to their record label.
The Long Now Foundation
The CEO of Sony is clearly not an entrepreneur (from the next generation). There are many opportunities commercially and culturally because of the freedom the internet provides. I think he is very theoretic, he would be wise to adapt to this reality.
This idiot seems to be a Nazi with his calls for censorship and so on. He acts like there is some terrible danger, yet copyright infringement is already illegal under present laws and nothing more needs to be done. I think what he is rally concerned about is that people can now publish their own music, art, literature etc, independantly, without having to go through large corporations who have to approve their work and control it. The idea that people can express themselves independantly scares them and they want the internet to be like every other medium, they control, that is filled with the same corporate controlled crap that fills the other mediums, basically an online version of MTV, the crappy noise that passes for music today and so on cooked up by recording company marketing departments and computer processed and synthesized that could make any bad singer sound like Elvis.
He's right in that people have a "give it to me now" attitude, but he's wrong in saying that people are unwilling to pay for it.
If people want it now, and you want to make money from them, then make it available to them now. People will pay if you give them what they want.
I have happily paid to rent movies online through iTunes. Why? Because it is very convenient. I wanted to see something now and didn't want to leave the house to get it. iTunes delivered and I paid for the convenience. When what I want to see is not available to purchase (for example, most TV shows are not available through iTunes in Canada), I have to turn to the free alternatives.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Keep your store open later, dipshit.
Love the shill, hate the behavior.
Sounds more like somebody trying to keep his obsolete job relevant. The distribution of entertainment material has been solved! Imagine if we controlled the usage and distribution of digital watches to save the livelihoods of watchmakers everywhere. Nonsense.
<strike>suffer</strike> change
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
is FREEDOM, you fucking power hungry dimwit.
In no other realm of our society have we encountered so widespread and consequential a failure to put in place guidelines over the use and growth of such a major industry.
I guess he never heard of the Betamax decision. Now what company was involved in that, again?
Not to mention the crises created by the invention of piano rolls, radio, and the cassette tape.
Speaking of which, why do you suppose the Sony Walkman was a roaring success, but Sony completely failed to come up with a credible competitor for the iPod? If Sony had run the "Rip, Mix, Burn" ad campaign instead of trying to put guardrails on their music players, do you suppose history might have been a little different?
just as the interstate system needs guardrails, so too does the information superhighway.
Yes, there should be laws protecting the common people on the internet from abuses by large corporations like RIAA backer and rootkit maker Sony, "trusted computing" Microsoft, and anyone else who buys judges and politicians or wants to take rights away from people in an underhanded way via the internet.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Personally I've always thought it was one of the most vile words in the English language and I hate saying it, but what a lying, self-righteous turd.
He makes it sound like some kid in a FSF hoodie and an anarchy t-shirt broke in and "stole" his movie. Not a Sony employee releasing an unfinished cut to garner interest in the movie ("Gee, I wonder what those special effects really look like, I guess I'll shell out $8 to $16 to find out."). This is a same BS, they have been playing for years and I have only shame and contempt for Huffington Post for even giving this guy a soapbox. Too bad Huffington Post has pull these days, I guess this shill will be heartily accepted on the Sunday morning talk circuit. Just another example of the entertainment cartel playing both sides of the street, filthy bastards. Makes you wonder if he will get a nice campaign job when Sony boots him for killing the company (a la Carla Fiorina), where he will pronounce truth and justice only where he can find a perpetual money printing machine.
Fine, there is a special place in Hell, I'm sure.
What can we do to stomp out these bureaucratic tax profiteering government lobbyist who keep making these big statements about web regulation ? It really makes me angry, I wish they would shut up.
Culture will never die. The industry built upon technical restrictions from the past will, and there's no doubt something healthy and vibrant will rise from the ashes and thrive.
You know (bear with me on this), one thing that really annoys me on the internet is when someone spends considerable time and effort putting together a humorous photoshop/blog post/top 10, and the next day I see it, completely uncredited in a national newspaper. Some journalist has stolen it...just because it's on the internet...and stuff on the internet is like, free, right?
Much as I hate to admit it, I think on this occasion Michael Lyton has a point (dammit, I don't like what he says but I have to defend his right to say it). In the real world, no one would seriously contemplate reprinting the contents of a book they borrowed from the library and passing it off as their own, and no one would seriously contemplate walking into their local record store and walking out with anything that caught their eye just because they 'wouldn't have bought it anyway if they'd had to pay full price'.
Thing is, I also buy into the argument that illegal copying actually promotes music sales. Hell, I copied enough albums from my friends when I was a kid to know that I still bought a lot of albums. But don't try to con me that what I wasn't doing wasn't stealing (i.e. taking without permission). It's stealing when a journalist tries to pass off my website as his own work, it's stealing when I copy an album that I never wanted to listen to but my friend says I might quite like, and it's stealing when I download the latest star trek movie because I can't be bothered to pay for it at the cinema and after all, it's bound to be shown on free television at some point anyway.
So let's reboot this discussion. All illegal downloading is theft. Full stop. The more interesting question, is it theft like stealing a pen from work, or is it theft like stealing a car. And if it's theft like stealing a pen, then why is so much more like stealing a car when somebody does it to me.
A craftsman makes 4 wooden masks. Someone takes one without paying for it. The craftsman now has 3 and someone has stolen 1. This is theft.
A craftsman makes 4 wooden masks. Someone makes an identical mask. The craftsman still has 4 masks. This is not theft as the craftsman didn't lose anything.
I don't care how hard they try, you cannot redefine theft. As a wise man once said, "I DO NOT BELIEVE IN IMAGINARY PROPERTY."
The Internet exposed a simple fact is all. Information is not a product. So laws that for centuries relied on the concept of phsyical assets are scrambling to catch up. industries built on that are trying to catch up.
The whole concept of copyright law was built, for centuries, that copying something had an implied labor cost, it took some measure of effort to copy. Now with the digital age, the Internet has exposed a series of seriously flawed assumptions on how fast information ages.
Dear Sony, we do not need safty rails on the Internet. It is like space (hence we call it cyberspace) in which it is nearly an infinite space with no center, up, or down. You can't "fall off" the edge. Like it or not, this is now the 21st Century and the last 30,000 years of recorded history is not much use in charting a course into the 21st century.
Relgion must adapt
Science must adapt
Business must adapt
Government must adapt
Cultures must adapt
People must adapt
Litigating a false nostalgia of how thigs "should be" based on how "things were" is irrelivant.
The 21st century is now and we need to move forward. The Internet is not a series of tubes, it is what it is, the Internet. It is not analagous to a phone network, a highway system, or a giant Rube Golberg machine. It a a complex collection of communication protocols and presentation layers most easly conceptualized by the phrase:
"Please Do Not Tip Strippers Poorly Again"
(P)hysical = The hardware that connects stuff
(D)ata Link = How do get stuff from hardware A to B
(N)etwork = Logical segmenting of 1 network from another
(T)ransport = How do we get stuff reliably from A to B, especially across more then 1 network
(S)ession = how can we tell we are working with A and B
(P)resentation = how do we move data from A to B
(A)pplication = What tools do we use to move data from A to B
While the descriptions are simplistic they should be sufficent in understanding what the "Internet" is, a very larger interconnected network of computers that operates largly based on that model listed above.
The Internet is PING, ARP, TCP, UDP, HTTP, XML, XVID, GIF, PNG, AVI, FLAC, FLASH, IRC, NTP, and so on and so on interoperating with one another to present information from A to B.
If I must dumb it down, then I offer this:
"To describe the Internet I can offer this: it is the canvas by which people communicate with, not only wth a wide variety of paints, but all the colors each paint makes available." - Ken P.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
... I was pulling for the PS3 and other Sony technologies but now I see that Sony is doomed. This is very unfortunate as I do not feel Nintendo can hold up under a full out attack from Microsoft. That means five years out Microsoft will dominate the video game + online entertainment industry.
What burns me is how morons like this get to even sit in positions that let them make decisions that can sink billion dollar businesses.
"testa di cazzo" in Italian roughly means "asshole".
Literally: a person whose head is a dick, or in other words one who uses his dick to think instead of his head.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
- Robert Heinlein, Life Line, 1939
"Once upon a time, if you wanted to see a show, you had to watch people perform it. Now that these talking films are out there, there's gonna be a whole lotta actors and actresses outa work. Why, one performance of a show could be shown to millions of people in just a single weekend! No nuance between performances, just the exact same thing, copied over and over. Plus, that poster would have known it's supposed to be 'cue', not 'queue', if only the movies hadn't deprived him of experiencing the creative art of live theater!"
- Michael Lynton's Grandfather, who "never saw anything good having come from mass-produced motion pictures".
Anyone who wants to reign in personal freedom and behavior because he thinks it hurts his business clearly didn't earn his MBA.
Where Lynton sees barriers to his business, entrepreneurs see real opportunities.
Seriously, when these captains of industry bitch and whine about the Internet, I see massive opportunities.
People who download music and movies may be pirates, but they're also FANS! And pirates can be made into customers. But not on industry's terms.
We new breed of consumers won't be forced, pigeonholed, or coerced into accepting your terms. We name our own terms. If you accept them, you make money. If not, there are plenty of substitutions. I'd pay what I think is reasonable and fair for content if it was available, fast, and in the format I prefer.
That's the problem though. Lynton bitches about the Internet. And while he bitches, I don't see Sony's catalog available anywhere online. Sony makes small portions available under heavily conditioned agreements. Why do they make it so hard for customers to buy their content?
They're using their grammar skills there.
I'm not going to make any /. friends today, but he's got a valid point.
1. When there's a show on British TV that I want to see, I don't wait for it to show up on BBC America with extra commercials a year later. I don't wait for it to come out on a region 2 DVD and then order the DVD through amazon.co.uk and have it shipped to my friend's parents' house in England so they can include it in his next care package from home and then buy a special non-region-coded DVD player so I can watch it. I just grab a torrent within an hour of the show airing in the UK and watch it on my big TV that connects directly to my computer.
2. When I DVR something (that I paid for the right to save and watch at my convenience) and it's sitting on my cable box in the living room and I want to watch it in the bedroom, or on my Blackberry, I don't just go without. I grab a torrent and watch that wherever I want.
3. When I want a copy of a worn-out cassette that I bought back in college (or a vinyl album I left in the sun...), I don't pay $18 for a new CD. I pay $8 for a DRM-free MP3 album from Amazon. If it's not available as an MP3 I grab a torrent. If I can't grab a torrent I'll try a used CD store and the RIAA gets no money at all.
4. When I want a collection of -- say -- all the songs that charted on the Billboard Modern Rock chart in the 90's (even the ones that never took off), I look for legal versions. You can't even get the *charts* for free; much less a convenient collection of the singles. (And if it was available they'd try to charge $5,000 even though we all know that half the stuff would be unlistenable.) They don't even want me to listen to their music in this case. How much more music would I want to buy if I could have dozens of "I remember that song!" moments?
In all of these cases I demand immediate access to DRM-free digital versions of my favorite media. And in most of those cases it's not that the store is closed, it's that the store either doesn't offer what I want to buy, they want one of my kidneys in exchange, or they think that making me jump through hoops and skirting US law is an acceptable substitute for just selling what I'm trying to PAY THEM FOR. When you get right down to it, I'm no different than an anarchist at a WTO meeting.
Are those the things that kiddies use when ten pin bowling? They seem out of place on a road, let alone the interspazz.
GTFOMP.
Get The Fuck Off My Poland ?
Here's a new meme for Sony:
Sony doesn't want guardrails - what they want is a fence.
An electrified fence, with barbed wire and dogs patrolling it. Ideally one where anybody that tries to cross it will be shot (e.g. three strike laws)
By the way, all of us will be the ones on the inside, trying to get out.
Sony's entry into the content business has destroyed it's ability to understand the consumer electronics marketplace. They are not seeing that the electronics are the enabler for digital entertainment. The evolution of the radio, phonograph, tape recorder, optical disc and so on were pure enabling technologies. The internet is the ultimate in enablement - consumers can buy instantly, any time. Sony needs a new CEO. This one is living dangerously in the past.
-- $G
Simply put, without chaos, you have no metric to define what "order" is.
Further more, chaos, is a necessary component of innovation and creativity. Without chaos, there's no motivation or desire to improve one's self in any way.
Order at it's most extreme is stagnation.
8==8 Bones 8==8
First they charge you directly, then they get greedy and force commercials on you.
I can do one but not both.
He published in the huffandpuffington post. Are you all that surprised it, like everything else on that site, is just mindless garbage?
The huffington post should only publish stuff you already agree with? I hate Sony's crap as much as the next guy but censorship is not the answer.
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."
he really ought to stop comparing the internet to a highway with guardrails and dangerous vehicles on it. i mean, the internet isn't a big truck.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I respect Sony for bringing future technology to the masses. I owned several Vaio's and they were worth every penny I paid for them. Their hardware/electronics division are sort of the AAPL of Japan. However, I hope their imaginary property division goes bankrupt as fast as Universal, EMI, and all the other leeches. Artists can sell straight to the customers, no need to give out 70% of their profits to bunch of greedy MBAs.
'The store is closed'... well the store can be closed for two reasons.
It's either closed because the shopkeep needs to sleep, or it's closed to create an artificial increase in the market. It's either a technical prohibition (the store needs some form of maitanence, sleep or otherwise) or it's a market manipulation. It's reasonable for the government to step in and protect 'maitenence' reasons, (the nova scotia government recently said that big box stores wern't allowed to open on boxing day... because if one did, they all did, and that meant that many many people only got one day off for the holidays. The reasonable government restriction to close the store is acceptable). However, if the store is closed to exert control of the market, fuck you if someone else wants to side step you.
...i don't see anything good come out of our money being controlled by non-governmental entities.
Obligatory quote:
"Permit me to issue and control the money of the nation and I care not who makes its laws." -- Mayer Amsched Rothchild, a prominent European banker in the eighteenth century
See related movie Money as Debt to start.
A few other videos on our current crap system: Free Global Energy, The Hemp Conspiracy, The Great Global Warming Swindle, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Tolerance Lost, Freedom to Fascism, The Obama Deception, The Flouride Deception, Chemtrails: Don't Talk About the Weather, Sharkwater...and many more.
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
Walled Garden only worse.
We were here first, dammit.
(And your track record precedes you, thief.)
I can see the fnords!
This guy made a fortune at AOL and he doesn't see anything good come from the internet?
I've never seen anything good come from money, geishas, fine art, wine, expensive cars, private jets, etc. Freedom to indulge in these things without restraint leads to economic meltdown. So, lets restrain this guy from these things.
No because the Internet is "like a Highway", it should have guard rails, road surface markings, ramps, been made out of asphalt, and everything else, regardless of it making no sense at all in that context? Wow.
On the other hand: EVERYONE who even forwards this guy's crap, is himself responsible for the popularity of his crap. He's just a troll, trolling the whole nation, instead of just a forum. So please behave in the same way here: Completely ignore everything of him.
From now on, he does not exist anymore. Period. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Oh how I wish that this could be read by Mr. Lynton, but unfortunately even if he read it, he JUST WOULDN'T GET IT anyway.
.Lynton, sold an inferior product to your customers around the world and in your paranoia over piracy made sure that they could not buy a superior product from region 1 and watch it on their TVs at home. And to top it all off, while you and your Hollywood buddies have slit your own throats you are convinced that someone else has done you wrong. What's really sad is that doing things like having region codes to begin with and convincing Samsung and others to stop making consumer friendly DVD players has caused those customers to look for alternatives - "free" copies of your DVDs that don't have region codes in them so they can play them at home. So no, I don't feel sorry for you because you did this to yourself and what you and your buddies in Hollywood think that consumers want is not what they want at all. If you want to fix this, put out better product overseas and start encouraging those same DVD player manufacturers to make region free DVD players because until you give up on region coding and finally understand how much we, your potential consumers, hate it, you're basically grasping at sand and not understanding why it's running through your fingers.
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.
Internet users have not become used to pirating, they're simply sharing with their friends, as they've always been doing, except they're doing this through the Internet, as it is more practical than previous media.
And sharing copyrighted material in a private circle is perfectly legal as it lies under fair use. What is illegal is distributing it to anyone, which basically only real pirates do, not regular users.
It's time content providers stop making false accusations.
Howard Stringer is. Also, he recently gave an interview where he talks about a number of things, including how badly he thinks Sony has screwed up in the past and what he thinks they need to change. Reading that interview, I don't see any indication that he thinks that nothing good has come from the internet. He actually seems eager to embrace it and all the possibilities.
Which would be great, considering how many times Sony has dropped the ball in recent years.
the fact that he refers to the 'information superhighway' is telling as regards to how out of touch he is.
1995 wants its catch-phrase pack.
With 2 classic quotes like those behind Lynton's name could I propose a new acronym for slashdot...
...Don't Bother RTFA
Not to defend window-smashers, but if people are lining up and begging you to take their money, and your response is "no thank you, we're not interested in money," then I don't know why you're complaining about the windows. Replacing them only costs money, and money is obviously something you don't care about anyway.
If you were a for-profit business, then you would open the store.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
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...
The actual CEO of Sony has very different views about the Internet and it's possibilities.
Then he or she better speak up quickly, because this Lynton guy is tarnishing the brand.
So this guy actually thinks that scholarship, creativity and progress in general depend on major corporations being able to control society and make shitloads of money? And he is rich and powerful? Man, did we do something wrong.
How many bad analogies can a CEO pack into one paragraph?
-- QED
That's a mighty fine strawman you've got there.
Being free without restraint does not equate to legalizing murder in any sane interpretation of the phrase. In the United States we have what is generally considered a relatively "restraint free" freedom of speech. Now of course there are still laws against slander and libel, similar to how there are already laws protecting intellectual property.
Now, if we were to enact "guardrails on freedom of speech" to prevent "politically unstabling speech" then we could then reasonably consider that "freedom with restraint" to be no freedom at all.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
the idea that we need a corporate filter on our culture is a false assumption
actually, you did need a corporate filter on our culture... before the internet, when vinyl and cassette tape were our distribution options
now artists and fans can reach each other directly
so now the corporation is looking forlorn and feeling insecure, and its shills (this retarded author) are attempting to justify and extend its existence artificially
the job of the average media company right now is simple: just die already
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I feel that the view spewed forth by the Article author is one that believes that some form of "culture" or "art" is better than other forms; and that a group within the state or economic system should filter and decide what is allowed and what isn't.
Exactly. And this is a Japanese company. Why are we surprised to hear this type of racist elitism coming from a Japanese entity? Oh......
That quote of yours pretty much sums up the traditional attitude of their culture.
He's BadAnalogyGuy!
Oh, sorry, gotta go now. My local internets are closing for the day.
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
Listen closely and you can hear the death rattle of an obsolete industry. ,you'll be out of a job. So What? Many of us are too. I'll call a WAHmbulance. Oh, well, the world needs ditchdiggers too.
Entertainment is in the hands of the people now and if you don't wanna add to the pool, quit creating media.
If you continue to try to "sell" things the old way, we will only laugh at your attempts. Your time of screwing both artists and consumers is over. Get over it. Buggywhip and saddle manufacturers suffered when the car went into mass production. So, Mr.Sony Entertainment
We've stopped buying music and movies so much. We make and distribute our own now. You're lucky we still watch T.V. so you can have paying sponsors.
I wouln't count on Obama to pull you butt out of the fire either. He's a bigger moron than his predecessor and will probably be shamed out of office later. The people have spoken. So either figure out some other revenue or fold and cash in your chips. Game over, you lose. Good riddance!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
...that it's got nothing to do with his store. On his property he can have almost what surveilance and security he wants - guards, alarms, cctv, rfid tags, locked cabinets, security wires and whatnot, because it's his store. After I've paid and walked out the door I can do pretty much what I want, but nobody cares because he got paid. But what he's talking about now is not on his property nor in his possession, it's in the hands of all his customers.
What he's looking for is akin to my grocery store trying to spy on me after buying tomatoes because they suspect I plant them and grow my own instead of eating them, and I only have a license to eat them. Or a pet shop trying to sell dogs with chastity belts because you only got a license for having the dog, not to have puppies. The post office opening every letter to see what's inside. Except they don't because that would be absurd, but the entertainment industry doesn't see the absurdity.
We don't need the Pirate Bay and public file sharing. If I hook up to all my friends, and they all hook to their friends and so on I with 1000% certainty have someone in my network of friends that somewhere got a pirated version. There's no possible way you could make a serious dent in file sharing without infringing on private property and private communication. Our rights have not changed, it's digtial media, reproduction and communitcation that has turned a trickle into a flood. A flood between people, not between thieves and some imagined store.
Between me and every other person on the Internet there's a now a pipe capable of sending pretty much anything - it's the essence of Internet and many-to-many communication. We're never going to change that, never going to turn Internet into cable TV, never going to submit to disclosing everything we send or be incriminated by lack of disclosure or volume. This death march battle you are fighting can not be won.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Me: Give me a million dollars
Someone: No!
Me: But that makes you a thief!
Someone: I'm a thief?
Me: Yes! If you would have given me a million dollars I would have been a million dollars richer. Now I'm a million dollars poorer, thus you are a thief! Police! Police!
Sony is going to buy the internet? Have a government buy the internet? Have the UN buy the internet? Talk to me after "they" have stopped botnets and spam. Until then I'm filing this under "pissing in the wind".
How do you define "restraint"?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Why?
Dumb asses need to be brought to the attention of the masses in case someone accidentally listens to them.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Yes it would be wrong to break into a store and steal something.
However there is nothing wrong with me sharing my media.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Freedom without restraint is a chimera. It just doesn't exist in a world with more than one "free" actor.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
There is no doubt, or at least I hope, that there will arise a new system that will allow people to, in some way shape or form, pay those that produce literature, music or other forms of entertainment or art.
I've taken to using Randall Munroe as an example. He gives his comics away for free, and seems to make a living from appearance fees and merchandising. Then there's this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-sufficient_webcomics
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
He's obviously an idiot. Lets make Sony an example for other companies that "just don't get it" and make them go out of business. I won't be buying another Sony product EVER again!!
not so much restrains as freedom without responsibility.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
"On what basis does he claim that newspapers have been harmed"
Its the same thinking as Rupert Murdoch, i.e. "News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites
Rupert Murdoch and this Sony CEO are the same type of person. People like them don't get to become high up in corporations without being power seeking control freaks. Their ruthless arrogant self serving behavior provides them with a competitive advantage which allows them to fight their way high up the corporate hierarchical power tree structures to gain power over others. This is why their kind of personality type feature so prominently in very competitive environments like business and politics.
So its no wonder the people at the top of these corporations think in terms of how to apply pressure to control others. They do that in their jobs to stay at the top so its no surprise they apply that same kind of thinking to the Internet.
For so many decades these control freak kind of people ruled over the old school media to control what people could see and when they could see it and for how much. These control freaks can't cope with a new open world where people can choose what they want to see and when they want to see it and even see it for free. Its an alien world to the control freaks. They want to be in power, to control others, they don't want open sharing of information.
The new and media companies are not going to die. Its simply evolving into media outlets that provide content that attract like minded people around open information that appeals to this group of people. The companies that work like this will gain advertising and other incomes like in some cases merchandising and cross promotional incomes etc.. while the old control freak media companies will die out as they fail to control what people can see and do.
The sooner the better.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
The "Entertainment Industry" seems to think that the Internet was created just for them. It happens to be useful as a user-friendly distribution channel for media. That doesn't mean that you guys get to suddenly control it! Sorry!
It was fine not to have internet guardrails at the edge of the internet when only a handful of people used the newly-built tubes a few decades ago. Furthermore the packets were shot at fairly slow speed from those old dialup modems.
Nowadays, everybody is on the internet, shooting packets at blazing internet broadband speed, We're talking whole megahertzs of packets. Without guardrails, a collision could easily cause a gigantic internet explosion, wiping out much of virtual porn sites on the internet sidewalks.
Lynton needs to pull his head out of his ass and stop shoe-horning bad analogiwhere they don't belong.
You can have my online freedom when you pry it from my cold, dead, CPU.
Number 1: You cannot stop me from using encryption without denying me access to microchips. I'll run it on Atmel AVR chips if I have to.
Number 2: You cannot stop me from sending encrypted data, unless you stop me from sending data. I can hide it in DNS queries if I have to.
Number 3: I'm a real nice guy, I don't want to fight this fight, and I pay for my copyrighted materials.
Number 4: Don't fuck with me. I fuck back.
I understand that the entertainment industry is going through some challenges right now, and that there will be winners and losers, and that Sony will probably fall on the loser side. But you cannot take my freedom (read: it is not possible). The harder you try, the worse it will get for everyone.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
There are all sorts of business losses, and often these can be covered by some type of insurance. Losses due to natural disasters, strikes, transportation problems, shoplifting, etc. Clearly, Sony and other large companies can be covered by IP theft. I think the problem is that they can't actually quantify IP theft in order to qualify for insurance, nor can they demonstrate a pricing model for IP delivery to combat theft. Rather, they want a price floor based on their current distribution pricing model, which is artificially high. Essentially, when they go to insurance companies to ask for IP theft insurance the insurance companies ask them to prove their losses are real--and they can't do that. They also ask to prove that they can't change their pricing to reduce theft (and thus losses)--and Sony is unwilling to do that.
Yip. Those pipes definitely need Guard Rails!
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
As someone pointed out in the last article about this asshat, he used to be the CEO of AOL Europe
I find it interesting how the author if this article suggests that we need guardrails for the internet but rejects the idea of needing censorship or restrictions. I feel that by definition censorship and restrictions would both fall under the category of "Guardrails." He outlines this grand idea for "rules of the road," without giving any sort of assertion on how said rules are to be implemented with out hindering the internet, which he himself praises as an important tool for society. I also like how he likens his "guardrails" to rules put in place during the creation of the US highway system such as speed and weight limits. This comparison is ridiculous as the highway rules are in place to manage physical limitations of the infrastructure and protect against physical harm to it's users. Overall this argument and idea is just ridiculous, he wants the internet managed to protect against piracy without hindering the use of the internet. If this was such a simple idea with such a simple solution i don't think that piracy would be the problem that it is today
The point is exactly right. Does anyone honestly believe XKCD would be published in any major newspaper? Yet look at how far it's going as a webcomic.
So my question is, what is everyone prepared to do to stop this sort of thing should people like this asshat start to get what they want?
I think if any of these people or organizations that want filtering (or watever this guy proposes as being "guardrails") or a "drivers license"real ID type thing required to use the internet (which is something else I see coming) can get their wish for any kind of abridgement of our freedom online in America then that's pretty much the game, for the reason that:
1. The majority of Americans seem to have become too complacently comfortable to be angry enough with their government to do things like strike en masse or force change when the government gets so out of line that it's protecting the interests of corporations over citizens - They seem to be able to still force the government to negotiate in places like France - kind of sad with our history.
2. While the internet is certainly global and decentralized to a degree, root DNS control and related issues, as well as the fact that so much of the high tech infrastructure and corporations are based in the US makes it a little more problematic for the entire world should the US govt decide to unilaterally impose their will.
I am not saying there wouldn't be any hope and it would completely ruin the internet in every way worldwide, but that certainly would almost be the case IMO - with a lot of the traditionally "free" western "democracies" sliding deeper into corporatism/fascism by the day and the heavily controlled corporate media the internet really does seem to be the last bastion of freedom, free information and communication and source of worldwide unfiltered news. I think it's so important, and those in power who don't have the best interest of the people at heart are keely aware of this.
So, my question is - what can we do, and what are you willing to do if this self-entitled asshole and others like him start getting what they want?
I know I am willing to do whatever it takes.
restrain - keep under control; keep in check; "suppress a smile"; "Keep your temper"; "keep your cool"
However, like everything in this world it's entirely relative.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
No wonder Sony is going bad lately ... what do you want with such a retarded CEO?
That is not a fair comparison. "Beyond store hours" is expected, reasonable, and understandable for a physical retail store. The people running the store have lives, and at the very least must eat and sleep sometime.
For an automated online presence, it makes no sense. For an online environment, any artificial scarcity or restrictions are unreasonable and often met with attempts to get around those restrictions.
At a physical store, they can only stock a limited quantity due to space limitations, and many places will place special orders as needed. At an online store, there is only the "special order" for delivery from the warehouse. For downloadable content, there can be no "out of stock".
For downloadable content, it is not reasonable to set artificial limits on when it can be downloaded or who can download it. A lot of "piracy" is because the content owners refuse to allow the content to be available, so other people make it available. As numerous experiments and studies have shown, many people are willing to pay reasonable prices for the content; those same people will obtain an illegitimate copy for free if a legitimate copy is not available for purchase. Putting an excessive price or excessive restrictions on the legitimate content will also drive people to obtain an illegitimate copy.
Yes, many people will still go for the free content just because it is free, but how many of those would have paid if the free content were not available? How many can you really count as a lost sale? Probably not very many of them.
So, instead of guardrails to keep the consumers in line, how about improving the roadways (stores/producers) to better meet the needs of the consumers? Instead of guardrails, paint lines, build exits, build rest stops, build stores, put up signs, etc. Give the consumers options to meet their needs, and most won't even think of smashing windows to get want they want.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
I feel that the view spewed forth by the Article author is one that believes that some form of "culture" or "art" is better than other forms
Absolutely. The better form is the form that makes the author money. Anything else is complete BS made up to support that basic premise.
I am officially gone from
You're right. My point was that "freedom without restraint is no freedom at all" is incorrect. Restraint is necessary to preserve freedom in the long run.
The restraint level necessary to preserve Sony in the long run under this kind of management, though, would give us Stalin style freedom.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
of the internet, it will continue to be as it is. A free flow (sometimes illegal) of ideas, content. If the day ever comes, that the UN (useless nations) get "control" over the internet, it will end up becoming a politically correct waste of time. There will be censorship big time. Don't confirm to their views? NO internet for you! I don't care for 99.999% of the garbage (in my opinion) from the huffington post, but, to quote a corny phrase, I will defend your right to say it. Just because I don't agree with something published in a book, magazine, radio or newspaper, it's a freedom of speech thing with me. When you start putting restrictions, no matter how insane or vulgar the speech, you end up running the risk of taking down the entire structure. You end up with "though police". Those too young should go back and read the untainted history of the world and look into what happened to Russia after the revolution, Hitler's Germany, the little dictator in Italy and others, who worked to suppress individual thinking. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, but, there are those on the left AND the right of the debate who want to taylor it to what they think. No, leave it alone, you have to take the bad with good.
Michael who? Is this guy insane? Online bill pay, online shopping and online muckraking are worth the price of the intertubes alone. Not to mention the lovely, tasteful pictures of women wearing various amounts of no clothing. Hot food, hot water and hot porn are the three pillars of modern civilization, after all.
Michael Lynton is Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment
Oh.
Once again, another company is screaming from the top of their sky scraper 'PAY ME!!!'. The only solution these people have are not encouraging people to purchase their products. They however have a fascist dream of restricting the medium in which data is exchanged. With all the bailouts if the US Government buys that load then our message to the people is "we only care about big business." If you're a small business or just a citizen, good luck with everything because you're not large enough to get the government's attention.
The message is loud and clear but it lands on deaf ears. They're not going to stop until they manage to shove their shit down our throats. They're not going to stop anytime soon because they are still making boatloads of money despite the fact that they're hemorrhaging most of it trying to change the public's perception.
They're in the business of content distribution, they're in the business of charging big money for what the Internet allows people to do for themselves at a fraction of the price. They're going to fight this "Internet" thing tooth and nail because it makes their business model obsolete.
In other news, the CEO of Buggy Whips, Inc. just stated that he sees "nothing useful" from the development of the automobile. "People just want to go wherever they want whenever they want!"
Anyways, Sony is right. We couldn't have had the Renaissance if it weren't for the large, multi-national corporations dictating the tastes and boundaries of acceptable art and commerce. How will our culture survive if corporations aren't free to restrict our freedoms?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Irresponsible people exist. We need a mechanism to restrain them.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Sony is a Japanese company. Sony Pictures though, which is what we are talking about here, is American and has its HQ in California. It was called Columbia until the 90's when it was bought by Sony. Just like BMG (you know the rootkit fiasco) was renamed Sony Music.
Mada mada dane.
media hitler!
needed correction, he's not trying to kill people, he's out to remove our freedom to access information via any means we can at any time we can.
this ability is something obviously beneficial to the masses, but not to those who want to earn money off the information. which makes him self interested like hitler in many ways. and to succeed he would have to enact a kind of software genocide, via courtroom death-camps and internet protocol starvation...
but he's not hitler in the sense that hitler holds partial responsibility for killing millions of innocent people. the difference here is a pretty big deal, and not recognizing it does a disservice to those who died.
DON'T CAPITALIZE! CO-OPERATE! AND FREE EVERYTHING!
is for paint.
Not censorship.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Go fuck yourself you rich piece of shit! I'd rather eat the asshole of a road killed skunk than buy any Sony product! I wouldn't even waste my time warezing their shit. Sony is my balls and Lynton is my ass!
"Without curiosity and knowledge, the mind is a vast void. Without the mind, curiosity and knowledge are nonexistent."
"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."
The quality has been suffering for many years now...
Item: Anyone who uses the word "vibrant" with a straight face is highly likely to be an idiot.
"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."
Actually what he complains about is that they want to make out of the Internet a market, something isn't foreseen by the it's creators.
The problem though isn't on side of users, as those were big labels and publishers who failed to agree on common DRM. As analyst have said from the beginning, marking part of Internet as proprietary market would have worked, but only if it was made on the same principle as Internet itself.
Compare DRM to TCP/IP and HTTP. While Internet creators cemented that TCP/IP and HTTP are free for everybody to implement and use, DRMs remains largely proprietary, with many strings attached. Worse: the DRM is heavily fragmented, since **AA also try to squeeze out of every deal every penny they can. Obviously different business deals lead to different DRMs. With iTunes I presume Apple wanted to set an example, yet labels decided to experiment with different subscription models, thus perpetuating DRM fragmentation.
P.S. To the murder analogy. The laws are playing precisely the role of demarcation: they tell what is right and what is wrong. But not only that: they also say where it is right or wrong. If you go into desert or wilderness where there is no law, then a murder might be pretty "lawful," as there are no laws in force there. Well-implemented DRM might have played the role of state borders. Yet, actual situation is that you can't move from one "DRM state" to another without being literally reborn.
TFS says Lynton "has posted an editorial at the Huffington Post". If you check TFA, it appears to be a "blog post", not an editorial, i.e. Lynton does not speak for The Huffington Post (I Am Not A Native English Speaker so this might be a misunderstanding on my part).
Yandelvayasna grldenwi stravenka
One that helps consumers protect themselves from corporations whoms products have been steadily declining in quality for the last 10 years. Mister CEO doesn't want a guard rail, he wants a traffic warden.
Well if you want to get that far into the car analogy, let's assume that the only reason he's selling cars is that we (the people) have granted him an exclusive license to sell cars, and we did this expressly for the purpose of encouraging the progress of car manufacturing. And if we (the people) ever decided to stop granting that license, it would mean free cars for everyone, but reduce the incentive to produce new car models.
Or something...
Actually, I thought queue worked pretty well in that sentence.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Nope, Godwin's gotta get in line just like everyone else. Stupid legendary internet name. Why does he think he gets special treatment over the rest of us?
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
I've recently been taking a management class that uses Re-Imagine! by Tom Peters as the text book. There are so many things talked about in the book that parallel the problems that companies like Sony are having right now. The large companies and their dominance in some industries is failing. This is in large part due to their lack of ability to adapt to a new global market place and the new technology. The Internet has completely changed the face of how most companies do business. Those who aren't willing or able to throw off the old completely and risk everything for the new will be pushed to the wayside. The movie and music companies are learning this the hard way and it's showing. There complete lack of focus on developing new money streams and new innovative ways to deliver content to their customers is driving customers away in droves. Think of where online entertainment could be right now if they had chosen a different path? What would of happened if they had embraced the Internet early on instead of these RIAA and MPAA chest beating?
Sony's attitude is just a symptom of what is effecting much of big business throughout the world. They are too afraid to take the risk needed to stay the top of their respective industries. Sony should be embracing the Internet and see it as a great opportunity to grow their business and provide an outstanding service and product to its customers. Instead they see it a roadblock. Something they need to control or hamper so they can continue to do business as they see fit instead of in the manner their customers demand. -Seranfall
...allows them to easily steal that property and sell...
If "them" can sell it then the internet hasn't decreased its value. His argument proves the opponent's case.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I would beat your faggot ass without mercy if you weren't just some random piece of garbage troll spewing your garbage all over Slashdot.
By music I mean not the composition or the performance but rather the recording and distribution thereof, whether as a physical product or a product consisting of ones and zeros. And by movies I mean to draw a similar line.
There is of course creativity in the process of creating these things, there is of course art in them, and there of course can be elements of their released product forms that trickle back into our culture (e.g. favorite quotes), but I would argue that that nasty bit in between that is the mass-produced product is not _itself_ culture or a part of our culture.
We would all be wise to draw clear boundaries between the culture and non-culture in this continuum, as the non-culture portions (while valuable and worthy of appropriate protection) should not be allowed to extract special treatment as if they were "culture" or a part thereof.
Lynton is the CEO of Sony *Pictures*, not Sony.
The actual CEO of Sony, Sir Howard Stringer, is quite a bit more enlightened about the value of the Internet, but clearly has a long way to go to convince his divisional heads.
He's out there begging for guard rails on the highway while the rest of us are flying right over the highways in our spiffy flying cars.
...hey, lookie that, I just made a metaphor!
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
I thought that overall, movie and music revenues were up? And that musicians who post songs on the internet have their actual sales increased a lot? So harmed does not mean monetarily. And If people steal off the internet, that does not mean that they have the money to, or will, buy in the stores. So monetary damages have not been shown in any case?
If by harmed, he means that music companies, movie companies, MS, and others, have had reputations trashed by the internet, perhaps that is only because their reputations were falsely inflated until the internet got involved.
I have not ever heard of an author who has claimed lost sales because of the internet, unless you mean the scientologists.
And what is this about talented creators and culture? I do not see most movies and books being involved in anything but degrading our culture. I thought that was the internet's job?
I do not see the internet as impeding the ability of authors or movie makers to make ungodly tons of money. Let's take Harry Potter for an example. The author made over a billion dollars? And the movies as well? Where is this so-called harm?
I call BS. Oh, wait, everyone has already called BS on this stuff. So maybe I am the last post? I doubt it.
wake up and hold your nose
Freedom without restraint is evolution.
What the wife and I do in the privacy of our home is none of your damn business!
You're confusing "freedom" and "liberty" - different concepts. Absent of rules, you have freedom. The scale looks like this (kinda):
Freedom(Anarchy) --->---> Liberty--->---> --->---> --->---> --->---> --->--->Tyranny(Totalitarianism)
A small amount of government is necessary. Unfortunately, the nature of government is such that it always expands its power over time, creeping to the right of the scale. Eventually, its gets far enough that the citizens of a nation will either give in or overthrow it, and go back to the far left.
Words have meaning - use the right one
Learn about Photography Basics.
What this sony shill has said is symptomatic of a corporate mindset in which the only things that have value are those that can be valued in currency. It is a convenient mindset that has the end result of maximizing profits for large corporations. To slightly modify a quote by Einstein:
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Boohoo. The vein this parasite used to suck blood from has finally clotted. Seriously, cry me a river.
Everyone with an Internet IP address can now publish and distribute their own creative works on a global scale. And now that those people have distributed it in easy to use formats with a $0.00 charge that is how people want to consume their media. Be it movies, music, art, news, etc.
You can tell he's thrashing to convince you his snake oil can cure what ails ya, by the bad car analogy and use of scary words like "chaos". Guard rails? What he wants is more like closing exit ramps to competitor's stores. Chaos? We've never had chaos coupled with abundance.
In fact I'd argue that Open Source Software is what happens when chaos hits abundance. The chaos away from the restrictions of software vendors and an abundance of computing power, programming resources (documentation, compilers), and hobby developer time. The myth that choas means everyone turns into a gun-toting, kill anyone who gets in my way gangster is bullshit, unproven hogwash. If you would kill and steal if you had the chance, I'm guessing you'll find a legal way to do it now, and because it's "legal" no one can stop you. At least in chaos, if you start stealing my shit, or beating me or my friends, no matter how you do it, I can respond to defend myself and community.
This makes no sense because the internet is not a dumptruck it's a series of tubes. How are you going to fit guardrails inside of a tube?
By extending copyright forever then we'll talk. Until then STFU.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If "Freedom without restraint is chaos" then what is Freedom WITH restraint?
~kulakovich
Halford 2.1 - Forged out of flame from chaos to destiny.
Someone hates these cans.
Mr. Lynton needs a bit of a paradigm shift.
"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."
Let me state emphatically that pirates are thieves. But why are they stealing? Maybe it's because they're pricks, maybe it's because they're cheapasses, and maybe it's because it's the only way to get what they're looking for.
It's not a matter of the shop being closed, it's a matter that products that meet the needs, wants and preferences of the (potential) customers have not been _developed_, much less _marketed_.
The potential that are swiping it because it's the only way to get what they want when they want it? They're a potential -- and more importantly, untapped -- market!!
Let's use his example of the unfinished version of the movie Wolverine. What does the rampant piracy of this tell you?
1. People want to see a movie. (make the movie available!)
2. People want to see a movie NOW. (simul-release film to theatres and DVD.)
3. The internet lets them see a movie NOW. (stream movies from the internet on day 1)
4. They don't necessarily want to go to a theater to do it. (see 2,3 above.)
5. Top Quality isn't always a concern. (see 3, above)
6. Hell, the movie even being *complete* isn't always a concern. (market previews, in-production work-in-progress "insider" subscriptions and bonus materials instead of the current woefully impotent movie promo web sites.)
7. Unfinished films have a market, too. (see 6, above)
8. Some portion of these 4 million downloaders won't ever pay to see it. (some pirates really are just theives.)
9. But you need to find out who among them *will*, and *how much* and *why*. (product-effing-development, people!)
Given all of the above, there's any number of product development possibilities. Entertainment companies, start ramming them through Stage-Gate and see what comes out the other end that might make you some money.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
The title is incorrect. Howard Stringer is the CEO of Sony.
I actively refuse to purchase Sony anything. If idiots like this are in charge of that company, do you really trust them to server you properly as a customer?
...after this little gem:
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.
Those who haven't adapted have found themselves seriously harmed, much as buggy-whip manufacturers were seriously harmed by the automobile.
That is: The fact that he included newspapers makes it quite clear just how out of touch he is. Newspapers are obsolete.
Similar criticisms could be leveled against those other categories -- for instance, Sony Music may have been hurt, but music in general, and especially indie music, has an unprecedented opportunity in the Internet.
But why bother, when he clearly doesn't get it about newspapers? He's writing a blog, and he doesn't get it about newspapers?
Some of that damage has been caused by changing business models (the FTC just announced an inquiry into the impact of new media on the newspaper industry). But the primary culprit is piracy.
Yes, I'm sure newspapers have been harmed by piracy. Can you cite a single example?
I am no Luddite.
Then it would be a good idea to have some balls and retract your statement saying that nothing good comes from the Internet. You sure as hell sound like a Luddite to me.
that the Internet should be left to develop entirely unfettered and unregulated.
Copyright does not disappear on the Internet. But just what are you suggesting here?
In no other realm of our society have we encountered so widespread and consequential a failure to put in place guidelines over the use and growth of such a major industry.
This coming form the CEO of a company which deliberately put DRM on CDs that strongly resembled spyware, that made their legitimate customers' computers slower, less secure, and occasionally did things like broke their drivers...
Buddy, it's not the Internet that needs guidelines. It's Sony, and other large corporations which seem to subscribe to the view that when you're big enough, you can do whatever you want.
I'm not talking here about censorship, taxation or burdensome government restrictions. I'm talking about reasonable boundaries, "rules of the road," that can help promote the many positive attributes of Internet technology while curtailing its hugely damaging effects.
Please explain how you can provide one without the other.
In the 1950's, the Eisenhower Administration undertook one of the most massive infrastructure projects in our nation's history -- the creation of the Interstate Highway System.
Sounds like someone took the "Information Superhighway" analogy a bit too far.
But unlike the Internet, the highways were built and operated with a set of rational guidelines. Guard rails went along dangerous sections of the road. Speed and weight limits saved lives and maintenance costs. And officers of the law made sure that these rules were obeyed.
Officers of the law don't have to violate privacy or other fundamental rights in order to do so. And the results save lives, not dollars. More, they save our lives, not the dollars of Sony.
Because actually I'm a guy who wants to see lots of good things come from the Internet.
Ah, there's the retraction. How about a little mea culpa?
I mean, I know it's hard. I know you, as a CEO, have a mental block against this. But just repeat after me: I. Was. Wrong.
But it's not going to happen the way it should if we do not act now to safeguard the fruit of our world's most imaginative and talented minds.
It is already happening quite the way it should -- open source software is a great example of this -- precisely because there aren't r
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"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."
Ah, no. Not many people break into your store to get what they want after it's closed. They go to another store that is open, even if the store is illegally selling your stuff. The solution is to keep your store open at all times and provide "payment" terms that make it less likely that people will go to a black market store.
Hard to believe the guy runs a multi-billion dollar company...
It is rare when the entirety of Slashdot is united behind a single message, and so I feel no need to elaborate further on that which should be obvious. But I will anyway, because I feel like I've got another angle on this thing. . .
Micheal Lynton is a million-dollar corporate tool who probably really, honestly for-real sees the world in black & white while everybody else is getting along just fine in full color. That we get.
Here's the new bit. . .
Joss Whedon, had he not screwed up the last episode of Doctor Horrible (thus setting back direct-to-internet-television-by-actual-paid-professionals about, oh, 5 years), showed us a glimpse of the future. Every media outlet in the West which had anything to do with pop culture TV was singing the praises of that little project. But while the world was going electric with excitement for two days, a sad ending on the third threw a bucket of cold water on the whole parade, so not a peep from big media was to be heard again and all the little studio execs pulled their heads back into their little shells. Or saw their shadows perhaps. . .
All of which is to say that awesome content will continue to exist, and for a while it will probably suck waaaaay less than the current fare, because only daring people with imagination will have the gonads to go West.
I one third wonder if Dollhouse was renewed just to keep Joss where they could keep him under thumb. Doc Horrible, even in all its un-wisdom, made enough money to pay the crew and turn a profit. Imagine if it hadn't sucked at the end? We'd be up to our necks in direct to Web content right about now. Kind of like George Lucas and his weird obsession with selling those silly three-inch plastic dolls that nobody could understand until he founded an empire on the things.
-FL
Sony stockholders should take heed. They have a guy that lacks vision running the show. He clearly believes in boxing in, rather than thinking outside the box.
We need more rootkits from Sony. That will save us all from ourselves.
"Culture" he says. His "culture" is homogenized "factory" produced arts and entertainment. That's not culture, it's business. The internet has opened the doors so all artists can participate, find an audience, entertain us with a wide variety of works that are not controlled, restricted or censored because a big fat cat decided "this work is not economically viable".
Exit the media business Sony. The only thing you're good for is good TVs.
If we push aside the whole copyright question temporarily, as just a question as it is, there's an even more disturbing element I find to the argument this person and so many others associated with the large media companies, enforcers and copyright lobbyists espouse.
As the internet has developed and evolved, I'd wager all of us Slashdot readers have witnessed and recognised its potential to revolutionise countless aspects of humanity. The Internet provides unique and fundamentally different ways to provide information in all kinds of forms to individuals, often at incredibly rapid speeds, for little to no cost, with a very high degree of accessibility that is only going to improve as Internet connections permeate all aspects of society everywhere around the globe, and consequently, costs further decrease as it becomes even more of a basic and fundamental commodity. The result being that human knowledge and culture is now more readily available and in vaster quantities than at any time in our history.
The extreme copyright and intellectual property protectionism that these people espouse, and the ideas to realise and enforce them that they inevitably generate, if ever implemented, I think would fundamentally alter the way the Internet functions and significantly damage its potential to enrich mankind and further develop. The results of implementing such ideas would turn the Internet in some ways into nothing more than an evolution of TV/Radio/other forms of "content delivery" that the media companies are so familiar with, and so easily able to control. The result would be disastrous for the continuing development of the internet, and devastating in terms of negating the benefits, both short-term and long term, that it currently is and is likely to further provide in the future. The copyright lobby may purely be interested in keeping their pockets lined, but if their ideas were used, they'd have far-reaching consequences across the Internet that would likely spread outside the domain of standard media. The copyright agenda is just how this could happen, but the result would be far greater than the sum of its parts.
I know this post likely comes across as dramatic, but I've grown up on the Internet and witnessed from a young age its potential, and the concepts thrown-about and in some cases being used right now (see: France, etc..) terrify me in their potential ramifications.
Let's see, this coming from some overpaid rich fuck who can't figure out how to compete.
The internet allows consumers greater choice. That's it. Companies now must compete on the consumers' terms, and less on their dictated terms.
Why Sony Pictures doesn't fire this pathetic excuse of an ostrich living in a 1995 view of the internet is beyond me. If I was a shareholder I would be pissed.
You seem to be confused. A boycott is something the consumer does to protest against something. Censorship is something the producer does to make sure the consumer isn't exposed to certain information.
The GP wants the Huffington Post to censor the opinions of Sony's CEO. They can't boycott those opinions. They could boycott Sony's goods, but that isn't the issue here. If they were to block those opinions then it would indeed be censorship, not a boycott.
Panties
all these mod points come from?
I'm going to come out and point my finger at the true culprits behind the current situation, and not for the reasons you expect, either.
Media Companies, especially movie producers, you are the ones to blame.
Why? Because this is the Future that they've always promised us!
THEY were the ones who told us of a time when life will be "Good". A time when everyone would have instant access to all the world's entertainment at the touch of a button. When barriers like locality were meaningless. When limitations like plastic disks that harm the environment and wires that clutter the scenery would be dissolved.
THIS IS THE FUTURE YOU PROMISED US.
A future that means instant communication with infinite capacity. A future of unbridled creativity and unlimited opportunity. A future that allows humanity to transcend the limits of the old economic views -- infinite supply, unlimited demand -- and find a new way of doing things.
In your movies. In your stories and programs and books and even your marketing and literature.
This is where you told us you would take us.
This, the here and now, is the future.
And it scares the living shit out of you.
The problem is that he (and his friends) seem to make their wishes to governments, and accompany those wishes with large cheques.
the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.
Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I laughed out loud when I read that part of his commentary. Many of the "great works" of art and literature, or at least those that many would consider "great" and of "high culture", were produced in the age before copyright. If the sort of crap that is currently produced by Sony and others in the entertainment industry passes as "high quality culture" then they can keep it. In fact, they couldn't pay me to watch it. The previous system of wealthy patronage seems to have contributed far more high quality works to the public domain than Sony and their cronies. My response to them, to paraphrase Bill Epton, is "burn, Sony, burn".
It does make me wonder though. Merchandising and appearances have nothing to do with making a webcomic, let alone a good one. If you want the best webcomic possible, would you force someone to take up public speaking, travel and marketing to do it?
I'm not saying that what these publishers are saying is right, but if you do want to encourage people to concentrate on the primary thing that we want from them, presumably we wouldn't force them to do other things to make a living.
The publishers do provide a service, and it is a service that many artists are very happy to accept. The publishers do the marketing, the distribution and other things that you don't want to have to do yourself or even have your agent/manager do.
The Internet has changed how distribution is done, and to a certain degree, marketing as well. This has definitely threatened the publishers, and it may also have an effect on artists who are not as able to self-promote as some others. We can't point at some successful artists and say "look, they can do it, so anyone can as well", if what they are doing to be successful is not actually the act of making webcomics alone, but they make use of a different set of skills.
I really think we may need to turn to a patronage system to finally bring the creative business back to the point where we can let artists be artists and still be able to take fullest advantage of the freedom that the Internet can offer them.
If you're going to be running your own business, you likely have to take up marketing and sales anyway.
So, if you want to make the best webcomic possible, no, nobody is going to force you to do those things. However, if you want to get paid to do it, then it's probably a good idea.
Smashing windows and stealing things?
More like picking the lock, taking pictures ("copying") and then leaving with the place undisturbed.
>And I guarantee that regardless of how easy or how cheap it is to download; people want
>to see bands they like LIVE. And people don't mind paying for the privilege. However this
>is money that goes almost directly to the band (in many cases) and the Distributors don't
>get to leech of a significant cut like they do with record sales.
See, I just don't buy this. In my life of 38 years I have paid money to go to a grand total of 2 concerts. Most of the music I listen to is recorded, and I've listened to countless hours of recorded music, most of it for free.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Holy throwback, Al Gore.
For Sale: Used Polish Submarine
Some interior water damage; may need new door.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
... 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.
All the best art throughout history comes from suffering. Great things should come from this.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Lyntons' company, "Sony Pictures Entertainment" was created when Sony purchased Columbia Pictures. The guy that started and ran Columbia, Harry Cohn, was famous for saying "Give the public what they want and they'll come out for it."
It appears that Lynton actually knows what his customers want - he just chooses to ignore them, at his company's peril, even as other companies such as Apple have clearly shown the way.
Now, if they could only put QoS and uptime guarantees on the real highway...
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Mozart and Michelangelo and Da Vinci got paid for their work. I'm pretty sure, Mozart got his revenue from concerts.
Da Vinci actually tried to protect his work by using mirrored text in his writings and hidden defects in his schemes. It was also common for alchemists to hide their work by using obliterations.
If his version of the entertainment industry can't survive with out the expansion of the police state, then I'd rather see it die. Freedom is more valuable than the garbage he is pushing.
Actually, everything he says is true. His problem is that he doesn't realize that we can't give up our most basic freedoms in exchange for "better entertainment". He has his priorities crossed, even if he's got his facts straight.
Because it' like a series of tubes. And this guy wants to be the one sitting on the valve.
Around where I live, the only guard rails on interstate highways are found where other roads intersect the interstate. Also where the interstate curves sharply, but for new road those are replaced by tilted road to give the driver feedback before driving over the cliff, rather than as a reminder during the act.
For highways with long stretches where one might fall asleep, there are mini speed bumps along the side. When your car rattles due to those bumps you wake up.
Eh? We wouldn't have known if you hadn't said that... :p
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I really don't understand... why would tubes need guard rails?
Sounds like he's still whining about not having product that sells. Nor listening to his people that tell him how to sell stuff in the enviroment specific of the Internet.
"I got it all together but I forgot where I put it."
Well, people say that any publicity..even bad...is good for a company. I think that is true except in the case of an ubiquitous company like Sony. I'd suspect that a very very high percentage of people in the United States (Don't know about other countries) knowingly own/have owned/know someone who owns a product made by Sony. They don't really need the publicity.
This article makes me think less of Sony because not only is their CEO making him sound like a complete and utter fool, but there is not someone around him with the guts to say "Sir, uhm, I think saying that "nothing good has come out of this internet thingy" is probably a poor thing to say when you are running a company that sells (Among other things) technology."
1. 'a lot of the traditionally "free" western "democracies" sliding deeper into corporatism/fascism'
on a historical scale, western democracies are less beholden to corporations (witness monopoly busting from a century ago). what you are suffering from is called historical myopia: the idea that things are getting worse and worse according to some arbitrary measurement when they might actually be getting better or not changing at all. additionally, there is no suich thing as a slippery slope. the concept of a slippery slope is a piece of propaganda meant to appeal to your emotions rather than your reason. it feeds into your conceit that you are the only human being who can tell the difference between say, censoring child porn and censoring political expression. or: allowing gays to marriage and allowing necrophilia. or: legalizing marijuana and legalizaing methamphetamine. no, your average person can make those discernments too, so there is no slipper slope from allowing one small thing into full blown "fascism", or whatever your fantasy life imagines
and as for "fascism" the use of this word is similar to the use of the word "socialism" or "terrorism": overused and extended in meaning to the point of useless demagoguery that has very little to do with what those terms literally mean
2. the sony asshole can state anything he wants. even if he lined the pockets of every legislator and got the most draconian anti-internet legislation ever passed, it wouldn't mean a damn thing, as there are always other countries where the laws don't apply, and there always legions of poor media-hungry teenagers who can always outcompete the most well-funded stable of corporate programmers. corporate meddling would just be damage for the internet to route around. in other words "what are you willing to do?" is a question with a simple answer: barely anything. use the simple free easily available script that disables whatever multimillion dollar tool the corporation devises
3. "So, my question is - what can we do, and what are you willing to do if this self-entitled asshole and others like him start getting what they want?
I know I am willing to do whatever it takes."
yes, so did timothy mcveigh: he perceived a threat which was nonexistent and hyped and propagandized by his fellow deluded tools into a mass hysteria, as you are doing, and then he decided to do the most retarded and couterproductive thing in order to fight a phantom threat
so how about this clarence: calm the fuck down and try thinking with a level head, if you possess enough neurons to do that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
sizzle and can smell the effects of the THIRD RAIL.... This guardrail business sounds shocking....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
You're right. My point was that "freedom without restraint is no freedom at all" is incorrect. Restraint is necessary to preserve freedom in the long run.
Sophistry. I demand proof.
After all, I am strangely colored.
how do you enforce what you are saying?
you can't
do you think moralizing and outrage is going to change behavior? then there is no enforcement, then there is no change in the status quo
if you can put into a reasonable argument a reason why internet file trading without attribution is theft, and a teenager raised in this environment can turn around articulate a reasonable argument as to why it is not theft right back at you, are you willing to rethink some of the woeful assumptions you obviously have about property rights and media?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Are there websites that publish papers with free access? If not, sounds like a good wiki idea.
+1 Insightful. As a PhD student, I would want everyone to read what news in cryptography I can drum up (if they care to, of course).
And as an avid science geek, I would like to be able to read scientific articles whenever the fancy strikes me.
Search for "Incompetent and unaware of it", it'll tickle your funny-bone. It's part of the Improbable Research (journal or annal, I'm not sure)---which has the slogan "research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think"---but it is honest-to-goodness decent academic psychology.
hollywood is completely impervious. why? because the cinema business is doing gangbusters business. unlike music, which produces product best consumed by oneself, sitting in a movie theatre with crowds oohing and aahing is better than watching a movie in your mom's basement on a 17 inch monitor by yourself. and yes, this positive crowd effect outweighs the cell phones and crying babies
sure, hollywood will completely lose their dvd aftermaket, but the cinema is going nowhere but up, and the internet will not kill it. the dvd didn't, the vhs didnt, hell, they said moviehouses were dead in the 1950s due to free television over the airwaves: nope
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, "nothing" is a bit strong - most of his merchandise consists of posters or signed prints of a specific issue of his comic, or a t-shirt based on one of them.
That's not to say that you don't have a point, but while his work is protected by copyright, I've heard him say that he actively attempts to facilitate people reposting his work elsewhere. As long as it's sourced, he seems to think of it as free advertising. Maybe he'd make a better comic if he was given a stipend to focus on his comics, but that system has its own flaws - generally in the selection process.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I read the full article and find a couple things amusing ..
The first thing that came to my mind about his earlier statement about the "nothing good coming from the internet. Period!" .. is this guy is a total Luddite. The funny thing .. in this current article he goes out of his way to protest such a conclusion. Me says "doth protest to much."
Secondly, he is very exceptional at talking to New Speak .. What I call "talking out of both sides of your mouth."
If in any other field, someone made an ASS out of themselves as much as this guys has, Publicly!, they would have been sacked from their position of priveledge post-haste.
So in the end, I have lost all respect for Sony as a corporation and producer/distributor of goods
for letting such a trogladite run rampant their tyrannical/draconian even Luddite mouth.
most of these companies are trying to sell a product that is essentially infinite (digitally replicable). It's value as a product is 0, it's only the experience that contains value. So the real question isn't if copyright will succeed, it's already failed, the real question is how to exchange value for experience, which to my mind would involve live performances or the possibility of mixing theater and music again (what did we used to call that? Opera? Musical?) and/or enhanced delivery or increasingly hi-res or immersive technology.
Quack, quack.
1. Military funds network design intended to survive nuclear warfare.
...
Is just another form of oppression.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
" ...if we don't figure out some way to prevent online freedom, the high quantity, low quality and artificially sparseavailability of the kinds of "entertainment" we force feed to have a healthy, excessive income flow will suffer."
There, fixed that to say what he really meant.
who doesn't see anything good having come from mammals.
You can still go further, though. For instance, you can say that the incentive to produce new car models isn't reduced, but the incentive for professionals to produce, market, and sell the cars for the car designers is reduced, balanced by the fact that the need for said designers is reduced as well.
Or something...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I, personally, would say that freedom of speech is fairly restrained in today's society.
Not only are there many things you can't say and do in many areas, especially schools and on public television and radio, but freedom of speech isn't in effect for any speech that doesn't have any perceived socially, politically, or artistically redeeming values, leading to a lot of unnecessary restraint by those who have a harder time perceiving or appreciating those values.
Fuck you.
Read radical news here
Well piracy is about as high I think as its ever going to get and whats happened. I look around and see games, movies, tv, software etc making good money. Even the music industry is doing ok. So wheres the Armageddon that's always promised by media spokesmen? Not sure about this creative vacuum that he keeps talking about but hey its always the money making distributors who seem to whine the most.
Just as a point in fact, I don't think Michelangelo allowed cameras in the Sistine Chapel :)
At the time the Camera Obscura was already 2 millennia old, and was used by painters to trace pictures - but probably not to take copies of other paintings. Makes you wonder why he didn't paint the first quarter of the chapel with stern warnings and images of hell to scare off those evil visitors that wanted to steal his intellectual property.
Well the direct financial incentive to record music will be reduced if copyright goes away. I don't see a way around that. On the other hand, there will still be indirect financial incentives.
Beyond that, it's never been entirely clear to me that the financial incentives were what was motivating the creation of music. I think you could make music recording illegal, and force people to pay to record their music, and people would still do it at a loss. The quality of the recording might suffer somewhat, in that there might not be the money floating around to pay for a $10K microphone, but I have no doubt that people would still play music and record music if copyrights went away.
I have been borrow music CD and Movie DVD for FREE at the local library ...
well, at least I pay the local tax.
Talk to California and ask them about Proposition 8.
1) I stopped watching TV when I realized that viewers feed on crime.
2) I only visit four sites everyday, thepiratebay, popularmechanics, popsci, wired, and slashdot.
More often than not, slashdot has been pissing me off, perhaps moving toward subnote#1.
RIAA, oBAMA, neutrality, Evolution. Can someone point me to a way out of this? Perhaps my hobbies will be my slashdot-patch, slowly weaning me off this hysteria and actually doing something constructive...
http://benedicts.webs.com/howtobuildawallthing.htm -jp
Art for art sake, money for god's sake!
The Low Point a View from the Valley Column 11
The Land of "Nothing for free"
On the map, Laguna Niguel looks like a beautiful Pacific coastal area south of Los Angeles, a little like one of my favorite spots Monterey, south of San Francisco. But I forgot; this is Los Angeles, where the brown haze of the air lies like a thick blanket over the insane sprawl of "Generica". It's an endless landscape of McDonalds, strip-malls and gas stations familiar to anyone who has seen the movie "Ghost World". Nothing is free here. You pay for parking (nothing but valet available), driving on toll roads, access to much of the beach (private). If they could figure out how to charge for the air I'm sure there'd be meters every block or so. It's a fitting home for the entertainment industry.
I was down there to give a talk on "Open Source Business Models" for a conference. Also represented were entertainment industry lawyers, "Big Telecom" management, and a smattering of software people. Microsoft was there of course. You can't hold a church fete with "Open Source" on the banner these days without Microsoft turning up and requesting representation. At least we also had Bruce Perens on our side to help make up the balance. The venue was an unbelievably expensive hotel. Even though I was on expenses I balked at asking the company to pay for a room there and found something cheaper (not by much) a few miles down the road.
Along with the collection of apologists for the "ultimate evils" (tm) of Hollywood and Telephone companies there were some very interesting presentations. A Japanese telecoms researcher made all the software people jealous by describing the idyllic state of broadband in Japan, where providers vie to sell gigabit fiber-optic pipes to the home. Yes, you read that right, Gigabit. The obvious question was asked; "what do people use all that bandwidth for" and the less than obvious answer was that they use it for all the same things people in less bandwidth-friendly countries do, they just do more of it. I could see a collective shudder pass through the entertainment industry people. They knew what that meant.
A keynote by Lawrence Lessig made the point even further. He showed a series of "mash-ups" of copyrighted material which were incredibly creative and funny. All completely illegal and currently being hunted off the Internet by entertainment industry lawyers. One of the most amusing asides was from a Walt Disney legal reply to a parent requesting "fair use" rights to use some clips from a Disney movie to put in his home video. He pleadingly promised them it was meant only for family viewing. "We currently deny all requests to use our material....". Even if you are impudent enough to ask, the answer is always no. At least one of the other studios replied that the current commercial rate was $700 to use a 30 second clip. I can see that being popular amongst parents making home movies. He also covered the current patent quagmire. A very interesting fact from his talk was that the total unit cost for a Chinese manufacturer to build a DVD player was around $26. However the total royalty fees they have to pay to western companies for the patent rights to build a player is $21 per unit, thus completely eliminating any profit they might make. No wonder the Chinese are currently creating their own digital video standard, completely incompatible with Western ones. It's the only thing that makes economic sense for them. This is almost certainly behind the Chinese refusal to use the new WiFi standards for wireless devices also.
I ended up making myself unpopular by publicly attacking the Washington-based economist who'd advised the Clinton Administration on "Intellectual Property" issues. It's a very personal issue for me as it affects my everyday life and work, so when he made the statement that "strengthening the patent system leads to more innovation for everyone" I saw red. He doesn't write software of course. I tried to explain later in private that it would be like people being able to patent
Well put.
Thank you, for reminding me why I've been boycotting Sony since 2004. Makes it a little hard, because I actually *like* my Sony-Ericsson phone's interface, and it's on its last legs, but clearly 5 years running Sony hasn't changed its stance. Damn you all for buying PS3s and keeping them afloat!
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
What the fuck is "a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet" doing on the internet in the first place, and how can "a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet" think that the internet "had a transformative impact on our culture and holds enormous potential to improve the prospects of humanity, and in many instances already has." Isn't improving the prospects of humanity a good thing?
"ow many people will be as motivated to write a book or a song, or make a movie if they know it is going to be immediately stolen from them and offered to the world with no compensation whatsoever?" I would. Imagine a world where only people who have a real message go out and say something. Where people who don't give a shit about their message, don't utter it. Wouldn't that be great?
"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." This dude needs to visit an image board. Even if quantity suffers; there's already more material coming out each second then any one person could possibly experience in an hour. What about quality? Is that people will copy it really a reason to adher a lower standard? Also; who defines `quality'. According to my standards; the `quality' of TV has been staggering downwards even before anyone not an university had a connection capable of reasonably downloading video content, or the ability to record it.
"But I also want their future to be filled with the kind of music and books and films and other creative sparks that have enlivened my life and our culture through the years." sounds like a good reason to download it from the internet. Music by pretty much any band which has not made it to #1 in the charts multiple times cannot be found in the stores any more. The same counts for music. And good luck finding books from that age as well.
Training wheels first. Guardrails are for when you can go fast enough to go over the edge, like when you can't keep away from alt.teen.tranny.llama.binaries anymore.
As long as there is freely modifiable software (read GNU/Linux) and the internet, no-one will ever be able to stop 'illegal' file sharing. No matter what measures are taken to protect digital content, someone will always be able to hack it through reverse engineering and release the hack into the wild. bits and bytes will always be able to be copied in some way or another, as a perfect replica of the original. The *only* way I see this being stopped is if everyone on the planet were forced to use an OS and software and hardware that are completely locked down and ultra-controlled by a corporation or government: It's never going to happen so content producers need to accept this and move on to another business model.
Organisations like this are living in the pre-internet era where solid tangible goods could either not be copied or it required specialised manufacturing processes that the general public could not afford, to produce a replica of the original object.
Now most media (books music film etc) is code. That they think they can stop a piece of such content being copied is laughable, but they can maybe create business mechanisms to control production and distribution processes that in some way hinder pirating such that it makes it tedious for the public to copy the content. Or they could just create a business model where they seel content online for a reasonable price and people would probably pay for it if it was easier to get it at an official publisher than a pirate (think better download speeds at the publisher site).
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
*giggles*
*claps*
I ASS (
How much do artists, say songwriters for example, actually get paid out of the total revenue for distribution of their CDs? How much to the recording companies get?
I think if it wasn't for the Internet, and for all of this 'theft' and piracy, these artists wouldn't be as widely known. Musicians can still tour around the world doing live concerts to make money. I'm sure there are thousands of bands, songwriters, movie directors out there that a lot of us know nothing about. If we happen to see their stuff on the Internet and download (or "steal") it, we may find we like it a lot and want to go see them live, or want to go buy an official branded CD or DVD.
All this piracy and "stealing" isn't preventing people from purchasing music or movies. If anything, it's exposing more people to the content and potentially increasing the number of people who will buy. The ones that don't buy probably wouldn't have bought the content in the first place.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
I've got news for him: They are producing mostly garbage now. Doesn't have an argument on those grounds.
However, one should not take what does not belong to you -- on the internet or anywhere else. He does have a valid point there, but DMCA ruined fair use, so we should boycott the SOBs. You get between them and that cash register, and, believe me, you will get heard.
Quote Thomas Macaulay, 1841:
And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.
People disrespect copyright law because it is too broad.
Copying is not theft. Both are illegal, but let's not confuse terms. Why reboot the discussion with an oversimplification?
I lost my sig.
But, without standards of commerce and more action against piracy, the intellectual property of humankind will be subject to infinite exploitation on the Internet.
But isn't that just it? Copyright is there to encourage new works for everyone to exploit infinitely, modulus a formerly moderate incentive at the frontend to kick start the process. It's not there to line the pockets of gatekeepers. The gatekeepers are a side effect, and increasingly irrelevant. No sense encouraging them further.
Ironic that this moron is fromSony - The most schizophrenic company ever! Let's see, they make hardwrae for copying CDs/DVDs (and in the old days - tape) and they make media. The HW guys are trying to sell us ways to copy the content while the content guys are suing us for copying content... Wow!
...
what a mess
The author is very funny too, talking about "...after store hours...", you can tell this bozo has absolutely no clue, and he is in charge. Next he will be talking about how the tubes distort the sound
Sony has great name-brand popularity and PR, like McDonald's, but lots of lousy products preprogrammed to fail.
1. Set up a website where people can buy digital copies of music and movies.
2. Charge a very low price; e.g. 10c for a song and $1 for a movie.
3. Preface every movie with a screen saying "This movie was legally obtained by $NAME using credit card number $NUMBER"
4. Make sure that the quality of the music / movies is god, and not some mindless pap some idiot has dreamt up as the latest kraze.
5. Profit.
Seriously. Of course some people are going to hack the movie to remove the notice. Some people are going to "buy" with a stolen CC. But, and this is the point: EVEN IF 90% OF THE CONTENT GETS PIRATED, YOU WOULD STILL BE MAKING TONS OF MONEY. Because a) the MARGINAL cost of making these products available on the 'Net is almost zero and b) most people couldn't be bothered with editing video clips etc. IF THE PRICE IS LOW ENOUGH.
What would you rather have: $100 million profit per year, or trying to get $100 billion a year... and ending up with zero?
It is now that you brought it up. We seriously need a +1 Meta-Funny mod.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.