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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.'"
This is a very good point. Sony squandered the moral highground a long time ago.
About 8 years ago the CEO of Fox Media gave a keynote at Comdex on this topic. What they wanted was something like the trusted computing initiative. Moreover what he wanted was a partnership with IT and broad support from the developer / hardware communities. He realizes that the IT people by and large support the free exchange of information and thus undermine this partnership.
His feeling was that there were potentially hundreds of thousands to millions of jobs in IT supporting a massive customized entertainment system, that could exist if and only if the medium was relatively safe.
I'm not sure that with Web 2.0 another alternative, the return of the amateur, isn't the direction we are heading in instead.
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.
"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
Great works of art, literature, music etc are far more often created by the impecunious than the wealthy.
How true this is. The greatest artists of the past, Mozart, Bach, Shakespeare, worked for a pittance comapred to what artists make nowadays. And contrary to the argument made that we have to feed the rich more vast sums of money so they keep on producing; the volume of output of am impoverished Mozart or Bach was enormous compared to the output of the pampered rich artists of today. And with a higher quality level.
This ad space for rent.
They can't boycott those opinions.
Sure they can. Nobody can keep a moron from babbling, but you also don't have to repeat what he says if it's clearly lunacy.
Did you also think it was censorship when the New York Times refused to publish John McCain's editorial?
Anyway, to revisit another error in your logic,
The GP wants the Huffington Post to censor the opinions of Sony's CEO.
No, he never said that. The Huffington Post has ever right to publish whatever drivel its editors want to push. He's simply pointing out that he, and the rest of us, have every right to boycott it, and pointing out that given its track record we might consider doing so.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.