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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.'"
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?
the cat's out the bag dude. you're either too late, or your business model is fucked.
move along, nothing to see here...
"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.
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.
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 |
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.
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.
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;
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{
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}
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
He published in the huffandpuffington post. Are you all that surprised it, like everything else on that site, is just mindless garbage?
I mean, seriously. I have seen not ONE good article there except the stuff they plagiarize. It seems to be a site that exists solely to push stupidity.
For example:
And my point is this: the major content businesses of the world and the most talented creators of that content -- music, newspapers, movies and books -- have all been seriously harmed by the Internet.
Obviously what he really means is that the Internet is stopping the gatekeepers from controlling who can get published. There are more people publishing their own books independently - rather than having to go through, say, Del Rey - than ever before. The comic pages of the newspaper have been replaced by webcomics but that's not necessarily a bad thing either - either you adapt, like Scott Adams, or you don't and you perish.
The Internet has brought people with no regard for the intellectual property of others together with a technology that allows them to easily steal that property and sell or give it away to everyone, with little fear of being caught or prosecuted.
He doesn't give a shit about "theft." He hates the idea of the Internet because it removes the need to keep his dumb ass as the distribution "gatekeeper" and skim money off of the hard work of others.
Prior to bittorrent, there was Samba sharing as enabled by several crawler-search setups. Prior to those, there was Napster. Prior to those, there were a zillion sites running FTP (ratio or otherwise). Prior to "the internet", there were BBS'es all over. Prior to that, there was sneakernet.
Go back ~100 years, and dumbshits like this Sony retard were "protesting" and trying to lobby Congress to forbid municipalities from keeping lending libraries (you know, the public library system we all have the right to use for free) because it would "impede sales if people could simply borrow the book instead."
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
This has no relevance to online commerce, "store hours" do not apply that is the whole point of digital content delivery...
I think he's referring to the arbitrary and often ridiculous restrictions companies like Sony have placed on digital distribution in the last decade. Things like different release dates in different countries, DVD region codes, DRM restrictions, malicious software, unavailability of single music tracks and legal downloads. Basically, the things Sony did to squeeze a few extra dollars out of their customers actually pissed off customers. Big surprise.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
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.
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?
"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.
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 biggest difference between the real "guard rails" on highways and the proposed ones on the internet is maybe that the real ones serve me, the user of the road, to guard me and to keep me safe.
I can't see how such "internet guard rails" would serve me. I could well see how they could put me in a straightjacket and limit my freedom.
If anything, "speed bump" would be the suitable analogy. Wonder why he didn't choose speed bumps. Maybe because they are as popular amongst motorists as those internet speed bumps would be amongst internet users? But even the (real) speed bumps serve a sensible purpose. You have to slow down and thus fewer accidents occur, and those that occur are less severe.
We don't put them on highways for very logical reasons, though. We put them where pedestrians are crossing the road. Kinda like, say, laws concerning the internet that outlaw pyramid schemes and the like?
But last time I checked there were little if any laws, regulations or guards on roads that protect trucks from pedestrians or convertibles. Maybe because trucks hardly need protection from those.
Quite the other way 'round...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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 don't understand this guy, he's complaining that people are making it really really obvious what they'd like to buy. If I were running a company, I would quit complaining and sell it already!
People don't want DVDs with copy protection notices, and DRM and region coding? Don't sell them! Sell DRM free downloads for a sensible price - that is after all what people are saying they want!
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."
We were here first, dammit.
(And your track record precedes you, thief.)
I can see the fnords!
I've been wondering the same for ages.
Take an immigrant from Scotland selling Haggis. You know, those delightful dishes made of liver, heart and other selected throwaway parts of sheep, seasoned in a blend of secret spices, kept secret to protect the guilty. He's convinced that this is the best dish ever. And he is complaining without end about those burger joints next door that steal his customers.
Fortunately, nobody could understand him through his accent, so we were spared with the big burger chain crackdown and today we don't have to resort to eating nothing. Because nothing beats haggis. Read that however you like...
DRMified content is the same. Their argument is that everyone would buy it if it wasn't for those pesky places where you can get it without (i.e. the way you want it). No. We wouldn't. Believe it or not, content is not like food, water, light or air. We don't need it.
YOU need US. Not the other way 'round.
Instead of complaining that those pesky customers don't like your product and demand that the customer has to change his tastes, produce what he likes and he will gladly buy it.
It's not "pirating is communism". Communism, actually, is producing what you deem "right" and expecting your customer to buy it because you deprive him from any alternatives. Ask anyone who grew up in the "Soviet states".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Have a little empathy. What we have is a group of rich, powerful and intelligent people who imagine a changed future in which their personal fortunes may not grow as fast as they do currently. Realizing that an argument like "The Internet is bad because I may not be as wealthy as I'm used to" is not a very persuasive they modify the argument to be: ""The Internet is bad because it means the END of CIVILIZATION as we know it" or something similar.
As far as I can tell there is fortunately hardly any correlation between creativity and monetary rewards. Great works of art, literature, music etc are far more often created by the impecunious than the wealthy.
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 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
If you really believed that piracy was no worse with sneakernet than it is now, you'd be too stupid to have learned to type.
Flamebait aside, you apparently have no clue what you are talking about.
**AAs consider giving your friend a CD/DVD/etc to be also a theft. And in the time of sneakernet, that was all over the place. Decade ago, probably half of my CD collection was constantly in other hands. And **AAs consistently consider that to be a "theft" too. Internet changed only one thing: most of my CD collection now is buried below thick layer of dust as MP3/OGG/AAC are exchanged by all possible means. (And I'd say external hard drives play not so little role in friend-to-friend (sneakernet's analogue of P2P) content exchange even now.)
Internet or sneakernet, human nature hasn't changed by a bit: if we enjoy something, we want to share that with others. And copyright laws cannot change that.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
"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.
+1 Insightful.
You've hit it spot-on. The rich aren't going to be getting richer quite as fast as they used to, and they're upset about it. And of course you know the golden rule, "he who has the gold, makes the rules."
Re: The Bible, you can see such a scaminario right now.
Just look at the two most recent large-scale cults in existence: Latter-Day Saints and Scientology.
LDS gives away their book. For free. To ANYONE who wants one, two, three, whatever. Yeah, they're kooks and irrepressibly gullible, but once you get past that, they are actually usually pretty good people - strong morality, strong family bonds, strong ethical sense, hyper-polite. If I were looking for a sales force I'd hire them in a heartbeat. Yeah, their men spend 2-3 years on "mission" trying to peddle their religion to others - but if you can walk away from a job like that, from KNOWING you will have doors slammed in your face or worse, you can sell anything. Yes, when you get closer to their central enclave in Utah, they get downright clannish and antisocial towards anyone who won't be converted after repeat attempts. Yes, I would describe their system as ultimately a "Cult." But they're a cult I can put up with and they don't spend their time trying to hide their doctrine, as opposed to our next exhibit...
The Cult of Scientology. What you have here is essentially a giant ponzi scheme that rolled a cross in the door and put collars on the "clergy" (whoops that's "auditors") in order to dodge the law. Scientology is famous for charging you into intense debt just to learn the "religious doctrine", and launching lawsuits and worse at anyone who exposes them. Hell, they even have an official policy for ordering a murder. Be very careful if you ever hear one of them mention R2-45: that's their newspeak for "murder someone", coming from the idea of shooting someone twice (R2) with a .45-caliber gun.
If you're in the Cult, the only way you keep your skin intact is either to (a) become a high ranking member (top level of the ponzi scheme), (b) an indentured slave of the Cult, or (c) be a rich celebrity (Tom Cruise, Greta Van Susteren, etc) who functions as a "recruiter" for the Cult and gets the "services" of the Cult for free.
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.
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.
It's right there. There's the proof. Which is first on his list? The *IAAs, not the creators. Then to solidify Moryath's point, he goes on and lists newspapers. Newspapers are not being hurt by piracy. Newspapers lost the battle in the 90's when they couldn't get their act together, just like how the *IAAs are suffering now because of clowns like this CEO.
The creators can do just fine without the businesses. Are you telling me you actually think XKCD or Penny Arcade could exist without the internet? Or that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah becomes an international success without it (I can go to a karaoke place in BFE Japan and sing their songs and I can count the number of westerners on one hand there)? Or that the Simpsons are parodying OK Go - Here It Goes Again without the internet? Does Serenity get made without the internet? Creators will be perfectly ok with the internet, the monkeys on their back, however, are up shit creek without a canoe.
Copyright is a temporary ceding of our right to our culture to be an incentive to encourage people to produce. The businesses, afraid of losing their free money, panicked and extended it to outrageous lengths and the people rightly revolted. The problem with intellectual property is that it's also our culture. It's who were are, it's how we talk to each other. But with the stranglehold that these leaches have on it, we're losing it.
And I can't beat you with that, I'll fall back on, "the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
I think the most interesting thing is that he doesn't actually comprehend what he himself is saying:
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.
Okay so far...
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.
Yes, what you are saying there is "we realize that to compete on the Internet where there is a lot of choice available to potential customers we need to meet their expectations for service, pricing, experience, and so forth. If we don't they may end up going elsewhere, and that's a huge problem for us!".
Perhaps if all the big players had spent as much time investing in the internet as they had fighting it in past they would be in less of a predicament.
I want service on my terms at a reasonable price without abuse of our relationship through the likes of DRM. If you can't even come close to my terms then we don't do business. It works that way in the real world, why do you think it should work differently online? Too often studios are so threatened by piracy that they impose such abhorrent terms on potential customers that nobody wants to be an actual customer. It's a self fulfilling prophecy perpetuated by the studios themselves.
Why can't I download FLAC from the majority of online stores for the same price I can download an MP3, or even at all? Why can't I download a movie in high quality without DRM? We both know it's technically possible, we both already know I can get the content elsewhere, and so far as the studios refuse to cater to what I'm looking for at a reasonable price realistically they can't expect anything other than what they're seeing.
Please... as someone that grew up in a "Soviet state" I perfectly know what Communism should have been... and what we had was not Communism. A part from this (old, re-hashed, western propaganda/ignorance) mistake, I agree with what you said. But please drop the "Communism = Soviet Dictatorship" examples... really.
I would say less 'speed bump' and more 'toll booth'. These companies are less interested in protecting anyone, including the artists that they allegedly server, and more interested in extorting as much money out of everyone as they can for as long as possible. Given the extension of copyright laws (and the likely extension they'll see again.) over the years it's as though they've started erecting the toll booths on public roads as well.
Fuck you.
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