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.'"

Comments

I'm a guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Who doesn't see anything good having come from Sony

Re:I'm a guy

[vintagepc]

...Except the fun people had mailing them bricks in pre-paid envelopes when they recalled their DRM-laden music CDs in Spring 2007.

Re:I'm a guy

[Moryath]

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 The comic pages of the newspaper have been replaced by webcomics but that's not necessarily a bad thing either - either you adapt, like Scott Adams, or you don't and you perish.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."

Re:I'm a guy

[mdwh2]

Yet he posts his views ... on the Internet. Period.

He then refers to the "blogosphere", trying to reduce all criticism to a single entity: "Now, the blogosphere does not take so kindly to provocations like that"

Lynton may have been privileged to have been offered a publication in a traditional news site, on account of him being CEO of some company, but his words written on the Internet are no different to any kind of blogger. Period.

On what basis does he claim that newspapers have been harmed? Even if we accept that Internet piracy is causing harm, where is all the newspaper-piracy? Are people distributing copies of the Huffington Post on bittorrent? Is there a Napster for Broadsheets?

Period.

Re:I'm a guy

[beelsebob]

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!

Re:I'm a guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent comment.

He reminds me of the Catholic church shortly after the invention of the printing press. Life was going to end once the unwashed masses got their fingers into the realm of the intellectual & financial elite.

And as for his "nothing good" comment, maybe Sony should just give back all the money it has made from online games since nothing good came of it...

Re:I'm a guy

[Opportunist]

I'm fairly sure there are limits to what crap you can find on bittorrent. Things that don't even warrant the abuse of electrons to transmit them.

Or, as I like to put it, my traffic is too good for that crap.

Re:I'm a guy

[Opportunist]

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".

Re:I'm a guy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I'm a guy

[Dan541]

Well this is a malware company after all.

Re:I'm a guy

[ThePhilips]

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.

Re:I'm a guy

[wilhelm]

+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:I'm a guy

[Moryath]

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.

Re:I'm a guy

[shoemilk]

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."

Re:I'm a guy

[DigitAl56K]

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.

Re:I'm a guy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I'm a guy

[characterZer0]

The problem is that people really really want to buy stuff with low profit margins.

Re:I'm a guy

[cjsm]

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.

Re:I'm a guy

[jmorris42]

> In the meantime, you're being completely disingenuous yourself. 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.

Yes the Internet has made things a little easier, but not as much as you seem to believe. I'm guessing you are too young to remember 'user groups'. All you needed was a couple of systems setup with two floppy drives and you were off to the races. A floppy could be copied in a minute flat on the better systems, a bit longer on the slow crappy serial based systems like the C64 and Atari. And copy they did, for hours while the users talked and talked. It was typical for everyone who attended semi-regular to have several shoe boxes of copied software.

Now it would be less practical because media capacity has outstripped transfer speed a little, but it is still pretty darned fast to dupe DVDs, especially if you cache the read and settle into stamping out multiple copies. CDs can even get pretty close to that one minute per copy speed of yore.

But what would totally reimagine sneakernet would be a new file sharing protocol that would allow two people to connect their disparate devices (laptop, mp3 player, smartphone, etc) on a local (wired or wireless) link and basically smartly sync everything between them. Smart in the sense that each user could set rules to decide what they want to receive so they don't fill up their device with a bunch of stuff they don't want. Have it remember you refused that pile of every episode of (insert name of series you don't particularly like) on your co-workers stash and never grab it even if it disappears and later shows back up on their laptop. Let the **AA clamp down on the Internet and watch how fast what I just described gets invented and popularized.

Give storage a few more doublings in capacity and music becomes a 'Pokemon' exercise. The top level packrats 'have em all' as in first every song that ever charted, then to every album commercially released and finally just every audio recording one could ever want. All available for sharing (via Internet or sneakernet) and spread around the world in so many locations no **AA effort could ever stamp it out. A few years later the same happens to movies and then TV shows. Children will be given a copy of 'everything' by their parents, supplemented by the cool new stuff by their friends.

How does the **AA continue to exist when that world appears? I believe the idea of copyright has merit even if the current eternal copyright is taking things way too far. But what I believe doesn't matter, the tech is coming and nothing I say or do, nothing you say or do, nothing the **AA says or does, nor even what government says, does or legislates is going to do more than hasten or delay that change a year or so.

Re:I'm a guy

[BrokenHalo]

The greatest artists of the past, Mozart, Bach, Shakespeare, worked for a pittance comapred to what artists make nowadays.

Yes and no. Yes, they worked for a pittance, because the only way an artist could survive then was to use his craft for the benefit or enjoyment of his patron. But the majority of artists in our age (unless they manage to hit an uncommon seam of luck) have to find other means to feed themselves and their families.

Many current artists make ends meet by using their talents either under corporate sponsorship or (more directly and lucratively) in the advertising industry. I don't think we can truly draw much of a distinction between the environments of most modern artists from that of Johann Sebastian. (Though for my own part, if I were forced to make a choice, I would have to say there has never been a musician whose stature equals that of JSB.)

Re:I'm a guy

[clone53421]

I'm pretty certain that most of the crazies will still be crazies whether or not they're able to find a religious excuse to rationalise it.

Re:I'm a guy

[Dun Malg]

QED, the ideal form of any given economic system cannot survive contact with reality.

GP poster renders moot OP's silly argument about soviet != communism, and your post is true--- and also is apropos of nothing anyone claimed. Good job!

freedom with restraint is no freedom at all......

[Shakrai]

Just saying.....

I don't buy it

[jsnipy]

"Guard Rails" sounds like "Insurance for Commerce". Culture is much more than what you can sell.

Re:I don't buy it

[damburger]

"Insurance" sounds too innocent. I would say its a government subsidy for commerce. I am pretty sure Sony don't intend to pay for the draconian system of 'rules' they want enforced.

Re:I don't buy it

[dov_0]

Also 'Store times'? Who's time? From what time zone? Sheesh. This guy is stuck in the 1890's.

Re:I don't buy it

[Shakrai]

I would say its a government subsidy for commerce

Silly Sony. Don't they know they have to first run their business into the ground and ensure that it's all but worthless before they'll receive a government subsidy? ;)

Re:I don't buy it

[Opportunist]

Cut them some slack, they've been working on it for ages. Minidisc recorders with a useless, crippled format, DVDs that put trojans on your computer, they've done everything in the book to alienate their customers and lower their business. Not their fault that they even fail at failing.

Re:I don't buy it

[fictionpuss]

Well yeah. He even says "It's hard to sell a legal DVD when it can be stolen without any repercussions." If the pirates gave away DVDs for free, and Sony charged a reasonable price for DRM-free downloads of new content, then Sony would have a fantastic business model.

DVDs are a pain to store, use and purchase, when compared with a network solution. But the studios stubbornly continue to tie their own hands with their arcane marketing and distribution 'rules'.

Re:I don't buy it

[damburger]

I admit, I did buy a minidisc player in the late nineties (I was young an naive). I reckon Sony owe me anyway, so perhaps I should go and pirate some stuff now to make up for it.

Re:I don't buy it

[morgan_greywolf]

Culture is much more than what you can sell.

That's it exactly. Did Michelangelo lock the doors to the Sistine Chapel and stand outside charging $20 a head (sorry, no cameras or sketchpads allowed) to come in and see his masterpiece? No.

Did Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart charge each symphony that wanted to play his pieces a separate fee for each concert they performed? No.

Did Leonardo Da Vinci hide digital watermarks in Mona Lisa so he could make sure no one was stealing his work? No.

Does Sony think The Fugees are in the same caliber as any one of the above artists in terms of culture?

Re:I don't buy it

[JasterBobaMereel]

He does not want guardrails at the edge of the highway, he wants them across the highway so you can only go where he wants you to ....

Re:I don't buy it

[MightyYar]

Does Sony think The Fugees are in the same caliber as any one of the above artists in terms of culture?

Without Sony, we wouldn't have classic movies like Angels and Demons, Fired Up!, Obsessed, The Pink Panther 2, Quantum of Solace, or the International.

Now in all seriousness - those movies all came straight from the front page of their web site... this is apparently what they are most proud of. In that list, there is only one movie that provokes any kind of interest in me at all, and it is yet another rehash of the old Bond series. Where, exactly, is all of this creativity that he speaks of?

I look at that horrific list, and when he says that output will be reduced all I can think is, "Good!" Maybe people will go outside instead of watching this dreck.

Re:I don't buy it

[morgan_greywolf]

I look at that horrific list, and when he says that output will be reduced all I can think is, "Good!" Maybe people will go outside instead of watching this dreck.

Better yet, maybe they'll be inspired and actually create something worthwhile.

Re:I don't buy it

[Bones3D_mac]

DVDs are a pain to store, use and purchase, when compared with a network solution. But the studios stubbornly continue to tie their own hands with their arcane marketing and distribution 'rules'.

I'm actually starting to run into that problem myself. I've already resorted to bulk CD storage cases (1,000+ discs in plastic filing sleeves), which are bulky, inconvenient and damaging to the discs themselves the more I use them. Before long, I'll literally have no choice but to rip them all onto a mass storage solution to keep the content itself intact.

Considering that most "ripping" tools are outlawed now thanks to the industry, it's like they're forcing the obsolescence of my legitimately purchased content by blocking off any (technically) legal paths to shift my content over to another medium for my own use.

Re:I don't buy it

[john951]

Hey hey now, the charity radio station I contribute to has three of the overpriced, clunky and slow desktop MD decks, and they do perfectly well making complex technology accessible to the out of touch by rendering it about as mechanistic and failure-prone as a steam-driven phonograph. Wait a sec...

Re:I don't buy it

[john83]

I look at that horrific list, and when he says that output will be reduced all I can think is, "Good!" Maybe people will go outside instead of watching this dreck.

Better yet, maybe they'll be inspired and actually create something worthwhile.

Or even to explore the archives of existing culture to find something worthwhile. There are tens of thousands of movies, some of them genuinely excellent, millions of books and I have no idea how many songs and other musical pieces in our current records. Some of them are bloody good. I'm pretty sure I'd sooner delve further into the works of Hitchcock, Rachmaninov or Joyce than watch the latest piece of disposable rubbish from Dan Browne, Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. Maybe in fifty years, people will speak of Christopher Nolan or Moby or Terry Pratchett as great artists whose work is standing the test of time (though probably not!), but I'm pretty confident that Angels and Demons will be remembered only as a footnote in a one famous actor's career. Good riddance.

Re:I don't buy it

[jedidiah]

...yes: the whole "Sony wants to make it illegal for me to preserve my property" is
far more important here than how much of a bother ripping is. I OWN my copy of their
movies. I should be able to safeguard it like I might any of my other property or
data.

        I should be able to use whatever technology is available to preserve or repair
any thing that I have bought from the megacorps. They should not be in a position
to force me to buy something over again just because they want some more easy money.

Re:I don't buy it

[Aladrin]

His analogy is to for the 'getting what they want, when they want it, how they want it'... In this case, the users want it the songs digital and now. Prior to the 'release' of the album, they can only get it through BitTorrent, so they 'smash the windows and take it'. Or if he only offers it on CD, and not digital, same thing.

In other words, he's trying to restrict what users can get, and they're reacting by just taking it, since it's not worth anything to them the way he offers it.

I'm not saying the users are right, legal or ethical. But you can't just ignore their message simply because they do something illegal or unethical. In fact, it should be a HUGE RED FLAG saying that you're not satisfying demand and they're willing to break the law/their own ethics to satisfy that demand. (Keep in mind I'm only talking about the people who -would- otherwise buy, and not the ones that would steal anyhow. They don't count.)

Re:I don't buy it

[Saint Fnordius]

Well yeah. He even says "It's hard to sell a legal DVD when it can be stolen without any repercussions." If the pirates gave away DVDs for free, and Sony charged a reasonable price for DRM-free downloads of new content, then Sony would have a fantastic business model.

It's also easy to see how faulty his logic is. Bootleg copies (I abhor the term "pirated") are often of lower quality but of higher convenience. Sony thinks its right to a monopoly on making copies is where the money is at, but that horse left the barn long ago.

Apple showed that what earns money isn't merely offering the music, but having trustworthy quality. You pretty much know that the song you buy from them has proper metadata and is of high quality. People pay money for trust, and that's what record companies ought to sell: guaranteed quality and an assurance that the artist is paid.

Re:I don't buy it

[vlm]

Take a documentary like Who Killed the Electric Car, which IMDB estimates to have cost circa $1m. I am ready to believe that estimate. Equipment rental needs to be paid .....

(Snip very long, interesting list of expensive "requirements" to make a film)

..... If you thought going all-digital was going to save you money and you did all your movie in HD video, the day you want to show it in a real theater the first filmout is going to run you more than $1 a *frame*. 24 frames per second.

That's all very impressive that it takes a village to raise a child and stuff, makes me wonder how my wife makes a home movie of my kid eating birthday cake without a home mortgage loan of expenses, and its all very impossible for a mere mortal individual to make a movie, but how come, relative to the electric car movie, "The BBS Documentary" by Jason Scott is better, longer, more interesting, better packaged, had more "actors" and better graphics, better sound, better DVD mastering (w/ easter eggs and stuff) probably has a higher ROI (although admittedly probably lower total dollar amount of profit) and was done by one dude in his basement? Don't get me wrong here, for an agit-prop documentary, "who killed the electric car" is pretty good and I mostly enjoyed it. Its just the BBS documentary is better, yet was immensely cheaper than your description. Could Jason Scott have blown, say $20 million on his much more complicated documentary? Maybe, but he didn't, as far as I know.

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/

Let's put it this way, some guy comes to you and says he wants to make a documentary about the electric car. You don't know the guy. Says he needs a million bucks. I'm sure you wouldn't give him even one hundred bucks.

Didn't slow down Jason Scott, he just did his movie anyway. Doing his next video on text adventures all in HD, according to his blog. Very impressive. Interestingly, he asked for people to front him a small amount of money to buy HD gear, and plenty of people did in a very short amount of time. I would have, but didn't have time before he collected all the cash he needed.

"New media" isn't just a cheaper copy of old media, it's a whole different way of doing things. Your description is not why old media deserves big bucks, but why old media is going away.

You see chaos, I see a level playing field

[damburger]

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?

Re:You see chaos, I see a level playing field

[Opportunist]

You needed THIS comment to decide that Sony isn't what you want to buy?

Frankly, Sony has a MTBFIM (mean time between foot-in-mouth) of about 2 years, either you're new or young.

Re:You see chaos, I see a level playing field

[elrous0]

Sony has for decades now been one of the handful of big media companies that basically controlled the kingdom of all media. During that time, they came to regard that kingdom as their birthright. Then the internet came along, and fewer and fewer peasants were coming around with their tax payments and deference for the king. So now they want to take back their kingdom by force. I think that's a much better analogy than "guardrails on the information superhighway."

Re:You see chaos, I see a level playing field

[damburger]

More that I've been out of the consumer loop a while; I lived frugally and worked less for a couple of years so choosing which greedy corporation to buy electronics and media from.

Having a bit more money is a burden in many ways; so many of the things I end up spending it on are from corporations so overtly nasty they make me feel dirty associating with them.

sony reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

the cat's out the bag dude. you're either too late, or your business model is fucked.
move along, nothing to see here...

Clearly he hasn't seen ...

[Paul Pierce]

Numa Numa guy

Imagine that

[Dolohov]

"Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it"

Not at all like rich CEOs, no.

Re:Imagine that

[Opportunist]

Yes, we did. Yes, we got used to instant delivery of digital content to our PCs. We got used to being able to use the content to display on multi purpose machines (like, say, PCs) instead of having to buy a few dozen different boxes to achive the same results. We got used to ease of storage, being able to put hundreds if not thousands of songs, movies, books and other content on a single hard drive, taking up the room a single book or two CDs in jewel cases would.

Now some bozo comes in and says you can't have that. My only response is "why?". Why not? Because you don't want me to have it? You can't always get what you want, I, for one, would want people to have a clue before they're allowed to open their mouth.

But then we wouldn't ever have heard that gem from the Sony CEO. Which would be a shame. I dare say it has the potential to become about as powerful as the 'internet tubes' meme.

Re:Imagine that

[AnalPerfume]

But that's how it's supposed to work in a world created by the elite for the elite. The little people are scum who exist to toil and sweat for peanuts making the elite richer. Scum are not supposed to be allowed to get things for free, they are there to have what little they do earn claimed back in the form of mass market goods via slick psychologist advised PR campaigns. This is the natural order of things.

Re:Imagine that

[jedidiah]

> maybe the answer to "why"? is because there are people who work for years to make all that stuff, and those people have the same bills to pay that you and I do? ...and a lot of that work was DECADES ago. A lot of the stuff that we're talking
about here should already be free for the taking. It should already be public
domain. There should be enough public domain on the P2P networks to STRANGLE big
media.

Nevermind the fact that having a 1000 DVDs worth of content on the harddrive in
your PC doesn't require that the relevant artists aren't paid. This is a false
dichotomy.

All that's happened is it is EASIER to pirate than to rip your own copy.

You've criminalized the leading edge media buyer and are seeking to criminalize
their own fair use to the point where they might as well just pirate since they
are going to be criminalized anyways.

Re:Imagine that

[Opportunist]

I don't mind paying artists for their work. Quite the opposite. I want to pay them for their work! Unfortunately, more and more often I must not buy their work.

I love anime. Yet it takes years (literally) for some anime to arrive in Europe. Some don't at all. "Lone Wolf and cub" () being maybe the most notorious example, being made in 1973-76 and shown (finally!) here 3 years ago. Thirty-fuckin' years later!

Sorry, but I'm getting old. I most likely can't wait 30 years, should an anime come out today that I'd love to see I most likely won't live to see it. If I wait 'til it is generously "made available".

Music. I love music. I dread the audiocrap that's shoveled in our ears these days, though. I tend to enjoy certain fringe bands. Some of which don't ever make it to Europe. I can't get their CDs here, though. Oddly (ok, not so oddly once you know the machinations behind it) enough, the larger the studio that published them, the smaller the chance that I'll ever get to buy it legally here.

Answer me this: Why can't I buy it where it's available? I don't want to torrent it. I don't want to hope and pray that I get what I allegedly download. I don't want to deprive the artist and autor of his money and I don't want to "bootleg" it.

PLEASE let me buy it. I beg you, PLEASE!

Re:Imagine that

[jedidiah]

>> "should be free for the taking"
>
> says who?

THE LAW

You remember that?

THE LAW says that copyright is not a natural right. It's
a means to achieve a public policy objective. It's by no
means mandatory. It can infact run afoul of actual natural
rights like free speech.

This is why until relatively recently, copyrights did actually
expire. A work you were exposed to as a child might be in the
public domain by the time you had your own child.

Perpetual copyright interferes with the labors of genuine artists.

Today's guitar hero should trump McCartney's worthless heirs.

Today's musicians should get the same deal that McCartney and the
other corporate vampires got. IOW, they are free to exploit the
accumlated global human cultural heritage developed by generations
of artists over the last 10 Thousand Years.

Then they "shut the fuck up" and "get the hell out of the way" so the
next generation of artists can do the same.

McCartney's works aren't entirely his own. They are derivatives. They
depend on the other n+1 generations of artists that didn't stand over
him with a battalion of bloodthirsty barristers ready to litgate.

The old state of the law had something resembling a balance.

I am not advocating anything terribly "radical", just what copyright
law was like when the baby boomers were busy trying to be pop stars.

Perpetual copyright gives ownership to common property. Perpetual
copyright intereferes with free speech. Perpetual copyright interferes
with future creative works. Perpetual copyright interferes with the
ability to document history.

Imagine if Kurosawa's heirs decided to get all "posessive".

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[Gandalf_Greyhame]

Hitler...

Ok, done. Now can we just stop giving this dipshit publicity?

We don't need Sony though!

[91degrees]

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.

Re:We don't need Sony though!

[smd75]

Oh man, If i had downloaded Wolverine and watched it, I would have saved my self $10 by wasting my money on it. I really was unimpressed with it. Its also the problem with CDs, DVDs, Games. Im supposed to buy it with out knowing if it is worth my time and money. Then it is too late, and I hate my self a little more for buying their crap, when my gut said not to. Why do I keep doing that? I love the internet so I dont have to waste my money on crap I dont want, like 90% of the songs on CDs.

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[caffeinemessiah]

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:

1. Almost everyone will have access to it! Then my ideas will reach a wider audience, and might make a difference. This is not why I signed up to be a scholar.
2. The publisher, which makes money on journal subscriptions with my papers, will lose money. Although I will not personally be affected one bit, I can't stand the thought of those nice folks at Elsevier, Wiley and Springer losing money they make off my back, for little to no investment.

So, to hell with this unrestricted Internet thing.

great example of sony thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Great example of why sony hasn't been doing well. As opposed to changing or modifying their business model to meet the demand "after store hours" the customer should change for sony, not sony for the customer.

Michael Lynton, CEO Troll

[eldavojohn]

So you justify your statement that "nothing good has come from the Internet. Period." with

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.

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 ... yeah, I think we've been down this road.

Re:Michael Lynton, CEO Troll

[jbolden]

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.

Re:Michael Lynton, CEO Troll

[Opportunist]

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...

Re:Michael Lynton, CEO Troll

[bcrowell]

Lynton said:

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 an example of the shortage of careful analysis in his editorial. He lumps together four things: music, newspapers, movies and books. Okay, let's take these one at a time:

• Music. Here is where he has the strongest case. It's undeniably true that a large number of people illegally download a lot of music. However, there's no real evidence that this hurts legal sales of music. Sales of recorded music have shown a general upward trend over time, and they also fluctuate a lot from year to year, e.g., 1982 was a good year, driven mainly by Michael Jackson's record "Thriller." The CD format started to grow in the 1980's, and may now be starting to die, but that's sort of a normal way for a particular data format to behave. A lot of people, including me, are just finding it more convenient to buy music in digital form rather than buying it on CD.
• Newspapers. This one is totally different. The newspapers started experimenting long ago with primitive digital methods of distribution, and as the internet matured and its use became more widespread, the experiments became more and more serious and widely used. The newspapers put their own content online, and now they're finding that they don't have a viable business model anymore. This has nothing to do with illegal copying.
• Movies. He talks about South Korea as an example. But I just don't see illegal copying of movies being a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. He says an illegal copy of the new X-Men film was downloaded four million times. That isolated example is a drop in the bucket compared to the whole U.S. movie market. I know tons of people who illegally download music, but I don't know anybody who's ever illegally downloaded a movie.
• Books. Totally bogus example. There's a lot of speculation that illegal copying of books will start to have a big impact on the publishing industry, but so far it hasn't. Basically it's a lot of work to scan a book and put it online, and the resulting product (a giant PDF with scanned bitmapped pages) is not very convenient.

But, without standards of commerce and more action against piracy, the intellectual property of humankind will be subject to infinite exploitation on the Internet.

This is the closest he comes to laying out what he wants to happen, and it isn't very specific at all. What does he mean by "standards of commerce?" I have no idea. Is this his code word for pervasive DRM and trusted computing? What kind of "action against piracy" does he want? He's already got the DMCA. Does he want a new and improved DMCA II or something? If so, let's hear what he wants to go into that bill, so we can debate it.

Re:Michael Lynton, CEO Troll

[Pofy]

>I agree with most of what you are saying, but it is a fact that immaterial
>things can literally be stolen from a person... for example, an electronic
>money transfer involves no exchange of any physical goods.

So if someone copy my electronical money transfer (or electronic money) you argue someone stole from me despite I still having the money? Strange I would not see it that way.

The difference is in the creation of a NEW copy when you copy. In theft, no one creats a new copy, instead there is a change in ownership of an allready existing copy. Quite a big difference and also the laws governing them differs a lot. For example many countries has the concept of copying for privat use being perfectly legal while no country I am aware of have any laws of stealing for private use being OK.

Re:Michael Lynton, CEO Troll

[alvinrod]

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.

That horse has bolted

[192939495969798999]

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!

Open 24 Hours

[vodevil]

What he doesn't seem to understand is the little shop that is the internet is open 24 hours.

The interstate has guardrails?

[liquidsunshine]

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.

Who else smashes windows?

[Drakkenmensch]

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.

Sony saying this?

[WCMI92]

Isn't this the company that is losing billions of dollars, that is notorious for cheating their customers, installing rootkits, running their MMORPG's in an unethical manner? This is a company that for 15 years has been living off their name and the fact that it used to make rock solid quality products.

Yeah, I as a consumer SO need to be lectured on ethics by a stuffed shirt from Sony.

Re:Sony saying this?

[91degrees]

This is a very good point. Sony squandered the moral highground a long time ago.

Sometimes "piracy" is only option!

[Anonymous Coward]

[posted anonymously since I am admitting to something technically illegal]

[...] 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!

Re:Sometimes "piracy" is only option!

[Opportunist]

I got into an argument with an IFPI (our version of the RIAA) representative about the same thing. The topic was anime and the fact that it's near impossible to get them in any kind of timely manner (read: within 3 years of release in Japan) in Europe. No matter what you'd be willing to pay.

Their reply "Well, you want a TV with a built in toaster, but it doesn't exist".

No, sorry. It does exist. If it doesn't exist, why don't you build it, your customer wants it. Last time I checked, what drives the free market economy idea is that the supplier builds what the customer wants and those that don't will perish while those that do will prosper. But it does already exist. You just refuse to sell me that TV with a built in toaster. Me and a lot other people would gladly go and buy it from you. You don't offer it. Others do. Yes, they buy it from some backyard hack that just slapped together a TV and a toaster and sold it as a new gadget (I'm not kidding here, people, the discussion got to this inane level), but what if the customer just doesn't effing care?

The customer wants what he wants. Sell it to him or he'll find a way to get it. Period.

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[91degrees]

Do you mean Cue?

From the guys that hack your computer...

[MathFox]

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...

Re:From the guys that hack your computer...

[Opportunist]

By the same miracle formula that now prevents banks with poor management from walking the road many small businesses went (i.e. bankrupcy):

Too big to fail.

/. users propose

[ionix5891]

metal bars for entertainment CEOs

A real live abuse of an association meme!

[inviolet]

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:

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.

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.

Re:A real live abuse of an association meme!

[sesshomaru]

Look, I know all about Sony's thinking. I hate them. Back when I had a Playstation 1, an edict came does from the Sony of America brass. The edict? No "2-D" games for the United States.

So, I went throught the complicated process of chipping my Playstation so I could play games like Samurai Spirits and the re-release of the Mega Man games. Which I bought as imports, legally.

Well, Sony didn't like that. They did have a legitimate problem with it actually, the chip that broke their region control allowed CD copies of games to play as well. Their solution? Did they come to the conclusion of doing away with region control? How about bringing out the games they were restricting from the US market?

No, their solution was to cause legitimate games to not work on the Playstation's that were chipped. However, pirated copies of the same games worked fine.

With Sony, it has for many years been all about control, about shaping the market into what they want it to be, not finding a need and filling it. The sooner Sony is gone, the better. The little they produce of value can be made just as well by their competitors.

Cars

[DoofusOfDeath]

suggests that just as the interstate system needs guardrails, so too does the information superhighway.

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.

Re:Cars

[Opportunist]

Think of the child processes, oh won't somebody please think ...

Get with the program, Michael

[JaredOfEuropa]

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.

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.

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[qbzzt]

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.

Giving people what they want

[qbzzt]

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.

Dodging the real issues

[spydum]

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.

Re:Inaccurate Comparison

[Locklin]

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.

Who cares what Sony says?

[pecosdave]

When they decide to start wearing pants I might pay attention to them.

Severe Tire Damage

[argent]

If one, for the sake of discussion, were to accept the bad analogies in this message: don't forget that Sony are the ones who shipped CDs with that caused "severe tire damage" to people who didn't even touch them... without so much as a warning that they were going to install a rootkit on your computer. If Sony's proposing guard rails, be sure they'll be electrified to 270 kVA with spinning tungsten-carbide blades and proximity-fused claymores.

The Most Damning Comment I Can Make

[Hangtime]

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.

Analogy fail

[DaRat]

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.

Re:Give the People What They Want

[Bakkster]

I doubt I'm alone in being disappointed by Hulu and the other network TV streaming sites. NBC has awfully annoying commercial pop-ups, and most shows have only the 4 most-recent episodes available, if at all. I would watch full length commercial breaks in order to catch up on old episodes of any show that I had missed. At that point, they would have to be making more money from me than they do by my watching the same shows on Netflix, right? Heck, if the service was good enough and prices lower than cable, I might even pay a monthly rate for the convenience.

I don't need to own it, just give me the option to watch what I want, when I want it. It's not hard to be more convenient than the alternatives, just find a mildly non-invasive way to monetize.

Let them eat DRM

[damburger]

I like that metaphor. Especially because of the ultimate fate of such overtly greedy monarchies has been well documented throughout history :)

Re:Let them eat DRM

[Yvan256]

Woo-hoo! Cake!

The only thing that will suffer...

[macraig]

... 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.

[Longhair]

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.

They just don't get it

[holychicken]

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.

Creators? Inconceivable!

[argent]

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.

"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.

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[Narpak]

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.

A hopeful nazi

[Eravnrekaree]

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 wrong, but he was close to being right.

[khendron]

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.

History lessons?

[argent]

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?

I completely agree

[Dunbal]

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.

Oh no, don't make me admit it...

[durathor]

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.

Reality Is

[kenp2002]

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.

Hasn't changed

[nlawalker]

"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

I think he's...right?

[JPLemme]

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.

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[Anonymous Coward]

GTFOMP.

Get The Fuck Off My Poland ?

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[nine-times]

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."

wait, didn't he get the analogy memo?

[anothy]

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.

Good Sony, Bad Sony

[YouDoNotWantToKnow]

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.

Because we were here first!

[bughunter]

What's wrong with this picture?

1. University Nerds create internet for sharing research data.
2. Open information concept attracts more nerds, some anarchists, and a whole lotta hedonists.
3. Someone starts making money selling internet access.
4. Big Business sees a market and starts selling things on the internet; information proves most popular.
5. Big Business starts complaining that "sharing data" and "open information" conflict with its maximized profits.
6. Big Business starts demanding laws outlawing open information.

We were here first, dammit.

(And your track record precedes you, thief.)

Why S.Korea isn't buying what you're selling

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

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 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. .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.

Maybe Sony should start a for-profit business

[Cajun Hell]

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.

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.

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[avm]

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...

Re:The title for the article is wrong and misleadi

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

actually the opposite

[circletimessquare]

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

Michael Lynton is already on /.

[visible.frylock]

and suggests that just as the interstate system needs guardrails, so too does the information superhighway.

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.

He's BadAnalogyGuy!

Oh, sorry, gotta go now. My local internets are closing for the day.

The problem is...

[Kjella]

...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.

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[john83]

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

Old control freak run companies

[MindKata]

"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.

It's interesting you should say that...

[Langfat]

As someone pointed out in the last article about this asshat, he used to be the CEO of AOL Europe

XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:XKCD

[schmiddy]

I love XKCD as much as the next bloke, but let's at least be fair in our hypotheticals. Would Calvin & Hobbes* exist if Bill Watterson had been born twenty or thirty years later? I'm doubtful.

* Watterson was vehemently opposed to commercializing the art that he saw his comics to be -- hence the lack of any official C&H merchandise, as opposed to Randall's business model.

What are you willing to do if this tool wins

[moxley]

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.

Re:Give the People What They Want

[corbettw]

My wife and I recently saw an episode of 30 Rock and thought it was hysterical. So we decided to watch the entire series from start to finish. First, we checked Hulu, and they only had a few recent episodes. We were impatient and weren't willing to wait for months and months, though days or weeks were fine.

First, we checked if torrents were available. They were, up to the mid-point of Season 3. But torrents can be a pain, and we'd rather watch on our 42" TV in the media room than a 17" monitor in the office. So we added the first two seasons on DVD to our Blockbuster queue and watched them that way. It was easy and worked well.

But we hit a problem: we were behind on season 3! Rather than wait months and months for the next DVD to come out, we downloaded the torrents for the first 17 episodes, got caught up to where our DVR had started recording, then switched to watching on the DVR. Next season, we'll watch them as they show (at least, within a day or so).

The point of all this is, if it hadn't been for those torrents, we probably never would've watched the series at all. We would've lost interest in it long before the DVDs for this season came out. So yeah, NBC lost some money by us getting caught up the way we did. But now that we are caught up, they've gained another viewing household for their show. In the long run, I think they came out ahead.

Boycott

[clone53421]

Not censorship.

Re:freedom with restraint is no freedom at all....

[nine-times]

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...

The internet is not a dumptruck...

[kimgkimg]

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?

When you give back the commons you stole from us

[symbolset]

By extending copyright forever then we'll talk. Until then STFU.

Difficult to keep reading...

[SanityInAnarchy]

...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

Seems everybody gets.it. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

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 take heed

[C_Kode]

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.

More Fundamentally

[Ralish]

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.

Re:No, Censorship

[clone53421]

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.

Lynton should listen to the founder of his company

[One Louder]

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.

Freedom with restraint

[nurb432]

Is just another form of oppression.

As John Stewart so elaborately put it :

[unity100]

Fuck you.

Re:This guy can't see the forest for the trees

[Derleth]

The Internet is all about price. As you point out, quality is meaningless. If it isn't free, it is going to garner only a fraction of the interest.

I disagree. I think both iTunes and the experiences of Radiohead and Trent Reznor disprove this statement.

I think this article sums it up reasonably well: "The Great Apathetic Revolution". In summary, people will do whatever is easiest as long as it isn't absolutely insanely expensive. iTunes makes it easy to pay $0.99/track, so people do that. It's easier than finding what they want on the torrent sites. It's also easier than finding and buying the album that has the song they want, which is why Sony gets so jihaddy at them.

Today we have "clever hackers" getting their content for free and "noobs" paying the fare for everyone.

This is true. It isn't fair, but it's less unfair than it used to be: It's easier for a poor person to become clever than to become rich. The Digital Divide is self-imposed to a larger degree than previous divides have been.

comment 394

[nidomedia]

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.

**AA still doesn't 'get' Internet and code

[Finite9]

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).

Artist pay for distribution?

[skiman1979]

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.

exploiting the internet

[bugi]

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.

Sony ... Ironic

[twoHats]

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!

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 ... what a mess