And you filthly pirates mean the end of art and culture...
Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, last week
made waves by boldly proclaiming he "doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet." Lynton proclaimed the Internet "created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time." "They feel entitled," he whines. "They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it," insists the CEO. In an editorial over at the
Huffington Post, Lynton continues his tirade, echoing complaints of previous entertainment industry executives:
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.
There's a lot of dumb things said in the piracy debate by the entertainment industry, but perhaps the dumbest tends to be the
repeated suggestion that if the current entertainment-industry business model collapses, art itself will somehow suffer and/or die. Of course in reality art lives on even if it can't be commercialized, and the quality might even improve.
With broadband destroying his cozy role as middleman between the artist and the consumer, it's not too surprising that Lynton would be angry. But by suggesting that broadband is a force of pure chaos and that customers demanding more from him are selfish -- he ignores a massive slew of potential new business models, and displays a shocking amount of ignorance for a chief executive officer.
It's not too surprising that Lynton ignores the fact that the entertainment industry brought much of their problems upon themselves, by fighting creative adaptation to broadband at every turn, suing consumers, pushing for restrictive DRM "solutions" that punished paying users, and now pushing for legislation globally that would terminate the connections of potential customers. While Lynton may not see anything good coming out of the Internet, it's fairly certain the Internet doesn't see anything good coming out of Mr. Lynton.
