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: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.