On Pandora’s box, buggy whips, and big pots of money with which to sue people…
We know who the internet’s biggest crybaby is, finally. It’s Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton. Echoing the lamentations of buggy whip makers when decrying the despicable horseless carriages, Lynton has this to say about the internet:
http://www.wwd.com/media-news/fashion-memopad/memo-pad-uniqlo-nabs-deyn-bad-internet-classic-martha-2136751?src=rss/recentstories/20090515#/article/media-news/fashion-memopad/memo-pad-uniqlo-nabs-deyn-bad-internet-classic-martha-2136751?page=2Sorry about the gross URL… Here’s a tinyurl version:
http://tinyurl.com/odxjuq“I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet,” said Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton. “Period.”
Further, it’s all OUR fault.
“Lynton wasn’t just trying for a laugh: He complained the Internet has “created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.”
You can just TASTE his angst, his personal demons. His hatred for the things his customers crave oozes from every pore, flavors his every word. The worst part of course is that this particular buggy whip maker has a HUGE pot of money to both sue his customers, and attempt to buy enough influence to make the bad bad internet go away, to take it away from the very people who created it. And that’s the thing – he does not understand that the content his company creates is merely one flavor of candy available in the huge candy store called the internet. To abuse the analogy, his company did not create the internet any more than the guy who puts red food coloring into skittles built the candy store, yet he’s trying to shut down the world’s biggest candy store because although he makes billions of dollars selling those red skittles, some kids insist on grabbing a few handfuls without paying (the lament of market street vendors for centuries, but he doesn’t see that either).
His answer is of course to shut it all down, make the customers come to him on his own terms. I don’t think he understands what he’s asking for. I’ve bought more media of various types in the last year than I ever did in all the years before the internet, and not one bit of it was from a physical store. I’m never again going to drive across town to buy a CD or a movie. Not gonna happen.
Since he obviously can’t see what everyone thinks of his worldview, it’s probably too much to hope someone will hand him a copy of the mythological story of Pandora’s Box in the hope he’ll figure it out himself.
