I’m sure I read that headline at some point in the 15th century…  That pesky Gutenberg!  Taking work away from all those monks toiling away illuminating manuscripts…

Now we have Sony Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton, a great guy, a brilliant guy, and a former CEO of AOL no less, making a stupid comment the other day at a conference and being quoted in the Hollywood Reporter.  See below.  If I were Michael Lynton’s mother, I would be very embarrassed that my son, a Harvard graduate, could have lost sight of the forest…. Such a shame… http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i3e5aa5e0b30aa48e395d31e29c5470d1

Michael’s upset that the Internet is having a negative impact on his bottom line, and he wants more copyright cops in D.C. to protect his eggs.

How can someone have run the biggest online service and still not understand the ‘Net?  Michael!  It’s too late!  It’s all over!  The horses aren’t coming back!  You’re not going to make people respect copyrights when the content is figuratively falling off the trees.

Instead of being a victim of software and video pirates, an apologetic re-purposer and re-packager of tentpole product pandering to the core demographic, why don’t you turn your brilliance to figuring out a new content development, production and distribution model?  Stop blaming bad movies on the shrinking video market, higher advertising costs and piracy!  Stop diverting our attention away from mindless sequels and a failing business model by blaming the greatest media distribution opportunity in the history of the planet (uh, I mean the ‘Net). 

There’s a term for this: cognitive dissonance.  He sees the truth, but refuses to believe it.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

I am not just fed up with this kind of attitude from Media leaders, I am terrified.  Don’t they realize that all that separates us from our brethren in the music business is a few more megabytes of bandwidth, a few short years, and perhaps a teensy bit more loyalty to going to the movies than going to the record store. 

Michael’s panel at Syracuse included Anne Hathaway and Nora Ephron.  Two talented ladies, but what were they doing there?  “The future of filmmaking” was the name of the panel.  Please, everyone, stop.  There is no future for filmmaking.  Filmmaking is no longer a defined artform living in its own silo.  And you know me: I’m all for telling stories and figuring out how to tell them in today’s very peripatetic and fragmented world.  But this can’t be about preserving what was or what worked in the past because that’s the only way you know to make art or to make a living.

Maybe it’s just the way the proceedings were reported, but it’s never a good idea for anyone, particularly an artist like Ms. Hathaway, to be quoted as saying that “People get so hung up on economics…” Yeah, like, good for you for doing an art film once in a while between taking home a big payday in a studio movie.

We’ve all got to work at monetizing the ‘Net.  Sure, Lynton’s frustrated that he hasn’t figured it out yet, and, in fairness, I am sure that he is losing sleep over this.

But he’s got to look at the ‘Net as an opportunity, because if he sees it as a threat, it will swallow him very quickly.  From the looks of it, he’s about halfway down the gullet right about now…