A top Sony executive has revealed how in touch the outfit is by secretly wishing that the Internet was switched off.

It seems that if Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton had his way he would have the Internet switched off. He told a panel about the future of film making that he as a "guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet, period."

Lynton moaned 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. Give it to me now,' and if you don't give it to them for free, they'll steal it."

This might explain why the luddites who are behind the film and music industry moved at glacial speed to develop a method of distributing films on the web and believed that the only way to deal with the net was to sue users.