Sony Cancels The Interview Over Hacking Threat - Update

[RJ Dalton]

Aww . . . :C

Everybody's already said what I was going to say . . . Guess I should have seen that coming really.

 

[DancesWithWerewolves]

If Sony truly supports its filmmakers' abilities to make the movies they want, they need to get on digital distribution of this film. Put it on the website on-demand for $8 or something.

If it doesn't move the meter, they still released the film and recouped some of its production cost. If there's a lot of positive feedback, it might open the door for a digital distribution system that bypasses physical theaters all together.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Well, looks like, as always, the pirates will win out in the end.

Not really, it still has Seth Rogan in it.

I'm not one to blame the victim, but it's Sony's dumbass fault for not having any digital security in place. I mean they got hacked by North Korea!

 

[Westaway]

Sony made the right call. There were threats being made (by a tyrannical government, mind you) to real-world businesses and lives, just weeks after that same government followed through on a previous threat and unleashed one of the largest and most brazen cyberterrorist attacks in history.

It is not the job of a movie studio--much less a theater--to judge the credibility of threats from a terrorist state, nor to counter those threats. If a crazy man runs up to you on the street and says, "I have a gun, give me your money," you don't go, "Ho hum, I don't know, I don't want to set a precedent; do you REALLY have a gun? How big of a gun are we talking here?" No: you give the guy your wallet, and then you call the fucking cops, the guys whose job it is to take care of crazy guys who may-or-may-not-have-guns.

If there was even a .000001% chance that the threat was credible, then Sony made the only possible ethically-responsible call. Else tomorrow we might be reading a very different headline.

You want to know who to be mad at? Be mad at the government of North Korea, and at the state department which shrugged its shoulders and mumbled, "It's not a credible threat," to this whole ordeal. Be mad at a President (and I *LIKE* President Obama! I voted for him TWICE!) who lets a dictator-state bully around companies and dictate the terms of our culture.

But don't blame Sony. I know it might not seem like it, because they're this big faceless corporation that makes a lot of movies that aren't all that good, but yes, they were THE VICTIM here. And I think it's absolute crap to demonize or chastise them for not telling a violent fascist dictatorship, "G'head, I'm pretty sure you're bluffing this time; come at me bro!"

North Korea lives off of empty threats. They literally make dozens each year. Precisely no one is afraid of North Korea. They're a laughing stock. Movies like The Interview are made because even stoners know to laugh at North Korea.

 

[Souplex]

Theater chains of America:
You've let the terrorists win.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

On the negative side, this is a stupid decision and a victory for cyberterrorism.

On the positive side, at least the world is briefly delayed from having to put up with yet another James Franco/Seth Rogen stoner humour movie.

 

[geizr]

So, how much has Sony spent in production and advertising for this movie? How much would it have cost to have properly upgraded their security by now? Didn't they already post some record losses recently?

Not that I would have gone to see this movie myself, cause it looked utterly stupid (only Seth Rogen movie I recall ever seeing is "This Is the End", and that sucked, too) and in extremely poor diplomatic taste (I have no love for North Korea, but, sometimes, there are things that are just clearly bad ideas, like making a movie about killing an insane man-child dictator), but I have to agree with other posters that this does set a very dangerous precedent, not only granting validity to terrorists but to any snot-nosed bratty hacker that wants to stir up trouble just for the lols. Honestly, if incidents like this continue escalating and becoming more frequent, I foresee a not very free Internet in the near future. Maybe I'm being too alarmist, but actions do have consequences, folks.

 

[shintakie10]

Im sad about this for 2 reasons.

One, the idea of their being an attack on movie theaters by North Korea is laughable at best. North Korea makes dozens of pointless empty threats a year. Every year they threaten to wipe South Korea off the map for every single pathetic reason they can think of, yet every year there's South Korea. I would go out and buy a hat just to eat if they could actually pull anythin remotely like that off.

Two, I actually really wanted to see it. I made plans to sneak out of familial obligations in order to go see it. Now I'm stuck dealin with family time instead of enjoyin myself with a Seth Rogen movie.

 

[Ashley Blalock]

Well I guess it's time to boycott Sony movies if they are going to cave to terrorist. Although given the films Sony Studios has been putting out people will not be missing much by boycotting Sony.

But hey I guess next time some fandom doesn't want a crappy Hollywood version of something released all they have to do is make a bunch of empty vague 9-11 style treats. Although if it saves us from another Transformers, GI Joe, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie maybe we need to see if North Korea can get pissed off at Paramount Studios next. I mean hell Sony caved to Kim Jong-Un fanboys and they aren't nearly as viscous as Transformers fans.

 

[ajr209]

The movie was meant to be out a week from now, hackers or not why the hell would you cancel it this close to the date. Threats of this nature have been circulating round this film since its announcement and now you decide that its too big of a risk to release. There is no reason why you shouldn't go on with the release now that you are this deep into it

Unless of course they wanted to shelve it and just needed something they could use as a viable excuse to do so. Pretty much everything I've seen and heard points to the studio having next to no faith in it and that it is an humiliatingly awful pile of crap. That means sony's decision might be less "aww...we want to show this but... lives" and more "whew, thank god we don't have to put that out and cause an emergency shareholder's meeting".

Even if I'm wrong on that Can you imagine that shit storm that would happen if they didn't pull the movie and the hackers followed through with their threats? They've gotten a ton of horrible PR from having their dirty laundry plastered everywhere and I doubt they want to add being the company that risked movie goer's lives just to put out a crummy Rogan/Franco vehicle that they didn't particularly care about to the growing list of reasons people are pissed at them.

 

[Strazdas]

I wanted to be surprised and angry at this but its just... meh. terrorism seems to win every time nowadays. Spineless companies ftw.

All the world will denounce the SONY.

Well i sure do now that they pulled this.

They should just make it public domain, as a big middle finger to the hackers.

This is Sony. they would rather go bancrupt lobbying a new copyright law than let anything reach public domain.

If there was even a .000001% chance that the threat was credible, then Sony made the only possible ethically-responsible call. Else tomorrow we might be reading a very different headline.

This is unworkable. if this amount of chance was enough then you should never leave you house, nor you should enter it for danger of death. in fact you should stop breathing too because you may breath in some toxins.

If the threat was credible they should have contacted proper authorities to decide what security measures to take.

This premise of yours is ridiculous because its never going to work. if we cancel everything for every threat than anyone can dictate release of anything just by fear. the ONLY way to stop those threats is to not give in to them.

I repeat: just weeks before, the same WORLD GOVERNMENT making the threat FOLLOWED THROUGH ON A PREVIOUS THREAT AND LAUNCHED ONE OF THE LARGEST CYBERTERRORIST ATTACKS IN HISTORY.

And those terrorists should be found and arrested, instead of giving them exactly what they want.

What exactly are you basing the scale of this cyber attack from? What source or sources is saying this is one of the largest? You need scale and sources here.

New York Times claim:
"While intelligence officials have concluded that the cyberattack was both state-sponsored and far more destructive than any seen before on American soil, there are still differences of opinion over whether North Korea was aided by Sony insiders with knowledge of the company?s computer systems, senior administration officials said."[/quote]

So hacking ability= Military might

This is 21st century where everything uses computers. therefore - YES.

All people really need to do get money from sony if they chose to show the movie is someone shouting "BOMB!". The following panic/stampede will cause injury then followed by the law suit.

what law suit. how can you sue Sony for somone shouting "bomb" in a theater? what kind of warped logic allows that?

 

[Triality]

Guys, guys, guys, terrorism won? Look at this pull quote:

All the world will denounce the SONY.

will denounce the SONY.

the SONY.

...

Anyone want to take a stab that this was written by a North Korean? Because Korean (the language) doesn't have the word "the" and you can bet your ass someone that doesn't know how to use the word can be trusted to misuse it all the same.

No, no, terrorism didn't win. COMMUNISM WON! YOU LET COMMUNISM WIN THIS TIME CAPITALISM! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!

 

[144_v1legacy]

Don't give up yet. I still think there's something we can do. I think it might take someone like Jon Stewart or John Oliver to rally the people, but maybe we can change Sony's decision! All companies see every decision they make through a money-filtered lense. No matter how many lives may be lost from terrorism, if the loss of revenue from the resulting lawsuits after loss of life would be less than the loss of revenue from the backlash from the decision, they'll change their mind! So how do we make them see backlash?

All forms of negative Sony hate! Send them feedback! Everywhere you can, trend how much you hate Sony right now (not the PS4 part of Sony, just the movie part, I'm not saying this as an anti-Sony thing, but as a pro-The Interview thing) and make the internet ablaze with negative sentiments of that company. If they feel bad enough, they may be pressured to say something like "we said we weren't going to show it on the 25th, but that's just because we were delaying it, not cancelling it."

All the world will denounce the Sony? Yes, they will now.

 

[webkilla]

Well, if nothing else now that North Korea pulled this stunt and threatened Sony to pull the release the movie will likely get a lot more people to come watch it, once it comes out

The funny thing is that the few pre-release reviews I've seen of it so far actually say that the movie is kinda meh

But we'll see

This is certainly drumming up a shitload of attention for the movie.

 

[Ferisar]

Guys, guys, guys, terrorism won? Look at this pull quote:

All the world will denounce the SONY.

will denounce the SONY.

the SONY.

...

Anyone want to take a stab that this was written by a North Korean? Because Korean (the language) doesn't have the word "the" and you can bet your ass someone that doesn't know how to use the word can be trusted to misuse it all the same.

No, no, terrorism didn't win. COMMUNISM WON! YOU LET COMMUNISM WIN THIS TIME CAPITALISM! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!

"Communism" won. Communism has never won anything, ever. (Which I personally think is quite sad because it'd be interesting to see an actual outcome that came from a functional communist society, if just for the sake of examination). But yeah, still. Are we really going to bend to baseless bullshit from a country that is trying very hard to be acknowledged? I get why this happened, but I don't know why SONY waited this long. Threats of bombing seem less severe then threats of open warfare which were given... One year ago? I think?

 

[WWmelb]

To everyone saying FUCK SONY for giving in to the terrorists... just think for a moment. Yeah it sucks that this kind of thing happens and yes maybe it might set a bad precedent. However...

Sony Pictures is a business. Sure there may only be a .1% chance of anything happening, but still A chance, however slim.

If something did happen, Sony Pictures would now cease to exist. 100% cease to exist due to outcry of them ignoring the threat, lawsuits, you name it.

They may lose a few million from this decision, but is the entire company, and all those jobs and people who rely on them for their income worth the risk?

I guarantee you that they had a lot of people inside and outside assessing the risk, including government agencies, and after deliberation deemed the risk nowhere near worth it. I probably would have made the same call.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It's totally not an impossibility, but making actual threats against the public is the kind of desperate move even Sony hasn't sunk low enough to make.

Oh I'm not saying that the threats are a part of the conspiracy. Just that their decision not to release the movie was made to hype it even more and then release it.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

You know, considering how it wasn't that long ago people were killed in theaters on the Dark Knight Rises release date. (Or around there.) I'm kinda with Sony on this one.

Yeah, lives mean more then money at any rate.

All these people calling Sony Cowards... you're kinda assholes. It doesn't take much to kill people, even one over-eager guy with a gun can ruin the day of many more people.

Sure, more then likely it was a bluff but, Seriously?

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

It's totally not an impossibility, but making actual threats against the public is the kind of desperate move even Sony hasn't sunk low enough to make.

Oh I'm not saying that the threats are a part of the conspiracy. Just that their decision not to release the movie was made to hype it even more and then release it.

Oh, this did give them a great opportunity to grab, and as long as the don't discuss that plan by email, there's no way anyone can prove they were going try profiting off this. They still will suffer a big backlash if the world did find out they canceled with the intention of increasing demand.

I guess I'm not a good conspiracy theorist. I need to go look up some better foil hat designs.

Captcha: game is up
It knows. It knows.