Sony cancels "The Interview"; Wise or Foolish?

Great Debates
21

[Quote=CJJ]
BTW, there’s been a lot of chatter criticizing “liberal” Hollywood for caving in to terrorist demands. IMO that criticism is misplaced; Sony the multinational corporation functions to put profits first, without regard to patriotism, free-speech principles, or setting a precedent for future bullies. This is exactly what it is supposed to do. If you don’t like it, blame capitalism.
[/QUOTE]

Exactly.

Pulling the movie was the first wise move made in the situation, and it came after many foolish decisions like: green lighting the movie, not having adequate computer security, and bad mouthing famous actors and executives via email.

I think people don’t realize how risk averse movie makes are. This movie was supposed to be a relatively cheap movie that would make it’s money back and would have a small shot to become a sleeper hit. The line between a money maker and a loser is pretty thin, and all of this bad publicity and theaters not showing the film means they likely would have suffered much bigger losses than they accounted for. Executives don’t want any headaches, especially when the source of those headaches is a movie by like this made by a guy like Seth Rogan. This movie, assuming it’s like Rogan’s other movies, isn’t high art or even something execs can be proud to have made. It’s basically a comedic farce that is in bad taste and would like add very little to their bottom line or standing in the industry. This is not the hill ANY of them want to die on.

This fiasco has already cost them millions because of the hack, and has some people calling for the jobs of high level execs. Amy Pascal, the chairwomen of Sony pictures, is trying to keep her job. She doesn’t care that anyone sees this movie just to prove a point. Someone in that position always has people wanting to cut her down to take her job. In a situation like this you stop the bleeding and minimize the damage. Pulling the movie was a no brainier.

22

I am assuming you aren’t a Sony shareholder or exec, because telling the owners of this global corporation that you lost $X million dollars so that people can see this movie you mistakenly agreed to distribute and that led to a significant and expensive hack, is gonna cost you your job.

23

What makes you think the hackers are going to leave AMC alone because they submitted to blackmail? On what basis do you trust them to keep the implied contract of “I give up - don’t hurt me”?

Regards,
Shodan

24

I don’t really see this as much as an existential “American society under threat” issue as most seem to be seeing it.

Sony owns the rights to this movie (as far as I understand entertainment law, which is not at all), it’s at their discretion as to whether or not they release said movie. Someone essentially threatens them / blackmails them to make them not release the movie, Sony caves.

The only real place where I see this is a big issue is government does have a job to prevent illegal threats and blackmails, but Sony is the victim here, and they chose to not avail themselves of government resources. At least as Obama tells it, they didn’t ask him first, they made the decision on their own to cave. I think if they had reached out saying “we need help with this” the government would then have onus (like it would for any citizen or company) to help protect Sony and to protect the movie theaters. But that didn’t happen, instead Sony has made the decision to go the other way. It’s akin to a ransom situation, FBI/local police always tell you not to pay a kidnapper’s ransom, but you have the option to do so. Sony essentially exercised such an option.

This is one company in a specific situation, and I don’t see it as having broad implications for the United States. I think that the government response and I also believe the corporate response would be different if this was a different situation, like a newspaper being told not to publish an expose on North Korean gulags lest “bad things happen.” That’s the real core of our freedom of speech, and would probably be defended.

With Sony, I think this whole movie was actually ill advised. Historically we haven’t done movies where we so negatively portray heads of state of nations we have “troubled” relations with. Even the Charlie Chaplain movie that mocked Hitler, didn’t mock Hitler by name. Further, I think there is also an argument that this kind of movie actually trivializes a guy who is actually a brutal, dictatorial monster. I don’t think it actually is wise to make the Kims out to be funny evil dictators, you need to drop the “funny” part of that. FWIW, after Chaplin heard about the concentration camps he regretted making his movie, because he said situations like that aren’t appropriate grounds for comedy.

Broadly though, I do think we are getting to a point where we need to establish some doctrine by which we recognize cyber attacks as actual attacks and make it known that just as an actual attack may result in military action, so too could a cyber attack. I think it’s important the United States establish that if someone breaks our natural gas pipelines or electric grid we aren’t going to look at it one or the other just because they broke it with software instead of by blowing them up.

25

I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the fact that Sony has currently taken the film off the roster means that we’ve given in to their demands.

If you’re dealing with a kidnapper, for example, you don’t just refuse to talk to them. You make the pretense that you’re giving in, so as to give yourself time to track them down and give them opportunities to expose themselves.

Bad publicity? Usually, this sort of exposure would be awesome. It’s free advertising, and going to watch the movie is like a free punch to the face to Lil’ Kim from every viewer.

26

Does such insurance even exist? How would it work, given the traditional “Hollywood Accounting” process where no movies make a profit on paper? What if Sony releases the movie sometime later? Do they have to pay it back?

I think that everyone involved made rational decisions, but the outcome is not a good one. It’s hard to figure out how to change things, though.

The theaters heard of a specific threat being made to them if they show the movie, and decided not to show the movie. Out of an excess of caution? Probably. But that’s how we react to threats. If someone calls in a bomb threat, you evacuate. You don’t try to ascertain if the bomb threat is credible. You evacuate and hope that law enforcement finds the guy making the threat.

People have pointed out that they didn’t pull the Batman movie from theaters even after someone shot up the theater (not in this thread, but on the internets), but that comparison is missing the point:

  1. The guy didn’t threaten to shoot up the theater. He just did it. No warning.
  2. They caught the guy right after, and there were no future threats.

Once the theaters decided to pull the movie, then Sony is in a pretty tough position. Sure, they could release anyway, but they stand to lose a lot of money to do so. Movies make most of their money on opening weekend. If you open and few theaters show it, you’ve wasted your whole marketing budget.

I fully expect that Sony will release this movie in the future. They won’t have as big an opening as they wanted originally, but they’ll be better off than if they went ahead now.

If threats like this become more prevalent (and it seems like they might), we might need some way of indemnifying businesses for continuing on in the face of (probably) empty threats.

27

On what basis do you think that AMC is still at risk when the Norks have totally won this round? There’s certainly a chance that they may still go off an launch cyber attacks on theaters, but isn’t the point of blackmail to get what you want and move on?

28

A somewhat off-topic question, but not significant enough for its own thread:

Is this the first time North Korea engages in hacking / cyberterrorism? If so, it’s a pretty damn impressive debut.

29

I think the Norks have done a lot of it before.

30

Yep, you’re quite right.

31

Before, the film was a crapfest that had to have the hell promoted out of it so it could have a decent opening weekend, 'cause there wasn’t going to be any real money coming in from it after that. Now, it’s a Cause - The Film They Won’t Let You See. When there finally is a release, there is going to be a lot of demand from the “They can’t push us around, America Fuck Yeah!” contingent. Sony literally can’t buy publicity like it’s getting now.

32

Something you might or might not find amusing. Way back in 2004 some people at various Republican Conventions used to hand out buttons which said “God’s Own Party” with the first letter in each word bolded in red.

I joked that it sounded better in Arabic because in Arabic “God’s Own Party” is Hezbollah.

33

I do not doubt you, sir, but I am surprised that there is no “Allah” in there.

34

Appeasement invites further manipulation.

35

What makes you think they won’t? Where does your insight into these hackers thoughts and ethos come from? On what basis do you not trust them to keep the implied contract of “I give up - don’t hurt me”?

:dubious:

36

There is.

37

The word is there indeed:

38

Never dealt with bullies in your life, I take it? :smack:

39

ElvisLives and Gigobuster, I thank you both for fighting my ignorance. :slight_smile:

40

Well said, Sir, well said.