The editors of the Wall Street Journal’s view of the reaction to the hacking of Sony and the subsequent threats is similar to mine:
Capitulating to the threats of North Korea’s department of global propaganda—and the U.S. government now believes Pyongyang was behind the Sony attack—will not be remembered as a profile in Hollywood courage, and will set a precedent for further bullying of a notably weak-kneed industry.
When you’re defending billions of dollars worth of intellectual property, spending a few tens of millions to do it sounds like a pretty good bet to me. That it didn’t to Sony’s management signals that Sony’s motion picture division has a serious management problem. They’ve relied too much on lobbying the federal government as their first line of defense and there are some threats from which the federal government cannot protect them.
One of the oddest parts of the story is the apparent blessing the State Department gave to the movie. Not only that, the impression was that State did so in the context of the foreign policy value of undermining the Kim Family. NK may not be a completely paranoid regime.
PD, they are completely paranoid. That doesn’t mean there isn’t good reason for it!
While part of me wishes Sony & the theatre chains hadn’t caved, I believe their decision to be prudent.
I don’t BELIEVE NKor would launch a terror attack on a US theatre (which still leaves theatres all over the rest of the world), but I don’t know that. But then I wouldn’t have believed NKor pulling off this type of cyberattack either, both in scale or (PR) sophistication. Prudence seems the best course of action until the situation is better understood.
As for those thinking Sony & the theatre chains should have shown more balls, well, it’s easy to be bold with other people’s money. Sony etc would have been on the hook for anything that went wrong. And it’s not like you could say, “Well, the people going to the movie knew what they were getting into,” either. What about people seeing The Hobbit? Or Into the Woods? Or, hell, even The Interview? I imagine a large part of the intended audience doesn’t follow the news that carefully.
No, for reasons financial & of public safety, best to be prudent & chicken out at the moment. You can always release it later.
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All that said, still happy that the Alamo Drafthouse has decided to replace it with Team America: World Police. Alamo Drafthouse, fuck yeah!
Ellipses, you are right. I was fumbling earlier with the phrase that being paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.