“I May Punch You!”, “We Surrender Everything!”
The United States population has had to deal with a lot of startling information over the last two weeks. First, a member of the NYPD who used a chokehold on Eric Garner was not indicted by a grand jury, which hit the already aggravated nerve of racial tensions in this country. Then the CIA torture report was released, which provided a shocking look into our interrogation tactics that depending on the way you want to spin it are war crimes or according to some delusional politicians, “complete crap.” Over the last few days the United States has started to talk to Cuba for the first time in decades. Yet much of this information has been washed over by Sony Pictures recent decision to not release their film The Interview which depicts Seth Rogen and James Franco as reporters who gain the privilege to interview North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, only to have the US government try to turn it into a chance to assassinate him.
Sony’s decision to not to show the film was prompted after the company was hacked and threatened by the group Guardians of Peace, who warned that theaters may experience 9/11 style attacks if they showed the film. The response to Sony pulling the film has been immense. Rob Lowe (who is in the film) likened pulling the film to, “the appeasement of Hitler.” On online forums, people are destroying Sony for their choice to not release the film and even trying to find the movie online. The theatre chain, Alamo Drafthouse, tried to show the film Team America World Police on Christmas day in direct response to The Interview being pulled. However, Paramount Pictures put an end to that. Twentieth Century Fox even axed its potential distribution of an adaptation of the graphic novel, Pyongyang which was to be directed by Gore Verbinski and feature star Steve Carrell.
To me, this is entire situation is a bit ridiculous. First off, Team America was released a decade ago and none of this happened. North Korea only tried to ban the film in the Czech Republic and guess what the Czechs did? Nothing. Yet when the same premise of killing the North Korean leader for comedic effect is applied to a new movie it is, “an act of war.” I cannot believe that I had to quote that. North Korea releases propaganda films mocking western civilization on an almost consistent basis and you do not see many of the first world countries threatening the North Korea. North Korea’s reaction almost seems childlike. However, when you look at North Korea’s recent history of trying to antagonize other countries with missile tests and other similar acts, it does nothing but affirm that view.
Why were the North Koreans or people possibly associated with North Korea able to hack Sony? The answer is simple; Sony has had a proven track record of weak cyber security. Three years ago, Sony’s Playstation Network was hacked and it was suggested that it’s approximately 26 million members at the time (myself included) change the email/passwords associated with their accounts to try and quickly protect their (potentially) compromised private information. You can trace Sony’s questionable security record back to 2005, where an auditor met with then Executive Director of Information (now Senior Vice President of Information Security) Jason Spaltro. The auditor told Spaltro that many of Sony’s employees were using weak passwords and that this could potentially be harmful to the company. Lo and behold, some of Sony’s employees were shown to be using terrible passwords, like s0ny123 in the recently exposed files. I would assume no one in this age of identity theft would ever use a password that simple, especially if they were working at a huge company like Sony. I am not trying to blame the victim here, but you are not doing yourself any favors when you have a proven record of weak cyber security. However, saying that Spaltro needs to be fired and the whole company has to obtain the best cyber security imaginable is a bit of an understatement, but that is for a writer who knows a lot more about IT and cyber security to go over.
Despite all of this, I think people are most enraged about this whole situation because it shows an alarming amount of weakness by these film companies. Why are we listening to the demands of terrorists? Then again why has this become a reoccurring theme in the entertainment industry? The last time we saw a similar situation like this was when Viacom forced South Park to censor its portrayal of the religious figure Muhammad in one of its episodes, after terror threats were levied against its creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker in 2010. Now every instance of Muhammad is censored throughout South Park’s catalogue, even though extremist groups never seemed to have problems with Muhammad’s depiction in the 2001 episode, “Super Best Friends”. I honestly don’t understand why Sony, Viacom, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox are giving in to these threats. These are threats and are nothing more than threats. North Korea and all other related parties have not done anything to us and have only proved that they can hack a multibillion dollar company with a history of unresolved cyber security issues. Look at what Warner Bros. did after James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 others during the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. They withheld box office numbers, canceled the gala premieres in other countries, removed trailers, but they still kept the film in theaters. They also removed trailers and had to change a key scene in their upcoming film Gangster Squad because of a scene that depicted mobsters shooting into a theatre of people with tommy guns. I would have preferred that Warner Bros. keep the scene intact, but it was understandable to remove it given the gravity of the situation. However, these aforementioned companies have basically rewarded a child who has thrown a temper tantrum with a brand new toy and it seems that the film and entertainment industry is going to continue to reinforce this behavior.
What baffles me is that Sony perceived this as a black and white issue, rather than looking at trying to take advantage of it. Even if Sony didn’t want to release the film to theatres, we live in an age of on demand entertainment, why wouldn’t they want try to take advantage of that? Sony could have very easily released the film to TV or online markets where customers would pay (I would assume the price of movie ticket) and sign a user agreement to view the film. They may have been able to cover the budget of the movie, but I don’t know the financial intricacies of the film and on demand industry as well as the money that has been spent on advertising. This would eliminate potential deaths (if the terrorists were to go through with their threats), Sony would be able to cash in on the huge amount of publicity that The Interview has gained and they wouldn’t look like cowards. Hopefully, they choose to do something about this to remedy the situation rather than allowing fear to win out.
As a final note, where the hell was the NSA on this one? Isn’t their sole purpose to prevent stuff like this from happening? Would I have seen The Interview? Maybe, depending on public and critic reviews. Now, I would probably want to see it just to spite North Korea and the hackers. However, this may never happen because as powerful and lucrative as the entertainment industry is, they just continue to reward threats with cowardice and compliance rather than saying, “I am not going to be bullied.”
It scares me that nowadays, all you need is a threat and everyone’s rights to privacy, freedom of speech and now creative/expressive freedom are surrendered in response.
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