Of course given an article about a stupid, overblown reaction a stupid and overblown reaction would be the top comment. This craving of egos heavily immersed in the social news context for every popular news item be the Most Important Thing That Has Ever Happened And Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again, paired with a never-ending need for everyone to be outraged about everything is just so tiring. Just get a hold of yourself and and chill out, ok, the world isn't over. Sony didn't just endanger your life. You're probably going to die of cancer in some hospital bed at 4pm in the afternoon a few decades from now after a pretty boring, normal life. You want excitement and danger go help a NGO in a war torn region. You're not going to find it on the pages of reddit and hacker news. This guy rolling his eyes in the vice article would probably roll his eyes at your response as well.
At best he just said that this could encourage more situations like this and possibly terrorist attacks. And all he literally said was "it can only create more disasters" which isn't very specific as to how many/severe said disasters are to be. How "overblown" of him.
He's not saying that the sky is falling. He's saying that it's bad policy to cave to threats like this, even once. Which it definitely is.
As an analogy, one police force giving into a hostage taker's demands probably wouldn't lead to more criminals taking hostages. But if it happened every time, hostage taking would become much more rampant. And so giving into criminals is almost universally against policy. Even if on a case by case basis it would seem overblown and ridiculous; to not just give them what they want to save lives.
And there are possibly serious consequences of just this incident. I bet there will be many fewer movies made about North Korea now. Movie studios will censor self-censor themselves more on things that might upset powerful groups. Of course that may have happened anyway but now they've given up millions of dollars - whereas otherwise they might have actually profited from the attention of the controversy. Two movies have already been cancelled over this nonsense.
People should really be upset at the theater owners who officially opted out. Chances are Sony may have pushed the release anyways but since they were forced by the theaters they are the ones who deserve to be balked at.
Also, Sony isn't America. It's a Japanese company, with a large presence and investment in America, but there's no reason to assume that give them any nationalistic motives or compass.
This has turned out to be a dead loss financially for Sony either way, and when you know you've lost the current game, it's time to start thinking about the next one. Being seen to capitulate like this marks Sony as an easy target. The next time some bunch of cybercriminals wants money and is thinking about targets for some blackmail scheme, who's going to be at the top of their list?
If it truly was North Korea or people they paid do you really think those they targeted would be safe anywhere? About any country can disappear someone, even outside their own country, and North Korea isn't beyond that, they may not be to the level of the US or Russia but I have read they had a fondness at one time for kidnapping Japanese nationals.
Sony should make some sort of TV-connected "console" to let people buy and download media over the internet. Waaaaait a second.
I know the movie studio and consumer electronics divisions aren't the same thing, but if they really wanted to get this video out I have to imagine that the Sony-umbrella companies are capable of working together.
My bet is they change course and still show it in theaters. Maybe not on the original launch date, and maybe not everywhere, but (caving to terrorists aside) they spent a pile of money on this and they want to make it back.
The movie has been produced at this point. It can't cost that much to ship some hard drives to theaters. It would make sense to try to recover at least some of their investment.
SONY should release, because fuck terror.
http://marcrogers.org/2014/12/18/why-the-sony-hack-is-unlike...
Oh FFS, that's just as stupid as calling it an act of war.
U.S. Should Make North Korea Pay for Sony Hack
Pyongyang has given the Obama administration no choice but to retaliate now by imposing sanctions or even an embargo.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/17/u-s-should-...
Did the hackers mention "the interview" before the press started speculating on the attack being from NK?
For all I know, they could be playing with the fears expressed by the medias after the hack went public. If that's the case, they're probably having a hell of a time posing as NK supporters terrorizing Americans.
The movie theaters decided to not show the movie because they couldn't implement a nationwide security system in every one of their theaters in 2 weeks. Since there is 0 security at movie theaters, I as a moviegoer would be extremely scared to go to watch this movie in it's opening week.
Think about what you are saying. "There is a group capable and willing to commit acts of terror on American soil... but now that Sony has not released the movie, I am perfectly safe".
There are 18,000 theaters that could be targets. Let's say there are 10 showings over the opening weekend that might be bombed, so if you attend, there's a 1 in 180,000 chance you'll be in the bombed theater (assuming there's only one bombing). Let's say there's a 5% chance it's a real threat (personally I'd estimate around 1%, but let's use 5% to be conservative). That gives a 1 in 3.6 million chance of being in the bombed theater.
Compare to car accidents. There are 1.27 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled in the USA. If the movie theater is five miles away, that gives you a 1 in 7.9 million chance of dying in a car accident on the way to or from the movie.
If we stop calculating there, it looks like you'd be roughly twice as likely to be in the bombed theater than to die in a car accident on the way to the theater. (Note that this is the chance of being in the bombed theater, not of dying in the bombing. Presumably, most people in the theater would survive.) To me, that seems like an acceptably negligible risk.
More detailed calculations could include the chance of dying conditional on being in the bombed theater, and could include the chance of more than one theater being bombed, and adjust for the chance of the bomber being foiled or the bomb not working, and could adjust for which theater you're seeing it in (theaters in major cities are more likely targets than small towns).
That being said, I disagree with the 5% chance that the threat actually gets carried through. It is not overwhelmingly difficult to carry through this type of threat, since North Korea has a large budget and theaters don't have security.
And from Sony's perspective, it doesn't matter if 6 people dying in Tennessee (random example) is only a small percentage of their overall viewers - it's human lives on their hands in a scenario that could have been easily avoided.
Certainly I agree risks like this are not worth worrying about, life is full of risks.
I mention it because that incident wasn't expected either, but it's an excellent demonstration of how much havoc a few bad actors can wreak. given the huge number of movie theaters and the impossibility of predicting which ones might be targeted, nobody wants to be left holding the bag in the unlikely-but-nonetheless-possible scenario of a mini-massacre. On the scale of things you would be willing to assume risk for, a tasteless comedy ranks pretty low.
My comment didn't mention people not paying attention to a bombing. My comment was about estimating the risk of dying in a bombing, not about people's reactions to it.
> Yawn...
There are more civil ways to express that.
There are more civil ways to express that.
There are more civil ways to discuss risk than making statistical straw man arguments too.
Sadly, that's exactly the fear the hackers want you to have. You have much higher odds being hurt or killed in a car accident on the drive to the theater than from some potential terrorist act.
Part of me wishes that the American public viewed this mess as a cause to be supported, to say criminals and/or a dictator from a third world country doesn't get to decide what harmless entertainment is suitable for us. I, for one, do not want to be threatened because I watched (or made) a movie.
Imagine if ticket sales had gone through the roof for this movie, the kind of statement that would make. And whether or not anyone actually watched it is beside the point.
You are in vastly more danger from other traffic on the drive to the cinema. Hell, you are more likely to die through home carpentry.
The problem isn't that Sony capitulated to a threat. It's that they capitulated to a nonsensical threat. They gave credence to every threat. Earlier in the day I was somewhat neutral on this, but now that I've had a chance to consider it I think that Sony is actually endangering our national security with this move. This is the first time in recent memory that America has been seen as caving to terrorist demands, and it can only create more disasters.