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Reaction To the Sony Hack Is 'Beyond the Realm of Stupid'
rossgneumann writes North Korea may really be behind the Sony hack, but we're still acting like idiots. Peter W. Singer, one of the nations foremost experts on cybersecurity, says Sony's reaction has been abysmal. "Here, we need to distinguish between threat and capability—the ability to steal gossipy emails from a not-so-great protected computer network is not the same thing as being able to carry out physical, 9/11-style attacks in 18,000 locations simultaneously. I can't believe I'm saying this. I can't believe I have to say this."
Home of the brave.
Nobody's hacking, noob. You just suck!
They were forced to. And not by the hackers, by the five largest movie chains pulling out. At that point it was best to not show it at all.
I'm sure Sony will release it on DVD/BluRay/streaming once they get their shit together and beef up their security. Right now though, no, it makes no sense to release the movie to a few small theaters.
Here's your main reason:
If ONE person is injured/killed within a 10 mile radius of a theater and the person doing the killing proclaims any notion of it being done because of the release of the movie, the relatives of the one shot will sue Sony for millions of dollars due to the release of the film that Sony KNEW could unleash terrorism. Imagine if it happened at 5 locations? What about one nutjob in one theater ala the Batman movie a few years ago? Sony would be put at fault for blatantly disregarding public safety by knowingly releasing a film. It's the same reason newspapers won't print an image of Mohammed or that South Park had to pull an episode that was going to show Mohammed.
Hyper-sensitivity to everything for fear of litigation.
Nothing else would feed the 24 hour news cycle.
If North Korea got this information and threatened to reveal it, that would definitely explain why Sony caved quicker than the Iraqian army when first attacked by Isis.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The OP has it wrong. The theaters would be liable.
Remember the shooting that occurred at a screening of Batman: the Dark Knight? Well, some families of victims are suing the theater and the case is still ongoing. Because there's a chance that the theater may be found liable of not having "enough security" for a random shooting, and because it can be argued that the theaters in this case were "warned ahead of time of a potential attack," they could potentially be found liable should anything happen.
Keep in mind that Sony is only pulling the release after the five largest theater chains refused to show it. And the reason they refused to show it is because they could potentially be liable should anything happen anywhere in any of their theaters. Given the poor reviews the movie is getting they presumably decided that it just wasn't worth any risk as they're probably not going to make much anything off showing it anyway.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The dialogue pinning the attack on DPRK serves many purposes, and it's been quite fun to watch this event transform from "Fuck Sony" to our ever present "Oh Noez! A bogey man" dialectic. We already have politicians claiming that the DPRK made an act of war (Newt Gingrich) and according to at least FOX and ABC the US is officially blaming the DPRK for the cyber attack (though neither have specified what agency this is). Even though evidence is weak at best.
Anyone believing the "terrorist" propaganda must somehow also believe that the DPRK has millions of bomb strapping terrorists stationed in the US ready to flock into Star and AMC to bomb people for watching a comedy.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
In the article, the Peter Singer states, "Someone killed 12 people and shot another 70 people at the opening night of Batman: The Dark Knight [Rises]. They kept that movie in the theaters. You issue an anonymous cyber threat that you do not have the capability to carry out? We pulled a movie from 18,000 theaters."
In some ways, the comparison between the response to this current threat against movie theaters and the rampage that happened 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado is appropriate. Both target movie theaters and the people in them. But that's where it ends.
The Aurora shooting has gone down in history as an unforeseeable tragedy the fault of which lay entirely with the shooter. Everyone said, "This was very sad," and no one's expecting any victims' civil suits to win anything.
In fairly extreme contrast, ***IF*** Sony were to allow the movie to be shown in theaters and ***IF*** someone attacked a movie theater for any reason relating to the showing of the movie, then Sony would be very publicly acknowledged as having fault in the harm done to theater-goers and would be sued out of existence.
Everything in this decision has to do with LIABILITY. Even if the probability is extremely low, the potential liability is astronomical. It doesn't make financial sense for Sony to allow the movie to be shown.
Aside: Notice who the puppets and the puppet-masters are here. Those making the threats hold the strings, but they're not playing Sony. They're playing the American public. They know that the American public are so unhappy with their opportunities to be super-rich that they see legal liability as one of their few chances to get MILLIONS! As such, the nation is extremely risk-averse thus thoroughly negating out espoused resolve to not be susceptible to terroristic threats.
To be cliche, the enemy is us.