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Disney Chief Bob Iger Says Hackers Claim To Have Stolen Upcoming Movie (hollywoodreporter.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Hollywood Reporter: Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed Monday that hackers claiming to have access to a Disney movie threatened to release it unless the studio paid a ransom. Iger didn't disclose the name of the film, but said Disney is refusing to pay. The studio is working with federal investigators. Iger's comments came during a town hall meeting with ABC employees in New York City, according to multiple sources. The Disney chief said the hackers demanded that a huge sum be paid in Bitcoin. They said they would release five minutes of the film at first, and then in 20-minute chunks until their financial demands are met. While movie piracy has long been a scourge, ransoms appear to be a new twist. UPDATE: According to Deadline, the movie in question appears to be the upcoming film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Disney appears to be working with the FBI and will not pay the ransom.
Disney has done some bad things recently (cough-H1B-cough) but I'm kinda glad they refused to pay. And I have a stronger urge to see this film in the theater, regardless of whether the criminals release it or not.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Or maybe this is all a false flag operation.
Cui bono?
Disney is getting free publicity for the movie
A 5 or maybe a 20 minute segment will actually increase demand for the theater release.
My theory is that Disney made it all up and there was no real threat.
Confirmation will be when he goes for the patriotism angle by claiming the hackers are working for ISIS.
So if you view the pirated version of the pirate movie, you are supporting terrorism.
You heard it here first.
The exact work? Probably not. In addition to lowering the total number of works published, copyright also tended to shift authorship from informative to fictional, since only the specific words are published, and thus rephrasing a scientific text allows a relatively trivial workaround.
So, we might have fewer blockbuster films (especially since we'd have competitive markets instead of oligopolies), but we'd probably be about 50 years ahead technologically by now, and more focused on learning. Of course, greater tech could mean greater standard of living, more education, and cheaper filmmaking, so perhaps we'd have even more well-produced films.
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