UKC

So with the news that Sony have dropped the release of 'The Interview' does this now present a template for dubious regimes with a decent IT dept to stop bad publicity items. More worryingly could persons with this ability stop stuff before it gets off the ground because of the fear that they might respond or even be able to blackmail corporations for actual cash or influence for the same reasons.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Have to say I was very surprised they did this. They must have seriously had the (financial) wind put up them.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Thin end of wedge giving in to blackmail. As has been said it could open the flood gates for more of this with hackers controling big business

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

just heard this on the news,bowing down to terrorist threats.just gives more weight behind threats.

you would think sony had people in their I.T section that could keep info safe.

In reply to mark s:

They've completely caved in so far as I can see; a dangerous precedent has been set.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

No it hasn't, things like this happen the whole time. bet it won't make any difference to anything really.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

All the cinemas should replace this film with 'Team America : World Police' and show those North Korean terrorists their game is through. **** Yeah!

In reply to JayPee630:

If I was running a 'rogue state'I would be trebling my security services IT budget

In reply to JayPee630:

Right now any Hollywood script that references N.Korea is being binned or altered.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


that would be great!

I'm of two minds here, and I guess it's hard to tell without seeing the film. While it's fiction and there is plenty of precedent of all sorts of national stereotypes and terrorist related stuff (Die Hard being the classic German one ), there is also a level of respect required. Also think about the kick off over pictures of Mohammed a few years back, it could be argued this is the same.

Now whether you think it was fear or respect that led to various decisions there is again up for arguement.

In reply to Scarab9:


Yeah I totally agree, you should only make films about people if you are going to be nice about them. The film should have concentrated on the many wonderful things that the Beloved Leader does for the prosperous citizens of N Korea, or at least on his golf prowess. I, myself, am working on a biopic of President Assad of Syria called 'Assad: An altruistic life'. I guess that meets with your approval?

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:


It's a very dubious precedent for sure. That said, how amused would most Americans have been after 9/11 by a rib-tickling foreign film about a plot to kill George W Bush?

In reply to Tyler:

not at all what I meant but thanks loads for the sarcasm.

There's a difference for example between setting the bad guys of a film as being from another country as opposed to gratuitously celebrating the murder of their head of state.

Where the film falls in that I don't know.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Outrage, condemnation, lobbying? Yes. Cyber attacks, not so sure but I'm pretty sure it would be covert not overt.

In reply to Scarab9:

How gratuitous is it? Does he actually get murdered?

I might not be able to comment further on this as I'm off to write a death threat to Edward Fox......

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:


Nuts. I reeeeeally wanted to see that film.

In reply to JayPee630:
>They must have seriously had the (financial) wind put up them.

I think it was more their dirty washing coming out in public. Some of the things they were doing to further their cause could be considered bribery of an official, in a less developed country. In America, its simply referred to as 'politics'.

"While the Verge report is focused on the "sexy" topic of the MPAA having an "anti-Google' (er... "Goliath") working group, the real story here is that it appears that this infatuation with taking down Google has extended to funding state politicians in their investigations and attacks on Google, even when it's on totally unrelated issues "

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141212/12142629419/leaked-emails-reveal...

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

There's no evidence linking N Korea to the Sony hacks - its just an assumption - one that N Korea denies.

Secondly Sony have been hacked before because their security was crap. You'd think they might have learned and sorted it out by now but it seems not. Perhaps this latest hack will change things finally - and may well make other companies more security conscious too.

In reply to mark s:


Computer hacking might be inconvenient, even cost a company loads of money but it certainly isn't terrorism which is a much more serious thing.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Steve Carrell's new film, Pyongyang, has been dropped already. Was meant to start being recorded in March

Shame

In reply to goose299:



Presumably the best response would be for everyone who doesn't live in North Korea to start poking mild fun at the Dear Leader. Let's all get KJU haircuts and see where it goes from there

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

How does North Korea even cultivate hot-shot cyber ninjas anyway? Getting people good enough to trouble massive corporations must take some doing in a country that presumably doesn't allow its citizens to navigate past kim.jong.un.nk/blogspot

In reply to stp:

That all depends on the nature of the hack. In this instance the initial hacking merely stole property belonging to Sony and leaked details of email communications, in itself not really a terrorist act. The subsequent statement from the hacking group "Guardians of Peace" was clearly threatening in nature and could easily be considered terrorism.

What if they had hacked into a power plant, an air traffic control system, a mass transportation system like the London underground? Hacking these systems could allow direct acts of terrorism as a result of hacking.

In reply to nufkin:

They have money and the will. The military/security sevices are clearly prioritised.
There are many ways it could be acheived, It needn't even be based in N.Korea.

In reply to stp:
Except everyone is acting on that assumption.
It is an assumption supported by statements from US government officials. The news reports I heard stated that N.Korea offered no such denials.

In reply to Gerrard:


I agree with that but so far the only cases resembling that I know of are from the US government against Iran. And in mainstream parlance Western governments are never terrorist.

I think its good to keep to words to what they actually mean otherwise we debase the language and words lose their force. Of course government propaganda these days increasingly uses the terrorist label against anyone they don't like: even pacifist protestors on some occasions.

In reply to abseil:


A liberty concerned brazillian author has now offered to buy the rights from Sony and then release it using Bittorrent. Wonder if Sony will respond.

http://torrentfreak.com/paulo-coelho-wants-to-give-the-interview-away-using...

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

The prime suspects according to the beeb are:

• A nation state, most likely North Korea
• Supporters of North Korean regime, based in China
• Hackers with a money-making motive
• Hackers or a lone individual with another motive, such as revenge

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30530361

In reply to nufkin:

I'm bald, no chance I can do that

In reply to goose299:

Why not gain a bit of weight then and put in a high-level appearance at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and shake your walking stick at the gathered Workers' Party of North Korea?

In reply to goose299:


Comically oversized peaked caps are the alternative for those of us not blessed with Kim Jong Un's glossy mane.

In reply to Removed UserBwox:

Easier than gaining weight to look like Kim Jong Un

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

I think its foolish move by Sony, and the cinemas for not wanting to show the film. It sets a very unhealthy president for hackers / nation states to censor stuff they don't like.

I think Sony should release it strait to DVD, that way we all get to see it and no one is going to be able to launch an attack on random individuals. It might not even be that good a film (although sounds like it'll be hilarious) but with all this hype about it being taken down it should sell well.

In reply to Lord_ash2000:
>I think Sony should release it strait to DVD, that way we all get to see it and no one is going to be able to launch an attack on random individuals

I think sony's pr teams are trying to manage the situation to their advantage. If they do as you suggest, it will become a best seller as 'the film they tried to ban'. Freedom lovin' folks everywhere will watch it to show that they are not cowed by terrorists.

The argument for not showing it in cinemas, apart from the major cinema chains refusing to show it, is fear of litigation rather than fear of terrorism. If they showed it, after they had been warned of 'bad thing', and something happened that could possibly be, in any small way, related to 'bad thing'; they would be ground into the dust by lawyers. For years and years to come.

Its all a nice distraction from the fact that the sony security sucked big time. They were hacked by anonymous a few years ago. One would have thought that they may have tightened things up a bit since then. By all accounts many, many terrabytes of data went missing over months or even years. One might have more sympathy for them if they weren't trying to bribe officials or threaten journalists who report on the data. Gotta love those pr teams for shifting the media focus.

In reply to dread-i:

Some pr dept. Add craven fools to the list of screw ups.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

This Interview film is making fun of killing the baddies.

It's totally different to mocking the killing of good guys.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

I'm not on expert in cyber security and hacking, but I rather wonder whether tis wasn't more a case of bribing a suitably senior IT bod to obtain the data rather than hacking per se.

The data must have been stored on different systems - why would they store a film on the same system as their HR records? - and I would have thought the offer of a few million $ would turn a lot of heads and be a lot cheaper than re-inventing GCHQ.

In reply to Lord_ash2000:

There was a comment on the radio this morning that I liked pointing out the irony, in the light of this craven decision, that so much of the cinemas and film-makers' profits for the last few years have come from super-hero films.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

http://xkcd.com/538/

In reply to stp:


Guess it depends on your perspective. If you manage to bankrupt a company by hacking all their data and threaten others with the same if they upset you then it could be considered a form of terrorism. Just a rather more sensible form than using random violence.

Although speaking of hacking attacks. This one sounds rather unpleasant.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/12/18/cyberattack-on-german-iron-plant-cau...

In reply to stp:

I don't think referring to these people as terrorists debases the word. These people issued a statement implying violent repercussions would ensue against any cinema that chose to screen the film, intimidating major cinema chains to pull it. This is the very definition of terrorism. I do agree that the terrorist label is used lightly these days and, as you say, this is sometimes in the guise of government propaganda against groups who perhaps do not deserve it.

As for mainstream parlance where Western governments are never terrorists, this probably depends on what mainstream you are part of. The mainstream in, for example, Iraq or North Korea would likely consider some of the West's actions in there regions terrorism.

In reply to Tyler:


I saw the trailer on a news report and yes, it does show him being killed. Personally a comedy about assassinating the President of a sovereign country, however awful he may, be seems at best to be in bad taste. We wouldn't like some foreign country to release a film worldwide which made a giggle of decapitating Mr Cameron in the present climate of terrorism now, would we?

In reply to Dave Garnett:


Probably not very. But the First Amendment of their Constitution would have ensured that it could be shown in the USA.

Sony expect to make a bucket of money from the US market every year. I hope the American public take note of the complete contempt that Sony have shown for one of the fundamental principles of their Constitution and avoid their products.

Likewise anyone else in the World who values freedom of speech.

In reply to colin struthers:


Sometimes 'freedom of speech' does seem to be used as shorthand for 'absence of thought', though

In reply to colin struthers:

Actually, we don't need to guess what would happen. Death of a President isn't a comedy but a serious political drama in which George W Bush is assassinated and Dick Cheney gets to play no more Mr Nice Guy. Several cinema chains refused to screen that one too, but presumably for rather different reasons.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Lol, you think the US wouldn't utilise such methods. You forgotten Stuxnet? That's just one of the ones we know about..

Sony suck. They should not suck so much after the FUBAR that was soe live / PSN hacks in 2011, yet they still do. Their IT manager stored passwords in plaintext.. http://i.imgur.com/GngopXj.png

Fingers crossed they'll chuck the movie up on bittorrent. https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-inc-happy-to-take-on-kim-jong-un-141220...

In reply to Removed User:

they should make it available on the internet somehow, for a nominal price. Instead of a couple of million people seeing it in the cinema, would be great for it to become the most watched film of the year or something.

In reply to Mick r:

They should release it for free on the internet to make a point. All the damage has been done by the hackers, Sony have nothing else to lose