By Nelson Schneider - 12/20/14 at 04:04 PM CT
The news has exploded recently with the revelation that Sony Pictures had their online infrastructure infiltrated by a group of hackers working on behalf of North Korea. The hack came in response to Sony’s formerly-upcoming release of “The Interview” in theatres, which has been canceled in the wake of the cyber-attacks.
This most recent hit against Sony Pictures is just part of a long history of shoddy cyber-security and network infrastructure on Sony’s behalf. Gamers will recall in particular when PlayStation Network was hacked offline for weeks back in 2011. Coupled with PSN’s generally sluggish nature and frequent outages, one wonders if Sony really has any business putting as much of their stuff in the Cloud as they are.
But the worst part of Sony’s response to the North Korea-sponsored hit on their servers is that they chose now to give-in to the hackers. Cyber-security experts are warning that the hack against Sony is the first in what will become a new wave of attacks directed at corporations rather than individuals. As we have seen over the past couple years, most hacks against businesses are performed with the end goal of acquiring big globs of hashed credit card data and other personal information from the businesses’ customers, which can be exploited to put money into the hackers’ pockets at the expense of consumers who simply had the good faith to use a credit card to buy something. The Sony Pictures hack wasn’t about stealing customer information to commit credit card fraud, but to defame the big shots at Sony Pictures by revealing the ass-hattery of their personal e-mails and to leak unreleased movies in order to hinder ticket sales at their official releases.
In essence, Sony caving to hacker demands when their executive employees are made to look bad and when the omnipresent specter of movie piracy is summoned makes it look like Sony only cares about itself. Where was this level of concern when customer data was at risk?
Here’s the thing, though: We already know Sony’s executives are ass-hats. They are executives at a huge media conglomerate – IT COMES WITH THE TERRITORY! And leaking copies of unreleased Sony Pictures movies? *Pfft* The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites have been doing that for over a decade! It is a fallacy to equate leaked media with lost sales. People will still go to see any and every leaked Sony movie. The only ones who will be happy with their torrent are the ones who would never pay for a ticket or retail disc in the first place!
Based on the simple fact that “The Interview” is a farce starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, it probably would have had a mediocre performance had Sony bothered to release it. Now that North Korea has made such a stink over the show AND Sony has given in to their demands not to release it in theatres, MORE people than ever will likely be interested in seeing it. North Korea just gave Sony the biggest block of free advertising in the history of movies, and Sony isn’t going to do the brave thing and release “The Interview,” but the safe thing and cover their executive butts.
Sony may be a Japanese company, but it has enough American locations and executives that it should do the patriotic American thing and not give in to North Korea’s demands. Sony should release “The Interview” theatrically and live with the consequences. Letting North Korea get their way in this instance is setting a negative precedent of letting terrorists win. How long will it be until ISIS (whose hackers are waaay more skilled than the ones hired by North Korea) is able to completely shut-down all Western media by simply threatening corporate executives whenever something (read: everything) is released that offends their hardline fundamentalist sensibilities? Someone needs to draw a line in the sand, and Sony is holding a perfectly good stick.
Comments
Chris Kavan - wrote on 12/20/14 at 10:05 PM CT
I agree - a dangerous precedent has been set - now that cyber terrorists know they can get away with it, you know it's only going to get worse. Sony was the first target, but you know they won't be the last.
