Sony, crazy hackers, gov'mnt and an interesting thought...

[fizzybutt]

I was reading this article https://www.yahoo.com/movies/sony-says-we-had-no-choice-to-shelve-the-105640738437.html (Yeah, it's yahoo and it's craptastic editors)(Googles spellcheck wants me to change craptastic to capitalistic!)  and upon certain phrases I immediately thought of another movie, Wag the Dog. In my opinion a craptastic train wreck of a movie from 1997 that was centered around a huge PR stunt to fake a war to get the population to get behind (in this case the gov't and a sex scandalized president)

 

This is what I read, and I quote:

 

 

 

Sony Pictures Entertainment is and always has been strongly committed to the First Amendment. For more than three weeks, despite brutal intrusions into our company and our employees’ personal lives, we maintained our focus on one goal: getting the film The Interview released. Free expression should never be suppressed by threats and extortion.

 

Now, with all the shit they were having exposed, they were focused on ONE GOAL, releasing an apparently controversial film. (There's been plenty of these before, hell Team America showed Daddy Kim as an idiot and he got a laugh out of it)

 

My question is, why is this their main goal? Why wasn't and isn't it anger about vital and extremely personal information being leaked (ss numbers and all the employee personnel files) Where is the real concern about that?

 

As I read through, I kept noticing they were iterating alternative viewing sources that they'd make available; and I remembered how Hollywood, earlier this year released the names of the top evil streaming sites for illegal movie viewing. And subsequently shit hit the fan for some of those sites I read a few weeks later. 

 

Now, Is this a Wag the Dog situation:, get everyone riled up in the US for

1: make more profit on what would have probably been an extremely mediocre movie?

2: Give people a reason to get behind the US to start a shitstorm with NK since someone cares to lay the blame on them for this even though no official information has been given (that I've seen anyway, just Obama and some of his analysts going, 'yeah it was them... we think.... because they were pissed about the movie anyway' my interpretation )

 

They can't launch missiles... That's already proven, yet they somehow have new, serious super cyber hacking abilities?

Or 

3: something else entirely that we just can't see yet. Maybe the NK regime suddenly can make cyber terrorism a thing... Scary thought.

 

Oh,

 

The decision not to move forward with the December 25 theatrical release of The Interview was made as a result of the majority of the nation’s theater owners choosing not to screen the film. This was their decision.

 

Let us be clear — the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it on Christmas Day in theaters, after the theater owners declined to show it. Without theaters, we could not release it in the theaters on Christmas Day. We had no choice.

 

Theaters are contractually obligated to show movies that are sent to them for a certain amount of time. What happened was Sony released them from this obligation (known as exhibition contracts I  was so proud I remembered this from drama all those years ago haha) so they could refuse, then, like a freakin' sissy, Sony blames the theaters. Seriously?

 

If you actually read the thing like me (which I admit I'm an idiot) then, maybe it doesn't make a bunch of sense to you either.

 

Yeah I'm just speculating. I don't care about the movie, what concerns me is, is this an actual threat from a country that's been a pain in the ass to everyone for a number of many years, or is this a new thing that's going to be suddenly unveiled as a new, more expensive way to charge people outrageous costs for movies that have certainly gone lackluster in the past years and a way of preventing people who steal movies for free viewing from doing so. The timing is what makes me scratch my head over this whole thing.

 

I'm not good at politics, I tend to have weird viewpoints on things which Suckit laughs at me constantly and tells me I sound like a weird liberal sometimes (No idea what THAT means O.o)

 

 

It's just food for thought... You know, it's that time again when Suckit had to go 5hrs to pick up his mom from another surgery and there is noone here to help be my sounding board for stupid questions. 

[joemonco]

I'm pretty certain North Korea has missiles that are capable of reaching the west coast of the US, they just don't have the targeting tech needed to strike with any accuracy.  Their nukes are also small enough that the only city that should worry about them is Seoul.  Just for reference:  they could take out Disneyland and a few surrounding neighborhoods in Anaheim, CA but that would be a one in a million shot whereas they could take out a significant portion of Seoul without much effort.

 

That being said, I'm pretty certain the theaters not showing the films are choosing to do so because of the liability they face if the GOP follows through with their threats.

[fizzybutt]

Out of all my supposition, you picked my snark about missiles to nitpick?

 

And of course the theaters backed out as soon as they were contractually allowed to. With that liability being transferred straight to them if something -did- happen, I don't blame them. The lawsuits would be catastrophic for those smaller business, It'd be catastrophic for any business. My point mostly was there isn't any solidarity, Sony smoothly shifted the weight of that responsibility to smaller business in the guise of choice when there really wasn't any with some unknown source threatening '9/11' seriousness of attacks. 

 

Back to my original thought, a real threat or one hell of a PR stunt that came about because Sony got hacked and a bunch of stuff released and now causing problems on a national level?

[joemonco]

Not nitpicking, just shootin' the shit.  

 

I don't think it's a real threat or a PR stunt, but there are too many crazies in the world to not take it as a serious threat of potential violence.