North Korea blusters, and apparently hacks into Sony Corp. and extorts them into holding up a dumb movie that blasphemes the sacred Kim Jon Un. Guess who the conservatives are blaming for, I don’t know, America’s cowardice, or craven Jewish Hollywood, or something — anything but a badly run capitalist institution? Liberals. It’s all about the standard trope, that liberals are the ones caving before the Commie threat.
Roy Edroso responds to that nonsense.
Who the fuck is “we”? I’ve been blaspheming that fuck Mohammed for years. I have no trouble telling Kim Jon Un to get stuffed either. (I don’t have time to draw a cartoon of him right now, but if I did I would make him look fat and ugly. Pay tribute to my heroism, America!)
Capitalism doth make cowards of us all, but conservatives prefer to blame liberals because we’re “politically correct” (i.e., polite to people with fewer privileges than ourselves). When a corporate board thought they’d rather not have Brendan Eich and his anti-gay cooties representing their company, liberals got the blame. When a TV network wanted some of the racist stank to wear off Paula Deen before they put her before the public again, ditto. When the NBA pushed out Donald Sterling, ditto; NFL Rice Peterson ditto. It’s not just or even mainly because they’re wired to pin every bad thing that happens to liberalism; it’s also because they believe that the market is God and money His grace, and can’t stand to see it proven otherwise.
You know what else? Every one of these fuckers who brings up The Great Dictator would, given the chance, have joined the red-baiters who kicked Chaplin out of America.
Amen.
Fucking hell, THAT. If I see one more comparison that puts Chaplin and James fucking Franco in the same sentence, I’m going to barf.
(Also I think the whole “bomb and death threats” rumors were probably a larger concern to Sony and the movie theater chains than the hacking itself.)
The funny thing is some conservatives are suggesting Matt Stone and Trey Parker would have released the movie–since they directed Team America: World Police, and apparently it’s directors who are personally responsible for releasing films to theaters–while completed missing how that movie made just as much fun of hawkish conservatism as it did Hollywood liberals and North Korean dictators.
Roy Edroso, idiot
Someone doesn’t understand what being politically correct actually is. I’m confused as to whether the last bit is intended to be snark or if he believes that drawing such a picture would be heroism. I’m not sure it really matters, though, because the substantive thing and incongruous thing is ‘fat and ugly’.
And sure, it’s stupid to blame the movie getting yanked from distribution on liberals, but the reason it ended up yanked is because major theatres were pulling the movie from screening because of threats. I don’t think any of them were genuine, but there’s really no way to know that and I’d prefer not to have that experiment run in real life. Sony could have continued with the distribution, I guess, but there was no real point, even if local theatres in Toronto were willing to screen it.
The North Korea angle, with respect to the hacking, is very very tenuous – at best. While there are pundits saying that the malware in use is “similar” to malware used by North Koreans (allegedly) in the past, it’s common-or-garden malware and the alleged Korean comments in it appear to have come from Google translate, not an authentic Korean.
FWIW, a lot of security professionals are still seriously skeptical that North Korea had anything to do with it, whatever the US government may have claimed. They’ve also suggested this is pretty obviously studio hype delaying the release until it’s had more publicity.
David Gerard @ #5
It’s obviously not studio hype. Theatres were refusing to screen it. They were willing, even, to fork over the money for the film and not screen it. Sony waived that charge for AMC (and probably everyone else since). Sony then decided not to distribute the movie for screening at all, eve though some theatres were still willing to screen it.
Nothing about that could lend any credence to the idea that this is just studio hype. Sony is bleeding money for this, money that it won’t be recouping even if the film does get released with a larger audience than initially anticipated.
What I hate about all this is that now I will have to watch another Seth Rogen and James Franco movie. They stopped being funny after Pineapple Express.
Sony is bleeding money; this is not a marketing project gone awry. Their security team is bolstered by a small army of expensive talent. It’s not the most expensive incident response in history – Saudi Aramco probably holds that distinction. But they are spending money like a drunken air force defense program manager.
Toronto will be showing the movie, from what I understand. Land of the free North!
Heh.
Really, rq? I thought distribution was thoroughly cut-off.
Okay, so I went and looked, and maybe a few theatres (literally 3) are still getting the movie. They are in Orleans (ON), Toronto (ON) and White Rock (BC). It’s possible that that’s a mistake, but I’m not going to bother investigating much further, because I’m not going to bother trying to get to any of those theatres for this film.
This can’t be just studio hype. There is no way that Sony willing released a bunch of employee SIN numbers and pay disparity info. That’s going to have repercussions.
“I’m not even interested in seeing the damned movie”
I presume PZ means that despite or because of the latest furor he has no interest in the movie. I, for one, had decided on the first bit of publicity – long before the Sony hacking thing – that the movie was a stupid piece of trash based on a stupid premise and therefore would never have any interest in it (either because of or in spite of the furor).
A Clockwork Orange (one of the all-time great movies) was pulled from UK theaters about a year after its release due to a similar uproar over the film’s depiction of violence and rape; 27 years later it was again in the theaters. Or theatres.
I’m somewhat disappointed that Sony caved, but it was a business decision, plain and simple. The people to blame are the ones making the threats.
I do wonder if they’ve considered just doing a DVD/Blu Ray/Digital release instead. Kind of hard to target people downloading from iTunes or getting a shipment from Amazon for a mass terrorist attack.
I also really wonder about the nature of this attack and Sony’s networks. In my field companies are often criticized for data silos that make it difficult to undertake tasks that could save a lot of time and money and there are issues of people keeping their files on only their own computer and no one else being able to get a copy of it when they need it. But the hackers were able not just to penetrate Sony, but to find and take files from such disparate parts of the company as HR records and digital prints of films and CEO emails? How’d they manage that?
I’m sure PZ’s lack of interest in the movie is the same as mine.
Who in the world wants to see yet-another “stoner gets himself in trouble but has a heart of gold” clunker? Seth’s pony does only one trick.
The only thing worse would be if it had Jack Black in it as well.
Yeah, and also — it’s a movie that ends with a fantasy of Kim Jong Un getting blown up by a missile, in slow motion, with close ups of his hair catching on fire and his face contorting in agony as he disintegrates in the fireball.
No, I have no interest in seeing that, even if it is a North Korean dictator. It’s just ugly.
Because Pineapple Express, being pretty much the opposite of funny, drained even the concept of humor from its participants like aliens feeding off human emotions in that episode of Star Trek… or was it?… wait, it was that episode of each and every scifi series. My own opinion, which of course is always worthy, is that James Franco is of the Owen Wilson variety: can be good but generally isn’t, in anything. Rogen often is.
Thomathy @ 3
Perhaps you could be so kind as to explain what “political correctness” actually is, because given my experiences with the Right and their snits and quarrels, Edroso’s definition is spot on.
Thomathy @3:
Yes, Roy Edroso is definitely snarking. He’s very liberal, and though his posts often contain language we wouldn’t use here, I’d venture that he surely does know what political correctness is, and he’s not criticizing it.
His tendency is to make fun of the American rightwingosphere, and the idea that among them portraying Kim Jong-Un as fat and ugly would be heroic. His point is that the decision by Sony and several theatres to pull the movie has nothing to do with ‘political correctness’ or liberalism. (That last part you correctly surmised.)
Does that help, or am I missing the boat and telling you what you already know? I’ve got a cold, so my thinkerglob isn’t processinating as correctiforme as usual.
As a fan of the original Green Hornet, I approve of North Korea’s attitude though not its actions. Give Sony the chance to show NK just who has the biggest bomb.
Anthony K @18:
Yeah, and I got so fed up and depressed by the rwidiots that I had to give up reading Roy’s blog, except for the occasional look in. Pity, because I love his writing. Wish he did more film/theatre/music criticism.
I disagree. I’m becoming more and more sure that the hackers really did pull out some juicy info, and are holding it over Sony for fun and profit.
threats of bombing theaters are rather effusive, frankly. threats to release sensitive information? you KNOW that has had serious impact on policy decisions over the last 20 years.
I’d be my money on information, and not bombs, being the issue sony is most concerned about.
Akira MacKenzie, I won’t be doing that because it’s clear (now) that I have misread the point Roy Edroso was making. There really wasn’t a need to come out with full force snark, though, I was asking a genuine question and my confusion around the, then, apparent incongruity between depicting Kim Jon Un as ‘fat and ugly’ and being politically correct was real.
Anthony K, yes, that does help, I didn’t grok that he was referencing back to rightwingopshere thought or the depiction in the movie.
there’s only one way they could have, according to most IT security experts I read…
they had lots of inside help at Sony.
Rob Grigjanis @20: I understand that. I have to take frequent breaks too, otherwise I become too cleanse-the-planet-with-fire-ey.
hmm.
OTOH, there were theatres that wanted to show “Team America” instead, and were told in no uncertain terms by Paramount… NO.
Ichthyic: I’m on the “sensitive material held over their heads” bandwagon.
Fear of terror attacks (or whatever: I would put more likelihood on assholes who think it’s funny to pretend to be NK terrorists) is probably part of the equation, but only in the most craven portion. My guess is none of them are insured against “acts of terror” and therefore are unwilling to take the chance.
Considerable evidence in the last decade or two suggests that no corporation actually cares about risk to customers. I don’t imagine movie companies/distributorships/theater chains are any better in that regard than, say, auto companies.
For what it’s worth, I thought your confusion was perfectly understandable. I just happen to be familiar with his œuvre. (Plus, I’d read his post at alicublog earlier today.) If you find alicublog too guns-a-blazin’ for your tastes, he also has a weekly feature at The Voice Explores the Right-Wing Blogosphere.
Sony had no real choice about canceling the movie, regardless of what the hackers were threatening them with (although it is highly convenient that the cancellation came just as the hackers were threatening a HUGE release of information).
Once the theater chains backed out of showing the movie, a theatrical release was never going to make a huge amount of money, there’s only so much you can get from the small, indie places, so Sony were looking at recouping the estimated $90m cost purely through DVD sales & Video on Demand.
That was never going to happen, so by canceling the movie outright, they apparently enact the Force Majeure clause in their insurance (all movies are heavily insured) and so get a huge chunk of the money back (likely a lot more than is probably warranted if the accountants have anything to say). Given how much money the hack is going to cost them, I don’t blame them for trying to limit their losses, even if they end up with even more egg on their face.
… and yeah, the chances that North Korea were actually behind the hacking & threats are tenuous at best, Wired ran a piece titled “why North Korea almost certainly did not hack Sony” just an hour before CNN started reporting that “unnamed sources” were pointing fingers. If they ARE involved (and none of the publicly available evidence really suggests it), my guess is that the hack started out as a simple extortion scheme, but when it became obvious that Sony weren’t paying up, the hackers took money from NK to shift focus to the movie (the earliest contact from the hackers had nothing to do with the film at all).
Anthony K @27: I thought Roy was recently let go by the Voice. Has he been hired back?
The full 4k movie footage is actually handled on a completely separate network to the one the hackers breached, there’s no physical connected between the hacked corporate network and the movie editorial network – studios are monstrously paranoid about their IP getting leaked, far less so about confidential employee information.
The “digital prints” were copies of awards screeners (watermarked DVDs sent to Academy members & reviewers) that resided on Sony’s DAX cloud server – when a studio wants to send out awards screeners, they contract out to third party companies to do the DVD replication and in this case, give them a login to the Cloud service to download the video files.
The password to that cloud service was in the list of files taken from the corporate servers, along with the passwords for all the company’s twitter accounts and anything else helpfully labeled “password” in the filename.
The reason we haven’t seen The Interview pirated yet is likely because it wasn’t on the DAX server at the time of the hack (I’m pretty sure there are screeners for The Interview out there, Gawker aired the death scene and that seems to be taken from a screener DVD, hence the “property of Columbia Pictures” watermark on the footage), but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.
interesting.
Anthony K, thank you! I still can’t read it properly, but knowing better helps and it helps that my confusion is understandable.
Actually, I quite like the style. I’m over at alicublog reading right now.
Considering the way Americans (especially those employed by Sony) have so far reacted to the threats from the hackers, I am now even less impressed by their claim that the USA is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Too afraid to show a movie!
Also on The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/north-korea-is-not-funny-the-interview-sony/383885/?single_page=true
The author makes an interesting comment about Chaplin, BTW:
Owen Wilson has co-written some of the best Wes Anderson movies, and he’s all right in those he acts in too. Another one is Adam Sandler, Funny People (with Seth Rogen as well) and Punch Drunk Love, both of which I loved were trashed by Sandler fans cause they were expecting more Happy Gilmore. These guys know exactly what they’re doing, they’re not as dumb as people generally think.
I’m not so sure. I’ve seen this type of reasoning before – the right wing’s claims that liberals are simultaneously rich and socialists is oddly similar to 20th century antisemitism: the Jews were perceived to be simultaneously Capitalists and Marxists (or anti-revolutionaries and Trotzkists in USSR), simultaneously cowards and enemy saboteurs, simultaneously Zionists and cosmopolits.
It’s classical dehumanization that precedes large scale violence.
Some of the Republican types weren’t too happy back in 2006 when the film “Death of a President” was released. The film was not a comedy but speculated on the assassination of President George W. Bush.
@7
Any luck and Sony will put the movie on DVDs and sell them at every discount store and download service for $3. They would make the production costs back and thumb their nose at NK. People would spend $3 on a DVD simply because of name recognition generated by NK threats. I know I would, if for no there reason than to find out what the controversy is all about. If NK is willing to hack Sony and threaten all potential moviegoers I figure there has to be some funny stuff. Even if it is the worse movie ever made I’ve got a $3 coaster, and a handy case.
Ichthyic:
Sony have had some large layoffs this year, so there will be a lot of disgruntled employees and ex-employees with motive.
I had this exact fucking argument a while back with some douche who was whining that NBC was whitewashing Putin for the Olympics. I not-so-kindly pointed out that there was no way in hell that NBC was going to stomp on the IOC’s toes by calling out the host nation and that ignoring the suffering of the LGBT community (Reagan/AIDS ring a bell?) and covering-your-ass to maximize profits are all classic conservative moves.
Guess who the conservatives are blaming for, I don’t know, America’s cowardice, or craven Jewish Hollywood, or something — anything but a badly run capitalist institution? Liberals.
They need any scapegoat they can get. This whole affair once again disproves that old libertarian trope about bold and brave Makers of Things freeing the people from government tyranny.
It also disproves the libertarian idea that government can’t do anything good — a concerted Federal effort could well have brought people and businesses together to forge a much better cyber-defense infrastructure, for EVERYONE, than the one we have now.
@kyoseki (#30) Thanks for that info. So it sounds like a key part of the hack was that Sony had passwords stored on the systems the hackers first accessed. I wouldn’t count on the Interview getting leaked by the hackers though, if the stories I’m hearing about it being North Korea and about their capabilities are accurate, then since their goal was to prevent that movie being seen, they wouldn’t ever release it. If they used freelancers, those folks might leak it, but the story I heard yesterday suggests North Korea had more than enough of their own hackers to keep this job entirely in house.
My next thought is this: some people are suggesting that Sony is less afraid of bomb threats and more afraid of whatever other information the hackers got. Apparently there are many terabytes of data that have not yet been released that the hackers took. But the I think, if they took that much data, they probably just downloaded everything on every server they had access to and most of it is garbage. They’ve probably already released most of the good stuff, though they could still be searching for a bit more.
The insurance angle is also interesting, I heard some commentary on that last night suggesting that their insurer will try to demonstrate that they could have prevented the loss if their IT security was better. Which once again raises the question of whether the movie was scrubbed due to terrorist fears or due to the hack. Either way, there’s a good chance of a court battle with the insurer over a number of questions related to each.
I heard some commentary on that last night suggesting that their insurer will try to demonstrate that they could have prevented the loss if their IT security was better.
On the one hand, it’s Sony’s job to see to their own information security. OTOH, shouldn’t the insurer have made inquiries about that sort of thing a long time ago? Like, oh, I dunno, when they were deciding on the price and extent of the coverage they were willing to provide?
Well, I think that type of “barn door” analysis is why corporate lawyers make so much money.
In the end, Sony will end up getting at least partially indemnified, insurance rates will go up for certain types of movies, corporations will get way better at IT security, and Seth Rogan will continue to be not funny.
. . . and studios will be reticent to make movies that might be seen as say, critical of Islam, or critical of white Christian radicals, or critical of whatever group might possibly consider using threats of violence to suppress speech. It’s unfortunate. This movie, in all likelihood, wasn’t worth fighting for, but I expect that it will take a great deal more courage and there will be a great deal less funding for “certain types of movies” in the future.
gussnarp:
It is already having a chilling effect (if I recall correctly and the source was accurate and not just a normal rumor mill story): They canned another upcoming comedy involving North Korea, starring Steve Carrell.
—-
Random thought for an experiment: Test the opinions of MRA assholes on the topic of death threats leading to a movie being cancelled to their opinions on the topic of death threats leading to a talk by Anita Sarkeesian getting cancelled. I’m sure the results would be intriguing. My guess is the loudest and most frozen of FREEZE PEACH on the one hand and lukewarm PEACH, at best, on the other.
Put me in the camp that says that Sony is using the threats of violence as a convenient cover for pulling the movie in order to placate the hackers from continuing to release confidential in-house info. Some of what has been released was embarrassing, but only in that, “We’ll have to have a bunch of execs issue apologies to people they bad-mouthed, or maybe fire a couple scapegoats” sort of way. Sony’s a multinational corporation in a global economic environment that almost demands that competitors break laws and exploit tax loopholes (often to the point of breaking the law there, too), and in a business that size, there’s almost always an internal paper-trail.
Now, a lot of regulators act with a nod-and-wink approach, but if actual evidence got released, that would be made more difficult. So yes, I think they’re trying to cover that up to prevent having their dirty laundry aired.
. . . and studios will be reticent to make movies that might be seen as say, critical of Islam, or critical of white Christian radicals, or critical of whatever group might possibly consider using threats of violence to suppress speech.
I wasn’t seeing a heckuva lot of such bravery before this incident.
Personally, I think it was a bit tasteless to have a movie that mentioned killing a REAL head of state. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to see a “comedy” about some white dudes trying to kill Obama. Most movies and TV shows that want to show high-level dirty politics and intrigue, refer either to fictional heads of state, or to wholly fictional countries; and they do this for a sound business reason: to minimize offense to potential ticket-buyers. “The Interview” did kinda cross a line here, which I’m not convinced they had any good reason to cross. That doesn’t justify the hackers’ response to it, of course (if, indeed, that really was what they were responding to); but it doesn’t make for a good movie.
Put me in the camp that says that Sony is using the threats of violence as a convenient cover for pulling the movie in order to placate the hackers from continuing to release confidential in-house info.
Yeah, and put me in the camp that suspects a lot of people, in and out of government, may be banding together to blame North Korea in order to pretend they were victims of a diabolical evil genius with unlimited state power, rather than a bunch of civilians who easily exploited a vulnerability that Sony could have and should have patched up years ago.
And speaking of which, I’d be very grateful if those who doubt the North Korea story could cite some backup for their doubts. The Wired story cited earlier seems to be behind a paywall. Thanks in advance.
Raging Bee:
That was kind of my feeling as well. As much as I think the North Korean government over-reacted (it’s just a damn movie and they have been saying for months that they will see the publishing of the movie as an “act of war”), it was still not a good idea to publish something talking about killing a real fucking person. Sure, they aren’t serious. Sure, it’s just comedy. But it still could look like a veiled threat, especially when you have to factor in cultural barriers and differences in interpretation.
I have a hard time imagining that any movie, from any country, premised on the assassination of an actual real world person would not have some kind of political backlash. Maybe not quite like this, but there would certainly be some controversy, no matter what. To avoid that, you would have to damn careful to structure and present the movie in a way that made it clear that it was just fiction, just for the laughs, and that no serious threat or desire for such a thing to happen was intended. It’s a precarious balancing act and I am not convinced that the makers of this movie even TRIED.
I wonder if the movie’s insurance rider includes threats made by anonymous sources. Sony could still walk away with a profit.
mccowan
Why does this make me think this was supposed to a re-enactment of The Producers?
Should have called it “Springtime for Kim Jong Un”.
As much as I think the North Korean government over-reacted…
Are you kidding?! Sony just showed the world it could make a bigger bomb than Kim Jong Un! Have you any idea what a humiliation that is for North Korea?
It’s a precarious balancing act and I am not convinced that the makers of this movie even TRIED.
Not trying to show any respect for anyone’s legitimate concerns or feelings seems to be one of the prevalent genres of comedy these days.
So all sorts of news outlets are saying “FBI confirms North Korea behind Sony hack” but they still don’t provide a name or a quote or a link to an actual FBI press release. WTF? Just shoddy journalism or are they back to making shit up and starting up the war drums?
Course, it could all be an elaborate marketing campaign…
It bugs me as well when people don’t link to sources, but in this case, it wasn’t too hard to find.
1) Go to “fbi.gov”
2) There is a menu bar, including an entry that says “NEWS”.
3) Click on NEWS, and a dropdown menu appears.
4) One of the dropdown entries is “Press Releases”.
5) Click on “Press Releases”
6) The first entry (as of this date, of course) reads “12.19.14 Update on Sony Investigation”
7) Click on the entry listed above.
URL:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/update-on-sony-investigation
And from the press release:
Owlmirror: thanks for the quote; that at least sounds like a plausible reason to blame NK.
Thanks Owlmirror!
I still think they’re wrong about NK, but it’s good to know the news outlets aren’t the ones making it up.
Wired’s article from a couple of days ago is pretty good about explaining why. And besides Marcus Ranum’s sources, I have my own connections that are saying the same thing. Who knows, maybe they’re the same people!
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/evidence-of-north-korea-hack-is-thin/
None of the information in the FBI press release is new, it’s the same information that’s been kicking around ever since the attack, information that most information security guys say is far too weak to form a definitive conclusion that NK was behind the attack.
Wired published a piece by piece analysis of every piece of information publicly available at the time and concluded there wasn’t nearly enough information to assert that NK was behind it:
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/evidence-of-north-korea-hack-is-thin/
The FBI report didn’t add to this, so unless they have some slam dunk evidence that NK is behind it and they’re keeping it to themselves, this seems like a case of laying the blame from expediency & convenience – there’s already a host of stories circulating to the tune of “FBI’s attribution to North Korea leaves information security specialists scratching their heads”.
It feels like they’re just looking for evidence to support a predetermined narrative (probably under pressure to blame someone as quickly as possible), it wouldn’t surprise me if the FBI turns out to be completely wrong here (wouldn’t be the first time).
These hackers probably don’t have access to the movie, it probably wasn’t on the DAX cloud at the time of the hack (4 of the 5 films that were released had already been sent out as screeners, but The Interview was not one of them, so it likely wasn’t on the cloud at the time of the hack, it’s screener was sent out much later).
The Interview is already out there as a screener however, that’s where Gawker likely got the finale footage, so it will follow the usual piracy channels of having someone rip it, encode it and release it. The original video files don’t have to be stolen directly from the studio for a screener copy to start doing the rounds on the Internet.
The Wired article, linked to above twice, is not behind a paywall.
*steal*
#51 anteprepro:
Ok the assassination fails in The Day Of The Jackal but I’m unaware of any backlash from France.
Daz, I am guessing the fact that he was not in office at time of the films release helped. But still a good point.
Jennifer Trout’s take on the whole thing:
(Recommended)
http://jennytrout.com/?p=8492
the thing that really worries me about this, is that it will end up being the “evidence” western governments will use to finalize control of all internet and WAN traffic.
doing it for not just your safety, but so those damn rebels can’t control which movies you get to see…
yeah, this whole thing reeks.
expect another bill to be put on the floor soon regarding network security. might even get introduced as the very first thing in the new term.
and everyone will applaud it, because they think it ironically will be about their “freedom” to see they movies they want.
And I think they are going to find the truth of the old verse, “you can pay the Danegeld, but it doesn’t get rid of the Dane” if that is indeed the case. Digital data isn’t like physical data: the hackers are always going to have a copy of that stuff somewhere, and if they are not state actors that data will continue to be for sale to whomever has enough cash and a beef with Sony.
anteprepro #64:
Umm. That wasn’t me. Twas some other fan of the mighty Molesworth.
Day Of The Jackal was inspired by an actual incident, if memory serves. Don’t know if that would have any bearing on the point.
@PZ Myers – 18 December 2014 at 3:20 pm
I feel the same way. I guess part of my cynicism about this movie, is really me protecting myself from the realization that many Americans would cheer to see that.