From CNN: “Source: Hackers send new message to Sony”:
The hacker message is effectively a victory lap, telling the studio, “Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy.”
The message also says, “And we want everything related to the movie, including its trailers, as well as its full version down from any website hosting them immediately.”
It warns the studio executives that “we still have your private and sensitive data” and claims that they will “ensure the security of your data unless you make additional trouble.”
The email was titled “Message from GOP.” The anonymous hackers have called themselves “Guardians of Peace.”
So how long will these trailers and clips remain up? It’s already become tricky to find online the final sequence of Kim Jong-un’s exploding head.
Yesterday I highlighted a report about Korean activists seeking bootleg copies of The Interview and predicted that the effect of North Korea bullying Sony into burying Seth Rogen and James Franco’s new film would be that it would leak all around the world and the internet, becoming unstoppable and much more damaging. But if the blackmailing goes a step further, if now Sony must start pulling the material they’ve already released in addition to legally threatening anyone who might be so bold as to share the film illegally, then I’m now not so sure.
It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that soon The Interview trailers will be pulled and an army of recently-recruited Sony lawyers will even start sending notices to websites that have written movie promotions or stories covering the controversy, asking them to delete pieces, lest more embarrassing emails be released.
The question will be: how far backwards could this go? Already the screenings of Team America: World Police announced to replace The Interview have been cancelled. Will this go further or will American companies fight back?
Obviously, it’s hard to expect them to want to fight when the example set by the Jarrett-Obama administration, per Cuba and Iran, has been to bend over backwards and embrace illiberal tyrannies.
Some have suggested the fantasy of the federal government buying the movie, endorsing it, and spreading the film around for free. My prescription goes several miles further in hawkishness, of course…
Question for President Valerie Jarrett: if it’s morally acceptable and necessary to drone Anwar al-Awlaki, why should we not do the same to Kim Jong-un?
The really radical thing about the film is that through humor it gets people thinking about the absurdity of our country’s long-standing, ill-informed policy supposedly prohibiting assassinations of foreign “leaders.”
It’s not just that the federal government should buy The Interview and release it en masse in the public domain. It’s that the common sense policy it advocates through satire is what we should actually be doing: don’t make wars against countries, just drone the criminal tyrants who don’t have a legitimate claim to leadership in the first place.
Deep down, as supposedly crazy and genuinely evil and malevolent as Kim Jong-un is, he probably knows and realizes that the only significant force stopping the U.S. government from completely obliterating him and then bringing Starbucks, Obamacare, gay marriage, and Beyonce albums to North Korea is the weak, morally confused will of the American people. If more people woke up and realized that the American military is technologically capable of defeating thugs like the Kim cult with much less of a risk of loss of life than in past generations, then we’d have leaders in place willing to use our military to do what it was trained and build to do: destroy the enemies of America.
What better, Chicago Way-style message is sent to the world’s dictators that when they hack a studio, and we respond by hacking up their government with drones? What group of slave state-sponsored hackers would dare try and disrupt a film again when the retaliation is World War II-style total war on their bosses and them? What message does that send to those who would target American lives that digital warfare against free states’ commerce, coupled with threats of violence, is met with military warfare?
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