The Sony Hackers Are Now Demanding the Removal of The Interview Trailers From the Web

There are at least a few fans of Sony Pictures' decision to cancel the planned Christmas Day release of The Interview after hackers threatened theaters showing the film—the hackers themselves.
The hackers sent another message to Sony executives after the decision was announced, reports CNN, calling the move to pull the film from release "very wise." Via CNN:
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."
Basically, the hackers, which reports say U.S. intelligence officials believe are linked to North Korea, are announcing that not only have they won this round of international corporate blackmail, they're prepared to go at it again. And, while they're at it, they're going to make some even more ridiculous demands about taking down the movie's marketing materials too. I bet Sony feels incredibly safe now.
Here's one of the trailers. Watch it while you can:
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Remember this the next time some celebrity is talking about how "courageous" Hollywood is. What a bunch of fucking cowards.
Not just Hollywood, the whole country is turning into a bunch of cowardly shits.
You say that, but it looks to me like the entire country wants to pay to see this movie as a big fuck you to the people who did this. It is Sony that is the problem here not the country.
I'm referring to other things in general, like the hysterical pants-shitting over the search for the younger, unarmed and wounded, Tsarnaev brother in Boston, The eagerness to excuse government domestic spying and torture because "safety", etc. etc.
I've seen pundits do that, not many of the people I've met excuse this shit, regardless of political persuasion. The polls certainly aren't showing that Americans support the wars, the dronings, the torture.
Why do you think voter participation has plummeted over the last 20 years? People have gotten sick of both TEAMs, but still believe (because it has been drilled into them for decades) thatvoting for a third party is "throwing their vote away." So they throw it away by simply not voting.
Average Americans are nowhere near as depraved as some of you guys seem to think they are. TEAM players are frequently unprincipled dickheads, but the don't represent the majority, and their representation in politics is diminishing.
The entire country doesn't have their dirty laundry in the hands of third parties.
My guess is that the hackers have some career ending shit for some of the Sony execs.
At this point the parent company needs to step in and do a wholesale changeout of the management and fix their IT holes.
Let me give you a good conspiracy theory. What the hackers have but haven't released is proof of how widespread child sex abuse is in Hollywood and this is why all of Hollywood, not just Sony, has rolled over so easily.
That is actually a very plausible theory. Would also explain Paramount stopping the re-showing of Team America.
That just makes me want to show it on the side of my building for free.
Wha?
^ This
It can't be mere racism, since that's already out there. It must be worse than that. Something illegal or so immoral that even Hollywood can't tolerate it.
There is only one thing that fits that description Nick, sex with minors. The country is not going to care if some exec they haven't heard of is racist, as long as the company fires them. The country doesn't care about actors using drugs, everyone knows they do, or being horrible demanding people, the tabloids show that every day. The only thing that would really turn country against Hollywood is that if it came out that it was Vatican West when it came to sex with minors. And it is a very good bet it is exactly that. The only question is do the hackers have such proof.
I agree it's gotta be something that sends a person to jail, but doubt the sex with minors angle.
I doubt people discuss that stuff in corporate emails.
Tax fraud, on the other hand....
Proof that they are registered Republicans maybe? This is Hollywood after all.
Meh, the left and the lefty actor types have long claimed (rather unconvincingly IYAM) that the PGA and studio/distributor executive floors are chock-a-block with hyper-conservative Republicans.
Hmm. It's not like there's a review of Sony's "morality" clause here. This is interesting because its all a big game of chicken, until someone calls a crisis PR firm.
Hollywood thinks it's "courageous" when a film criticizes such things as racism and homophobia.
Fuck them.
Oh, and Sony, you are a bunch of cowardly pussies!
Congratulations, Sony. You dug this hole for nothing.
Now I'm even more pissed at Microsoft for making the XBox One suck so much. I really wanted to give them my money instead of Sony.
Old people don't understand that email is forever. They probably have tons of emails of executives asking for naked pics of 18 year old (male) gofers and correspondence discussing weird fetishes with prostos and mistresses.
Unless you work for the IRS.
I thought 18 was over the hill for hollywood execs.
LOL.
I was under the impression they were almost entirely composed of rich, elderly, jews.
I bet these hackers aren't even N. Koreans. Rather, this is some elaborate blackmail operation by some people who know way too much about the shit that goes on behind closed doors in Hollywood.
Like, people who have been raped on the "casting couch" and so forth.
Exactly. My best educated guess is it's someone right there sitting on top of the Industry in Los Angeles. I think someone snapped after the release of the torture reports. I think they probably got so sick of watching CIA propaganda being injected into the mainstream film and TV industry and threw them a game changer.
Regardless of Sony's courage or lack thereof, they do pay taxes and we do have this giant government that claims to protect us. Why should Sony have to fight this fight? Don't we have a government for that? Is it too much to ask that it make some effort to find the people who did this and hang them by their balls or if they are supported by North Korea make North Korea regret fucking with us?
It's fairly well known that state-sponsored espionage is changing focus more towards stealing corporate secrets than military secrets. You would think that the US government would want to be all over this particular security breach. But I imagine that fed-gov is still busy with internal purges resulting from the Snowden affair.
Sony execs didn't donate enough to Obama's reelection campaign.
NSA is too busy spying on American citizens at home to track down shit like this.
They have that building the size of the superdome in Utah. Couldn't they help a little?
... Dude, Sony's owned. Booz Allen already has all the embarrassing stuff. Now more people have it who aren't the NSA. I think that's the point. The NSA wouldn't give you ANYTHING on Sony. But these hackers would yank down their pants in public doxxing so shameful it might make you sorry you looked. That's how it works.
Yes, I do believe that one of the primary functions of government is something called "police", and that steal people's data and threatening to blow up movie theaters are both illegal.
Where the hell is the FBI on this?
Goddamnit, we really are a nation of pussies.
BOSTON STRONG!!!
I'm not usually a violent person but this shit has made me want our military to level Pyongyang. That probably shouldn't happen but I'm really pissed off right now.
Or, if really is Pyongyang, at least retaliate in kind. Shut down their grid or something for a while.
Take back the Pueblo. 😉
I'm sure it's loaded with explosives to prevent just that.
That's fair. And I guess we haven't confirmed who it was. Fine....
It was NK.
This could really get really stupid and vigilante among hackers. US hackers are pretty good both White Hat and Black Hat. I'm not sure its ever legal what might happen if the Sony hackers were ID'd.
The mystique is based on you NOT KNOWING who hacked Sony. The IP address might be proxxied to North Korea, but it might be a bedroom in Canada or San Diego. All the while Kim Jong is probably laughing his ass off at Sony and playing PS4, not giving a damn and not knowing who did it all the same. The hackers who did this are probably doing the same thing.
We should at least be dropping tablets with of both films in NK, Berlin Air Lift Style.
Just for yucks, we could load up the tablets with a bunch of pictures/video from South Korea showing them what life could be like without their shitty government.
Pay the danegeld and never be rid of the Dane.
One of the commentariat here at H&R referred to it as "derpgeld", IIRC.
That should be spelled "derpegeld"
While I think Sony was worried about their legal liability in the extremely unlikely event that there was a terrorist attack at a theater showing The Interview, I think it is much more likely that they were really concerned about further document dumps.
How embarrassing must those other emails and internal documents be? I'm guessing they're much worse than what has already been released.
Child sex abuse. Things like "hey, (insert famous actor here), needs to be set up with (insert aspiring child actor here)." Or, "tell that mom if she won't play ball her daughter isn't getting the part"
These people clearly have no sensor and acted like these emails would never be seen. Would it be surprising that they were that sloppy?
I'll bet its more systematic fraud, Producers style.
My guess is that they have been cheating actors & outside investors out of profit, and talking about it openly.
Not to mention the tax fiddles. I fully support the fiddles; the IRS's lawyers for some reason vociferously disagree with me.
It's pretty well known that the film industry doesn't follow the usual rules of accounting, i.e. Return of the Jedi has never turned a profit, etc.
They have clearly been doing that. That has been known for years. There have been enormously profitable movies that somehow ended up being listed as money losers when it came time to pay actors their shares of the profit under their contracts.
Another thing might be tax fraud. Maybe the hackers found the second set of books that shows that the execs have been skimming money off the top. That would not get you fired with a nice severance package, that would send you to prison.
That is a good possibility. All these studios like to brag about the box office receipts and how many hundreds of millions their movies make. But, when it's time to file taxes, lo and behold none of those films ever seem to make a profit.
Or, Sony could have scrapped this because they need a $90 million write-down for Q4 2014.
I think the child sex abuse thing is more likely.
These are the same people who think what Roman Polanski did was no big deal. I wouldn't be at all surprisied if they ALL had dirty secrets like that. Look at Bill Cosby.
Some of them might even have literal corpses in their closets given Hollywood's relationship with the drug cartels.
Someone please explain to me this supposed "legal liability" for Sony. If the movie is released, and I choose to go to a theatre to see it, in full knowledge of the threats being made, how can it possibly be Sony's fault that I chose to assume the risk? I could perhaps see the liability if the threats were known to Sony alone, but once the threats were publicized, it was my decision to go.
The "liability" issue is a cover. There must be something truly damaging in the stolen data.
How astute an observation from Nick M.
How indeed...
This is just depressing...
Did it not occur to Sony that capitulating immediately like they did would only embolden the hackers and lead to more demands, thus accomplishing absolutely nothing?
The next communique from the hackers to Sony:
Sony screwed themselves.
The Sony Hackers Are Now Demanding the Removal of The Interview Trailers From the Web
Lol. Good luck.
At this point, Sony should just abandon the copyright and then "leak" the film. Soon, it would be all over the torrents and youtube sites. This way, Sony would show at least a little defiance to NK.
I looked at the paycheck that said $4961 , I accept ...that...my neighbours mother woz like they say actually making money part-time on there computar. . there dads buddy haz done this for under twelve months and just cleared the loans on their house and purchased a brand new Nissan GT-R: .
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Something tells me that this isn't really the North Koreans at all.
I'm thinking columbian drug lords at the moment. Someone got a shipment of coke and didn't pay.
Another plausible theory:
They are doing this to pressure Congress to reapprove the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program.
That's why they picked a shitty comedy they knew was a dog as the target.
Or the simplest conspiracy theory of all: It is all a scam to drum up publicity for what would otherwise have been an utterly forgettable movie.
Reward behavior, and get more of it. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.