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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty ridiculous. Want to clear out an entire NFL playoff game in a few weeks? Tweet out a vague threat against the game about 24 hours prior. Want several million dollars? Send emails to about 20,000 bars and restaurants demanding $5K in Bitcoins or their business will be blown to bits.

The problem isn't that Sony capitulated to a threat. It's that they capitulated to a nonsensical threat. They gave credence to every threat. Earlier in the day I was somewhat neutral on this, but now that I've had a chance to consider it I think that Sony is actually endangering our national security with this move. This is the first time in recent memory that America has been seen as caving to terrorist demands, and it can only create more disasters.

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> They gave credence to every threat. Earlier in the day I was somewhat neutral on this, but now that I've had a chance to consider it I think that Sony is actually endangering our national security with this move. This is the first time in recent memory that America has been seen as caving to terrorist demands, and it can only create more disasters.

Of course given an article about a stupid, overblown reaction a stupid and overblown reaction would be the top comment. This craving of egos heavily immersed in the social news context for every popular news item be the Most Important Thing That Has Ever Happened And Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again, paired with a never-ending need for everyone to be outraged about everything is just so tiring. Just get a hold of yourself and and chill out, ok, the world isn't over. Sony didn't just endanger your life. You're probably going to die of cancer in some hospital bed at 4pm in the afternoon a few decades from now after a pretty boring, normal life. You want excitement and danger go help a NGO in a war torn region. You're not going to find it on the pages of reddit and hacker news. This guy rolling his eyes in the vice article would probably roll his eyes at your response as well.

I think you are reading far more from parent comment than he actually saying. Nowhere in his comment did he say anything to the effect of "It's significantly more likely my life will be taken in a terrorist attack." Which is what you seem to be interpreting it as.

At best he just said that this could encourage more situations like this and possibly terrorist attacks. And all he literally said was "it can only create more disasters" which isn't very specific as to how many/severe said disasters are to be. How "overblown" of him.

He's not saying that the sky is falling. He's saying that it's bad policy to cave to threats like this, even once. Which it definitely is.

As an analogy, one police force giving into a hostage taker's demands probably wouldn't lead to more criminals taking hostages. But if it happened every time, hostage taking would become much more rampant. And so giving into criminals is almost universally against policy. Even if on a case by case basis it would seem overblown and ridiculous; to not just give them what they want to save lives.

And there are possibly serious consequences of just this incident. I bet there will be many fewer movies made about North Korea now. Movie studios will censor self-censor themselves more on things that might upset powerful groups. Of course that may have happened anyway but now they've given up millions of dollars - whereas otherwise they might have actually profited from the attention of the controversy. Two movies have already been cancelled over this nonsense.

You completely misinterpreted my comment, and your response is far more over the top than you incorrectly claim mine to be. My point was that private businesses caving to threats that have no possibility of being carried out will embolden countless others to make similar threats. Thus, what Sony did will likely cause similar issues for other businesses, large and small, the thinking being that US companies are so risk averse that they will just give in.

Individual theaters backed out before Sony had a choice in matter. If theaters refuse to play the film, it's moot what Sony does. Of course they could accept s limited release, but that would kill their profits. They are a business so it wouldn't make much sense to do a limited release if it's not profitable. They could still go for a digital release or something else but they probably won't.

People should really be upset at the theater owners who officially opted out. Chances are Sony may have pushed the release anyways but since they were forced by the theaters they are the ones who deserve to be balked at.

Also, Sony isn't America. It's a Japanese company, with a large presence and investment in America, but there's no reason to assume that give them any nationalistic motives or compass.

>They are a business so it wouldn't make much sense to do a limited release if it's not profitable.

The movie has been produced at this point. It can't cost that much to ship some hard drives to theaters. It would make sense to try to recover at least some of their investment.

I bet there is some threshold at which the movie does worse in the long term with limited release. They can still do a full release in the future and part of the profit is purely from buzz and social momentum, followed up by video sales etc... So they can probably just wait until it's worthehile for a full release. The newest Hobbit movie was ready for summer release but pushed to avoid competition with other hits. If they can wait 6 months, I'm sure Sony can wait here with minimal losses.

If I were the CEO of Sony, I'd put the damn movie on YouTube under a CC license and weaponize the Streisand effect.

This has turned out to be a dead loss financially for Sony either way, and when you know you've lost the current game, it's time to start thinking about the next one. Being seen to capitulate like this marks Sony as an easy target. The next time some bunch of cybercriminals wants money and is thinking about targets for some blackmail scheme, who's going to be at the top of their list?

Why make it free? I'm sure the Streisand effect is strong enough to get a lot of people to buy this movie if they released it online and/or direct to video. "Buy the movie North Korea doesn't want you to see". A pure digital release would make it pretty hard for terrorists to decide what to bomb.

Sony has no plans to release it on video which I found astounding. Who caved first doesn't matter in my book but I do understand their concern.

If it truly was North Korea or people they paid do you really think those they targeted would be safe anywhere? About any country can disappear someone, even outside their own country, and North Korea isn't beyond that, they may not be to the level of the US or Russia but I have read they had a fondness at one time for kidnapping Japanese nationals.

'no plans' doesn't really mean anything. At the moment I would say it means they still want to do a theater release after this kerfuffle blows over.

>Sony has no plans to release it on video which I found astounding.

Sony should make some sort of TV-connected "console" to let people buy and download media over the internet. Waaaaait a second.

I know the movie studio and consumer electronics divisions aren't the same thing, but if they really wanted to get this video out I have to imagine that the Sony-umbrella companies are capable of working together.

My bet is they change course and still show it in theaters. Maybe not on the original launch date, and maybe not everywhere, but (caving to terrorists aside) they spent a pile of money on this and they want to make it back.

Right -- why not release it to individuals for even $2.99 and have a "watch-in" where you go watch in a local public space that is not advertised or set before-hand? Make it the decentralized distributed stupid-comedy-watching sit-in of the year. Do it on short notice so people feel comfortable that no one could set up a terrorist attack beforehand.

It's a sunk cost.

SONY should release, because fuck terror.

The theaters backed out when Sony let them back out. Sony had contracts with the theaters that said that they would show the film. After receiving the threats Sony told the theaters that they were no longer bound by those contracts.

To a lesser degree, Comedy Central did too, when they refused to fully air the South Park episode featuring, apparently, Mohammed hidden inside a bear costume.

Considering reactions to cartooning of Muhammad, I'm not sure that threat was so empty. Still, it's sad the episode was censored.

Strange thing is, they had other episodes with Muhammad with no comment from anyone that I'm aware of.

True, the threat is more credible, but ... free speech, anyone? It's easy to defend free speech when it's the virgin Mary in a jar of piss, while the Catholics complain (but don't go and slaughter the artist). If the 1st amendment is only going to be protected when something is offensive to a peaceful group (or one without the credible likelihood of violent radicals going ape), then you end up catering to the sensibilities of those most likely to be prone to violence.

Marc Rogers makes a convincing case that North Korea was almost certainly not behind the attack, and that a disgruntled (former?) employee was. His analysis makes the terrorism threat seem even hollower.

http://marcrogers.org/2014/12/18/why-the-sony-hack-is-unlike...

I think that Sony is actually endangering our national security with this move

Oh FFS, that's just as stupid as calling it an act of war.

Some people believe it is... this guy actually has a regular column at Forbes.

U.S. Should Make North Korea Pay for Sony Hack

Pyongyang has given the Obama administration no choice but to retaliate now by imposing sanctions or even an embargo.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/17/u-s-should-...

To be sure, the DPRK would consider the _release_ of the movie and act of war[1], so he's not completely nuts. At least he's not the someone in the Foreign Ministry saying such things.

[1]http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28014069

Maybe Sony wasn't scared of real-world terrorist attacks on theaters but of some informations that the hackers might disclose to the world. Who knows what kind of dirty laundry ended up in the hackers' hands.

Did the hackers mention "the interview" before the press started speculating on the attack being from NK?

For all I know, they could be playing with the fears expressed by the medias after the hack went public. If that's the case, they're probably having a hell of a time posing as NK supporters terrorizing Americans.

Sony is Japanese.

Sony Pictures Entertainment, who produced and marketed this movie, is based in the US (Hollywood) and run by Americans. In all likelihood this decision comes from them.

yes is I where Obama or the comerce secratery id be considering using the kiss of death words "not fit and proper persons to run a public company"

It's not an empty threat. They completely compromised Sony's servers. Who knows what they haven't leaked yet, or what they are capable of.

The movie theaters decided to not show the movie because they couldn't implement a nationwide security system in every one of their theaters in 2 weeks. Since there is 0 security at movie theaters, I as a moviegoer would be extremely scared to go to watch this movie in it's opening week.

> I as a moviegoer would be extremely scared to go to watch this movie in it's opening week.

Sadly, that's exactly the fear the hackers want you to have. You have much higher odds being hurt or killed in a car accident on the drive to the theater than from some potential terrorist act.

I as a moviegoer would be extremely scared to go to watch this movie in it's opening week.

You are in vastly more danger from other traffic on the drive to the cinema. Hell, you are more likely to die through home carpentry.

I tried to roughly estimate the risk.

There are 18,000 theaters that could be targets. Let's say there are 10 showings over the opening weekend that might be bombed, so if you attend, there's a 1 in 180,000 chance you'll be in the bombed theater (assuming there's only one bombing). Let's say there's a 5% chance it's a real threat (personally I'd estimate around 1%, but let's use 5% to be conservative). That gives a 1 in 3.6 million chance of being in the bombed theater.

Compare to car accidents. There are 1.27 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled in the USA. If the movie theater is five miles away, that gives you a 1 in 7.9 million chance of dying in a car accident on the way to or from the movie.

If we stop calculating there, it looks like you'd be roughly twice as likely to be in the bombed theater than to die in a car accident on the way to the theater. (Note that this is the chance of being in the bombed theater, not of dying in the bombing. Presumably, most people in the theater would survive.) To me, that seems like an acceptably negligible risk.

More detailed calculations could include the chance of dying conditional on being in the bombed theater, and could include the chance of more than one theater being bombed, and adjust for the chance of the bomber being foiled or the bomb not working, and could adjust for which theater you're seeing it in (theaters in major cities are more likely targets than small towns).

Yawn...this sort of statistical analysis misses the point and demonstrates a rank ignorance of human psychology. Run the same statistical analysis on the possibility of getting killed at a school in Pakistan and then tell me how the Taliban killing ~130 children and some teachers is just a statistical outlier that people whouldn't pay any attention to.

I mention it because that incident wasn't expected either, but it's an excellent demonstration of how much havoc a few bad actors can wreak. given the huge number of movie theaters and the impossibility of predicting which ones might be targeted, nobody wants to be left holding the bag in the unlikely-but-nonetheless-possible scenario of a mini-massacre. On the scale of things you would be willing to assume risk for, a tasteless comedy ranks pretty low.

> tell me how the Taliban killing ~130 children and some teachers is just a statistical outlier that people whouldn't pay any attention to.

My comment didn't mention people not paying attention to a bombing. My comment was about estimating the risk of dying in a bombing, not about people's reactions to it.

> Yawn...

There are more civil ways to express that.

Comments like this about the remoteness of the risk always carry the implicit argument that one should not pay attention to it because of the low probability. It's certainly irrational to think there's a high probability of it happening to you, but it's eminently rational for stakeholders like movie theater operators to minimize the risk - after all, to the extent that customers consider the showing of the picture to be a risk factor, they're going to stay away from the entire theater even if it is showing other pictures they might want to see.

There are more civil ways to express that.

There are more civil ways to discuss risk than making statistical straw man arguments too.

Actually, he was replying to a comment that centered on the specific threat level that a particular individual thought he may be facing, so a calculation like this is exactly on point.

Well, that's true. All the same, I think it's a hopelessly facile analysis - the assumption that a bombing is the only possible risk scenario, for example - that's not really responsive to the underlying issue.

Fair enough. From the average moviegoers standpoint, it's probably not too risky to watch the movie on opening day.

That being said, I disagree with the 5% chance that the threat actually gets carried through. It is not overwhelmingly difficult to carry through this type of threat, since North Korea has a large budget and theaters don't have security.

And from Sony's perspective, it doesn't matter if 6 people dying in Tennessee (random example) is only a small percentage of their overall viewers - it's human lives on their hands in a scenario that could have been easily avoided.

That 5% figure is arbitrary though. If the threat is a real one, and the intention is carry out a terrorist attack, you could assume that it will happen because the people behind it mean business. If it is bluff, then there is no risk at all.

Certainly I agree risks like this are not worth worrying about, life is full of risks.

I think the likelihood of a physical attack being carried out at these theaters is literally zero. It's one thing to compromise servers from anywhere in the world and it's quite another to build bombs and plant them in movie theaters. This is the ultimate goal of terrorism after all, not to kill people but to make people afraid to go about their normal lives.

Part of me wishes that the American public viewed this mess as a cause to be supported, to say criminals and/or a dictator from a third world country doesn't get to decide what harmless entertainment is suitable for us. I, for one, do not want to be threatened because I watched (or made) a movie.

Imagine if ticket sales had gone through the roof for this movie, the kind of statement that would make. And whether or not anyone actually watched it is beside the point.

> Since there is 0 security at movie theaters, I as a moviegoer would be extremely scared to go to watch this movie in it's opening week.

Think about what you are saying. "There is a group capable and willing to commit acts of terror on American soil... but now that Sony has not released the movie, I am perfectly safe".

So anyone who is capable of compromising the servers of a corporation, or even a government agency is also capable of blowing up things?

Good to know.

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