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Comment by krick | Hacker News Reader

Literally every day now I run across something mentioning "Sony hack", but haven't understood yet why it's so significant topic. It seems to gather way more attention than I imagine something like this should. Every now and then somebody gets "hacked", sometimes it's somebody pretty big, it's not that uncommon that some really important data gets leaked, but it never goes further than mentioning it on HN or something, no jokes about it on 9gag, no North Koreas joining investigation. What's the matter?

Maybe it's because I missed original news. Can somebody provide link or explanation why the heck it's so important that even completely non-technical people buzz about it all the time?

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Because it exposed the interpersonal dealings of people who work at Sony. Whether it's that Trebek sometimes gets mad when asked to deal with unreasonable people, or that execs sometimes say really terrible things about people when they think the email is only between the two of them, or the future of companies that Sony execs are board members of (such as Snapchat) where there is lots of confidential information being discussed about the future of Snapchat and where it believes the current status of messaging lies.

In my opinion, it's mostly about the scope of the hack, and the studio's reaction.

The amount of data compromised is unparalleled in any other previously reported hack, and the response by Sony (canceling the distribution of a movie) is also unprecedented.

Because free speech is a constitutional right now being impugned by a bunch of hackers or a tiny country. The U.S. looks completely powerless in the face of it.

The free speech angle always seemed like a stretch. Isn't Sony free to release or not release movies as they see fit?

And Hollywood could have pulled the prediction of Casablanca to avoid upsetting Germany and the pro Nazi german americans - and there was serious pressure put on Hollywood to do this.

source? Casablanca was produced in 1942 and released in 1943

the book describing the making of Casablanca is quite explicit about the pressures the appeasers and American Nazis put on Hollywood.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Making-Casablanca-Bogart-Bergman...

Such pressures may have existed in the late 30's, but I don't see how there could have been any pressure to "pull production" of Casablanca for the sake of not offending Nazi germany given that its production was well after the US had entered the war. As far as I can tell Warner Brothers had only first heard of the script by January 1942.

It's not a 1st amendment issue, but it is a free speech issue. Sony (and the theaters) were coerced by threats of violence.

And now they're being coerced the other way by the President of the United States. Why is that different?

I agree that the U.S looks weak during this whole thing but how is this an issue of freedom of speech? A company chose to pull its product due to a threat, the government didn't force them to pull it or anything, it's their own choice. If you publish a controversial book and get threatened because of it and choose to pull it, it's not a freedom of speech issue because you are pulling your own book (or not pulling it).

Right, the US government didn't force them. But possibly another government did. If the US government was the perpetrator of this, I'd bet it would be in flagrant violation of the 1st

>possibly another government did

That's just perfect way to put it! Possibly! Possibly aliens from Alpha-Centauri did. Or possibly they didn't.

After comments like this it really starts to look like pretty successful excuse to start a war or something and completely made-up topic overall.

US isn't powerless, it's just a matter of the will to act. If everyone agreed that NK should be destroyed (such would be the case if they were stupid enough to launch a nuclear attack against someone, for example), it would be. Hacking Sony doesn't reach that level of retaliation.

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