The Interview: Will the American
people and companies that call
themselves American be stopped from seeing a film that skewers
one of the world's most genocidal despots?
Sony's Only Hope
of Redemption: Post 'The Interview' for World to See (Le
Monde, France)
It has been 25
years since the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a
religious 'fatwa' enjoining Muslims around the world to kill august British
writer Salman Rushdie. The reason?
One of his novels, The Satanic Verses,
was insulting to Islam. The case of The
Interview involves the same type of threat. As suggested by our British
colleagues at The Financial Times,
Sony must in turn respond by utilizing the Web and making the The Interview accessible to anyone who wishes
to see it ... and putting it online.
The firm Sony Pictures Entertainment has created a dangerous
precedent. Yielding to the aggression of pirates in cyberspace guided by North
Korea, the studio announced on December 17 that it would not release a film, The Interview, in theaters or via any
other medium. This capitulation marks a black day for free expression in a
world living in the digital age.
The information pirates have won a victory unparalleled in
the history of cyber warfare. They have forced, which had to write off an $80
million investment in a film that was due to be released for Christmas. On
Friday evening, President Barack Obama said he regretted that the studio
"made a mistake" by canceling the film, just after the FBI fingered
the Pyongyang regime for the act of piracy that victimized Sony.
Marauding freely through the computers at Sony, the pirates
seized the e-mails of Sony management - which at times contain consummate
vulgarity - and extremely confidential e-mails, movie scripts and other
documents considered to be more or less confidential. They made the entire
contents public and promised to upload even more if they failed to obtain what
they sought: the withdrawal of the film.
It will be hard enough for Sony management to regain its
reputation, and even more so for the parties who thought they could safely
correspond with it safely via e-mail, but the assault went even further. The
pirates that call themselves "The Guardians of Peace" threatened to
carry out attacks on theaters that show the film. Employees of the studio were
surprised to find when turning on their computers this week the following
message: "The world will be full of fear … Remember the 11th of September
2001."
Hollywood had already surrendered. Even before the Sony decision,
the largest distribution networks had refused to carry The Interview. The film chronicles the plans of two journalists
eager to obtain a meeting with Kim Jong-un who are then
recruited by the CIA to assassinate the leader of the North Korean regime.
If the American argument is true, and Pyongyang denies any
involvement, that means that a state can blackmail a newspaper, a publishing
house, a theater or a film producer into removing an article, a documentary -
or any work it dislikes. That means that any or almost any attack can be gotten away with in this
space of exchange - the Internet - that is the heart of daily life in our era.
It confirms, unfortunately, a form of warfare is already well underway in this
vast digital space where nothing is safe.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
It has been 25 years since the leader of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued
a religious "fatwa" enjoining Muslims around the world to kill august
British writer Salman Rushdie. The
reason? One of his novels, The
Satanic Verses, was insulting to Islam. The case of The Interview involves the same type of threat. As suggested by our
British colleagues at The Financial Times,
Sony must in turn respond by utilizing the Web and making the The Interview accessible to anyone who wishes
to see it ... and putting it online.
