Sony Leaks thread

[Vee]

Oh, it'll leak. Then we can all make that choice for ourselves.

[marceline]

With all the money we've dumped on wars and all the data breaches that were basically treated like business as usual, it's amazing to me to watch [!@#$%^&*] North Korea be the country that actually manages to do so much damage. It's the age of the geek, baby.

[Vee]

They're not exactly technologically-advanced on their own. Depending on who you ask, they either had outside help or funneled huge amounts of money and hardware to one small unit for this job. Everyone but the military and top power elite in that country live in squalor; they barely know the Internet exists.

[Vee]

George R.R. Martin offers to screen The Interview.

Insanely enough, I know that theater well but had no idea he owned it. Small world.

[Juliajms]

What they do have is an ally in China and the ability to nuke South Korea. If they didn't have China, the US/West likely would have made sure they never managed to become a nuclear power in the first place. I personally think KJU chooses to keep his country in the state its in. He has plenty of food and electricity and a population without those things is a lot easier to keep under control.

And if it's not China that the world is afraid of (which it is) it's even more shameful that we haven't acted to stop North Korea's "prison" camps. So much for "never again".

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2013/08/20/horror-of-north-korean-prison-camps-exposed-at-un-panel-hearing/

[marceline]

I've decided that this isn't North Korea, it's Oprah trying to get rid of the competition for Christmas Day so that people will go see Selma which, ironically, is about *actual* freedom of speech and expression.

[Toups]

I like Seth Rogen's dumb comedies too and don't see anything wrong with the subject matter of this movie. We shouldn't let a dictator decide what we can and cannot see. It needs to be released somehow.

George Clooney gave a good interview about this: http://deadline.com/2014/12/george-clooney-sony-hollywood-cowardice-north-korea-cyberattack-petition-1201329988/

FBI confirms North Korea is responsible: http://deadline.com/2014/12/north-korea-attacked-sony-hacking-federal-announcement-1201329309/

[marceline]

I don't think of it as a dictator deciding what we watch. I see it as the cowardice of corporate media deciding what we watch and they've been doing that for years. That's why we get six million superhero movies while a film like Dallas Buyers Club for instance, languishes in development hell for decades because straight, white male execs think it's icky. When I think about all the quality projects that never see the light of day at Sony or other companies because of the thinking we've seen laid out in those emails, I can't bring myself to be outraged. The level of entitlement I'm seeing from people who think that the rest of the planet has to play by our rules is distasteful and IMO deserves some pushback. I'm not going to cry because the world has been denied yet another example of Seth Rogen's "genius."

ETA: All that said, I was happier than I should've been to see that in spite of everything James Franco showed up for Stephen Colbert's final show.

[Juliajms]

Deleted: poor taste on my part.

[Vee]

China keeps NK on a very tight leash. You get the sense they are as much of an exasperation to the Chinese as they are to us sometimes. From what I've heard, NK's nukes are barely viable at short range, let alone trying to get anywhere else. The danger is not to us but to other parts of Asia, in what they could do to their neighbors if we did act. China also does not want to deal with the influx of illegal immigrants and refugees should the North fall. Therefore we have stasis.

Stories like Camp 14: Total Control Zone and the testimony of people like Park Yeon-mi tell a harrowing story. It's hard to believe conditions like that still exist on Earth within an institutional framework, but they do. It's not just the thought criminal who is taken away, but three generations of his or her family. The bloodline is wiped out. Children are born and raised inside those camps.

VICE also did a hilarious (and sad) series of reports from inside Pyongyang's one and only tourist hotel that frankly made The Interview seem pretty spot-on. More recently, they looked at NK's long-running international drug trade, including crystal meth. Drugs are one of their (or perhaps their only) major export(s).

Don't get me wrong, I am dying to see Selma. I just think there's plenty of room to tweak this tyrant too.

[Juliajms]

I'll watch this over the weekend. I saw one Vice piece on NK, but it's not the one you mentioned. It was about the state of NK overall.

[Vee]

Park Yeon-mi escaped NK at age 13:

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More from a live Q&A with the Guardian.

[Juliajms]

^ That was really hard to watch. She's right that people focus more on the regime and less on the people. Sadly, I think the press pays less attention because it's not genocide.

[GregNYC]

Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton says Obama is lying.

[sony Pictures CEO Michael] Lynton reacted to Obama’s comment that he wished Sony had reached out to them. “We definitely spoke to a senior advisor in the White House to talk about the situation. The fact is, did we talk to the president himself? … The White House was certainly aware of the situation.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sony-fires-back-at-obama-759553

[marceline]

The New York community is doing a free reading of "The Interview" this weekend.

http://playbill.com/news/article/ny-theatre-community-to-stage-free-reading-of-controversial-sony-comedy-the-interview-337919