Sony, the internet, and censorship

My last column before Christmas this week in Expansión, Spain’s leading financial daily, is called “Sony and poetic justice” (pdf in Spanish), and is about the recent theft of information from the company’s computers, and its subsequent decision to suspend the December 25th premiere of its comedy “The Interview”, as a result of terror attack threats and the refusal of five movie house distribution chains to show it.

On Thursday, Sony said that had no other plans for the movie other than its cancellation, but then on Friday said that it might release it on VOD. In the meantime, I came across an article called “Why Sony Pictures should release the The Interview” online in The Verge which shares my belief that we cannot accept the cancellation of movies just because somebody doesn’t like it.

Whether North Korea is behind the hacking of Sony Pictures or not, the idea that a poorly written threat can change what an industry that has lived through dozens of controversies plans to do is deeply worrying. The infrastructure required to carry out terror attacks is very different from that needed to hack into a company’s computer system: the fact that the people behind this have been able to penetrate a company’s security measures does not, in any way translate into a capacity to launch a bombing campaign.

This isn’t about defending Sony’s right to release a film of dubious quality, but using the internet for what it really is: suddenly, distributing a film on the web has many advantages. On the one hand, it avoids the possible danger of attacks, however unlikely they may be, and making the decision to see the movie an individual choice. On the other hand, it puts to good use all the investment and time spent on making and marketing the film, with the added benefit that the huge media coverage has provided for a dumbed down comedy that was unlikely before this to have garnered much attention. What’s more, this gives Sony the chance to try out low-cost commercial models that would put people off downloading the movie for free.

And last, but not least, it would send out the message that censorship, from whichever quarter, doesn’t work, and would defeat whoever is behind this by making the movie more visible than it ever would have been.

But of course we’re talking here about Sony, a company that has consistently shown a complete inability to understand the internet’s potential (shown in large part by the cyberattack on its information systems, and which has prompted legal action by its own employees), and that has just been shown to be planning attacks against Google as well as considering direct threats to the structure of the internet. It is something of a paradox that the very internet that Sony finds so hard to get its head round could now provide the answer to its problems. Is there perhaps a chance now that Sony will come round? I suspect not.

Below, the image of column and the translated text in full:

Sony poetic justice

Last month, Sony Pictures was the victim of a cyberattack that resulted in the theft of a huge about of information, and that now seems to have originated in North Korea, whose government is deeply unhappy about a comedy called The Interview, in which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is ridiculed and eventually assassinated.

Theft is a crime, and anybody who steals should be locked up. The fact that in this case, the victim is Sony, which in 2005 infected the computers of thousands of people it suspected of downloading movies illegally with spyware, cannot be regarded as poetic justice. A crime is a crime.

The people responsible for the theft are now threatening to attack movie houses that show the film. The threats are scarcely credible, but the five biggest distributors in the United States have decided not to show The Interview, which as due to be premiered on December 25.

What should Sony do? It has invested a lot of money in the film, and stands to lose even more by not showing it. Furthermore, there is the question of acceding to censorship. Are we going to cancel all movies that somebody doesn’t like?

What Sony needs to do now is take advantage of the media hullaballoo and make the film available online. A small payment would be enough to prevent people obtaining it from other sources, while showing the blackmailers that more people than ever are going to see it. That’s the smart option.

Are we about to see Sony, perhaps the company that has the worst relationship with the internet and that has persecuted its users, premiere a movie online? Now that really would be poetic justice.

(En español, aquí)