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An Offer to Sony from 2600

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Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#21

Post by k-mcgrady »

jarcane wrote: post #16
zaroth wrote: post #4

Sony CEO Michael Lynton says Sony still wants The Interview to be seen and is considering their options. Those include DVD and Blu-ray home video, YouTube, VOD, and other digital platforms but “there has not been one major VOD distributor, one major e-commerce site that has stepped forward and said they are willing to distribute this movie for us.” [1] Hackers to Sony: We'll stand down if you never release the movie.…

Sony owns several digital release platforms. If they want this movie out, they could make it happen tomorrow. This is just PR speak. They might cave and release anyway, but Lynton's statement is deliberately weak and duplicitous, once again attempting to deflect all blame from themselves rather than admit to any mistake on their part.

>> "Sony owns several digital release platforms."

Which ones?

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#22

Post by mparlane »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #21
jarcane wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony owns several digital release platforms. If they want this movie out, they could make it happen tomorrow. This is just PR speak. They might cave and release anyway, but Lynton's statement is deliberately weak and duplicitous, once again attempting to deflect all blame from themselves rather than admit to any mistake on their part.

>> "Sony owns several digital release platforms." Which ones?

PSN for starters.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#23

Post by zaroth »

jarcane wrote: post #16
zaroth wrote: post #4

Sony CEO Michael Lynton says Sony still wants The Interview to be seen and is considering their options. Those include DVD and Blu-ray home video, YouTube, VOD, and other digital platforms but “there has not been one major VOD distributor, one major e-commerce site that has stepped forward and said they are willing to distribute this movie for us.” [1] Hackers to Sony: We'll stand down if you never release the movie.…

Sony owns several digital release platforms. If they want this movie out, they could make it happen tomorrow. This is just PR speak. They might cave and release anyway, but Lynton's statement is deliberately weak and duplicitous, once again attempting to deflect all blame from themselves rather than admit to any mistake on their part.

I'm not sure they are in complete control, although it's a great image of master manipulation to imagine they are. I'm waiting until I really understand the whole story to start assigning any blame.

I'm more interested at this point in figuring out what this means for the future. Do we live in a world now where state-actors will target specific companies and basically try to rip them to shreds and extort them? Now I'm supposed to personally defend my company and my network against state-sponsored targeted persistent threats?

It should be possible to lock down individual machines which aren't ever supposed to be networked. That's hard enough. I'm personally of the belief that any networked device is ultimately hack-able up to the physical constraints of the network. It's all about how much it will cost an attacker to gain access, and how much they can steal once they get it.

If governments start routinely sponsoring these attacks, I'm very concerned the cost-levels we impose today are 5 - 6 orders of magnitude too low, and the network bandwidth 5 - 6 orders of magnitude too high, to deter these types of attack.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#24

Post by q2 »

Let us relook the issue here. Is it hackers attack on Sony or Sony making a movie on North Korean ruler(as I understand) or both?

Every human/culture has likes,dislikes ...etc and every one expect others not crossing those lines for peaceful co-existence. In democracy, no doubt, there is freedom of expression but if that expression is uncomfortable to other, then there is responsibility to control/prevent that expression rather than brazenly going ahead ignoring sensitivities of others.

If the story line as I understand from mass media is, assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and if North Korea protested it, then Sony should have understand and accommodated the sensitivities of North Korea and stopped making this movie. It is not censorship as President Obama noted.

People on HN voiced concern on NSA surveillance ...etc, since many felt privacy/anonymity is violated...etc. Just like you have sensitivities, North Korea too has sensitivities and it is natural to expect, others to understand them. Whether it is, dictatorship or democracy and their relative merits/demerits is different point of discussion.

I am neither supporting hacker's attack on Sony nor North Korea but Sony in first place, should have considered the sensitivities of other cultures, even if they are alien to your culture and act accordingly, given the story line.

Arts should further enable the stability or peace on earth and you may not achieve peace by hurting sentiments of others.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#25

Post by k-mcgrady »

Very little content here. Seems more like self-promotion and a silly offer that Sony would be stupid to take. Why let someone distribute the movie for free when they spent over $40m making it and can (worst case scenario) put it on a website they build and charge $10 to everyone that wants to watch it?

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#27

Post by lucozade »

Malician wrote: post #14
zaroth wrote: post #4

Sony CEO Michael Lynton says Sony still wants The Interview to be seen and is considering their options. Those include DVD and Blu-ray home video, YouTube, VOD, and other digital platforms but “there has not been one major VOD distributor, one major e-commerce site that has stepped forward and said they are willing to distribute this movie for us.” [1] Hackers to Sony: We'll stand down if you never release the movie.…

Doesn't the assumption that the movie release even matters assume North Korean culpability in the attack (debated in other threads?) If NK is not responsible, it really doesn't matter whether the movie is released. In this scenario, the hackers could easily leak the movie themselves under someone else's guise, providing an excellent excuse to continue their campaign of pure damage toward Sony Pictures. (Assuming they…

I don't think so. There have been explicit threats against the cinemas if it's released. As such, it's pretty much beholden on the U.S. gov and Sony to assume it's a terrorist threat and act accordingly.

That's somewhat orthogonal to whether or not NK is behind it but the possibility of a nation state being involved must affect their calculations.

Re: An Offer to Sony from 2600

#30

Post by remarkEon »

zaroth wrote: post #12
logn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy. And we want everything related to the movie, including its trailers, as well as its full version down from any website hosting them immediately." If only we had passed SOPA and CISPA, we'd be so much safer right now.

If anything I think this shows how poorly the US Gov is prepared for cyber-warfare. The last decade was no cake walk, but the next decade will truly be eye opening. The FBI told Sony they didn't know if the theaters were safe. Seriously, WTF are we paying them for if they can't tell us, with absolute certainty, that our theaters are safe from terrorist attacks on Christmas. That's not very comforting... So what I'm h…

Ehhh I'm not sure I agree. I think Cyber-warfare could be called "silent War", or at least "War with a lag". It's certainly possible, given what we know re Snowden about the capabilities of the NSA et al, that we've responded already and we haven't (or won't) see the results, at least not in the near term and probably not as spectacular as a successful Drone strike on a military compound.

Having spent time deployed, I think a lot of Americans might be conditioned to seeing immediate(ish) responses to threats via Drones, SEAL team 6, Ranger Regiment, whatever. The nature, and future, of Cyberwar is something that's fundamentally different from what we've seen broadcast on CNN over the last 13 (soon to be 14...15...) years. A response to North Korea (though I'm not truly convinced that they're the lone perpetrators) might not be something that pops up in The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer or trends on Twitter.

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