We Negotiate With Terrorists....Wait.

I am currently kind of cranky at Sony right now. North Korea (according to the FBI) or some other group of hackers hacked Sony a while back, and in the resulting chaos, threatened to attack movie theaters if they showed the movie "The Interview". Showing their commitment to the art of film making and integrity as a company, Sony immediately acquiesced to the threats and pulled the movie from all theaters. This was a terrible decision that will only lead to more problems in the future.

The second you give in to people who threaten you, they win. It shows them that all they have to do to get what they want is make threats against people. Also there is no guarantee that giving them what they want will stop them from hurting people or releasing your sensitive data that they stole. CNN reported that they are still threatening Sony. So there you go, it didn't do anything to stop them. And if integrity isn't your thing, maybe greed is. How much money does Sony lose on this? $44 Million according to wikipedia's page on the film. Because the movie will probably never go to theaters or be released for sale at all, all of that budget gets lost.

Look, I get it. If people got hurt it would look bad for your company. If you are worried about people being hurt make a statement explaining the situation. Informed consent is a thing, and if people are worried about being hurt they won't go to the theater. I bet they would have sold a bunch of tickets due to the "Lets show those terrorists a giant middle finger by all watching the thing they don't want us to see" stance that a lot of people take around these types of situations. And if the threats still had people worried, I am sure that the police would have posted guards around major theaters. In all honesty I thought that this might have been a marketing scheme until Sony actually pulled the film. Get a bunch of people to see a movie just because it is controversial.

Acquiescence does nothing good in this situation. Terrorism's goal is to enforce change by making the other side afraid. The second you do anything out of fear, they win.

Also, we hit 100 Posts. Yay or whatever. =p