Obama: Sony “Made A Mistake” Cancelling “The Interview”
If your company is being attacked by cyber-terrorists and you feel like you need to start pulling projects because of it, President Obama wants you to come to him first. The President said that Sony Pictures “made a mistake” by giving in and cancelling the release of the Seth Rogen – James Franco comedy, “The Interview” after threats from the hackers that attacked the company and released sensitive email information.
On Friday, President Obama spoke out against the decision to stop the release of the film and felt Sony should have asked his advice. At his annual year-in-review address, the President said, “Sony is a corporation. It suffered significant damage, threats against some employees. I am sympathetic to the concerns they faced. Having said that, yes I think they made a mistake. That’s not what America is about…I wish they’d spoken to me first. I would have told them, ‘Do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks’.”
The Prez believes cancelling “The Interview” goes against everything our country stands for. “We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States. Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don’t like, or a news report that they don’t like — or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended. That’s not who we are. That’s not what America is about.”
In his address, President Obama promised that North Korea would get what’s coming to them. He said that the U.S. would respond “proportionally” to North Korea’s hacking attack in a time and manner of our choosing. When you least expect it North Korea, expect it!
