If that weren’t enough of a blow to Sony, hours later President Obama touched upon the issue in great detail during his end-of-year speech. Addressing the nation (via THR) he said “I wish they had spoken to me first,” before going on to say:
“Sony is a corporation, it suffered significant damage. There were threats against its employees. I am sympathetic to the concerns that they faced. Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake.”
“In this interconnected digital world, there are going to be opportunities for hackers to engage in cyber assaults, both in the private sector and in the public sector. Now, our first order of business is making sure we do everything we can to harden sites and prevent those kinds of attacks from taking place.”
“We cannot have a society in which a dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States. Because if someone is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary they don’t like, or news reports they don’t like,” the president said. “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.”
The president went on to state that the U.S. would be responding to North Korea – who had previously applauded the terrorists for their efforts to quash the release of the film – but did not specify how.
After Sony decided to cancel the release of The Interview following the GOP message threatening any movie theater showing the film, many denounced the studio for their lack of backbone in the issue. Celebrities took to Twitter to vent their frustrations on submitting to a terrorist agenda, while the studio continued to pander to the demands. With President Obama now joining that crowd of detractors, there looks to be many more miles to go for Sony until the catastrophic debacle surrounding The Interview is somewhat resolved.