You'd think that we would start getting the same respect as other states. I mean come on! Canadian cities are richer than some American states now. Why won't you take our loonies?
Interesting. I guess YT and Google Play don't geolocate the IP each time. Every other video streaming provider I've checked denied me on my recent trip to Europe.
Kernel is one of the companies putting this together. They temporarily put up the redirect (movie doesn't go live until 10a PT). About to put up a more informative redirect page.
There is zero percent chance this was a publicity stunt.
You really think Sony would fake a "9/11 style" threat against movie theaters, in today's world?
The only plausible "publicity stunt" scenario is that after the real hacking, the real threats, the real refusal of theaters to show the movie, that Sony pretended they wouldn't even release it online in order to drum up online sales when they finally changed course.
If this was a publicity stunt, then it may well be the worst one ever! They were humiliated in the press, the President reprimanded them, and their strongest partners (the big theater chains) all turned their back on them.
I agree that this is probably good coverage for the movie, as I imagine many others like myself would never have even considered watching it, but now actually want to see it given the interesting context.
On the other hand, I still can't imagine they would be dumb enough to fake this, considering they opened an FBI investigation and there were threats of physical violence. The risk to reward just doesn't make any sense.
There's an old saying in PR: don't let your main distribution channel refuse to carry your product. Also, don't let anyone threaten your potential customers with death or terrorist attack!
There's a possibility that showing The Interview on YouTube and other sites will result in online streaming becoming a huge runaway revenue success. But that's a huge gamble to make, especially when the movie is scoring just a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The embarrassment they have suffered along with the damaged relationships with artists is going to affect them for a number of years. The coming lawsuit by former employees for the loss of personal information.
Let's not forget that a terrorist threat against your customers (theaters / viewers) is really bad for business. So, let's say one of the places playing the show suffers an attack by some crazy. Sony is going to be on the hook in a big way. US courts[1] are known to pay out some huge settlements[2].
So, a loser in so many ways with no upside for profit.
2) Despite politicians and other calling them "cowards" you would have to be insane to release a film suffering such a terroristic threat. If the politicians believe we shouldn't buckle then they should pass some tort reform.
2) is in fact pretty obvious. If you check the behaviour of people in the west before terrorism became well known (halfway through the 90s or so) and after you can see that a lot of terrorist demands have in fact been met.
From this perspective, terror really works very well.
Don't know why you're being downvoted, it really feels that way to me as well. Lot of people with strong opinions must not appreciate that they've been played.
Think about it: Sony intentionally leaked its own employee records and emails just to boost publicity of a movie that's bound to be popular on its own right. How plausible is that theory?
The hack was in all likelihood real, (but probably not North Korean). Sony made the best of a bad situation.
I wonder if HN has considered making the general information about downvotes available? I'd like to see metrics on how many of the downvoters downvote more than the average amount.
The "new" section is literally full of "Go check out the Interview here!" links.
Links which contain nothing more than "Here's where you can watch the Interview". A film nobody cared about, seemingly, until the alleged NK hack. And the look at how fast some of the upvotes have happened on those stories.
At the very least, we should be treating and flagging these things the same way we do any other stupid "Buy our product" submissions that creep onto the new section.
EDIT:
And so many downvotes today for questioning the obvious. Thanks folks!
I wonder if Netflix was considered, or if the lack of PPV revenue disqualified the most popular streaming service in the country.