An entrance gate to Sony Pictures Entertainment at the Sony Pictures lot is pictured in Culver City, California April 14, 2013. Reuters/Fred Prouser
Trevor Timm argues in defense of WikiLeaks re-publishing the Sony emails in the Guardian–it's a brilliant takedown of the ridiculous warning letter Sony's lawyer is sending news organizations, claiming it may be against the law for journalists to even look at them. What utter bullshit.
Sony, which spent weeks holding itself out as a free speech martyr after North Korea allegedly hacked its emails, is now trying to do more damage to the spirit of the First Amendment than North Korea ever did. The corporation is using high-powered lawyers and lobbyists in an attempt to stifle the rights of media organizations to publish newsworthy information already in the public domain. Ironically, some of those emails include Sony and the MPAA's attempts to censor the Internet on a much larger scale.
Sony's lawyer, David Boies, has spent the week sending out a hyperbolic letter to various news organizations, pressuring them to avert their eyes from the hacked email trove that WikiLeaks published on its site last week. Boies, while misleadingly claiming that journalists could be breaking US law by even looking at the emails, also said if media organizations refused to write stories about them, they would somehow be "protecting the First Amendment."
The head of the MPAA and former Democratic Senator Chis Dodd went a step further yesterday, outrageously suggesting the US government should go after WikiLeaks in some fashion for re-publishing the emails.
It's quite fitting that the day before Dodd made his true feelings on press freedom be known, the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced.
In related news, Variety reported last night that Motion Picture Assn. of America chief Chris Dodd said something significant:
"Dodd said that the U.S. government was in the best position to try to go after the website not the trade organization he runs. In the case of the WikiLeaks situation, he praised Sony officials for being "highly responsive" in communicating with the proper authorities."
Previously on Boing Boing: "Sony sends pre-emptive threat letter to journalists"
