Variety Co-Editor-in-Chief Andrew Wallenstein concludes after extensive analysis that reporters should report information hacked from Sony.
Sony lawyers have warned the press not to publish the hacked documents that include scripts, film budgets, financial statements and executives’ e-mails. (Variety, December 14, 2014, by Brent Lang with Ted Johnson)
But UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, The Washington Post, December 15, 2014, thinks that Sony does not have a strong legal footing in threatening anyone who publishes the documents. Volokh cites Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001) and Pearson v. Dodd (D.C. Cir. 1969). The courts ruled that even though the information was stolen, so long as the media wasn’t involved in the theft, and the information was of public interest, it could be published.
Emily Yoshida of The Verge, December 12, 2014, concludes that in deciding whether to publish a story using hacked Sony data, …”It’s not a matter of whether Sony now ‘deserves’ to be cyberterrorized or not, but rather whether the value of what we have learned outweighs how we learned it. We decided that it was important for you to know how the MPAA plans to influence how you experience the internet, and by extension, how they intend to shape the future of the information marketplace…,'” writes Yoshida. The story in question concerns how the Motion Picture Association of America and Sony are conducting a secret campaign to tear down the Domain Name System, the backbone of the internet.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin writes in an op-ed in The New York Times, December 14, 2014, that the media should not do the work of the hackers, possibly North Korean intelligence agents unhappy with a film about their country, who want to damage Sony. Sorkin sees the hack of Sony as a attack on the nation and freedom of expression.