I Decided to Publish the Sony Hack Emails 10 Years Ago. Now I Regret It

variety.com:

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst Exactly 10 years ago today, I published a commentary defending the decision to publish the contents of the Sony hack in Variety, the publication where I then served as co-editor-in-chief. Listen to the podcast here: And so in this episode of “Strictly Business” podcast, with a decade’s worth of perspective, I’m going to revisit a decision that, if I’m being candid, I came to regret.

I’ve encountered some sticky wickets over the course of my 30-plus-year career, but the Sony hack was the stickiest. I’m not going to say if I had to do it all over again I would do it differently because I understand why I did what I did then.

But looking back on the hack in hindsight, I wish I’d taken a different tack. Let me explain why. By now the basics are a well-known chapter in relatively recent Hollywood history: On November 24, 2014, a group of hackers based in North Korea calling themselves Guardians of Peace began what you might call a virtual terror campaign against Sony Pictures in objection to the movie “The Interview” and its depiction of their leader, Kim Jong Un.

As part of that campaign, they stole and leaked mountains of private information of all sorts from Sony, including highly sensitive emails from its executives concerning their business.