Boston, Dec. 24, 2014, — Sony has released the controversial movie the Interview online today, and will release it in about 300 independent U.S. theaters on Christmas Day. The main plot of the movie: two journalists recruited by CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during an interview with Kim they had been granted.
North Korea has tried to block the movie in their U.N. petition earlier this year. The Interview is also believed to be the main reason why Sony Pictures was hacked, and many damaging information was released online by the hackers. F.B.I. has blamed North Korea for carrying out the hacking.
The Interview is available for U.S. consumers on the following online services.
Google Play: http://play.google.com/
YouTube Movies: http://youtube.com/movies
Xbox: http://video.xbox.com/
Kernal: http://
Google published a official blog on offering this movie on its websites. In the blog, it states:
“Last Wednesday Sony began contacting a number of companies, including Google, to ask if we’d be able to make their movie, “The Interview,” available online. We’d had a similar thought and were eager to help—though given everything that’s happened, the security implications were very much at the front of our minds.
Of course it was tempting to hope that something else would happen to ensure this movie saw the light of day. But after discussing all the issues, Sony and Google agreed that we could not sit on the sidelines and allow a handful of people to determine the limits of free speech in another country (however silly the content might be).”
China Urges Restraint
China called for all parties involved to keep restraint over the alleged cyber attack on the US-based Sony Pictures Entertainment, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Wednesday.
“We hope all parties can keep restraint to properly deal with the issue,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing, voicing China’s opposition to all forms of cyber attack and terrorism.
“Cyber attacks tend to be anonymous and transnational so we must have full, professional and complete facts before making any conclusions,” Hua said.
China will only make judgements based on facts and deal with cyber attacks in line with international law and China’s own law, she added.