Comment by q2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by q2 | Hacker News Reader

Let us relook the issue here. Is it hackers attack on Sony or Sony making a movie on North Korean ruler(as I understand) or both?

Every human/culture has likes,dislikes ...etc and every one expect others not crossing those lines for peaceful co-existence. In democracy, no doubt, there is freedom of expression but if that expression is uncomfortable to other, then there is responsibility to control/prevent that expression rather than brazenly going ahead ignoring sensitivities of others.

If the story line as I understand from mass media is, assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and if North Korea protested it, then Sony should have understand and accommodated the sensitivities of North Korea and stopped making this movie. It is not censorship as President Obama noted.

People on HN voiced concern on NSA surveillance ...etc, since many felt privacy/anonymity is violated...etc. Just like you have sensitivities, North Korea too has sensitivities and it is natural to expect, others to understand them. Whether it is, dictatorship or democracy and their relative merits/demerits is different point of discussion.

I am neither supporting hacker's attack on Sony nor North Korea but Sony in first place, should have considered the sensitivities of other cultures, even if they are alien to your culture and act accordingly, given the story line.

Arts should further enable the stability or peace on earth and you may not achieve peace by hurting sentiments of others.

I understand the sentiment behind your comment but applying this doctrine does more good than harm.

The right to not be offended, quite simply, does not exist and should not exist in free democracies. Everything should be open for debate, discussion, parody, etc..

Not producing a movie because someone might feel insulted by it and then throw a temper tantrum is censorship by proxy in its purest form. The tyranny of sensibilities may be justified by humanitarian arguments (i.e.: "peace on Earth" !) but it is, more often than not, a disguise totalitarian doctrines take to silence opponents.

The fact that this attack allegedly comes from the last Stalinian regime - the worst dictatorship still in existence - certainly points to a totalitarian motive.

> The right to not be offended, quite simply, does not exist and should not exist in free democracies

Genuine question: Why is that?

Because a right not to be offended requires a power to suppress offensiveness. The right to life and the right to property would be meaningless if murder and theft were decriminalized. In the same way, a right not to be offended implies that offensiveness must be punished.

The power to suppress murder is a relatively small power, and its limits are easily determined by laws and courts. A power to suppress offensiveness would be broad and vague, capable of suppressing anything anyone might object to. Since taking offense is so subjective, it would be difficult for this power to be administered by a neutral third party. It would be prone to abuses.

A right not to be offended requires an arbitrary power incompatible with freedom.

Because it necessarily limits the far more important right of free expression.

It seems straightforward from here:

Because empirically, history seems to tell us that very many people will always be "offended" by others disagreeing with them, or living/worshipping/looking differently.

And so if there were a right to not be offended, it would trample many of the fundamental human freedoms we associate with democracies.

Blacks and whites marrying offended some people. The River Brethren not going to war offended some people. And in this specific case? Black humor isn't that rate; Arsenic and Old Lace, man. I'm sure that offended some people.

The right to be offended probably can't exist in free democracies.

Not being able to offend/hurt feelings/be disrespectful would be contrary to any semblance of free speech.

I think this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic meaning of artistic expression, freedom of speech, and censorship. I find that I am diametrically opposed to everything that you have stated.

This also really has nothing to do with a silly little movie called "The Interview". The movie is a footnote in a brutal attack on Sony which left their entire network destroyed, their PCs wiped, their entire data set stolen and published, their employees and partners and customers terribly exposed, and all this used to extort them...

As for peaceful co-existence and all that, such a thing can only be possible not by retaliating when we are offended, but by understanding we have a right to be offended, and a right to express our outrage peacefully and constructively.

Edit: Imagine a world where Kim Jong-un posts a video statement on kim.nk decrying the movie and asking for support in a world wide boycott. This is how mature adults respond to such a situation. Oh wait, I almost forgot, he's a brutal dictator bent on world destruction. Seriously, your comment blows my mind.

Whatever happened on Sony is bad, no doubt in that.

>>> As for peaceful co-existence and all that, such a thing can only be possible not by retaliating when we are offended, but by understanding we have a right to be offended, and a right to express our outrage peacefully and constructively.

I would like to see examples of this approach getting succeeded between different countries with different scales/opinions on justice,fairness. Whatever may be the reasons/circumstances, West did not pursued this approach after 9/11. I live in India which pursued peaceful/constructive approach after 26/11 but literally no change has occurred. So this looks proper approach in theory but not practical.

You are comparing attacks that killed thousands to a movie?

Ok, let's fill in a little bit of background here: North Korea isn't a happy place. It's a tyrannical dictatorship that has earned its spot as, quite literally, the worst place on earth. The Kim family has spent decades systematically programming the North Korean people as part of a system that follows in the tradition of such evil as Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Pasha. Concerning yourself with Kim's feelings is the height of ignorance and folly: he certainly doesn't concern himself with the millions who have died at his family's hands by, in NK concentration camps, and through preventable famine.

Interestingly enough, The Interview never actually hurt the feelings of the North Korean people. In order to do that, they'd have to learn about it first. And there's nothing less likely to find its way into a closed society than a comedy about the assassination of that society's leader. But that's largely irrelevant: we don't live in a society that enforces "respect" at the expense of individual liberties.

There's a significant difference between being able to respectfully engage cultural differences and blindly accepting the abuses and atrocities. Particularly when we're talking about the sort of practices that make North Korea, well, North Korea (which have nothing to do with a Korean culture that dates back centuries and everything to do with one family's mad desire for absolute power).

North Korea may not be happy place. But expecting a movie would bring meaningful change is a stretch of imagination.

a few years back we had Team America[0] in which kim jong il is painted as a crazy terrorist and in the end dies after the american world police gets to him, and is revealed to be an alien cockroach when he gets impaled on a tube.

Apparently, that movie was ok, so why shouldn't this have been?

There is always people whose sensitivity gets hurt by movies and books, but this should not automatically lead to stopping publishing.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police

All things happened in the past may not be good for example financial crises, wars, tsunami's ...etc. So past is not reference to present or future.

>>> There is always people whose sensitivity gets hurt by movies and books, but this should not automatically lead to stopping publishing.

There are "defamation laws" in many countries. Many people/companies use them if they feel offended/hurt, even if they are not noble. This incident may be the same for NK.

I really wish Kim Jong Un would appear in court to sue some for defamation. Then we could get him for crimes against humanity.

I think you misunderstood me: sony did not worry about north korea's sensibility, as you seemed to imply it should have done, because north korea has never manifested any interest in it.

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