Sony Once Again Ridiculously Warns The Media Not To Report On Leaked Emails

Free Speech

from the that-fair-use-thing... dept

Back in December, when the Sony emails first leaked, we wrote about how Sony hired super-high-powered lawyer David Boies to send off ridiculously misinformed letters to media outlets warning them that they should not write anything based on information in the leaks. Boies took it a ridiculous step further, threatening to sue Twitter for not blocking screenshots of the emails. Both threats had no real legal basis.

Of course, now that the emails are in the news again, thanks to Wikileaks posting the archive online and making it searchable, Sony is apparently shelling out more big bucks to Boies to send around another version of the letter. You can see the letter here or at the bottom of the post.

Once again, the legal reasoning in the letter is… questionable at best. The included attack on Wikileaks is even more confused, arguing that freeing up this information helps North Korean censorship. It’s difficult to see how that’s really true, but okay. But the really ridiculous part is arguing that the media should not publish this information to support the First Amendment. Really.

SPE [Sony Pictures Entertainment] therefore again asks for your help in protecting the First Amendment and declining to exploit the Stolen Information. As I stated in my December 2014 letter, SPE does not consent to your possession, review, copying, dissemination, publication, uploading, downloading, or making use of any of the Stolen Information. And we again ask that you take all reasonable actions to prevent your company and any of your employees, independent contractors, agents, consultants, or anyone who may have access to your files from examining, copying, disseminating, distributing, publishing, downloading, uploading, or making any use of the Stolen Information.

This is a rather confused understanding of the First Amendment, and the rights of the press to look at and publish newsworthy information, even if it’s obtained through more questionable means. Hell, it seems worth mentioning right about now that Sony Pictures Entertainment just happens to be making a movie about Ed Snowden. Apparently, it’s fine and dandy for Sony to make a movie detailing how the press was able to report on a bunch of “stolen information,” but if anyone in the media does that about Sony, then it’s magically illegal? Is Sony really going to try to push that argument in court? Because it’s going to get a massive First Amendment smackdown if it tries.

Thankfully, it appears that most of the press is ignoring these threats, and there have been a number of interesting and newsworthy stories coming out of people looking through the emails. Well, except for Hollywood’s favored mouthpieces, like Deadline.com. It reported on this letter, but used it to repeat Sony’s completely bogus talking points and insist that “respectable media outlets don’t seem to have any appetite to re-enter territory that seemed morally questionable in December.”

While one might argue that revealing internal gossip and bad jokes by Sony execs is morally questionable, it seems that stories about paying for political investigations of companies you don’t like is extremely newsworthy. As is trying to influence international trade policy with statements that completely contradict what you’ve said publicly. There is plenty of newsworthy information in these documents, and the media would be doing the First Amendment a major disservice to ignore newsworthy information just because Sony doesn’t like it.

Filed Under: david boies, first amendment, free speech, journalism, sony emails, sony hack
Companies: sony