'Interview' lawsuit costs a pricey $8million to Sony
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc will have to pay $8 million in "The Interview" lawsuit where employee data was stolen. Under the settlement, Sony will reimburse up to $2.5 million, or $10,000 per person, to compensate workers for identity theft damages. Sony will also pay another $2 million, or $1,000 per person, to pay them for emergency measures they used following the cyber assault.
On 22 November 2014, Sony's computer systems were compromised with a message threatening to reveal "secrets" from data obtained from the hack. The hack caused crippling problems at Sony with a complete shutdown. Sony initially labelled it as an "IT matter", but later confirmed the hack to staff, describing it as a "brazen attack" composed of "malicious criminal acts".
The hack revealed private information like bosses' salaries and employees' social security information. Strings of confidential emails between Sony workers were also circulated.
In December, Sony Pictures Entertainment was slapped with two lawsuits from its four former employees. They claimed that the company had not done "enough to prevent hackers from stealing nearly 50,000 social security numbers, salary details and other personal information from current and former workers." They further claimed that the company had known about these weakness and that had informed the employees too late.
A group called, "Guardians of Peace" or "GOP" took credit for the Sony hack. They asked Sony to cancel the planned release of the comedy The Interview, based on the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. United States intelligence sources, assessing the software, systems, and network references employed in the hack asserted that the assault was patroned by North Korea.
The threats caused the cancelation of the movie's New York premiere. However, on 23 December 2014, Sony announced that the film would have a limited theatrical release and would be made available for download.
The hack also revealed critical Hollywood information. It revealed that female film stars like Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence were given less money. Amy Pascal's (Sony's executive) jokes about "black-themed movies" which Obama might like were made public. An email from producer Scott Rudin was leaked where he branded Angelina Jolie as being a "minimally talented spoiled brat".
On 6 February 2015, Amy Pascal resigned and apologised for "insensitive and inappropriate" comments in the email interactions, which included the ones on President Barack Obama.
