An entrance gate to Sony Pictures Entertainment at the Sony Pictures lot is pictured in Culver City, California April 14, 2013. Reuters/Fred Prouser
Who’s a bigger threat to free speech in America, North Korea or Sony? Hard to tell today.
In a nastygram to Twitter, Sony lawyer David Boies demands that the social media service suspend the account of users who have posted the contents of hacked emails belonging to Sony.
Here’s the text of the letter sent by Boies, whose name you may recall from many previous high-profile internet cases, including the early days of Napster.
Snip from the lawyergram from Sony to Twitter. “>Read the entire thing here.
On behalf of Sony, he sent a similar request last week to media outlets including the New York Times, the Hollywood Reporter, and the Los Angeles Times, attempting to block publication of the leaked material. Each of those publications were reporting on leaked emails which contained information of obvious news value.
Letter from Sony’s lawyer sent to media outlets including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, threatening legal action if they report on the contents of leaked Sony emails.
The letter to Twitter released yesterday demands that Twitter suspend musician Val Broeksmit’s account @bikinirobotarmy, which has been posting screenshots of emails leaked in the Sony Pictures hack. Sony also wants Twitter to suspend all other accounts engaging in similar activity.
Vice’s Motherboard site was first to report the legal threats against Twitter.
Perhaps North Korea isn’t the biggest enemy of freedom of the press and freedom of speech in America after all.