索尼黑客事件佐证好莱坞衰败

Hacking at Sony Over ‘The Interview’ Reveals Hollywood’s Failings, Too

索尼黑客事件佐证好莱坞衰败

Kim Jong-un, who appears to be America’s newly self-appointed minister of culture, has decided that it is not enough that “The Interview,” the Seth Rogen film about North Korea that includes Mr. Kim’s assassination, will not be released. On Thursday, a message from the Guardians of Peace, the hacker group that breached the computer systems of Sony Pictures and warned against releasing the film, said “we want everything related to the movie, including its trailers, as well as its full version down from any website hosting them immediately.”

金正恩最近似乎成了美国自封的文化部长，他认为塞斯·罗根(Seth Rogen)导演的关于北朝鲜、含有刺杀金正恩情节的电影《采访》(The Interview)，不能上映还不够。星期四，破坏索尼影业网络系统，并警告该片不得上映的黑客组织“和平守卫者”(Guardians of Peace)发来消息，称“我们希望和这部电影相关的一切，包括预告片和完整版都马上从网络上撤下”。

My, that slope became mighty slippery pretty quickly. The hackers promised that if Sony scrubbed all traces of the comedy from the Internet — an impossible task — they would cease a campaign that has lasted almost a month and has threatened employees and their families, embarrassed executives and potentially unleashed 100 terabytes of private company data into the world.

天哪，形式可真是急转直下。黑客们宣称，如果索尼从网上抹掉这部喜剧的所有痕迹——一个不可能完成的任务——他们就会停止对该公司持续了一个月的攻击，此外他们还威胁公司雇员和他们的家庭，令公司高管难堪，偷偷把相当于100兆字节的公司秘密信息公之于众。

Federal officials said Friday morning that they had extensive evidence that the North Korean government organized the attack. A few hours later, President Obama added his voice to the chorus of critics, including irate Hollywood actors, who say Sony and the nation’s theater operators should not have canceled the release. “We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” he said.

星期五上午，联邦政府官员称，他们有足够证据证明北朝鲜政府组织了这场攻击。几小时后，奥巴马总统加入了批评的大合唱——盛怒的好莱坞演员纷纷指责索尼公司以及美国的院线老板们不应当取消放映这部电影。奥巴马说，“我们的社会不应该让某个地方的某个独裁者对美国施加审查。”

It was a remarkable and disorienting turn of events: a tiny, failing state that lacks the wherewithal to feed its own people was deciding which movies we can and cannot see, while the industry it had attacked watched silently from the sidelines, and the president of the United States felt compelled to step into an international confrontation catalyzed by a lowbrow comedy.

这是非同寻常、令人迷惑的转折点：一个每况愈下的小国，连自己的人民都养不活，却来决定我们能看什么、不能看什么，而它所攻击的行业只是一言不发地旁观，美国总统则认为自己不得不卷入一场由一部粗俗喜剧引发的国际冲突。

After weeks of embarrassing disclosures from Sony’s hacked files, the endgame for the movie began on Tuesday, when the hackers invoked the devastation of September 11, and said that anyone who attended the opening on Christmas Day would be risking their lives. “We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time,” they wrote in a rambling email to news organizations.

自从文件被黑客公开后，索尼公司经历了几个星期的尴尬，如今这部电影即将迎来上映前的最后阶段，然而，就在星期二，黑客却提起911事件的灾难，声称任何在圣诞节那天去参加首映的人都将有生命危险。“我们建议你们在那个时候远离那些地方，”他们在给新闻机构的一封前言不搭后语的电子邮件中这样写道。

Theater chains quickly let it be known that “The Interview” would not be screened. Sony, saying it had no choice, withdrew the movie. Certainly, there were concerns about public safety, but make no mistake, other considerations factored in the decision, all involving dollar signs: the box office receipts of films that would be playing alongside “The Interview” during one of the biggest movie weeks of the year, and the holiday shoppers at the retail chains that surround so many theaters. Major cable players made it clear that they were unwilling to step in with a video-on-demand alternative, so short of hanging a bedsheet and screening the movie at its Culver City headquarters, Sony was cornered.

电影院线很快公布，《采访》将不会公映。索尼公司说自己别无选择，也撤下了这部电影。诚然，这里有公共安全方面的考虑，但是别搞错，影响这个决定的还有其他因素，全都和金钱有关：比如在一年之中电影最赚钱的一个星期里，和《采访》同期上映的其他电影票房收入，乃至诸多影院周围商店中的假日购物者都将受到影响。各大有线电视台澄清他们不会播出《采访》的视频点播版，索尼别无选择，只能将这部电影扼杀在摇篮，或者只在公司科尔瓦城总部偷偷放映它。

Once the film was successfully censored, you could count the days until other films were affected. Actually, it happened earlier in the same day, before “The Interview” was shelved, when New Regency announced that it would drop an untitled thriller about North Korea that was to have starred Steve Carell.

这部电影就这样成功地被审查了，其他电影受到类似影响也指日可待。其实，在《采访》被宣告搁置的同一天早些时候，这种事已经发生了——新摄政 (New Regency)公司宣布，它放弃拍摄一部与北朝鲜有关的惊悚片，该片原计划由史蒂夫·卡瑞尔(Steve Carell)主演，尚未命名。

The threats and subsequent cancellation will become a nightmare with a very long tail. Now that cultural discourse has become the subject of online blackmail, it is hard to imagine where it will end. Documentaries, which have become increasingly important sources of news and information, could suddenly be in jeopardy. And if you’ve been watching the current season of “Homeland” on Showtime, you know that Pakistan’s more sinister operations have been on wide view.

这些黑客威胁乃至电影业内的取消行为将成为长着长长尾巴的噩梦。如今的文化话语(cultural discourse)已经成了网络勒索的主题，很难想象它将如何终结。纪录片如今日益成为新闻与信息的重要来源，它们很可能突然陷入危险境地。如果你看了这一季映时台(Showtime)的《国土安全》(Homeland)，你就知道巴基斯坦很有可能采取更危险的行动。

This summer, HBO is planning to broadcast a comedy series starring Jack Black as a foreign service officer who takes on a rogue general who seizes control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Rogue states and their operatives could go after a Bond movie because they didn’t like its taste in villains. (The script for the next installment was released as part of the intrusion, by the way.)

今年夏天，HBO台计划播出一部系列喜剧，由杰克·布莱克(Jack Black)饰演一个外国军官，他惹怒了一个掌控巴基斯坦核武库的流氓将军。流氓国家及其官员们可能会因为他们不喜欢007电影中坏人的品位就谴责它(顺便说一句，该剧下一集的剧本作为黑客入侵的一部分而被公之于众)。

And it doesn’t end with the entertainment. Some news outlets, including The New York Times, have found themselves under sustained digital attack after publishing articles that displeased various groups that had the resources to respond with intrusions. Many state-sponsored actors will no doubt be emboldened by the spectacular success of the Sony breach.

这种事不会止于娱乐行业。一些新闻出版物，包括《纽约时报》在内，在发布某些惹恼拥有黑客资源的群体的文章后，持续遭受到网络攻击。黑客在索尼一事上取得的巨大成功无疑会令不少由国家赞助的网络攻击参与者感到大受鼓励。

Things have gone so deeply wrong so quickly — the movie industry will look back at this crossing of the Rubicon with a deep sense of shame — it is hard to keep track of all the mistakes that led us here, but I’d like to take a crack at it.

形式就这样飞速恶化——在未来，电影业回顾这个转折点之际，将会感到深深的羞愧——想追溯我们是怎样犯下各种错误，走到今天这步田地，这是一件难事，不过我愿意开个头。

Sony I happened to be with Howard Stringer, then chief executive of Sony, during a vast security attack on its PlayStation platform in 2011 — he looked as if he had been living inside a beehive for three days. That Sony did not harden as a target in a meaningful way afterward is inexplicable.

索尼：2011年，索尼的PlayStation平台受到大型安全攻击，当时我正好和索尼当时的首席执行官霍华德·斯特林格(Howard Stringer)在一起，他的样子看上去好像在马蜂窝里呆了三天。在这以后，作为靶子的索尼表现得并不强硬，这一点令人非常难以理解。

And while I am all for bold creative choices, was it really important that the head being blown up in a comedy about bungling assassins be that of an actual sitting ruler of a sovereign state? If you want to satirize a lawless leader, there are plenty of ways to skin that cat, as Charlie Chaplin demonstrated with “The Great Dictator,” which skewered Hitler in everything but name.

此外，虽然我全心支持大胆的创意选择，但这是一部喜剧，讲的是拙劣地谋杀某个主权国家的领导人，这个领导人是真实存在的，在片中爆掉他的脑袋就真的那么重要吗?如果你想讽刺某个无法无天的领袖，要干这件事有很多办法，比如查理·卓别林(Charlie Chaplin)的《大独裁者》(The Great Dictator)，从各方面讽刺了希特勒，只是没有指名道姓。

Hollywood If you are looking for courage on the lots of Hollywood, probably best to pack a lunch. Other studios were content to watch Sony dangle, saying nothing for fear that they, too, would end up on the Guardians of Peace’s naughty list. The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the film industry, went into witness protection when the crisis erupted, with a spokeswoman telling Deadline, a trade website, on Dec. 11, “We have no comment at this time. We are not involved.” The association condemned the attack only once the devastation was writ.

好莱坞：如果你想在好莱坞的人们身上找到勇气，还是歇菜吧。许多制片公司都满足于观望索尼的犹豫不决，自己却什么也不说，担心自己最后也会上“和平守卫者”的黑名单。当危机发生时，代表电影业的美国电影协会仿佛进入了证人保护计划，12月11日，它的一位发言人对商业网站“截稿日”(Deadline)说，“目前我们无可奉告，我们没被卷入。”只有在损害很明显时，该协会才谴责了黑客攻击行为。

The breach of Sony would seem to be exactly the kind of moment when an association has real value, when it can collectively respond to a fundamental threat to the industry. The organization and the studios it represents hid instead. As my colleagues Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply wrote, “The incident is likely to be remembered as a failure of Hollywood leadership.”

对索尼的攻击或许应当被视为这个组织显示其真正价值的时刻，它可以发表全体声明，回应对这个行业的基本威胁。然而这个组织，乃至它所代表的那些制片公司却躲了起来。正如我的同事布鲁克斯·巴尼斯(Brooks Barnes)和迈克尔·西普里(Michael Cieply)写的：“这件事很可能被视为好莱坞领袖地位的失败。”

On Friday, George Clooney was even less polite about the widespread cowardice, telling Deadline Hollywood that when he circulated a petition of solidarity, he heard nothing but crickets in response. “As we watched one group be completely vilified, nobody stood up,” he said. When the novel “The Satanic Verses” was under attack, the book industry formed a united front. Exactly the opposite happened here.

星期五，乔治·克鲁尼(George Clooney)对普遍的懦弱显得更不客气，他对“好莱坞截稿日”说，自己在散布一封请愿书，要求大家团结起来，却没有得到任何回音。“当我们看着一个团体遭到彻底中伤，却没有人站出来，”他说。当小说《撒旦诗篇》(The Satanic Verses)遭到攻击时，图书行业组成了统一战线。电影业发生的事却正相反。

The News Media After the hackers absconded with personal and corporate information from Sony, they put the data on a site called Pastebin. Trade publications and some mainstream news outlets took the bait and spent a great deal of time rummaging through the stolen goods, and highlighting juicy emails meant to cause maximum embarrassment. What public purpose was served by printing private correspondence? We discovered that studio executives are capable of being callous, and that producers can be churlish when they don’t get what they want. As Aaron Sorkin pointed out, that’s not exactly new or important information.

新闻媒体：黑客窃取索尼公司的个人和公司信息后，把数据放在一个名叫“粘贴桶”(Pastebin)的网站上。业内出版物和许多主流新闻出版物上了钩，花费大量时间去翻查这些偷窃而来的赃物，用大标题报道这些意在尽可能造成尴尬的八卦邮件。刊登这些私人通信对公众有任何意义吗?我们只是发现，一旦达不到目的，制片公司的高管们可以非常铁石心肠，制片人可以变得脾气暴躁。正如亚伦·索金(Aaron Sorkin)指出的，这并不是什么新鲜或是重要的信息。

The data dump did reveal an industrywide effort to join forces against Google, but most of what was disclosed was intended to elicit clicks and smirks and the hackers knew enough to harness the base, competitive impulses of the press. News organizations mostly refrained from publishing material like passports and medical records, but in general, the news media served as last-mile delivery agents on information that was used to threaten Sony, the industry, and finally, the American public. The larger story about an unprecedented political attack on free speech took a back seat to titillating peeks at industry backbiting.

这些泄露出来的数据的确表明了，整个业界正在联合起来努力向谷歌施加压力，但最主要的内容还是那些会引发窃笑和私语的东西，黑客们知道这一定会刺激媒体最基本的竞争冲动。新闻机构强忍住没有公开那些护照和医疗纪录之类的内容，但总的来说，在信息方面，新闻媒体还是成了威胁索尼、整个行业，乃至美国公众的最后一份力量。在宏观范围内，媒体不是去关注对言论自由前所未有的政治攻击，而是去偷窥业界的互相诽谤中伤。

The list goes on, including politicians who engaged in bombastic, warlike rhetoric, but let’s just say the last few weeks in the American political and cultural narrative have been miserable. The merits of “The Interview” can be debated, but fundamental business imperatives and civic freedoms are clearly in play.

这份名单还可以继续列下去，包括那些热衷发表空洞、好战言论的政治家们，但让我们只说过去的几个星期里，美国的政治与文化叙事都太糟糕了。《采访》的价值有待商榷，但最基本的商业规则和公民自由显然还是要尊重的。

So what is the right response? Americans are good at sitting on a couch and watching all kinds of stuff, so why not harness that impulse? David Boies, a lawyer for Sony, told “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the film would eventually be distributed. “How it’s going to be distributed, I don’t think anybody knows quite yet, but it’s going to be distributed.”

那么正确的回应应当是什么样的呢?美国人擅长于坐在沙发里看着各种各样的东西，所以为什么不利用这种力量呢?索尼公司的律师大卫·博伊斯 (David Boies)在星期日接受“与媒体会面”采访时说，这部电影最终还是会发行的。“它将以怎样的方式发行，目前还没有人完全清楚，但最终它会发行的。”