A chilling cyberattack on Sony — and all of us

On Monday, Merriam-Webster announced its 2014 Word of the Year: culture.

For an old word, it seems to have newfound, even profound meaning in today's rapidly transforming world.

It was culture — not the threat of added economic sanctions or new military maneuvers — that allegedly rattled the reclusive, reckless regime in North Korea into a spectacular cyberattack on Sony over "The Interview," the comedy about a CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The initial impact was significant, but mostly for Sony executives and several celebrities whose e-mails revealed Hollywood's backstage, back-stabbing gossip.

But then the threats became more insidious (Webster's third-place word this year). And now the hack — linked directly to North Korea by the FBI on Friday — looks more like cyberwar, with a mostly off-the-grid nation defeating the home of Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

The shadowy group claiming responsibility for the cyber subterfuge, "Guardians of Peace," was anything but when it warned of a 9/11-type attack on theaters screening "The Interview." After major theaters bowed out, Sony announced on Wednesday that it had canceled the film's planned Christmas premiere — a move that President Obama, at a Friday news conference, called a mistake.

So what was an attack on a corporation is now one on a country's free expression. The international implications cannot be overstated.

Obama is mulling a "proportional" response "at a place and time we choose."

And in the future will another country, or nonstate actor or disturbed domestic terrorist try similar cyberterrorism censorship — a concern even Obama acknowledged?

"The Interview" isn't the first satire about world leaders, after all. And beyond comedies, what about political documentaries? And it's not just film at risk. Could books, magazines, newspapers and radio — as well as their digital extensions and online-only publications — also be bullied into self-censorship?

It may already be happening: After "The Interview" was silenced, the thriller "Pyongyang" was yanked out of production after Fox declined to distribute it.

The chill risks not just Hollywood comedies, but serious analyses of a totalitarian state. This, of course, was not the artistic aim of "The Interview," which based on the movie's trailer seemed to portray Kim as more buffoon than brute, in effect humanizing an inhuman ruler, much in the same way that Dennis Rodman's bizarre friendship with Kim does.

The reality, according to a 400-page United Nations report released in February, is that Kim's regime is responsible for "a wide array of crimes against humanity, arising from 'policies established at the highest level of State'  " and that "[t]he gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world." Tactics include "extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation."

What's more, the report says, "There is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association."

Unwittingly, the hack may make more Americans aware of these allegations and receptive to reporting on the nature of North Koreans' Orwellian nightmare.

And ideally, instead of just one gutty media organization willing to screen, publish or broadcast a definitive documentation of North Korean crimes, multiple media organizations would be willing to.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, reflecting on the responsibility (or irresponsibility, in his view) of the press in reporting the Sony hack, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. While his words were published before Sony scuttled the project, they have newfound resonance when applied to the broader controversy about "The Interview."

"We create movie moments," Sorkin wrote. "Wouldn't it be a movie moment if the other studios invoked the NATO rule and denounced the attack on Sony as an attack on all of us, and our bedrock belief in free expression? If the Writers Guild and Directors Guild stood by their members? If the Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA], which represents the movie industry in Washington, knocked on the door of Congress and said we're in the middle of an ongoing attack on one of America's largest exports? We're coming to the end of the first reel; it's time to introduce our heroes."

On Friday, the MPAA issued such a statement. But the cavalry should not be limited to the movie industry. It should incorporate all companies, and countries, that would suffer if cybercrimes chill, or even freeze, free expression.

After all, the good guys winning in the final reel shouldn't just be a thing of nostalgia (Webster's second-ranked word this year).

John Rash is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. The Rash Report can be heard at 8:20 a.m. Fridays on WCCO Radio, 830-AM. On Twitter: @rashreport.