Obama said he wished Sony called him before making the decision. Good to know that Sony can just pick up a phone and get put through to the President. Can any other corporations do that?

I was thinking the same thing... only more towards whether ordinary citizen or anybody representing the public could have that degree of access to the president.

I am, of course, in favor of free speech, and against intimidation or censorship by governments or corporations. So far so good.

But comparing Sony's actions with canceling a football game that has had a terrorist threat against it... doesn't ring true to me. The equivalence seems off the mark to me. It makes me nervous, in fact, to think that if I had tickets to a game, and there was a terrorist threat to blow up the stadium, that the government, armed with that information, would not make it public and give me the chance to watch at the neighborhood bar if I so chose.

Here, it is not exactly true that we don't have censorship of a sort. Often, it is corporate censorship - or videos being removed by corporations like Youtube for being inflammatory.

Porn magnate Larry Flynt criticizes the U.S. government and Sony Pictures' handling of the hacking of the studio, and announces his own X-rated response to the controversy...

"If Kim Jong-un and his henchmen were upset before, wait till they see the movie we're going to make," Flynt said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. "I've spent a lifetime fighting for the First Amendment, and no foreign dictator is going to take away my right to free speech."

In an appearance on the BBC's Newsnight program Friday, Flynt had harsh words for the studio: "I think the problem is that Sony had no backbone, and would not stand up to some tinhorn dictator. ... I find it unbelievable."

Technical analysis of the data deletion malware used in this attack revealed links to other malware that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed. For example, there were similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks.
The FBI also observed significant overlap between the infrastructure used in this attack and other malicious cyber activity the U.S. government has previously linked directly to North Korea. For example, the FBI discovered that several Internet protocol (IP) addresses associated with known North Korean infrastructure communicated with IP addresses that were hardcoded into the data deletion malware used in this attack.
Separately, the tools used in the SPE attack have similarities to a cyber attack in March of last year against South Korean banks and media outlets, which was carried out by North Korea.

A foreign country broke into a company's computer network, stole virtually all its data, and made violent threats of bodily harm to any civilians associated with the distribution of a movie, and, we believe its the company's duty to take on this sadistic dictatorship one on one? "Mano a mano?"

Ridiculous.

The CEO of a consumer company had a direct, physical threat made against himself, his employees, and his customers. The military dictatorship attacking Sony is one of the most brutal, and, bloodthirsty nations on earth and run by a dictator of questionable mental stability.

I'm not saying, in hindsight, that Sony handled the situation perfectly, but as Sony's attorney, David Boies, said, once physical threats were made against individuals by a foreign government the situation became unique, and, not like any of the hacks we've become used to hearing. It's financial exposure, besides its moral duty, became incalculable.    

The FBI agreed, saying, "The destructive nature of this attack, coupled with its coercive nature, sets it apart from anything that's happened before."

Finally, I'm really disappointed in President Obama. He was aware of the Hack, almost as soon as it occurred. And, he did absolutely nothing for an entire month. Sony said, once the hack was made public, that not a single company in the distribution chain would touch the film. And, no actor, producer, or, director, fearful that their names and/or comments may be in those hacks, would allow their names to be used publicly supporting the film.