Today, 16 April 2015, WikiLeaks
publishes an analysis and search system for The Sony Archives: 30,287 documents
from Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and 173,132 emails, to and from more
than 2,200 SPE email addresses. SPE is a US subsidiary of the Japanese
multinational technology and media corporation Sony, handling their film and TV
production and distribution operations. It is a multi-billion dollar US
business running many popular networks, TV shows and film franchises such as Spider-Man,
Men in Black and Resident Evil.
In November 2014 the White
House alleged that North Korea’s intelligence services had obtained and
distributed a version of the archive in revenge for SPE’s pending release of The
Interview, a film depicting a future overthrow of the North Korean
government and the assassination of its leader, Kim Jong-un. Whilst some
stories came out at the time, the original archives, which were not searchable,
were removed before the public and journalists were able to do more than
scratch the surface.
Now published in a fully
searchable format The Sony Archives offer a rare insight into the inner
workings of a large, secretive multinational corporation. The work publicly
known from Sony is to produce entertainment; however, The Sony Archives
show that behind the scenes this is an influential corporation, with ties to
the White House (there are almost 100 US government email addresses in the
archive), with an ability to impact laws and policies, and with connections to
the US military-industrial complex.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange said: “This archive shows the
inner workings of an influential multinational corporation. It is newsworthy
and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain.
WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there.”
Sony is a member of the MPAA
and a strong lobbyist on issues around internet policy, piracy, trade
agreements and copyright issues. The emails show the back and forth on lobbying
and political efforts, not only with the MPAA but with politicians directly. In
November 2013 WikiLeaks published a secret draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) IP Chapter.
The Sony Archives show SPE’s internal reactions, including discussing the impact with
Michael Froman, the US Trade Representative. It also references the case against Megaupload and the extradition of
its founder Kim DotCom from New Zealand as part of SPE’s war on piracy.
[Soderbergh&Clooney.]
The connections and alignments between Sony
Pictures Entertainment and the US Democratic Party are detailed through the
archives, including SPE’s CEO Lynton attending dinner with President Obama at
Martha’s Vineyard and Sony employees being part of fundraising dinners for the
Democratic Party. There are emails setting up a collective
within the corporation to get around the 5,000 USD limit on corporate campaign
donations to give 50,000 USD to get the Democratic New York Governor Andrew
Cuomo elected as “Thanks
to Governor Cuomo, we have a great production incentive environment in NY and a
strong piracy advocate that’s actually done more than talk about our problems.“
Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO
Michael Lynton is on the board of trustees of RAND Corporation, an organisation
specialising in research and development for the United States military and
intelligence sector. The Sony Archives show the flow of contacts and
information between these two major US industries, whether it is RAND wanting
to invite George Clooney and Kevin Spacey to events, or Lynton offering contact
to Valerie Jarrett (a close advisor to Obama) or RAND desiring a partnership
with IMAX for digital archiving. With this close tie to the military-industrial
complex it is no surprise that Sony reached out to RAND for advice regarding
its North Korea film The Interview. RAND
provided an analyst specialised in North Korea and suggested Sony reach
out to the State Department and the NSA regarding North Korea’s
complaints about the upcoming film. The Sony documents also show Sony being in
possession of a brochure for an NSA-evaluated online cloud security set-up
called INTEGRITY.
The archives also detail SPE’s
development of its own films and collecting “intelligence” on rival pictures,
for example documents in the archive reveal the budget breakdown for Oliver
Stone’s rival picture Snowden, which is currently in production. The budget reveals the
rights spend: 700,000 USD to the Guardian’s Luke Harding, 600,000 USD to
Oliver Stone for his work on the script and 1,000,000 USD to Snowden’s Russian
lawyer Anatoly Kucherena.
WikiLeaks has a committment to
preserving the historical archive. This means ensuring archives that have made
it to the public domain remain there regardless of legal or poltical pressure,
and in a way that is accessible and useable to the public. WikiLeaks’
publication of The Sony Archives will ensure this database remains accessible
to the public for years to come.
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