Elon Law professors Enrique Armijo, David Levine and Michael Rich led a Hot Topics forum at Elon Law on Jan. 21, titled, "Sony, 'The Interview' and Kim Jon Un: What you need to know about the Sony Hack."
Hot Topics forums at Elon Law connect students and faculty in recurring discussions about current legal affairs and complex policy issues. At today’s Hot Topics forum, Rich drew from his expertise in criminal law to make a distinction between the legal issues involved in the Sony hack and those related to terrorism.
“This isn’t 9/11. We should be very careful to not begin thinking about it like it is,” said Rich. “There are those who would like to turn cyber security into a terrorism issue, into a national security issue. The discussion has been about elevating hacking to a terrorism level, where the federal government has the power to provide protection. I find that frankly quite troubling. From the criminal law side of things there’s really only one tool, that’s to criminalize it and punish it harshly, but we’ve already done that.”
Armijo, whose areas of expertise include media and internet law, and international freedom of expression, placed the Sony hack in the context of the globalization of media.
“The story of ‘The Interview’ and the Sony hack is about what happens when media content becomes distributable both digitally and internationally,” said Armijo. “We can expect more stories like it in the years to come.”
Levine, whose scholarship focuses in part on transparency and accountability in the sphere of trade secrecy law, suggested that the Sony hack may be best analyzed outside the context of trade secrecy and intellectual property law.
“Arguably nothing that was released during the Sony Hack actually qualifies as intellectual property,” said Levine. “Think critically when industries claim they have the right to control the information being released.”
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