Fall out from the Sony hack continues Sony’s run of bad luck after they were first made the target of a cyberattack courtesy of North Korean hackers earlier this month. As if Sony wasn’t dealing with enough, word came on Thursday that a fourth class action lawsuit was filed against the multinational conglomerate. Who’s suing Sony in this latest round of litigation? A group of former Sony employees led by Michael Levine and Lionel Felix want to see Sony in court for what they believe to be gross negligence on Sony’s part. Felix, Sony’s former director of technology who was responsible for the company’s IT infrastructure from 2001 through 2004, and Levine, Sony Pictures Imageworks’ previous technical director from 2003 to 2012 are leading the charge of employees who state that Sony did not do enough to protect their private information. In fact, they state that Sony should have been better prepared because Sony “engages in the entertainment industry as a part of a vast multinational corporate conglomerate, knows or should know that it may be the target of the world’s most sophisticated data hackers or cyber criminals.” This latest lawsuit comes on the heels of three other cases, all similarly blaming Sony for being unprepared for the Guardians of Peace hackers.
The sheer scope of the Sony hack has slowly become apparent over the course of this past month. The North Korean cyber attack has been responsible for the release confidential information of countless Sony employees, embarrassing internal memos and cringeworthy email exchanges involving some of the biggest players in Hollywood. But beyond that, seemingly unrelated people have had to address information revealed from the hack. For example, today Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto discussed the Mario Brothers animated movie that was revealed as a result of the Sony attack. The popular site, Gawker, even wrote an open letter to Sony offering to host a screening of The Interview in order to defend the “freedom of speech and the American Way.” The Interview isn’t the only film that’s been canceled due to the North Korean cyberattack. It was revealed this week that an untitled Steve Carell film was scrapped because Fox and New Regency did not want to suffer Sony’s fate since it was also set in North Korea.
Do you think Sony Pictures is deserving of these class action lawsuits? Or do you think that this is simply a case of bad luck and that any major company is vulnerable to such cyber attacks?