Hackers may have stopped the Christmas release of "The Interview" but human rights activists are going to make sure that North Koreans still get a chance to see it. Using balloons even.

Courtesy The Hollywood Reporter:

 Whether or not North Korea is behind the Sony hack, Kim Jong Un better brace himself because The Interview is headed to his country. Human rights activists are planning to airlift DVDs of the Seth Rogen comedy into the country via hydrogen balloons. 

Fighters for a Free North Korea, run by Park Sang Hak, a former government propagandist who escaped to South Korea, has for years used balloons to get transistor radios, DVDs and other items into North Korea — not to entertain the deprived masses, but to introduce them to the outside world.

Of course at this point there is no telling when the DVD will be released, but I have a feeling that once it has been that this will be the most popular item on the North Koreans "gifts from the sky" wish list.

Today cable news, newspapers, and websites are all over this news about the Sony hack and the decision to pull The Interview from theaters. In fact it has even knocked the Senate torture report off of the front pages.

I personally do not think this is quite as important, but it IS very important and potentially problematic moving forward.

The idea that a bunch of hackers sitting on their couch eating Cheetos can frighten a wealthy movie studio into stopping the release of a major motion picture  should give all of us pause.

And whether you thought the movie should have been made or not, or that it went too far, is really beside the point. After all how many world leaders, and racial stereotypes, have we killed in American movies over the years.

In the James Bod film "Die Another Day" the bad guys were North Koreans, The same is true for the remake of "Red Dawn," Angelina Jolie's "Salt," and "Olympus Has Fallen."

In that last film by the way the filmmakers also shot the White House full of holes.

Hell in "Independence Day" the filmmakers blew up the White House altogether, as well as most of the rest of the world, and (Spoiler alert.) even killed the President's wife. (There even exists a "fakeumentary" about the killing of George W. Bush, made in 2006.)

If a movie goes too far, or is in bad taste, that should be reflected in poor sales and bad reviews. And it should not result in threats of terrorist attack or the hacking computers and releasing private information to the public.

Bowing to this kind of pressure is setting a very, very dangerous precedent.

For those who have wondered what all of the fuss is about, here is the scene where Kim Jong-Un is killed.

CEO of gun manufacturer comes under attack by gun nuts. Her crime? Trying to market a gun that can only be fired by its owner.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Belinda Padilla does not pick up unknown calls anymore, not since someone posted her cellphone number on an online forum for gun enthusiasts. A few fuming-mad voice mail messages and heavy breathers were all it took. 

Then someone snapped pictures of the address where she has a P.O. box and put those online, too. In a crude, cartoonish scrawl, this person drew an arrow to the blurred image of a woman passing through the photo frame. “Belinda?” the person wrote. “Is that you?” 

Her offense? Trying to market and sell a new .22-caliber handgun that uses a radio frequency-enabled stopwatch to identify the authorized user so no one else can fire it. Ms. Padilla and the manufacturer she works for, Armatix, intended to make the weapon the first “smart gun” for sale in the United States. 

But shortly after Armatix went public with its plans to start selling in Southern California, Ms. Padilla, a fast-talking, hard-charging Beverly Hills businesswoman who leads the company’s fledgling American division, encountered the same uproar that has stopped gun control advocates, Congress, President Obama and lawmakers across the country as they seek to pass tougher laws and promote new technologies they contend will lead to fewer firearms deaths. 

“Right now, unfortunately, these organizations that are scaring everybody have the power,” Ms. Padilla said. “All we’re doing is providing extra levels of safety to your individual right to bear arms. And if you don’t want our gun, don’t buy it. It’s not for everyone.”

Of course that was no good enough for the gun nuts, nor the NRA who said this: 

The National Rifle Association, in an article published on the blog of its political arm, wrote that “smart guns,” a term it mocks as a misnomer, have the potential “to mesh with the anti-gunner’s agenda, opening the door to a ban on all guns that do not possess the government-required technology.”

Yes, of course science is always the enemy for those who traffic in people's ignorance. 

Now if right about now you are suffering from some vague form of deja vu, don't worry you are not crazy.

Something about this technology has surfaced before on this blog, when Sarah Palin completely misunderstood it and took to Facebook to condemn "identifying bracelets." And then challenged Attorney General Eric Holder thusly:

Eric, you can replace my identifying bracelets with your government marker when you pry them off my cold, dead wrists. 

And, Eric, "You don't want to go there, buddy." 

- Sarah Palin

And that just about sums of the intellectual argument against this new technology, which even a child would recognize as potentially saving millions of American lives.