SHouldnt it be "Sony, and by extension Kaz hirai" or am i mistaken

Well at least someone said it besides me and on a way bigger platform.

Not really.  Safety may be a concern, but conveience, efficiency, freedom, choice, etc. are weighed against safety all the time.

If North Korea is as dangerous as many people seem to think from this incident, then the US is not safe. After all, apparently they can and will attack us at slightest provocation so why wouldn't they just attack us anyways?  I mean, do they think they'd get International support because "We attacked another nation that made a movie we didn't like!"

If someone or a group or a government is dumb enough to kill others because of speech, then yes, I choose the freedom of speech in spite of the consequence that small minded people get offended and actually murder others over it.  We shouldn't appease psychopaths at the cost of expression.  We all get offended all the time, 98% of us have the good sense to be civil about or displeasure.  Don't go to the movie, tell others not to, even picket or boycott the movie.  Once you threaten violence you lose all legitimacy...unless of course that threat actually gets what you want, then you validate it for all future arguments on this issue.  

Sony can't be exclusively blamed because they had no choice at that point but

"Or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don't want to offend the sensibilities of someone whose sensibilities probably need to be offended"

This is so true. Looks like Obama hates when people want to show Kim and his ilk "respect"

I'm going to go ahead and call it. Kim Jong will be dead from Cancer by the end of 2015, similar to...you know... about 17 other dictators in the last 5 years. There is a comfortable balance in the world where many western politicans enjoy having these idiots around to remind their own citizens of how much worse it could be etc etc, but when the liability becomes too large......bry bry!!

Oh I would but I bet the media would say something along those lines.

I would disagree with them in their logic. It should be "How could North Korea do this?" as they made the choice to murder people because they were offended.

North Korea in this instance didn't say "We will attack cinema at 14 Main Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma" they made a big vague threat about all over the country. If they had been specific, we would have inspected that place.  Keep in mind they have made threats in the past, it's called sabre rattling. Know what we did? Nothing. And nothing happened, no one died. So, yes, we took a chance they weren't dumb enough to commit an act of war over petty differences.

If a war had happened (which I highly doubt) the blame would be on North Korea for attacking the US.  Anyone who says, "Well, some of their citizens did make a movie that is offensive so those people deserve to die, and they should just never offend anyone." is far removed from my line of thinking.

Makes me think of the abortion issue and how people threaten and bomb clincs and kill doctors.  We risk those lives every day because abortion offends some people deeply.  The cost has been lives, but again, we put the focus on those that commit the acts of violence, not those that offend beliefs.

Again, an artist in a free society should not be beholden to the sensibilities of a tiny percent.  I get offended all the time, and I imagine many people do, it never excuses violence or threats of violence.

Note: I realise this is getting impassioned. I have zero issue with you BraLoD, seem a nice person and I know you mean well. Think we can respectively disagree on this topic.

I am Army officer and the reason this makes me sick is I am tired of threats and attacks being made against US citizens and there is nothing we can do about it right now or for the past 6 years, Maybe eventually we will have a strategy,

I am read in on the "plans" dealing with N. Korea, and none of them will work without decicive leadership from the chief. I think Kim jun Un knows this and is seeing what he can get away with,

He just attacked a company and threatened lves and all Obama does is scolds the company. This is like chastizing a rape victam because they decided not to press charges, it completely avoids placing any blame on the true guilty party.

Such a stupid thing to say. Sony is a company. They weren't being cowards; they were maintaining the well being of their company. You know who would have backed them financially if they actually went through with the release and had to deal with even more leaks? Not Obama.

Hard to take him seriously on this when he sang a rather different tune about an obscure YouTube video that pissed off some Muslims. In that instance his focus was less on how abhorrent it was to kill people simply because you're offended by a movie and more on how offensive said movie was. At least no one died here, except for Amy Pascal's career.