Sony finds some loose change, flings most of it at lawyers ... the rest at staff hit by 'North Korea'

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) has agreed to pay up to $8m (£5.18m) to settle a lawsuit stemming from its 2014 IT security meltdown. The movie studio will pay out damages after the personal details of 47,000 current and former employees leaked onto the internet following a network breach said to have stemmed from its …

[Anonymous Coward]

A cost so small...

...that there is no incentive to spend money on security to avoid being hacked.

[DocJames]

As per AC

Yup. Thanks for the comparison of profit from the film too, although I'd have put it in the first para.

[MJI]

All this because

People bought Vhs rather than the superior Beta*.

This forced Sony to buy studios to guarantee source for any future formats, and as a major format inventor I don't blame them.

Then the people in these new offshoots ruin the reputation of the core company.

* I have a 950 so can prove it

[Ed_UK]

Re: All this because

"People bought Vhs rather than the superior Beta"

Sony shafted themselves by refusing to licence the Beta standard to other manufacturers. As mentioned here before, Sony are masters of incompatibilty. The non-standard memory cards for cameras springs to mind. I was suprised to see that Sony actually offered Android 'phones.

It's more than a decade now since Sony's famous rootkit got blown open but we remember.

[tekHedd]

North Korea DENIES responsibility?

North Korea /not/ taking responsibility for basically a successful attack? That's like an admission right there. They're probably afraid Sony will buy them and force a J.J. Abrams rewrite of their history.

[Mark 85]

Re: North Korea DENIES responsibility?

You have to admit that things are still suspicious. I wonder how much The Interview would have made if the attack hadn't happened...??? Hollywood movies are full of conspiracy and devious plots. Maybe SONY believed their scripts and pulled one off in real life?

[Adam 1]

Are they serious? 2 million? Let me get this straight. Pirating a single movie costs apparently costs them hundreds of thousands in damages, but the identity and health information of their employees can be capped at such a ridiculously low number.

I hope a large number of their staff resign in disgust (or at least start applying elsewhere). They have nailed their true colours to the mast.

[Donald Becker]

47,000 employees, and they'll pay out up to $2M total. That's about $40 per person. The employees won't even see that, since every claim will be carefully examined, and the cost of the examination will go against the payout cap.

The only assured pay-out is the lawyer fees