A significant majority of Americans say that Sony's decision to cancel "The Interview" in response to a computer hack was an overreaction, a new poll has found.
According to a
CNN/ORC poll conducted Dec. 18-21 of 1,011 adults, 62 percent say it was an overreaction to pull the movie following terrorist threats by hackers against the theaters, while 36 percent think it was the right decision.
American authorities believe the North Korean government was behind the
cyber breach. North Korea has denied it was responsible, but has also called the attack a "righteous action."
The poll also found that Americans rank North Korea as the top threat to the United States of any of the country's other adversaries, with 42 percent saying the country poses a very serious threat and 31 percent saying it represents a moderately serious threat.
North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un also ranks highest for unfavorable views among a list of foreign dictators. Eighty-four percent of people view him unfavorably, compared to just 1 percent who view him favorably.
President Barack Obama has said Sony Pictures was
wrong to cancel the release of the movie, and many conservatives have also been critical of what some see as the company's self-censorship or capitulation to a communist bully.
Sony has hit back saying it had no choice because the theaters refused to run it.
"You can't release a movie unless you have a distribution channel," the company's lawyer, David Boies, said, adding that "this is not a Sony security problem; this is a national security problem."
North Korea suffered an
outage of its Internet for hours Monday. The United States refused to say whether it was responsible but had earlier vowed to respond to the attack on Sony.
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