SONY: Don't Publish E-Mail Messages -- The Real Lessons to Be Learned

Critical Thinking Lessons From the SONY Hack. 

As the world waits to see what else will be released by hackers in the wake of the SONY hack, there are important lessons to be learned. Every business leader should learn from the SONY experience.

As it relates to the portion of subjective comments about people by Hollywood execs, this isn't about a hack, it's about how business leaders conduct themselves, and the ethics and values they live by. It's not about increasing security to avoid leaks, it's about what kind of life you live.

What you say and write behind closed doors reveals who you really are. If you call people names and take cheap shots, it says more about you than the intended target you are writing and talk about. 

At times business can be tough, but it's the people who conduct business based on values and ethics that are true leaders; the rest are not.

Now SONY lawyers are threatening the media for reporting contents of the emails. 

In the Washington Post: "Sony’s ability to follow through with legal action is uncertain at best, legal scholars said last night. “The short answer is that publishing such leaked material, even if it was illegally extracted by hackers, is likely to be legal,” said University of California at Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh."

"George Freeman, a former attorney for the New York Times who now runs the Media Law Resource Center, said Sony’s demands struck him as “a stretch.” He said newspapers and other publications have reported leaked corporate and government documents “scores of times,” and this instance appears similar to those."

The lesson to be learned: Live by values and ethics, in person and online and you won't need to worry about some of the issues that SONY has had to worry about.