This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, December 23rd, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

There are clear lessons in the fight over Sony's early decision not to release the Stoner

comedy, The Interview.

It shows that speech even in the United States may be subject to the whims of people who threaten retaliation.

Journalist Mary Catherine Ham, author of a forthcoming book on free speech and self-censorship, says if we can't stand up for stoner comedies, what's next?

So this week, the United States of America, Sony Pictures, five major theater companies, came together

in a great act of cowardice to decline to show the interview, a Seth Roggan and James Franco vehicle objected to by the head of the

North Korean state.

So now there's an American comedy, an American stoner comedy, one of our greatest

exports that will not be in theaters because Kim Jong-un has an issue with it and this makes me angry.

Sony's response to this, if you're looking at it from a purely business perspective,

someone has a whole lot of emails that would potentially be very embarrassing and from a purely monetary perspective can you at least understand that they're concerned about both liability, that they're concerned about both liability, that they're concerned about the

revelations that may be contained. Yes, I think we are a country that increasingly is run by lawyers and wimps and I get that there

is a financial issue and an insurance issue with hosting a film like this when there are threats.

I also think that is sometimes the duty of American companies and folks in America to stand up for

free speech even when there is danger and even when there is liability and to work with

something like Homeland Security to figure out those threats are real and to

hire people to work on that because the free speech issue is pretty big.

I think there's another speech issue as well, which is George Clooney spoke to this

when he put together a petition for Hollywood that no one would sign to back

Sony in releasing this film. Why wouldn't they sign it? Well, because the

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