Dershowitz: Hollywood Should Have Followed Rushdie Example

Hollywood should have rallied around Sony Pictures and released "The Interview" jointly online, says Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

Appearing Thursday on Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File," Dershowitz pointed to how book publishers got together to jointly publish Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" after Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on the author in 1989 for what some Muslims saw as a mocking of their faith.

Dershowitz said the U.S. government is helpless since North Korea has nuclear weapons it can launch against our allies Japan or South Korea. But the private sector, he said, does have to power to stop North Korea from attempting to ban the movie in which an American TV star is tasked by the CIA with killing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

"All of the Hollywood studios should have said, we're going to give up our profits on this. We're going to jointly distribute this film over the Internet so that hundreds of millions of people all over the world can see what North Korea doesn't want you to see," Dershowitz said. "That would have really stuck it to the North Koreans. It would have told them you cannot fool around with American liberty."

Sony Pictures pulled the film after a major cyberattack on the company and threats of terrorism at movie theaters.

Dershowitz said studios feared losing more money, but said they are not just beholden to stockholders.

"They are holders of our First Amendment freedom," he said. "And they have to put First Amendment issues and freedom of speech first, even if it means that their profits are in danger."

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