Freedom, you were a nice idea, but anonymous hackers with a strange fondness for North Korea don't like you. So I guess you'll have to go.
After a single random online threat from an anonymous source the Department of Homeland Security finds not particularly credible -- a source that, for all we know, could be a group of basement-dwelling pranksters trying to sound like North Koreans -- Sony pulled "The Interview."
If someone purporting to be from the KKK calls the Weinstein Co. to order it to pull "Django Unchained" from any further distribution, will Harvey say, "Of course. We wouldn't want to offend you nice people"? Can the American Nazi party stop Universal Pictures from airing "The Blues Brothers" on TV by issuing an especially forceful tweet?
As an arts and entertainment company, Sony Pictures has better reason than most to understand the importance of creative freedom, especially when that creation carries a political character. The same is true of the theater chains. Their chicken-hearted response to the threats is a warning to everyone who works in the arts that controversy is best avoided.
Bill Kristol from the Weekly Standard also makes some excellent points.
I think this is more a business decision by a private entity than anything to do with freedom. However, for the record, I think it is extraordinarily unlikely the North Koreans would actually try to execute a violent terrorist act on American soil. Their regime values survival over everything else and shooting a bunch of movie goers in a theater would probably imperil their existence.