Of course companies would pay for data if they had the choice. And small companies often do in case of a ransom attack. But if you're as big as Sony, there's re

Of course companies would pay for data if they had the choice. And small companies often do in case of a ransom attack. But if you're as big as Sony, there's really no upside to paying them. Like the other commenter said, if they did pay, the attackers would without a doubt still sell the data to others. Why wouldn't they? It's not like they have any morale. And to make things worse, this would just signal to other hacker groups that hacking Sony is very profitable, since they apparently are happy to pay. So they would just increase the target on their back. No upside.