At 112 Jefferson Avenue in Port Jefferson, New York, and the zip code is 11777.
We who believe in freedom can be free.
The New York City Chiapas Coalition will be hosting the annual Cultural Festival of Resistance,
Saturday, December 11th at Charis Community Center.
The Festival of Resistance will be a day of celebration and learning of resistance struggles
from here in New York City, to Seattle, to around the world with speakers, films, poetry,
theater, music, a photo exhibit, and the annual piñata ritual.
Special guests are WBAI's Amy Goodman and Doug Henwood,
who will lead the post-World Trade Organization teach-in.
Also, video screenings of Women Forward and Zapatista.
And then, from 9pm to midnight, the festival will transform into a dance party
with the live African, Latin, funk, punk band Antibalas and disc jockey DJ Chrome.
The Cultural Festival of Resistance, Saturday, December 11th, from midday to midnight
at Charis Community Center, 605 East 9th Street, between Avenues B and C.
For more information, you can call 212-561-0302.
That's 212-561-0302.
To believe in freedom, and not fear.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
It's 8 o'clock time for Off The Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bundle it up for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Bundle it up!
Bundle it up!
And a good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you for the next hour,
talking about the latest in high technology, computer hackers,
the battle for freedom, the battle against freedom,
and all kinds of other things that are going on.
What an incredible show we had last week,
with live action from the Streets of Seattle World Trade Organization.
We're going to have an update on that,
as well as just, I guess, a pause to realize
how incredible the whole thing was,
and how high technology made such a difference.
We'll be getting into that in just a few minutes.
And we also have a special guest,
who has a tale of woe from another part of the planet.
We'll be getting into that in just a little bit as well.
Well, we have this that was actually going on.
This was one of the things that was being talked about
at the World Trade Organization,
or was supposed to have been talked about,
some of the secret meetings.
Legislation and enforcement mechanisms to combat
piracy of software, music, film,
and other intellectual property products.
In other words, mandatory global government policies
to imprison anyone copying anything for their own use.
You listening, Isaac?
I'm listening.
Good. All right. I hope you are.
Because this applies to you. It's got your name on it.
I have my reservations, though.
Well, I don't know where you're going to be going,
because you can't get away from this.
You'll have to go off-world.
All right.
It's a good suggestion.
It's a good suggestion. You're right. Yeah.
In fact, the petition I have outside...
Well, never mind. We'll get to that later.
U.S. urge to stand firm on intellectual property.
Representative Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington,
today delivered a letter signed by 12 members of Congress
to the U.S. Trade Delegation,
urging negotiators to stand firm against any attempts
by other nations to attenuate or undercut the TRIPS,
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement.
TRIPS requires every nation in the World Trade Organization
to establish legislation and enforcement mechanisms
to combat piracy of software, music, film,
and other intellectual property products.
With the January 2000 deadline to comply with TRIPS looming,
many so-called least-developed nations
have sought to extend that deadline.
It's just amazing, though, that such enforcement
can take place over any kind of local laws,
any kind of national laws.
It's really a frightening thing,
and that's kind of what the theme of last week was.
NSA is being sued yet again.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center said
it has filed a lawsuit in federal court
accusing the NSA released documents
that address the legality of its intelligence efforts.
EPIC, a privacy advocacy group,
is seeking information specifically related
to the agency's so-called ECHELON project.
The NSA has never acknowledged the existence of ECHELON,
allegedly a super-secret spy network
that supposedly can capture and analyze
phone calls, faxes, and e-mails.
Maybe thoughts, too. Who knows?
Here's a little bit of revisionist history.
Japanese digital video disc manufacturers
were forced to postpone the launch
of long-awaited new audio equipment
after a European hacker broke open
the copyright protection of DVDs
and raised new piracy fears.
Don't you just love how they twist things around?
Hackers figured out that the encryption was no good,
and now all of a sudden hackers are standing
in the way of technology.
Well, they're not.
It just makes smart business sense
not to release a product based on a standard
that may change within the next month.
Well, that's certainly true,
but you can't blame the hackers.
That's what they're doing here.
They're saying that hackers have prevented it
from going forward,
and it's their own ineptitude
that has prevented it from going forward.
If they had listened in the first place,
this never would have happened.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Company
postponed the launch of DVD audio-video players
by about six months to next May or June,
while Victor Company of Japan plans
to withhold the release of its new equipment
for an unspecified period.
The FBI and the Pentagon are planning
a special vigil as 1999 comes to a close,
fearing both government and private sector computers
could come under attack
as the calendar changes to 2000.
Now, here's the good part.
Terrorists, hostile nations, criminals,
and recreational hackers
could all launch assaults at the same time
and could use Y2K malfunctions
to hide their actions.
What is a recreational hacker?
I have to wonder about that one.
As opposed to us hackers that do it for business,
you know, that's the ones that do it for sport.
Yeah, cyber attacks likely at year's end,
experts say, federal officials increasingly say
the greatest Y2K threat will come
not from data errors, or data errors rather,
in software, but from terrorists,
particularly cyber terrorists,
launching hacker attacks via the Internet.
Did you know that cyber terrorists
can launch hacker attacks?
Didn't realize that.
So they throw hackers at machines?
They throw hackers at machines, apparently,
or something along those lines.
This is according to Stephen Northcutt,
Chief of Information Warfare.
Great name for somebody in charge of warfare,
Northcutt.
In charge of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
He's the latest expert to warn of this threat.
All the other experts have been put away for insanity.
He told an audience of federal managers
at the Government Technology Leadership Institute
in Washington Thursday
to expect network intrusions and other cyber attacks
during the entire winter holiday period
and especially around the New Year's weekend.
It's because hackers have no life.
They're just going to sit around
bombarding defense computers.
Come on, that can be done any time.
You don't need to do it on New Year's.
Anyway, as Defense Department, FBI,
and Congressional investigators
examine the recent hacking of DoD systems
by Russian government entities,
the more deeply the hackers appear
to have burrowed into military computers.
Despite all...
This doesn't even make sense.
Despite all the denials,
the recent sophisticated and widespread hacks
into Department of Defense computer networks
by personnel at a Russian Academy of Sciences lab
did in fact manage to penetrate
at least a few classified systems
according to knowledgeable sources
and inferences made
during recent Congressional testimony.
Classified systems should not be on the network.
That's right.
And if you have a classified system on the network,
it deserves to be exposed.
Well, I wouldn't go that far.
I would.
I mean, look, who is it protecting?
It's not protecting them.
It's protecting us, supposedly.
It's classified information for the protection of citizens.
So I think we deserve to know
if they're being so boneheaded
as to leave it wide out in the open.
That's just my personal feeling on it.
And finally, we have a new bill to worry about.
This is called the Kill Bill.
Have you heard about this one?
The Kill Bill?
It's either pronounced Kill or Kyle.
K-Y-L.
How would you pronounce it?
You got me.
Yeah.
Well, you got me on this whole bill.
It's three consonants in a row.
Yeah.
Well, this guy, he's a Republican from Arizona.
He wants...
He wants the federal government
to be able to shut off anyone's net access
as if it were a government privilege.
Sort of like the driving type of thing,
you know, where you can have your driver's license revoked
if you drive drunk or irresponsibly
or something like that.
Well, this particular bill has to do with gambling.
And...
Let's see if I can find the actual relevant passage here.
An order restraining the provider
from providing access to an identified subscriber
of the system or network
of the interactive computer services provider
if the court determines that there is probable cause
to believe that such subscriber is using that access
to violate the gambling prohibition
by terminating the specific account of the subscriber.
So, according to some things being passed around on the net,
this seems to pose at least two significant problems.
One, a state attorney general
could seek to turn off my internet access
not with a successful prosecution,
proof beyond a reasonable doubt,
but instead with a lesser showing
merely of probable cause.
And two, will this set the precedent
for other politically incorrect activities?
What happens if Matt Drudge is sued for slander?
I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
Will this lead to the government
utilizing internet access as a carrot
or a loss of net access as a stick
to modify behavior?
It's all very scary stuff happening
and the year 2000, no doubt,
will bring a whole lot more of it to us.
Stay tuned.
And you're listening to Off the Hook
on WBAI in New York.
Last week, we really went through
quite a lot over the air
and a lot of people were very mystified
by what we were broadcasting.
It wasn't quite in the usual theme of Off the Hook,
but when all was said and done,
the internet and high technology
managed to really play a role
like it never has before.
Last week, if you recall,
and if you have internet access,
you can listen to the show on our website,
www.2600.com.
We cut live to the streets of Seattle
where Amy Goodman was standing
in the middle of it all,
where tear gas was being fired,
rubber bullets, the whole works.
You probably didn't hear very much of it
on the mainstream news
and that's very unfortunate
because there was quite a story to be told here.
I've spoken to a lot of people who were out there
and it's amazing.
No matter who you speak to,
whether they be people who live in the area,
whether they be shopkeepers
or people who went out there
for the specific purpose of demonstrating
against the WTO,
they all pretty much tell the same story
of how there was a small group of people
who were vandals
and the vast majority,
something on the order of 99 and change percent,
were there to peacefully protest.
And for some odd reason,
the police didn't go after the people
who were vandalizing the stores.
They went after the people
who were simply standing, protesting,
arm in arm.
And some of the things that happened
were simply shocking.
They were unbelievable.
And you hear these eyewitness accounts
from various people
but you don't hear them in the mass media.
You have to wonder why.
Why does General Electric
not want to air this kind of thing?
Why does Disney not want to air this kind of thing?
You know, all the major corporations
that own all the major TV stations,
why aren't they airing the news
about how people suddenly mass against
major corporations?
Interesting.
Interesting theories that come about.
But what was different about this,
what was different about Seattle,
is that the net was accessible.
And there was a particular website
known as www.indymedia.org
spelled I-N-D-Y-M-E-D-I-A
that had and continues to have to this day
a whole lot, I mean a lot,
well over a hundred independent synopses
of what happened, whether it be in writing,
whether it be through camcorders,
whether it be through tape recorders,
all kinds, a real hodgepodge of experiences.
And that's where you really find out
what happened in the streets of Seattle.
You won't see it on the mass media.
But anybody in the world now
can just go directly to the net
and find out firsthand,
in many cases minutes after it happens,
just what it was that took place.
So, sorry Isaac.
The WTO itself was putting out
a webcast of their sessions,
if I recall correctly.
Well, what sessions were left, yeah.
You can't get much more firsthand than that.
Well, except for the fact that
nobody really could get in there
and also that they were kind of closed off
as far as discussion and things like that.
But I'm talking about what was important
and that's what was happening out in the streets.
That was what people were doing
and that's where cops were really
abusing their authority
and hurting a lot of people,
hurting a hell of a lot of people.
So, you didn't see that in the mass media
and it's unfortunate because it happened.
There's documentation, there's lots of it
and the ramifications of this
will be going on for some time.
So, tonight I'd like to make
a little bit of history
by bringing some of that to the folks.
What we have here comes directly,
100% from the internet.
This has never been done before,
as far as I know,
where we simply hooked up
a tape recorder to the net
and went to a lot of the selections
that are floating around out there
and recorded them.
Recorded them from the net
to put on the radio.
Kind of the opposite of what it usually is.
Usually it takes something from the radio
and put it on the net.
Well, this time,
because it wasn't on the radio
or on TV or any place else,
in the mass media that is,
we simply grabbed it firsthand
and recorded it right onto a tape recorder
so we can put it on the air tonight.
So, that's what we're going to play
for the next few minutes
and we'll get on to our special guest after that.
Keep in mind, there are times when
if you're offended by language,
you might want to tune away
because this was quite an intense experience
and sometimes people just didn't think
to shield their language
from those who might be offended.
I think you'll find this to be
a very eye-opening experience,
almost like being there.
Let's take a listen to what happened in Seattle
over the course of the few days
of the WTO conference last week.
My name is George Becker.
I'm the International President
of the United Steelworkers of America.
I'm here representing our labor union,
the steelworkers,
and we have 750,000 members
of the United States and Canada.
We had a long, peaceful march yesterday
in protest of the WTO
and the way it's currently being administered.
We're insisting that the WTO
change some of the very fundamental policies
that excludes working people,
the environment, and human rights issues
from their charter.
About 50 cents.
Does that seem like a fair wage
for taking an entire pound of coffee
and throwing in the whole bit, 50 cents?
I grew up as a Navy dependent
and I remember seeing the war rights
during Vietnam.
This is no different,
except for they haven't started beating them yet
and they aren't holding bayonets to their throats.
That's the only difference.
This is an overkill.
They could have had these guys
standing way back around the corner
had regular officers out here.
Then if they acted up, if they got violent,
then these guys could have came in.
But this looks like stormtroopers.
Almost, we dare you to act.
We dare you to act.
It could be confrontational.
The cops need to hide their faces.
Is that because they're planning on acting out violently
and they don't want to be filmed or identified?
There's no numbers identifying them.
No names.
Yeah, no numbers.
No names out.
Faces hidden.
Sounds like to me they're ready to jump in.
What I see here is a peaceful protest of young kids
that are concerned about the environment
and I see them being confronted
with a strong police force
in a very militaristic way
in a way that I don't feel comfortable with
and I don't think the citizens of this country
should feel comfortable with it.
How's everybody feeling?
It's a little hard for me to talk.
I was shot in the face by a rubber bullet
but I just want to describe what happened.
My friend and I here are peacekeepers
as you can see by the bandage tied to our arms.
And as we were securing the intersection
to prevent the delegates
from doing their meeting in secrecy
we were chanting nonviolence.
We were sitting down.
We were keeping the peace.
And then the cops started shooting tear gas.
They shot me in the face with a rubber bullet
and I have a hole completely through my lip.
And I finally got it on a visceral level.
I got it!
They've got rubber bullets for us in this country.
They've got tear gas for us in this country.
But if the WTO succeeds and moves
multinational corporations' interests abroad
they've got real bullets and real murder
for third world people.
And I'm here right now because
I just want to remind us we're here for nonviolence
and the love in our hearts today
has prevented round one.
And I want to pass the mic on. Thank you.
What happened is these two kids
were standing at the street
ready to cross the street at 3rd and Union
and all of a sudden these three guys
come walking up to them
and there was nobody else around
and all of a sudden start beating them up.
Slugging and beating them up.
And the kids are already falling to the ground.
One of the guys is all bloody.
She's just in a panic because she doesn't know
who these guys are.
Then finally these two real cops
that are in real uniforms come up
and then the three undercover cops say
we're cops. And they handcuff these kids.
But they've beaten them up, kicked them
then they cart them off. These kids did nothing.
They were just standing at the street sign right there.
And the guy from Metro over on the other side
said those two kids were tagged.
They were at the confrontation earlier
a half hour earlier and they were targeting them.
Somehow they're targeting these kids
by putting some kind of a tag
on the back of their outfits.
And then the police, the undercover cops
come up later and beat the shit out of these kids.
So they're targeting the kids
when they're in the safety of all the groups
they don't go near them.
But they target them and then after they leave
their protection, then they tag them
and hurt them.
Journalists were having their eyes cleaned out
from the pepper spray they had
had sprayed on them just outside
the independent media center on 3rd Avenue
in downtown Seattle. This announcement was being made
in the media center to the journalists and staff
on hand.
I have an announcement.
There's a row of riot police just outside
blocking the street. You can't go left out the door
if you want to.
They're not communicating with us at all.
They won't indicate who's in control
or in charge.
And so basically
they're just locking us
in here essentially or forcing us
out of the door. But they've drawn the line
right outside the IMC here.
Get the word out
that the press is being held captive.
This is the problem we have when you have a concentration
of media
owned by fewer and fewer corporations.
I mean, how many radio stations
or TV stations are there out there?
And if you have one or two of them saying that
they're not going to cover an activity because
the government agency didn't happen to
provide a permit,
then you really have a collusion
behind, in this case
pretty blatantly, corporate power
and the government.
WHO SHOT GONNA GO?
WOHO
WHO SHOT GONNA END IT?
WHOHO
WHO SHOT GONNA END IT?
WHOHO
WHO SHOT GONNA END IT?
WHOHO
My name is Lanni Hansen.
I'm here with my daughter Lanni Ross
and my daughter Meghan Carmody.
Megan Carmody and we wanted to blockade a road this morning and we sat down
peacefully in the middle of the street and riot police came there was a lot of
chanting a lot of fun a lot of dancing and then and then the police had had
enough of it and they sprayed us with pepper spray shot rubber bullets at us
we were all hit and then tear gassed us it was just amazing meanwhile there are
people running around the streets breaking windows and turning over
newspaper magazine containers who aren't being bothered at all the police
don't seem to be making any attempt to control them or arrest them or get them off the streets
okay the free logging agreement is to eliminate tariffs those are
wood imports taxes around the world right okay the US is
pushing this backed by Weyerhaeuser and international paper and all of our big
forestry corporations right this is one deal they want to finalize this week
right okay the White House did a report on this because we've beaten them over
the head about our concerns and they said it's going to increase logging
around the world okay particularly some of the most sensitive forests in
Indonesia 4.4 percent in Malaysia 2.2 percent and in Chile by 1 percent
now our friends in those countries are here and they're very clear to say that
they don't have regulatory systems there they don't have environmental
protections they have nobody to enforce the laws and they can't handle any more
logging so our friends are here to say that they want to stop this thing too in
those countries in addition to that in the next round they want to put in the
on the table subject for negotiation to eliminate the ability of government to
do these things raw log export bans which are important for conserving
forests and for jobs all right protections at the border for invasive
species second leading cause of species extinction now in the world all right
equal labeling third-party equal labeling all these things are calling
non-tariff measures all right all these environmental protections we have they're
calling non-tariff measures and they're things that they want to put under new
WTO rules right okay just here right now but we just heard from the US Trade
Representative's office that they're going full steam ahead with all these
things even though we're out here right now even though you all are out here
that they want to put these things in the next round and they want to finalize
one of the agreements what we're calling the free logging agreement the tariff
elimination this week Victor Minotti was just speaking has very detailed
information I published this report how the WTO undermines forest conservation
and I'm accredited NGO okay and we've been banging on them for months now
give a card this is my sony's credentials just to let this is to keep
the information between those of us in the inside and all you out here okay so
you all know what's going on
well that's why we're running around in the streets right now just yelling
things like this the news cameras are more interested in covering you know the
chaos rather a substance of what's going on inside
you have a website I haven't been following it as closely from what I know
from the people following the Ag stuff are not doing well not doing good the US
wants to propose a working group on biotech so that it can prevent any
government from being able to ban the import
yeah can you say I haven't heard any news other than that the third world
wants to change the rules on this chaos they're constantly running after us
everywhere they're making they did just made a huge move it is usually made a
huge move they took in some people they grab some folks I don't know who they're
trying to get exactly but they got him that is fucked up it is chaos fucking
down here it is total freaking chaos that came out of nowhere all of a sudden
all of a sudden all right this is getting pretty heavy fucking duty
oh well I'm gonna go walk down okay independent media the results of what
happened just a little while ago was that they grabbed Victor Makati the NGO
we got the interview on it they just came through with a cop car snatch him
threw him in the cop car it was done and over with all right we're coming up
on
okay right now we have about 20 people arm-in-arm linked together protecting the
protecting the merchandise with a broken window okay tear gas has been deployed
we need to make sure that we keep the energy level up and then we're still
focused on being here and being together because if we let that drop if we stop
paying attention and if you know we start leaving one by one that's gonna
again they're gonna do something again they did it earlier this morning they
dropped one in my lap and so once again what we've got right now is we've got
the numbers and we've got the cameras they don't want to shoot us with the
whole world watching as we've been saying it all day we just need to stay
here and stay strong what my man saying here is right we cannot leave Gandhi
defeated the largest imperialistic country in the world through nonviolent
protest Gandhi took down the great britain government at the height of his
power through non-violent protest believe you me i'm the first one who
can resort to violence but i have chosen not to we cannot quit supporting
ourselves if you guys leave they will gas us again they will shoot rubber
bullets again a little old lady trying to run over here to go shopping took
three fucking rounds shot at her because they did not fucking look to see who she
was she was just passing through without the people here to support us
with you guys going home they're gonna pull the same thing and if they're gonna
shoot without looking at a little old lady what do you think they'll do to us
so where we were this morning really looked like a military zone and there
was armored vehicles there were cops with automatic weapons there was tear
gas canisters flying horses like horses
you know something you see on the news in some other country that's at war was
very very obviously military confrontation and when you think about
what's going on what you've got is a military power protecting corporate
interests the WTO represents corporate interest that's totally obvious there's
hundreds and thousands of people in the streets to protest this and there's
military power backing up the corporations so to me it was just a very
graphic and painful illustration of the way things are structured in our country
when we have military power that protects corporate interests and the
voices of the people and the opinions of the people and us putting our bodies on
the line it's not really what's important what's important is corporations
making a profit and that's where the police are going to come out and protect
and like i always make this joke when i see these cops protecting corporate
interests like how do i get my own private army because it's it's not there
it's not fair to serve and protect us what a mockery of what police are
supposed to be about those police are protecting a few rich white people from
from what from a bunch of people sitting down we weren't even rushing barricades
nothing we're sitting in the street and they open fire on us
let it be known that the cops have resorted to violence and we're just
standing up for the people of the world i was shot in the face with a gun and i
they sprayed pepper spray on me i'm here for non-violent protests
so
shame indeed that's uh some perspectives of what happened in seattle over the past week
all coming to you from independent people running around with tape recorders camcorders things like
that and all found over the internet and really it didn't sound too bad a few years ago if we had
tried to air something like that over the radio i don't think it'd be bearable it'd be less than am
quality but uh quality has really gone up and it's it's it's one reason why it's so important it's so
important to have a grasp of the technology so that you can go out there find out what's going
on and if the mass media won't cover it then you put it up on the website yourself and you get the
word out in your own way and people will hear it so that's uh most of that is available on
www.indymedia.com and uh they're putting more stuff up every day i'm sure there are other
pieces on other uh websites all around the world and uh if you have any other things that you'd
like to send us please let us know oth at 2600.com we'll be back in just a moment
look for the meadow and say where the grass
is
choking the atmosphere oh so incredibly slowly
so far and carbon and hydrogen sulfide and lime
favor corrosion and cover your cities with grime
something is killing the land before your eyes
and the sunshine is not to play
and you're listening to radio station wbai in new york the program is off the hook and we're
here with you tonight i'm about to uh hear from a special guest who is a victim of i guess another
kind of uh corporatization something of one power exerting itself over something far far less
powerful you may have heard of a company called e-toys e-toys.com but you may not have known
is that there is another organization organization of artists who has a website
called e-toy.com i think you might know where this is going yeah e-toy.com has existed for
since 1994 actually they're a group of european artists who worked on the cutting edge doing
performance art techno events and raves and they picked the name e-toy literally by consensus
being from italy england switzerland physical collaboration was difficult
so they got together on an irc channel and went through a list of random names generated by a
pearl script that's right when uh when e-toy came up they all knew that was the name they wanted
they first used it in october of 1994 and in october 1995 they put up their website at e-toy.com
in 1996 e-toy won their first artistic award their work typically blurs the line between real world
and art in this case they had undertaken to demonstrate how important and yet how fragile
the system of search engines was by subverting the meta tags of prominent websites like playboy
they pulled inexperienced surfers to their site where they put in a plug for kevin mitnick and
had a few laughs at the newbies expense they called it the digital hijack
a curious kind of art in 1996 it was original enough to win an award from ars electronica
nowadays everyone knows the trick the search engines find it and disregard it and some
underhanded websites try to make a fast buck by stealing trademarks but e-toy did it first for
fun christmas 90 1996 came and went and then in june 1997 etoys.com with an s began operations
it wasn't until october that their website went online they filed for a u.s trademark on their
domain at which point etoy got a little alarmed and filed for their own trademark on their own
domain maybe because they're based in europe or maybe for some other reason etoy says their
application is still pending on some technicalities but it doesn't matter when their trademark is
granted their website went online in october 1995 two full years before etoys and its date of first
use it's important not the date of filing christmas 1997 came and went 1998 came and went but now it's
1999 the year of the e-tailer and suddenly etoys.com with an s has gone public and is worth six billion
dollars meanwhile etoy.com without an s again putting the spotlight on corporations and society
has raised money by selling shares of itself not quite sure how they did it but at an artist
gathering a half serious half mocking exhibition exhibition slash fundraising they pulled in
something over ten thousand dollars which they then donated to their friends in the u.s also
working at the boundary of society and corporations rt mark best known for their george w bush parody
site in the year of the e-tailer what kind of speech scares corporations more than anything
disrespect artists who don't play by the rules people who don't understand that business is
serious business etoys.com with an s wants etoy.com with no s they offered money at one point they
were offering cash and mostly stock that would have been worth almost half a million dollars
no sale but that should give us an idea of how much they're willing to spend on lawyers finally
in september etoys filed a lawsuit against etoy on the grounds that a potential customer had
mistakenly gone to the wrong site and had seen the message that if they wanted to enjoy etoy.com
to its fullest extent they should download the effing flash plug-in they also didn't like the
pierced breasts or etoy's sense of humor to be precise they claim that quote the anti-social
obscene and offensive images associated with defendants use of the mark etoy both on the
internet and elsewhere have tarnished the etoy's mark and the etoy's brand name unquote let this
be a lesson to anyone whose domain is coveted by a multi-billion dollar company careful with the f
word we have with us on the phone from zurich one of the people involved in this whole mess
zai from etoy it's all you there yes i'm there hello how are you me yes i'm fine yes hello can
you hear us yes perfect all right that's one of those rare occasions where the bi phone system is
working properly yeah i was listening to the show before on the real audio broadcast and was
perfect quality great it's really exciting scary things going on there in america but we are even
more scared about this country yeah it's a lot of scary things happening everywhere but it's good
that we can keep in touch using different mediums including real audio including all kinds of
broadcasting uh so tell us what has happened since uh since uh this happened in september when
etoy's filed the lawsuit but what's happened since then um it was a strange mix between um
offering money and um shares from their company and on the other side making lots of a lot of
pressure with their attorneys sending uh lots of documents lots of documents which made us spend
uh which made us spending a lot of money on attorneys too so um we were forced to um enter
a battle we um which is not our battlefield normally so it was really a scary thing to
experience and but on the other side we also um um could use our weapons and this is a media media
war or whatever you call that i mean we could spread the virus that we are attacked and that
we will not sell our domain to this company if they are behaving like they did now how are you
spreading that message um we have uh lots of different tools to do that um our art concept
really am focused on the internet i mean in the year 95 as you perfectly described in our
short in this short history you gave us um we started to concentrate on the internet and we
stopped doing all the the the rave event and um techno uh things and we totally uh concentrated
on the internet and we started to develop a huge system we can use um to to inform people and to to
channel some information to the to the users there the most important thing of course is our
website on the domain www.etai.com we developed this website um during the last years and it
became a really strong and um famous brand so to speak if we want to use the the words of the of
the enemy and of course we for us this is also to use this language it's also about irony and about
using their weapons against themselves so um this brand um the etoy site um this portal or whatever
you call it was very important to um talk to the people and um but we were prepared at the moment
we saw that they want to they want to buy or in the worst case um they want to take or steal our
domain name um we started to talk to different people on all kind of different platforms we have
partners like you mentioned archmark is one of our partners then we are working with people like
detritus or helcom or the thing in new york and lots of different organizations and we started to
develop a huge uh system um where we can mirror our um our servers and our information platforms
to uh keep people informed when the the thing gets uh uh gets shut down or something like that
now now you're not able to keep people informed on on the etoy.com site are you that's been shut
down hasn't it yes i mean we were not forced um or we were forced to shut the the site down by
ourselves this was the tragedy i mean that's probably much harder to do yourself to turn down
or to shut down your apache server and um if someone else would do that it's probably easier
so one of us had to type in that had to kill the task and the other person had to hit return
um button and this is a really bad thing to do not no one person wanted to do the whole thing
no was too was too tragedy uh too too tragic um to do that but um we were advised by our attorneys
to do that because um the u.s government or the judge um talked about um ten thousand dollar
fees per day if we keep it up so this is really no choice of course we could have uh could have
keep it up just to fight um against the united states and to um to keep it keep it up as far as
we know the the american uh um organization controlling the domain names wouldn't wouldn't
shut us down or didn't uh does not does not um i have a very strange echo at the moment on my
telephone that's fine a little bit disturbed but um it's just echelon don't worry about it yeah um
so uh internec as far as we know does not um shut um websites down so um we could have um
keep it up but then the attorney said that we have to definitely turn it off by ourselves
well now your site is located in switzerland is it um we have a whole server network so the domain
etoy.com is split into different servers we have servers um in amsterdam we have a server in um
budapest and we have a server in zurich and so it from this from this perspective it wouldn't be a
real problem we could keep it online i mean we have also very reliable providers who um cover
us and we also had with the digital hijack back in uh 96 we also had some problems also with the
united states they sent the um um some cia agents after us and did uh huge investigations and
they were working together with um local police task force for um or against terroristic activities
in austria for instance but after three months they stopped doing that and is this because of
etoys or is this something else no no this was i mean etoy wasn't even incorporated by this time
it was because um uh that uh that's what we expect it's very difficult to say what exactly
happened but the digital hijack this pro project we um did and what uh won um one of the most
important art um awards was just playing around with this whole um problem of internet terrorism
and uh you you talked about this thing a little bit and i think you explained it quite well the
digital hijack just showed that you can control the the the place or the the user traffic that you
can that you can direct people to a place and that you have some uh influence um without um
telling the user that uh you're doing this and so what we did we um we uh worked with this
with this um idea and with the uh concept of the of the search engines because we did an analyze
or we analyzed the search engines and the power of the search engines i mean
basically they point people to the to the different sites and they decide who's got
attention and who's not so um we were uh definitely as artists interested in this kind of
things but we don't see ourselves as real hackers we are more kind of media hackers or art hackers
we try to cross the border between um corporate aesthetics this irony part in itoid and the whole
aspect of internet um uh terrorism and on the other side of course art and entertainment you
can call sometimes we just call it entertainment to um make people um a lot of people want to keep
clear lines between art and entertainment and business and all these things and our strategy
is to blur these lines and so the digital hijack was made up like a like a film you can not not on
a technical side or a formalistic side it was more like thought like a film it was a whole story with
characters and and the story was basically to inform people about this this this process of
being hijacked and and the search engines which direct them to a place and they believe that they
are um that they are gonna be at a safe place and so on and so um it really looked like um
a scary thing maybe for certain people i mean you have to be a little bit
naive to really being shocked about this project but well the thing the thing i don't understand
is you're over there in europe now how much jurisdiction does the united states government
have over your domain name i mean as you know the united states are really powerful they have
a lot of control i've heard on on lots of different levels i mean to come back on the other story um
at the at this hijack story they sent uh they just sent people or they are they um managed it
that austrian police officers um uh came after us and made house seekings and talked to all uh
people around us to just to find out what's going on we were totally shocked we didn't expect that
we expect maybe that austrian police is doing something by themselves but then we found out
we saw some facts facts um sheets and they proved that the cia ordered this and of course if the cia
is knocking on the door at the austrian police department they are somehow very proud and feel
like little james bond characters and then they can do investigations i mean they were totally
unsuccessful they were working with typewriters they had no computers on their desks we were
there once for interrogations and they didn't even have uh computers on their desk so it was
quite uh quite funny but um to come back to your question i mean the united states has lots of
contracts with europe and lots of powerful tools to force and that's the point to um to um get the
money and an american court would um would uh i don't know the word for that i mean if a if a
american court asks us for money or forces us to pay fees then we definitely have to pay that i
mean it takes a while it takes maybe two years or something but we have to pay and the other thing
our attorney attorneys suggested is that if we want to go back to the united states and
one of our past member members was american or is american still and um he's also uh attacked
in this in this whole case and a lot of i mean nearly everyone or everyone from us also has lots
of friends and some of us even family in the united states and if we would cross the border
we would be uh immediately handcuffed and we even have to go to jail if we don't pay um fees in this
this high amount of money so it's really scary and we have to check out what's going on and
this is pretty pretty incredible story now you uh since your website is is i guess suspended for
lack of a better word how can people check in with you guys is there any way um the whole the whole
um thing is very very um complex that's the strategy of the other side as you also mentioned
the e-toys corporation hired one of the most most um expensive and most powerful law agencies
in america it's ireland manila in california and they are working with real bad bad um
strategy they just try to make us spend spending as much money as possible so they send um documents
every week huge documents with hundred thousand things um inside and lots of different details
we have to bring in lots of documents from employment and university document documents
and passport reports and all kind of stuff and of course all the log files everything
so um it's really hard to um to uh to uh survive this thing just on the financial level but is
is there a website people can go to this yeah of course we um change to an ip address i mean that's
the most important thing to say that we don't uh switch to another to another uh domain name that's
what they suggested also at the time when they came along and offered us first they offered a
ridiculous thirty thousand dollars um and they always talked about the uh temporary or or another
just a another domain we could use and they always they always talked about um yeah they
handle it like for us it's just another website like some band has a website somewhere and can
also change it i mean it's the same imagine you would ask them to change yeah well that's exactly
what i was thinking you have the name first so why don't they change their the only the only um
difference is that we don't make millions or billions or whatever i mean at the moment they
also don't do uh billions they lose millions but um so they're certainly spending enough to uh to
get this uh we're starting to run out of time so if you could just give that that ip address so
people can check in important to to tell that i mean the ip address is um one four six dot two
two eight dot two oh four dot seven two that's just to show that we don't switch to another
domain name lots of people suggested to switch to the main name because it's easier to remember
but we want to show people that we don't give up our domain even if the server is down at the
moment we use this domain to log in well of course there could be a u.s company that comes
up with the name 146.228.204.72 next week and sues you for using their name yeah i guess uh
we all live in a risky society that could be possible yeah we we are waiting for this to
happen but um it's also important we there is a whole network of other websites and probably
mentioned these domain names it's one is um evil toy dot com um so it's it's like a parody
site to both of the names and it's managed by people from i think from hell.com and you also
find a huge cultural um activities activity thing and a community thing going on under toy war.com
that's the site we um we uh built with lots of people and with the help of a huge community
to strike back with our weapons the cultural weapons and we just we are about to um give out
the cd with music from very um interesting american and european bands and artists like
negative land illegal art or evolution control committee or um gunner lockwood and steve heiss and
lots of other people and we um at this point probably we uh if we can we would ask uh if
there are people listening who are interested in contributing uh lullabies we are collecting
at the moment nursery songs and children's songs to strike back with subversive tunes and to
infiltrate the children's bedrooms okay well i can't think of a more uh a more worthy goal than
than something subversive like that uh is there an email address that people can can can write
you out if they have some uh some way of helping you yeah sure we um have um first of all um on
toy war.com you can subscribe and you get regular info mails about the whole thing and that's
probably the best way to contact us at the moment because there you find out a lot about other ways
to contact us and to help us you can also um find lots of information and detail information on this
on this site and all the links to the to the articles wrote about this thing we are at the
moment totally overloaded with email and so it's really it's really difficult to um write um uh
stories about our whole thing we do a lot of people are confused what we are doing
because our art concept is really is really strange and complex and sometimes hard to
describe but we are always happy to describe and to talk to people but at the moment we are
totally overloaded by uh mail a lot of people um send us their um support and they um talk to us
that we shouldn't give up and that we have to keep fighting against this uh corporation because
we definitely have priority rights and we have to show that because if no one is really standing
up against this company this could happen to a lot of other people and etoy fortunately has the power
and the time at the moment you have to know we turned this whole thing which would kill us if
we were uh just normal standard working sorry we're out of time now so there are some people
who want to join that crowd so if you just give that email address out then yeah we've got to go
that's a mail me at etoy.com the mail server is still up and if there is a problem with that
just go to toy barn and you okay so that's that's mail me at etoy without an s.com yes and that
that'll get through to you at least at least for now and is there is there any kind of feedback at
etoys with an s.com for people to to voice their uh yeah their opinion their best thing would be
to um direct the the mail to the responsible person there and i would say that's the ceo
toby lang his email address is toby t-o-b-y at etoys.com with an s i'm sure he will be very
happy to receive your mail that's the best thing you can do at the moment we receive
lots of cc's every day about this um i stuff now okay well nice to talk to you
zi thanks very much for uh for for being so courageous and express our best wishes to
everybody over there we'll be keeping update on updated on that and uh yes a lot to you
and you are happy to uh um to uh um see a lot of toy soldiers on toy bar.com okay great take care
this is emmanuel goldstein for off the hook we'll be back again next week we're sorry we didn't take
any calls this week or last week so we'll try to make up for it next week good night
you