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Maybe a potato?
I just want the spelling to be correct.
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Well, I know how to spell Pacifica.
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W-B-A-I.
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Now spell potato.
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No, you're writing a check to WBAI.
Fulfill your pledge to WBAI.
Spell WBAI.
There is no prize for being the last to pay.
I'm trying not to make any spelling errors.
Are you trying to be the last person to pay?
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Maybe a potato?
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Fulfill your pledge to WBAI.
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And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York.
It's 8 o'clock on Tuesday.
And that means it's time once again for Off the Hook.
That's understood.
Bundling it now.
So when Kevin got out and we escorted everyone, you pulled the car out and the whole swarms
of media, there were at least three different crews there, sorry, 30 different crews there,
all followed us in a huge caravan down the road to this little place on the shoulder.
And Kevin himself didn't know exactly where we were going.
In fact, Kevin's aunt was driving the car, so we had to tell them, hey, follow us, we
know a place where you can read your statement, because that's what Kevin wanted to do, read
the statement to the press.
So follow us there.
This is a little tiny two-lane highway out in this rural area.
And so we get there and we both pull over, us and Kevin's car, and all the media starts
setting up, and it's just a huge traffic jam.
And immediately a white sedan of some sort of federal agents pull up and say, Mr. Mitnick,
you can't be here.
This is still, this belongs to the Air Force, and you have to keep moving.
Actually, they called him Kevin.
I thought that was kind of nice.
But yeah, they were so obviously feds, big fat feds, too.
The kind you see on TV, they just, you know, as soon as they pulled up and got out of the
car, those are feds.
Yeah, they had a little pin on their lapels.
You don't even need the pin, you don't even need the lapel, just the face.
It's a fed face.
I don't know how to describe it.
You know, if you watch TV, you'll see these kind of people.
They really do exist.
They breed them.
Yeah, it was pretty spooky.
But it turns out that where we were was also federal property, because that was part of
the Air Force base.
Right, right.
So we had to make a U-turn, and all the media, there was this traffic jam, so they had to
kind of like pull over and let us by, because no one else knew where we were going.
And at this point, we didn't even really know where we were going, but the federal agents
told us, oh, well, in the other direction, you can get past the prison, and it's not
federal property.
Yeah, it doesn't just go away.
But it's all on the island, and there's nowhere to pull over.
Yeah.
So we pull over into a truck yard, which was pretty big and pretty empty.
We were, oh, there's enough space here.
And we hoped, well, we could maybe pay off the foreman and just use the parking lot for
a while.
I walked up, and I talked to the foreman, who was just coming out of the building, wondering
what these 30 or so minivans just suddenly pulling into his driveway was all about.
I said, look, this guy just got out of prison.
He needs to make a statement to the press.
Do you think maybe you could?
I didn't even get the sentence finished before he said, you're going to have to move out
of here, because I've got a business to run.
So we were kind of worried that the next couple of hours would be spent driving aimlessly
around roads in California with 30 different press outlets behind us.
By the time we found out that we couldn't stay, our two cars were officially surrounded
by cameras, and some agencies already had their transmitting towers up.
And we kind of had to stand there, keeping them away from Kevin's car.
A real feeding frenzy.
Yeah.
So a local reporter knew of a park not far away.
Yes, I'm very happy that person was there, because we never would have found that park.
The park was perfect.
We all went to the park.
And that's where Kevin wound up giving his statement.
And if you want to read the statement, it's on Kevin Mitnick's website, freekevin.com.
I think ZDTV actually put it up audio-wise, or video-wise even.
So if you have bandwidth, you can actually hear it.
But Kevin had a really scathing commentary about the media, about John Markoff, about
his five years in prison.
And, well, he didn't want to take questions.
Now, Mackie, why do you think he didn't want to take questions from the media?
Well, besides for the whole 60 Minutes thing, where he had some sort of exclusive arrangement,
I mean, it would be really hard to give a balanced, really a fair response to all the
questions without getting trapped into something.
But what was the first question that was asked?
Well, the first question the obnoxious CNN reporters asked was,
do you have any remorse?
Do you have any remorse?
And as Isaac pointed out at the time, well, there's no real right answer to that that
doesn't have at least a dozen follow-up questions.
And there's no real answer to that that makes him look good.
I mean, do you have any remorse?
Yes.
Right?
That makes him...
That means you're guilty.
It's like one of these, do you still beat your wife type questions.
Exactly.
And if the answer is no, do you have any remorse, then basically you show no remorse for your crimes.
Right.
So you're an evil person either way.
Assuming that there are crimes.
Well, I respected him for that.
I mean, the man knew what he was doing.
He was very crafty.
Kevin says no questions and explains why and everything.
He says, but are you bitter?
And at this point, the Fox reporter kind of chimed in and said, well, wait a second.
Why are you answering 60 Minutes questions?
It's not ours, huh?
What do you have to hide?
And that's when we started walking away from these.
It was kind of cool to be one of the people that was like ushering somebody away from the media.
Yeah, that was fun.
We had to tell them, you know, when you ask why we're not taking any questions, that's a question.
And we're not taking any of those.
And, you know, basically Kevin is going to talk to all kinds of different people over time.
But this is the moment he just got out.
I don't think he was ready for a barrage of all different kinds of things like that.
So in due time, I'm sure he'll have many, many things to say.
In fact, for about five years, Emmanuel, this is probably the first moment that Kevin had complete control over a situation.
And I think he finally wanted just to have that breath of fresh air to actually be in control of something for a change
after years of zero privacy and zero control of his own life.
And you've got to give the guy what he wants.
Right.
And, you know, in all the reporting that I saw, very, very few, maybe one or two, actually alluded to anything that he said in his statement.
You know, and that's it right there.
They don't listen.
They don't care about what you have to say.
They just want to write their story around your appearance.
They know what they want to report ahead of time.
I'm surprised that Kevin didn't express any opinion about our Justice Department and the whole legal system.
He seemed to be more addressing the media, the media's coverage as opposed to his treatment
and how the justice system was basically perverted to convict him.
Well, the statement took about ten minutes to read, and I guess he could have stayed there an hour talking about all kinds of different things.
Oh, please.
Yeah, easily.
I know you had a lot to say when you got out of prison about all the various things.
Well, my jaw was wired shut, so it was difficult for me to say anything.
Yeah, they worked that out real good with you.
Yeah.
There are some really great pictures of the whole fiasco during his release on the 2600 site, including all the reporters swarming around.
And we even have the fat-headed feds on the webpage, so if you want to take a look.
It's probably illegal for us to do this, but we put it on there anyway, and you can see them for yourself.
And tell me yourself, you know, look at those pictures and tell me.
If you saw one of those people coming at you, you wouldn't know that was a fed.
Fat-headed feds.
Fat-headed feds, yeah.
Oh, jeez.
Feds don't like to have their pictures taken.
I noticed that.
I noticed that.
They always tend to, you know, cover their faces and shy away when you do that.
That's why I always carry a camera.
But, you know, it's amazing.
After that whole press thing, we made sure all the press people left, all right?
And then we got Kevin out of there.
Actually, no, wait.
Kevin left.
That's what happened.
Kevin left first.
We made sure none of the press people followed him.
Then the press people started to leave.
And then we joined Kevin at a secret place.
Just a place we could get pancakes or something for the first time in God knows how long.
And it was amazing because there were press people there already.
You know, there was a press person that just happened to be around the area, and she recognized Kevin.
She worked for a local paper in the town of Lompoc.
What a dead-end job that must be.
She saw our bumper stickers.
Yeah, she saw the bumper stickers which we foolishly left on our rental car.
And, of course, she's chasing around Kevin.
She was nice.
She was fairly respective of privacy and things like that, wanting to know if he could say anything to her.
Of course, he wasn't able to.
He didn't want to at that particular moment in time.
Then we had people sitting at the next table over who somehow knew who he was, and they wanted autographs and things like that.
It was really kind of funny that this whole spectacle was following us everywhere.
And Lincoln Town Car is like you wouldn't believe.
Every time you turned around, you'd see something like that.
Meanwhile, every time Kevin had to talk to somebody on the phone, he had to go outside and use a pay phone
because, of course, he wasn't allowed to use any of the dozen or so cell phones that were at the table.
So it was fun, though.
And we spent the next couple of days in Los Angeles just kind of catching up on things.
He did have some toy cell phones, though.
Did he?
Some refrigerator magnets, I believe.
Oh, the refrigerator magnets.
Hopefully, that's okay, but we'll see.
What about a Nextel phone or a PCS phone?
They're not cellular.
Do you really want to argue that in front of a probation officer?
Basically, I learned that if the feds call a cat a dog, then for all practical purposes, it's a dog.
They've made things so difficult for him, though.
They say that everybody wants to interview Kevin, and they're offering him a speaking tour, all kinds of things like that.
He is not allowed to do that.
He's not allowed to benefit in any way from his crimes.
Meanwhile, all these other people are becoming millionaires because of his crimes,
but he cannot accept a speaking engagement or have an interview with somebody where he accepts anything for it.
And that really makes things difficult.
And, of course, he's also looking for a job.
This is a very important consideration because if you want to survive in the free world, you do have to earn money.
He's not allowed to be around computers.
It makes it very difficult.
In fact, one of the probation officers went on record as saying that he could dig ditches, literally.
That's what they expect him to do, something like that, for the next three years.
That's what they expect him to do.
So we're trying to work it out.
We're trying to get him a position someplace where he won't be around computers,
but he will at least be able to get a fairly well-paying job where he can afford to live on his own.
And if you want to help out with that, please send us email, oth at 2600.com, and we'll forward it to Kevin.
And we also have an address.
Bernie, do you have that address on you?
I do.
So Kevin has a mailing address where you could send letters or, more importantly, any type of, well,
I don't even know if we want to say any type of equipment that you could send him, but you can't send him any kind of computers?
No, no computers, no cell phones.
What exactly is restricted, Emanuel?
He's not allowed to have a cellular phone.
He's not allowed to have anything that's a computer or computer-related.
Of course, he can have magazines.
He can read things.
They haven't quite restricted those rights yet.
So he can have any kind of reading material.
We're hoping people will send him just the things.
Picture yourself five years ago, all the things that have happened in five years.
I mean, you've seen movies.
Send him a videotape of your favorite movies, something he might have missed because he certainly didn't see it in prison.
Send him, you know, a CD that you think he might like.
Just go on Amazon, just go on, you know, CD Now, whatever those online things are,
and just buy stuff for him and enter his address, and he'll get it in two days.
I actually sent Kevin a radio scanner today so he can listen to ham radio and, you know, all kinds of two-way communications
because I know he's a ham radio operator, and that would interest him.
That's a very good idea, things like that, ham radio-related, things he'd enjoy.
Well, here's an address for Kevin that people can send books, magazines, videotapes, permitted equipment,
anything other than computers or cell phones to.
It's Kevin Mitnick, M-I-T-N-I-C-K, at 2219 East Thousand Oaks Boulevard, number 432.
And that's in Thousand Oaks, California, 91362.
Let me read that one more time.
It's Kevin Mitnick, 2219 East Thousand Oaks Boulevard, number 432.
And that's in Thousand Oaks, California, 91362.
Emmanuel, are there actually a thousand oaks there?
You know, I didn't have time to count them.
I saw a couple.
There's definitely a couple oaks out there, but I guess calling a couple oaks California wouldn't make much sense.
But also I should point out to the people, we've gotten several letters from people saying,
what are you doing giving out his home address?
Okay, that's not his home address.
That's actually a mailbox with kind of a cool-sounding address.
So don't go out there thinking you're going to find his house by finding that particular address.
You'll find a little silver mailbox is what you're going to find.
Listen, Kevin has had zero, absolutely zero privacy in his life for the past five years.
And he deserves a little privacy.
If I were in his shoes, I'd get a P.O. box or a mailing address instead for a while too.
You've got to breathe and enjoy some peace for a while.
I have to say that people have been very respective of his privacy.
There were a lot of people around during the few days we were out there,
and they showed complete respect for his family, gave him the time he needed.
And I think overall people on the net have shown incredible sensitivity towards this whole thing.
I've seen some of the letters that have been sent to him.
Of course, there's a lot of sickos out there too saying you should rot in jail for the rest of your life.
But, you know, you're going to get those people no matter what.
There are people sending us that kind of mail.
I think he's very heartened, very happy that people actually care.
I mean, he was very surprised when I said,
you know, there's kids writing reports about you in high schools all throughout the country.
He was amazed people are doing this kind of thing.
But I've gotten so much mail from people who are doing just that.
And it's as inspirational to him as he is inspirational to them.
There's no question about that.
So, again, Kevin will be on the show next week.
We'll have a chance to ask him all kinds of questions.
If there's something you'd like us to ask him, please email us, lthat2600.com.
We'd like to take phone calls next week, obviously.
It's possible that he might have so much to say, first of all,
that we might not be able to have the chance next week.
But we certainly, if we don't do it next week, we'll do it in weeks to come.
And the same holds true for today because we also have a lot more to get to.
While we were out there, while we were in California,
in fact, the very day before Kevin was set to be released,
in fact, right after I got out of the prison visiting him,
I checked my voicemail on my phone
because I wasn't allowed to bring the phone into the prison.
And there was a message there saying that,
actually, you know, it goes back even further than that
because we haven't been on the air in three weeks.
We talked about the lawsuit that was filed against us,
actually against me specifically,
for the DVD, I guess, encryption cracking code is the best way to describe it.
There was a second lawsuit filed shortly thereafter,
right after our last show on these airwaves.
A second lawsuit was filed in the state of New York.
Now, the reason we were kind of jovial about the last one
was because it was filed in California.
It didn't really affect us that much.
And it was filed against how many people, Mackie?
Hundreds.
500 John Doe's.
Yeah, a whole lot of people.
Well, there was another lawsuit filed a couple of weeks after that
in federal court, federal court in New York.
And that was against four individuals.
Actually, I'm sorry, it was against three individuals.
And it was also filed in Connecticut against one other individual.
Now, I was one of the individuals.
It was really pretty surprising.
I learned this when I was in New York the last couple of days.
I think it was on a Friday.
Yeah, it was a Friday, a week before Kevin was to be released, the 14th.
And that's when I found out that this lawsuit had been filed.
I found out, Mackie, you called me on the phone, in fact, while I was driving.
I was in New Jersey at the time.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that.
You left me while you called me and said, hey, guess what?
There's another lawsuit, and you're one of three people named.
And I was pretty shocked by that.
And what was even more amazing was that, obviously,
this time they would have to serve it in person.
We were waiting for them to serve us with legal papers last time,
wondering what we had to do, if we tipped the guys when they come,
you know, things like that.
But they never actually came.
They just mailed it to us.
This time they actually, well, they tried to deliver it in person.
A story in itself.
A more bungled attempt I cannot possibly come up with,
if you gave me one of the best fiction writers in the country.
These two guys came to where they thought I was at the time.
Of course, I was in another state at the time.
And they said to the people there, listen, we have to serve this.
And I promise you this will not be painless.
I don't know what that even means.
I think the guy meant to say this will not be painful.
And, in fact, one of the people there said,
don't you mean to say I promise you this will not be painful?
And the guy got all perplexed and said,
look, just take the thing.
And the people there said, no, we're not going to take it.
You know, we're not taking things for other people.
You have to serve it to the person yourself.
They pitched it through the door.
They actually took the legal documents and they threw it football style.
Threw them through the door.
You know, the door was open because they were talking to them.
And right into the house it went.
And apparently, I am told,
I am told that that is considered legally serving somebody.
If you can believe that.
That, in this country, is legally serving somebody.
They threw it through the door of a house that you're not even in.
Well, maybe a volleyball style serve.
Well, in any event, that was the extent of it.
And then later, right after that,
apparently they went out to the,
well, they must have done this beforehand
because this happened at about 630 at night on Friday.
Before that, they apparently tried to serve the post office box
that is registered to 2600.
Now, the reason I know they did that was because we received in the mail
an address to the P.O. box from the very post office that the P.O. box is in.
So, that meant that these cement heads must have gone out there
thinking that they were going to find us at the P.O. box.
You know, standing at attention by our P.O. box.
That's where we conduct business.
Or maybe they knocked on the box.
I don't know.
They were trying to get into the box somehow to serve us with this documentation.
And the post office must have explained to them,
look, this is how post offices work.
You can't do that.
So, best you can do is mail it to us from the post office.
And that's what they did.
So, we got a copy there as well.
Okay.
So, this lawsuit has been filed on the 14th of January against me
and two other people in New York,
one of whom, by the way, runs the internet service provider who we may know as Escape.com.
Roman Kazan, who has been on this show quite a few times,
he was actually served with a lawsuit because one of his customers
had the DECSS code on his website,
on that person's personal website that was hosted by Escape.com.
Roman had no idea this was even going on.
No idea at all.
And he was brought into this whole thing.
It's insane.
So, the way it worked out, we had literally a day,
literally a single day to prepare everything,
and there was just no way to do it in time,
where we had to come up with a whole defense
and all kinds of proclamations and documentation and things like that.
And plus, keep in mind that I was on the way to California to see Kevin get released.
So, for some reason, we had to submit everything by Wednesday at 7 a.m.
That just did not happen.
We submitted it a few hours later, I think,
and the court would not accept it.
And also, that week was a holiday week.
Martin Luther King Day was Monday,
so that means we only had Tuesday to do this.
It's incredible.
I just cannot believe that this is how justice works.
So, the hearing was actually held on Thursday,
and this was a preliminary injunction against material on the website.
So, as I was getting out of prison in Lompoc, California,
on that Thursday afternoon,
I checked my voicemail and there was a message for me
from one of the lawyers over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
who very graciously have stepped in to spearhead the challenge to this whole thing,
saying that the preliminary injunction was ruled upon in New York
and that we had lost.
And so then we were faced with a rather serious choice
as to what we should do then,
because technically they could issue a warrant for my arrest
at that particular moment in time for having this on the website,
even though it's the magazine's website,
and I don't even necessarily have the authority to do this.
They had my name from the Who Is documentation on the internet.
They said, well, this person is the technical contact.
That's how they got Roman's name,
because he was the technical contact for this other site.
So, therefore, they're guilty and they have to take the site down.
Now, of all the contacts, the technical,
you'd think it'd be the administrator for the billing?
You'd think so.
Or in my case, I am the administrator as well,
but in Roman's case, he was not.
He was the tech?
I have no idea why he was brought into this in the first place.
It's completely crazy.
So, Mackie, I guess maybe you could describe what we did at that point as far as the…
Well, and the voicemail specifically said, you know,
this judge would think nothing of sending you to jail.
And it's a federal case, so even though we're in California,
it would be the U.S. Marshals from the prison coming out.
Yeah.
They just have to walk across the lawn and…
What timing, what amazing timing.
And this was about, you know, 12 hours before he was going to get released.
And it was also less than 48 hours after the hearing,
which took place out in California on the previous Tuesday.
The one time in my life I decided to travel light and leave my laptop at home.
Yeah.
We had to quickly get this stuff off our web page if we wanted to avoid the warrant.
So we had to drive to the nearest Kinko's, which was about 45 minutes away in the next town,
and use their public Internet terminals.
So we stayed up all morning and we wrote an article to explain what had happened,
typed up a copy of the injunction ruling, and removed the software from the site.
I've got to say, it's kind of cool to have a Kinko's for situations like that
because we pretty much took over that place.
We were pacing around, yelling and screaming, kind of debating the whole process,
what we should do, what we should say, how we should say it.
And, you know, it was good because we had the material we needed to be able to write things.
But the thing that I really objected to was being forced into that position
where we had to pretty much bypass our security
because I don't think logging in from a Kinko's is a very safe way of doing anything.
But we had no choice, literally.
If it wasn't that Kinko's there, I don't know what would have happened
because we had no way of getting the stuff off the site
other than dictating it to people over the phone.
And who wants to do that?
Having spoken to the lawyers on your side of this issue, Emanuel,
they assured me that this judge would not hesitate to file a contempt of court order
against you personally, in which case you would have been arrested,
handcuffed, and taken to jail if you did not remove the software forthwith.
So it would have been hard for you to fight this thing from behind bars.
So I think you, I know you felt, I knew you had a lot of strong feelings
about taking this information down off of the website, but we need you out.
Well, yeah, I like to think I'm better off on the outside, too.
But, yeah, you're right.
It was a horrible feeling having to submit like that.
I was comforted by the fact that we were still able to figure out ways
to get the message out anyway, namely through having links on the website.
Since then, we've gotten all kinds.
We haven't been able to keep up with the number of links that have come in.
If you go to the website now, you'll see that we have all kinds of articles,
all kinds of transcripts and things like that.
But one of the things that we have there is a way for people to submit links
to sites that still have the information up there.
Now, they may go a step further.
They may outlaw links as well.
They're trying to do that right now.
They're trying to file papers to make it illegal to put links up.
When they do that, we'll have to figure something else out.
But the thing is we're not going to be silenced easily,
and I think that's the point we're making here.
Have we made it clear who this day is?
No, no.
Why don't you tell us?
This is eight major motion picture studios.
I think it's all the major motion picture studios.
Well, yeah, the major motion picture studios.
We're talking companies that own most of the major media outlets in the United States,
Disney, which is like ABC News,
Times-Warner, which is CNN, and I'm sure you know some others.
These are major, major media outlets that you're up against.
Yeah, Paramount, they own UPN, Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers Network.
Well, who watches that anyway?
No, nobody watches it, and they don't even have a news department.
But the point is all the media people are pretty much controlled by these companies
in the first place, which is probably why if you saw any news about this at all,
it has something to do with DVD pirates losing a case in court.
And that's almost exactly how the Los Angeles Times,
which I happened to read while I was out there, phrased this thing.
And it was really frustrating because if you've been following the case,
it's got nothing to do with piracy.
Maybe one of you guys could explain a little bit, very briefly, technically,
what this code is about.
Go ahead, Macky.
All right.
Well, the ECSS is the software in question here,
a product of an open source project to make a free
and open DVD player for the Linux operating system.
And the ECSS specifically is the part of the player
that decrypts the DVD movie to allow you to play it.
DVDs are all, at least ones released by major motion picture studios.
The actual movie on the disk is encrypted with something called
Content Scrambling System, or CSS.
And they have virtually a monopoly on all the players
because up until now they had to license everyone who wanted to make a DVD player
had to go through them to find out how to decrypt it.
This Linux project went and reverse engineered it
and found out, oh, here's how you decrypt it, and published their findings.
And the Motion Picture Association doesn't like that.
So they went ahead and took all this action.
Yeah, and it should be pointed out that it always has been possible to copy DVDs, right?
Yeah, that's the key thing.
The major media outlets are trying to put this forth
as this wonderful way of now being able to pirate DVD movies.
Well, I'm sorry, but you could copy these things before we managed to crack the encryption.
Basically, this is just about playing it.
It's access control.
Where you go out, you spend $60 on this movie,
you bring it home, and you can't play it on your computer
because you're not running Windows with a licensed DVD playing software.
You're not running your Mac.
You're not using one of the hardware devices.
It's basically them trying to control access to the content.
But what they're going to try to do is they're going to try and say that it's,
oh, all these guys are running around and they're pirating software.
They're copying our movies so they can give them to their friends.
My favorite one is that we're trying to de-grip the movies,
put them into large MPEG files, and send them over the Internet.
Yeah, if you notice, the net's been slow lately.
We've been swapping 3.7 gig files all the time.
It's just absurd.
Actually, the movies are cheaper than $60.
You can get them for $20.
$20?
$20.
It doesn't make sense for people to go to all this trouble and inconvenience
to bypass buying a real DVD for $20.
The point is that money is leaving your wallet
and going into an investment of purchasing this film,
and yet you can't watch it
because you don't have a licensed player from these other people.
So they're getting you at the cash register,
and they're getting you once you get home.
That's never been done before as far as this kind of technology.
For instance, CD players.
You didn't have this kind of player control by the music industry.
Imagine if every CD player had to be licensed for you to actually listen to it.
Imagine if you could not listen to a CD that was bought in England, for instance.
A lot of people buy imported CDs.
Well, you know what?
DVDs, you're not allowed to do that.
You can't buy a DVD in another country and listen to it here.
They want to control that.
And that's part of the control that they're very nervous about losing.
But that's what it's all about.
They're trying to push this as pirates just swapping these discs, which is not the case.
And we have to wake people up to that fact
because Joe Sixpack sitting at home is going to say,
Oh, these guys are copying movies.
Oh, darn it.
They're rascals, which isn't what it's all about.
It's all about being able to play the thing that you actually purchased.
There's a movement afoot to educate people about this.
Isn't there, Emanuel?
Yeah.
In fact, I'm holding the flyer that has been manufactured.
Actually, to echo what Isaac just said, we're not their enemy.
We're their customers.
And that's certainly the case here.
We have a flyer that you can download and print and pass out.
And where people are passing them out, this has already happened.
Many thousands of them have been passed out already at movie theaters and video stores throughout the country,
throughout the world, in fact.
We're making translations for different countries.
And those are the people you want to hit, the people who know what the MPAA is,
that are familiar with the various studios out there.
And we'll put some pressure on them.
Just get the word out.
What we're doing this Friday, we're doing a massive, probably bigger than anything we've ever done before,
a massive leaflet handout in coordination with all the 2600 meetings,
because this happens to be the first Friday of the month,
which means we're having meetings, I think, in about almost 100 cities worldwide.
And we're asking people to print these out in those various cities,
hand them out outside theaters, outside video stores.
All the information is on the webpage, www.2600.com.
In addition, we have Linux Expo taking place here in New York City tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday.
If you go there, it's at the Javits Center.
We're going to have the 2600 van outside there.
We'll be handing out all kinds of leaflets, recruiting people for the Friday action,
and hopefully just getting the word spread around.
We have a real activist movement here, because what they did was they made a real mistake
picking these people to target, picking an ISP, picking a magazine.
It's got a lot of people riled up.
We've never seen so much support.
I was mentioning before about the various sicko people that write in to say
Kevin Mitnick should be locked up for the rest of his life and things like that.
Everything we've always been involved in, from Bernie S. to FiberOptic to Kevin Mitnick,
we've always had a small percentage of, you know, some of them are lunatics,
some of them actually are well-thought-out arguments,
but there have always been people that have been opposed to what it is that we stand for.
In this particular case, and I'm sure this will change after I bring attention to it,
but in this particular case, we have gotten thousands of pieces of e-mail about this.
I have not seen a single one piece saying that the Motion Picture Association is correct,
that the studios are correct in bringing us to court. Not one.
Except for all the legal notices.
Yeah, except for them.
The reason is because it's such an affront to common sense.
I mean, say you go out and you purchase a meal.
You know, you go to Kentucky Fried Chicken or something.
You bring the bucket-o chicken home, you put it on your plate,
and you couldn't just imagine not being able to eat the chicken because you don't have a licensed knife and fork.
It's just ludicrous.
How can an industry be able to function like this
by continually bludgeoning their customers over the head with these license restrictions?
It's greed. That's what it's about. It's all about greed.
It's all greed, but people have to wake up to the fact that this kind of thing is going on.
There's a gentleman named Jack Valenti, who I believe...
Oh, boy.
I believe, is he not the head of the Motion Picture Association?
He's the head of the MPAA.
You know, I actually kind of like this guy.
He's kind of like a gruff guy, like the guy in Reservoir Dogs, you know, just kind of like growled all the time.
He's a five-foot-one guy with a Napoleon complex.
Yeah, but when he starts mentioning my name and calling me a pirate, I get kind of pissed off.
And you know, I'm telling you this right now, and this is on behalf of the other people too,
there are some very major counter lawsuits being planned here.
Because when you put somebody's name in newspapers, in press releases, and call them criminals, you know,
that's an affront. It really is.
And I resent being called a pirate, somebody that goes around making money off Hollywood
and trying to copy films when I've never even thought of doing something like that.
So this guy has gotten himself into a bit of trouble. I don't think he realizes it yet.
He has threatened to file a thousand lawsuits a day if that's what it takes.
Yeah.
Well, we can get the environmentalists behind this too, then. You know, you've got to save the trees.
All the paperwork that's going to be involved.
I cannot describe the amount of paper that we've gotten in the past couple of weeks.
I mean, I found this book the other day that I hadn't even opened yet, and it was just filled with all this legal stuff.
Well, we've had a tour of fax machines in the Los Angeles area, in the Lompoc area.
That was kind of amusing.
You know, wind up going to a hotel and, oh look, you know, 40 pages worth of facsimile documents.
Yeah, because we have to have all the things faxed to us.
So, yeah, we've had a busy couple of weeks here.
It sure would have been nice if we were on the air to talk about it as it was happening, but it's still happening.
Do we have any court dates to worry about?
Not yet. There will be one soon.
Yeah.
When they tried to stop us from linking, they actually amended the original complaint.
So we have something like 20 days to respond to that, and then there will be a hearing.
And eventually there will be a trial, and this will be going on for the foreseeable future for many years probably.
And it's replaced Kevin Mitnick as the number one story here on this show.
We're going to be focusing on this until it's over, because this poses a very real threat to all of us.
Remember what they did to Satellite Watch News.
There was a civil lawsuit filed against Satellite Watch News by DirecTV, and they put them out of business.
They won a case for $300,000.
In our case, what they want is, I think the number mentioned was $2,500 for every time somebody accesses one of the files.
For every act of circumvention.
Yeah, I have the actual statute here in front of me.
I'm sorry. You're both talking at the same time. Say that again.
I have the actual statute in front of me, what the penalties are, the civil penalties.
Okay.
It says at any time before a final judgment is entered,
a complaining party may elect to recover an award of statutory damages for each violation of Section 1201
in the sum of not less than $200 nor more than $2,500 per act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer,
or performance of service as the court considers just.
Now that could be interpreted to everybody who downloaded this particular code, no?
Oh, sure. And, you know, from what I've read of the transcript so far,
this judge is capable of interpreting things in many different ways as far as interpreting the law.
I mean, I don't know. I was just reading this thing through.
And, Barney, you got a hold of the transcript.
Yeah, I actually was able to get it from the federal court in Southern District of New York.
People should, Mackey, is that transcript up on the 2600 website?
Yes, it is.
People should read this transcript. It's about 90 pages long.
This hearing, which I went up to listen to, took over three hours,
but it's very telling if you read this transcript up on 2600.com.
You can see how biased this judge is towards these five attorneys from the motion picture industry who were there
to basically bludgeon Emanuel and the other defendants in this case with legal firepower.
It's very clear that this judge is not being impartial, and it's pretty scary.
I should also point out, Barney, I've been in touch with somebody who was there in the chambers where the conference call is taking place.
Keep in mind, the lawyers for our side were in California.
They had just had a hearing two days earlier.
They were completely unprepared for this, and I think that has something to do with the timing
because they had devoted all their attention to the hearing in California,
and all of a sudden this was hit kind of sudden.
Which was intentional.
It was intentional. I'm almost certain of that.
So they were in the chambers, all the lawyers for the plaintiffs, for the motion picture agency.
They were there, and the lawyers for our side were in California on the speakerphone.
Now, the person I was in touch with said that there was all kinds of body language
and smiles and winks and things like that between the judge and the lawyers
that made it clear that they thought of the people on the other side of the phone as the opposition,
as people don't know what they're talking about, as the other side.
So that's something to be really worried about.
As Jack Valenti said, as activists who had been seduced by the hackers' bizarre ideology.
Well, how about we have our listeners give us a call, tell us how bizarre our ideology is.
We're at 212-209-2900.
We have some time for phone calls, and we'd like to hear your take on this
and any other things that might be going on.
But I tell you, folks, it's scary.
It really is.
To be one day inside a prison, visiting somebody,
and then literally as soon as you get out being told that,
hey, you could be next just because of something that you didn't even do on the website.
I mean, we had nothing to do with decrypting this nonsense.
We should not take credit for that.
As somebody with a whole lot more intelligence, I was able to figure this out.
And we're the enemy simply because we support the right to put it up on the net.
It's a scary world today.
Let's take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Yes.
Go ahead.
Hi.
My name is Angela.
I'm calling from Manhattan.
I wanted to express my support for what you are doing
and say that as a law student,
I wanted to publicize the lawsuit at my school, which is Cardozo.
We've got a lot of intellectual property attorneys in training,
but there are also some people who understand how important actually your rights are
and that I would like to help with that.
That's great.
I really appreciate that.
The best way to get in touch with us if you want to help is to write to us at the radio show,
oth at 2600.com.
We've gotten a lot of offers of support from people in the legal world as well,
but if there are people out there that want to also help, we definitely welcome their participation.
Great.
All right.
Thanks very much for your support.
Thank you.
Well, you don't have to be a lawyer to actually be able to read through this law.
Go over to www.law.cornell.edu
and look up Title 17 U.S.C. Sections 1201 through 1205.
That's basically what we're dealing with.
Otherwise known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Oh, boy.
That's a pretty scary act right there.
And for further reading, look at 512, Section 512 of the same title,
I think it's 512, to get an idea of where Roman stands so far as being an Internet service provider.
We knew that this law, Digital Millennium, would eventually be challenged because it's just so incredibly insane.
We did not know that we would be the ones challenging it.
But, you know, I'll tell you this.
I'm honored to be on the front lines.
I really am.
And it's something that we intend to stay with until the end, until we win one way or another.
And, you know, I think it's kind of appropriate that we'd be saying this on today, February 1st,
which is the, I don't know if people know this, the 40th anniversary of the Greensboro boycott,
where people sat down at a lunch counter and refused to move until they were served because of the color of their skin.
That's something that takes a lot more guts, I think, because you're putting your personal selves in the line of danger.
But from what I'm told, this could very well end up with people being imprisoned as well.
In fact, the kid in Norway, we should mention this as well, the kid in Norway who initially posted the DECSS code to the net
and was thought by some to be the author of them.
I'm told now that he's not the author of the actual code.
He was actually arrested a few days ago with his father.
And they are charged with, I guess, a Norwegian equivalent of the Digital Millennium Act.
Which is actually under criminal statute.
Yeah.
So it's not just civil.
It could turn criminal at any moment in this country as well,
because there are criminal remedies, as they put them, for the Digital Millennium Act, as well as civil.
So it's something really to be keeping an eye out for.
500,000 shall be fined and not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than five years or both for the first offense.
It's great how they always say not more than, as if, you know, okay, let's not be too enthusiastic here.
That's not more than that.
We have to protect their rights, after all.
And for the second offense, you shall not be fined more than $1 million nor imprisoned for not more than 10 years or both for any subsequent offense.
What happens on the third offense?
That's what I really want.
They shoot you by firing squad.
And send you the bill for the bullet.
Yeah.
Let's take another call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Oh, hi.
Yeah.
I just wanted to call and mention that I believe the suit against Itoi was dropped.
That's correct.
Yes, we should mention that.
Itoi was victorious in their struggle against Itoi's.
I don't think they have their site back yet, although I believe they're getting their site back.
They got their domain back.
They did get their domain back?
Yes.
Okay, because I've been trying to go to itoi.com.
I haven't been getting anything, so maybe they just haven't put it up yet.
They're still working on that.
But they legally got their domain back.
That's great.
That's great.
And we had the people from Itoi on the air a few months ago.
You might want to check that show out on the net.
It's inspiring when someone is able to stand up against a huge corporation like that and win.
We should have them back on again, Emanuel.
Definitely.
As sort of a post coverage of what happened.
Yeah, I think that would be a lot better.
I believe they also got something to the tune of $40,000 in legal fees.
This is a great example of how activism actually pushed a multibillion-dollar corporation back a few steps.
These were a lot of volunteers and activists who publicized this so much.
And, in fact, Off the Hook was the first media outlet in the United States, I believe, to cover this in any depth.
And it snowballed from Off the Hook on, I think a few days later,
on the National Public Radio and from then on.
But in any case, just all these volunteers and activists managed to push back a company worth many billions of dollars,
eToys.com, into righting a wrong that they had done against a bunch of artists.
That's right. It's people power.
And that's one thing we seem to have on our side this time is people power.
Just a number of folks that are volunteering to help in whatever way possible.
Right now, the best thing you can do is get the word out by getting the flyer printed out.
If you don't have a computer, run down to a copy store, Kinko's, whatever, print it out there.
Make several thousand copies because you will go through them.
Just hand them out outside theaters, outside video stores, or any place, bookstores, any place where there are people.
Put them in your schools.
Just make sure people know what's going on.
And, believe me, the pressure will be felt.
It makes all the difference in the world.
Are we ever going to get away from Kinko's?
Well, you know, it's just, I don't know.
Is there another place that you can find?
We're going for a sponsorship here.
Yeah.
If you're listening.
Yeah.
All right.
212-209-2900.
Let's take one more phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Yeah.
I have a nice little recommendation.
I recommend that everyone within the listening area take a trip to Indonesia where they can get any movie that came out within the last six months or so for the equivalent of five U.S. dollars.
Is that on DVD?
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, I'll bet they did not use the DECSS code to do that.
They didn't have to.
Of course not.
Well, they didn't because, like, I brought, you know, I was kind of skeptical.
I wasn't sure if they were going to work, but I got home, and I'd say out of the eight movies that I got, six of them worked on my, you know, I have a G3 laptop.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
So, yeah, they don't have any region codes on those ones as well.
But, you know, one of the things I was thinking, what would actually prove our case?
If we can show people that, look, it's possible to do this anyway.
You can copy DVDs as it is.
They're on sale every place, and it's got nothing to do with this code.
Exactly.
I mean, I've known about this since probably five or six years because I have some friends that live in Asia,
and they were always telling me, oh, you could get this for, like, $5, you know, or $3.
You could go to Hong Kong or wherever.
Yeah, and this is going on for, like, five years.
I've known of the fact.
It's just, like, this is, like, the first time I got the opportunity to be in Southeast Asia and actually purchase some DVDs.
And, you know, I came back home, and they worked.
It's interesting that Jack Valenti is not railing against the people who are actually pirating DVDs in Asia.
He's railing against hackers who want to give people the right to view movies that they purchased on the computer platform of their choice.
And, you know, they've never really given any type of justification for why, in any sense,
it would be practical to decrypt the DVD before pirating it
because all those ones being made in Asia and stuff are being pressed.
You're not using consumer burners.
You're not even decrypting it.
You're just doing a bit-for-bit copy.
And the only reason why you might possibly want to decrypt the content before distributing it is if you're, say,
you're sitting over the Internet, and you wanted to make it a much smaller file.
You could convert it to something that's a third of the quality.
But if you're going to do that, you can already do that with what comes with your DVD drive by just outputting it,
doing the normal television out jacks, and recapture it.
I think it's as Isaac said that it's not so much about copying as it is about control.
Oh, well, so far as why they're pursuing this here in the States and not going across Asia is because they're not really interested in getting people in jail.
I think they're much more interested in setting precedent law.
Yeah, well, they may wind up doing that not quite the way they want.
Where all of a sudden they get the case found in their favor and then years down the road, you know.
We're out of time, but we just want to one more time tell people what we're doing in the next few days.
If you go to Linux Expo, which is taking place at the Javits Center,
tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday, we'll be there in the 2600 van handing out leaflets, getting more people on board to help us out.
And please show up there.
On Friday, every 2600 meeting, every place in the world will be gathering to hand out these leaflets at movie theaters, video stores, any other place you can think of.
If you're part of a 2600 meeting, any place, please download the flyer, which is on the website, 2600.com, in many different formats.
And you can download it, print it out, make lots of copies.
You will go through them.
Make sure you bring copies to hand out to people to make copies themselves because a lot of people will want to join you as well.
Bernie, do you have Kevin Mitnick's address one more time so people can send him CDs, movies, books, whatever it is they want to send him that he may have missed out on in the five years he was here?
Sure.
Again, that's Kevin Mitnick at 2219 East Thousand Oaks Boulevard, number 432.
And that's in Thousand Oaks, California, 91362.
Okay.
I want to thank you very much, Bernie, for being part of the show and showing your support.
Thank you.
And thanks for being on tonight.
Mackie, thanks for being with us, too, from California.
And Isaac.
My pleasure.
Happy Groundhog Day.
Yes.
Happy Groundhog Day tomorrow.
And we'll be back again next week, hopefully, unless they throw us in prison.
And, well, just keep your eye on the website.
Until next week, Emmanuel Goldstein, good night.
The prison system is out of control.
And you have a loved one caught in the struggle.
Suddenly you're in it, too.
Sometimes you're depressed and frustrated because you miss them and you love them.
And you've done everything you could.
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Well, now you can.
Send a message or a shout-out over the airwaves with WBAI's new service dedicated to prisoners and their families.
Let them know you're thinking of them, wherever the system takes them.
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