I don't care, don't know where I've been, but I'll get me there
I'm alive, yeah, yeah, it's alright
Power to the me, power to the speak, I got the power within me, yeah
Power to the shine of all I choose, yeah
Power to the me, power to you
And bless this hand, bless this hand, bless me to the dirt in my fingernails, yeah
And bless this day, bless this night, give me something good, make me feel alright
I'm alive
CBS and Viacom, $80 billion. WBAI and its listeners, priceless.
So please, honor your pledge and send it soon to Post Office Box 11445, Church Street Station, New York, 10277.
Because some things are just too precious to lose, like non-commercial WBAI.
For everything else, there's the corporate media.
And tune your radios very tightly to 99.5 FM so the corporate media does not bleed through.
It's 8 o'clock and time, once again, for Off The Hook.
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
For Billy Bond, for the best, expect the worst
I hope that's understood, for Billy Bond
Off The Hook
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you. Isaac over there on the other side of the room.
How you doing, sir?
Bernie S. down in Philadelphia.
Uh-oh.
You're missing your cue.
Bernie, you there?
You know, this is typical. This is the kind of week I've had where there are...
How do you put it? You've got to put it kind of mildly here.
Phone problems. It doesn't do it justice. It really doesn't.
He's really not there, is he?
No, he's gone.
Well, actually, let me do a little troubleshooting here.
I've been doing this all week, too.
Let's see if we have any signal on the phone line.
OK.
That's a dial tone.
That's a dial tone, so we are getting a signal on the phone.
That's a different line, but there doesn't seem to be Bernie S. on this line.
Let's turn down the music in case the music is interfering with him for some reason.
OK, guys, stop.
All right.
Bernie, are you there?
Everybody be quiet, please.
Bernie, are you there?
OK.
Now I'm going to hit a tone just in case that might wake him up,
because sometimes...
You ever see someone fall asleep on a cellular phone?
Yes.
It happens.
It's frightening.
OK, listen.
Oh, oh, oh!
OK, apparently what I've done by doing that is I've jostled the system
into some kind of state of alarm.
I don't know how to get rid of this.
I suggest hanging up.
No, that wouldn't be right.
We might have to listen to this for the whole rest of the show.
Actually, you know, this is fine.
This is perfect, because this is the rate of my pulse right now, all right?
And this is the kind of week I've had having to deal with phone nonsense and...
All right, this works, too.
This works, too.
All right?
Pitching, ear-piecing, screeching, noises.
Yeah, no problem.
No problem at all.
Ah, living hell, all right?
Can you say living hell?
Living hell.
That's what I've been through.
That's what a lot of us have been through.
I don't know if we have a website tonight, all right?
And it's not because of, you know, 13-year-old hackers from Iowa attacking us.
Yeah, I've been hearing about these hacker guys.
Yeah, look at this.
Look at this headline.
Hackers attack more websites from the San Jose Mercury News.
Or wait, no, this is just the Mercury.
What's the Mercury?
I don't even know where these papers come from.
It's so full of self-importance that it assumes that we know what the Mercury is.
It's just the Mercury on February 10th.
I have no clue where this paper is from,
because they just print all the same stories that every other paper in the country prints,
and these guys have 800 numbers, so there's no real clue.
The Mercury is in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
I don't even know what Pottstown is.
What's a Pottstown?
Is it anywhere near Punxsutawney?
I don't know.
But anyway, here's this picture of Janet Reno,
and hackers attack more websites,
and basically more justification for crackdowns.
But anyway, I'm not sure about our website tonight,
because we've had such trouble with connectivity in the past week,
and I've got to tell you, I've been frustrated before with things.
I've been incredibly frustrated.
But this has been incredibly frustrating.
I really should get Bernie S. back on here.
That's a good idea.
Bernie, are you there?
Of course he's not there.
Unless he was an ear-piercing squeal.
So I've got to disconnect that, and then I've got to do this.
Magic dial.
All right.
Then I've got to dial his number off-air
so that people all over the world don't get his number.
Then I've got to enter the secret code once I get the tone.
There's the tone.
Now I've got to enter the secret code
and wait for the phone to ring.
Oh, that was fast, actually.
Very fast.
Let's see what happened to Bernie.
Good evening.
What was that, Bernie?
It sounds like you're in some kind of echo chamber.
No, I was listening to Off the Hook on the radio
here in Philadelphia.
Ah, you have some special hook-up that allows you to do that.
I have a very good radio in Philadelphia.
All right, well, that's good.
This week has been a living hell also here.
So you heard everything I said.
But what happened to you on the phone, though?
Apparently it was a courtesy disconnect.
Oh, one of those Sprint things.
By Sprint PCS, right.
Where you have a five-bar signal and you get bumped anyway.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay, let me tell my horror story,
and if you have a horror story,
or if anybody else has a horror story,
we can get into that.
But basically, we made the magical switch to DSL.
I can't think of anybody on this planet,
and there's a lot of people I don't get along with,
but I can't think of anybody on this planet
that I would wish this on.
All right?
And I'm talking about...
I have a sense of acceptance.
I'm talking about foreign leaders
that engage in genocide and things like that.
I'm all for all kinds of horrible things happening to them,
but DSL, that's, like, inhuman.
Especially DSL through Bell Atlantic.
Now, keep in mind,
I'm not getting DSL through Bell Atlantic,
but you have no choice but to go through Bell Atlantic
to get the local loop installed.
Well, they have the actual copper that runs from...
Yeah, the actual copper or paper or string
or whatever it is that they use.
Okay?
I can tell you this.
It doesn't work, whatever it is.
Okay.
Now, we've got a DSL...
First of all, if you listen to the advertisements,
what do they say about DSL?
It's always there.
It never goes down.
DSL is the most consistent thing.
I think the catchphrase is always connected.
Always connected.
Yeah.
Well, there's a word that describes that,
and I can't say it on the air,
but I think you all know what it is,
because it's not true.
We've been down more than we've been up.
It's the most shoddy service I've ever seen,
and it's...
I can say this without fear of contradiction.
It is all Bell Atlantic's fault,
because they are the ones responsible
for getting the wire to the facility,
and they have completely shirked the responsibility
of doing that.
There are several companies that you have to deal with
when you get DSL.
You get a local provider.
You get the DSL company, I guess is what they call it.
In our case, it's Network Access Solutions
or something like that, NAS, down in Virginia.
COVAD is another one.
And those are the people
that actually have to troubleshoot things.
They've been great.
They've come over so many times
to troubleshoot the various routers
and figure out what the problem is,
go into the CO and figure out what's going on there,
go down to Virginia,
figure things out from that end.
So it's basically been narrowed down
to the stretch of copper from the CO to your house?
Well, if you had a sense of...
If you took a look at the wiring,
the wiring out on the island is atrocious.
Oh, well, I'm not...
Don't get me started.
They have it tacked to trees.
They have it running on the ground.
They have it, you know,
practically going down the street.
And we've talked about this before
where phone lines come into your house
that don't belong to you.
It's called a bridge tap.
A bridge tap is when they run wires
into other places because they just feel like it.
I don't know what the reason is.
I'm not, you know, that much of a telephone person.
I know why this has to happen.
But there are many occasions,
and you might want to try this.
If you have a spare jack at home,
plug in your phone,
and sometimes you'll get a dial tone
that belongs to somebody else.
And you can have hours of fun
taking that person's calls
or, you know, having them answer the phone
when you ring it
and various things like that.
We've had various guests, I call them,
that just stop by the house sometimes
when a line becomes free.
And I think that's what they've done
with our DSL line.
They've made it pop up in all kinds of places.
And the reason why I say this
is because it's so consistent.
Every day we get all these CRC errors,
constant CRC errors.
You cannot keep a connection up.
So we go down all day long
from, say, 7 a.m. until about 7 p.m.
I wonder, Emmanuel,
do you think any of these bridge caps
could be left over from previous wire caps?
Oh, I'm sure.
I'm sure there's...
Well, put it this way.
When they measured us for DSL,
they said we were 16,000 feet away from the CO.
Isn't that just the limit of...
No, 18,000 is the limit.
18 is the limit?
Yeah.
Now they say that we're 22,000 feet away.
Which is more than...
Which means that they decided to...
You know, if you walk to the CO,
we're two miles away,
which is something like, what?
How many feet is that?
Say 10,000.
Yeah, around there.
So someone's running wires all over town with this thing,
and it's a real mess, and that's, of course...
You've probably got five or six federal agencies
panning your lines right now.
If they could just share the data,
they don't have to all go to their own little offices,
whatever they have out there.
But it's...
The thing is, during the day it goes down,
at night it comes up,
because at night the phone lines aren't in use,
and at daytime they are.
It's crosstalk.
Obviously it's crosstalk,
but to get Bell Atlantic to admit it's crosstalk
is pulling teeth, literally.
We had an appointment set up today
where all the vendors were going to get together
and figure this thing out.
Bell Atlantic canceled at the last minute.
Just canceled.
We're not going to come.
So there is no way to get through to these people.
I tried to file complaints
with the Public Service Commission.
The Public Service Commission says,
we don't handle DSL.
That's handled through
the Federal Communications Commission.
We handle ISDN, but we don't handle DSL.
So I called the FCC, and they said,
no, we don't handle DSL either.
That's not regulated.
I said, so what?
So that means...
You're saying that means
that Bell Atlantic can do anything they want,
and they don't answer to anybody.
That's exactly it.
We're a phone company.
We don't have to care.
They can do whatever they want.
So, folks, if you've had trouble reaching us,
if you haven't gotten your message
to go through on one of our mailing lists,
if you haven't gotten email going through
if things are bouncing,
it's because Bell Atlantic has,
as far as I'm concerned,
vandalized our lines
because they basically cut things,
they wire them like morons,
and they refuse to fix them.
And I don't know what we can do at this point.
I really don't know.
Have you asked Bell Atlantic
to bring out a TDR,
or Time Domain Reflectometer?
How do you ask Bell Atlantic something?
How do you speak to them?
It's like speaking to the Wizard of Oz.
How do you find them?
Where are they?
Nobody represents them.
Well, you can actually speak to a technician.
I've done that several times.
Yeah, that's great.
Good luck if you can find a technician.
But, you know,
they don't take calls from mere customers.
You know that.
I've done it.
Yeah, I mean, you know,
you can persevere
and figure out a way
to get through to them eventually,
but it's an all-day process.
And we've been spending time on this now for a week.
You know, we've got better things to do.
So, I don't know.
If anybody has suggestions out there,
I can say email us.
It's kind of a joke.
But go ahead.
Email us anyway.
You know, if we go up tonight,
then we'll get it later
when all the other mail has piled through.
OTH at 2600.com.
But I'll tell you,
this is the most frustrating experience
I've ever had online.
And I can point back to the whole ISDN saga
three years ago
where it took us, you know,
many months to get ISDN.
But this, it took a year, first of all,
to get the DSL loop put in.
And you'd think that once they did that,
that they would have gotten it down.
And it worked fine.
You know, when we first got it put in,
it worked fine.
Then some idiot did something to it,
and it's been broken ever since.
And to get them to come out
and actually look at it,
it's impossible.
It's impossible.
Don't get DSL, folks.
Not until the technology is stabilized.
It's a shame, too,
because, you know,
there are a lot of companies out there
that are offering it
that are, you know,
really doing a good job.
But Bell Atlantic is sabotaging the lines.
They cut lines.
They string them to places
they shouldn't be stringing them to,
and they don't fix them.
Well, what could be the motivation for this, then?
Because you're not getting DSL from them.
They sell DSL as well, you see.
That's interesting.
I hear their feelings are somewhat hurt
that you picked somebody else.
And, you know, I'm not making this up.
I've heard this from people
and from companies
all over the place
that this is standard reaction for Bell.
Bell would like to just cut a line in the CO
one day
and take three days to fix it.
And that's just the way it is.
You know, now,
if I had gone out, right,
and I had done something to Yahoo's web page
or Bell Atlantic's web page, right,
and I'd taken them off the net for 15 minutes,
I'd be hearing about, you know,
all the lost profits
and all the horrible things
and people would be talking about prison time.
Well, Bell Atlantic has basically given us
a big denial of service now
that has lasted a week.
What are they going to do?
You know, how are they responsible?
How do they pay the penalty?
We don't get anything.
We can't even file a complaint.
They won't let us file a complaint
because they're not answerable to anybody.
If I red box every single call I make
for the rest of my life,
it will not make up for this.
You know?
It's ridiculous.
So that's a little consumer frustration
for you right there.
But it affects everybody.
I am very frustrated.
I think I'm the only person here
without a story from hell tonight.
It's, uh, I mean,
I'm trying to keep it clean here.
Let's put it that way.
As soon as I walk out the door,
you know, you'll hear different words.
And I'll be going on for a good long time.
All right.
Bernie, you had some interesting information for us.
Uh, interesting and probably at least as depressing.
I wasn't looking forward to being cheered up.
This is such a cheery show to listen to, you know?
Yeah, you know.
We should have, like, an all-good-news show
one of these days.
Yeah, you know, we should do,
maybe April 1st we'll do that.
I'll start lining up content now
because we'll probably still be short.
Yes.
So what did you find out, Bernie?
Well, apparently, uh,
you had given me a tip about this,
and I did a little bit of research on it.
Um, apparently there's an organization
called the National Conference of Commissioners
on Uniform State Laws.
And they're the folks who've pretty much, uh,
uh, codified the universal commercial code.
Mm-hmm.
It's, uh, pretty much, uh,
built into state and federal law.
Well, they're, uh,
they're upgrading the universal commercial code
with something new called the UCITA.
And that stands for
the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Well, let's make things uniform.
Well, what this, uh,
what this, uh,
Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act proposes
is to, uh,
it endorses a license model
for, uh, computer information transactions.
Now, what that means, uh,
it would allow a software vendor or manufacturer
to state in its,
in the license for that software.
You know, when you buy software,
you don't own the software.
You own a license to use it.
It would, uh,
would allow the licensor to limit or control
how the licensee, that's you and me,
uh, can use the software.
Uh, even when the software has been, uh,
like mass marketed to consumers.
This isn't like software that's just written custom,
like as a contractual kind of thing.
It's just, you know, software off the shelf.
Um, and examples of some of these limits
would, uh, would include restrictions
on the consumer's right to sue for product defect.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, or even to publicly discuss
or criticize the product,
which is blatantly against the First Amendment,
but so is, uh,
so are things like the, uh,
uh, Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
which, uh, you know,
abridges people's First Amendment rights
to express themselves in, by writing software.
So, uh, here's more, more of this type of law
coming down that restricts people's freedom
to use a product
that they've purchased and paid money for
to use it or even criticize it,
as you have, uh, uh, you know,
you and others have criticized, uh,
the Motion Picture Association of America's, uh,
attempts to limit how, uh,
people use DVDs that they've bought and paid for.
Well, we try to be kind,
but, yeah, they're a bunch of idiots, too.
If I can speak frankly.
So, anyhow, this is not law yet,
but, uh, it may be law,
so I urge people to contact their legislators
and express concern about the UCITA,
the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act.
I mean, I don't know how many people
have actually read a shrink-wrap license before.
Have you ever read a shrink-wrap license?
Oh, it can be very amusing.
What do you think, Isaac, about these shrink-wrap licenses?
Oh, you know, you hear by OS you're first born,
you know, we reserve all right to squash you under our thumb
and all right to, you know, open your mouth,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Should the software have any kind of ill effects on your system,
we are not responsible for this, that, and the other thing.
It's really amusing.
And then you click decline
because you really don't want to agree to this,
and then the installer just stops,
and you have no software.
I'd like to write a service agreement
where you have to decline, you know?
If you decline, that means, you know, you can go ahead.
But if you accept, you're an idiot,
Well, before the whole BXA thing
where you would try to download PGP,
it used to require you to have a list,
like, are you an American citizen?
Do you intend to give this software
to a non-American citizen?
Are you under the coercion of a foreign government or foreign power?
Are you a liar?
And you'd have to just actually click accept, accept, accept, accept
before it would let you through.
So I'm sure you could phrase those as decline,
like, I am under the coercion of a foreign power.
No, I'm not.
It's like those customs forms that foreigners have to fill out
when they come to the United States.
I've read those.
Are you a communist? Are you a terrorist?
Come on, a terrorist isn't going to lie
about a little checkbox on a...
Yes, yes I am.
It's so silly.
So yeah, most people just click OK, and that's it.
These ludicrous shrink-wrap licenses were pretty much a joke.
But now this is going to give them the protection of law.
Right now, shrink-wrap licenses have been essentially unenforceable
for the most part.
I don't know of anybody who's ever been sued
for not complying with a shrink-wrap license.
Otherwise, there would be a whole lot of people being sued.
Well, a whole lot of people being sued anyway,
but even more people would be sued.
But this would basically make these shrink-wrap licenses
very much more enforceable under law.
And next time, I'm sure all our listeners
probably have a piece of software at home,
and there's a license agreement, a little card.
This is the license.
Sometimes it looks like a certificate.
Pull that out after the show and read this shrink-wrap license,
if it's called, or they don't call it that,
but I call it a shrink-wrap license
because it basically means
after you've pulled the shrink-wrap off the package,
some of these licenses are, I remember saying,
once you've unwrapped this product,
you agree to all these things.
You can't even read it
until you've pulled the cellophane off the package anyway.
And then you're beholden to this ridiculous set of rules
that would be almost impossible to follow
and also use the software.
Well, the other crazy thing about this proposed law
is that they don't even have to tell you
until after you accept or something crazy like that?
Yeah.
There's a lot of vague areas in this law,
which seems to be a common theme these days,
to make the laws as vague as possible
so that they can be enforced selectively
and as broadly as possible.
It doesn't require the software vendor
or whoever is selling the intellectual property,
the licensor or the one who's granting the license,
it doesn't require them to advise the purchaser of the software
of everything in the agreement beforehand,
which seems to just go completely against contract,
what we would consider conventional contract law.
I'll tell you, Bernie, it's gotten to the point
where these laws come down the pike, right?
And people just laugh now.
They don't even pay attention anymore.
It's like how many times can we contact our legislators?
They're obviously clueless.
They never listen anyway.
At some point, you just lose all respect for the law, period.
Here we go.
The UCITA allows licensors of software
to disclose the restrictions about the use of the software
after the transaction has been completed,
such as when a licensee opens the software box
and discovers the terms of the license then.
Like, surprise!
Well, the only thing I can really rest assured in
is that they're probably not going to go after Joe Sixpack
for making fun of Microsoft Outlook or something.
They'll probably only be enforcing this on companies
where they could potentially get an actual benefit
from taking them to court.
Yeah, but I think that's a really dangerous slippery slope.
Oh, it's very dangerous.
When you have all these laws out there,
people say, well, we're not going to enforce that.
Are you kidding?
Like, yeah, well, I happen to be somebody
whose one of these ridiculous laws was enforced on,
and I spent almost a year and a half in jail for it,
and it was a law that nobody even knew about.
And, you know, this is going to be used on somebody.
And I don't think it's going to be...
I don't think people are going to be prosecuted left and right
for violating these ridiculous license agreements.
But, you know, somebody's going to say,
it happened to me, and you never know.
When your number's up, it could be you.
All right, here's an interesting story that comes from Europe,
very reminiscent of the Itoi incident of last year.
There's a network called the Leonardo Network.
It was originally founded in the mid-'60s by Frank Malina,
an eminent astronomical pioneer and kinetic artist.
Members and founders of the network have included
Jacob Bronowski, Ora Buckminster Fuller, C.P. Snow,
C.H. Waddington, Frank Oppenheimer, John Cage.
Current members include Roy Oscott, Richard Gregory,
Lynn Hirschman, and others.
The network was founded by an earlier generation
interested in the use of new media and the sciences and the arts.
On the 18th of November, the Paris-based company
TransAsia Corporation, with co-complainants,
filed a lawsuit against the Leonardo Association in Paris
claiming trademark infringement and loss of business.
TransAsia, in their filing, claims to have recently
trademarked the names Leonardo, Leonardo Finance,
Leonardo Partners, Leonardo Experts, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
He's in a lot of trouble, too.
I don't think he's heard about this yet.
They're claiming over a million dollars in damages
based on their argument that a search engine search
on the word Leonardo brings up not only their websites,
but those of our association, Leonardo.
It's like, yeah, okay, that's how search engines work.
Get used to it.
They claim that this results in lost business.
Please don't tell me this was laughed out of court.
Please tell me this.
It'll be a happy end to the story.
We're not in that stage of human development yet
where they can laugh at this.
We cannot refrain to make the editorial comment
that the Leonardo offices often get fan mail
addressed to Leonardo DiCaprio because in many search engines
there is confusion between this actor's fan sites
and those of the Leonardo Arts Organization
as well as Leonardo da Vinci.
But he's been remarkably quiet about the whole thing.
I figured he'd be the original holder of the...
Yeah.
Their lawsuits ask that we be restrained
from using the word Leonardo in any of our activities
and ask for penalties.
Following the filing of the lawsuit,
and this comes from someone who sent us mail from Toronto,
I think from Toronto,
TransAsia obtained a search warrant
for the home of my mother,
the 80-year-old widow of artist Frank Molina,
her home in a suburb of Paris.
The search warrant was served
by a squad of eight French policemen
accompanied by a locksmith.
They had instructions to copy all papers
with the word Leonardo on them.
More absurdly, they had instructions
to log into the Internet from my mother's home,
presumably to show that the Leonardo websites
could be accessed from this location.
They left with copies of papers dating back to the 1960s.
I regret to say that my mother has never intended
to use the Internet and her home
for website creation.
Unfortunately, they chose not to remove all papers
with the word Leonardo on them.
This would have resolved a long-standing dispute
between my mother, my brother, and I
on how we are going to dispose of the old archives
that fill the garage.
All humor aside, this raid by the French police
with no warning was very, very frightening
for our family, including my eight-year-old son
who was present at the time of the raid,
et cetera, et cetera.
That was from Roger Molina.
I was wrong as to where he was from.
He was from France.
You know what?
This is crazy.
I'm going to trademark Smith.
Well, it's kind of late for that.
I'm going to get Smith.
Kind of late.
I can go around to a good fifth of the population
of this planet and start demanding
that they turn over their names.
You can't have stationery with the name Smith on it.
Is that a pencil with Smith on it?
No, sir.
That car with the registration that says Smith,
I like it, in fact.
Yeah, definitely does.
Well, we'll be keeping people
apprised of this situation
as things happen.
Crazy.
These things
just will not stop.
All right.
I'm getting threatening mail now.
Oh, no, really?
More threatening mail.
This is good. This is what I was waiting for, actually.
We knew this was going to happen.
Did you not, like, buy the extra CDs
from the penny thing?
No. We got mail from Collectech Systems.
Collectech Systems.
It's a collection agency.
This is regarding your long-distance
charges with AT&T.
AT&T has made several...
AT&T has made several attempts
at resolving this account with you and has been unsuccessful.
Has been unsuccessful?
Had been unsuccessful.
We had this discussion at one point.
Is the entity an it or a they?
I don't know, but I think they're plural.
I don't think it's a single individual.
Since you have failed to resolve this issue with AT&T,
they have now assigned your account
to us for a collection.
If the balance of $25.04 is
incorrect,
I want them to pay.
All right?
I want them to pay through the nose
because they deserve to.
If the balance of $25.04 is incorrect,
please see the reverse side for information
on disputing this debt.
It is in your best interest
to resolve this matter to avoid
any further collection efforts.
Oh, but I like the further collection efforts.
I really do.
To ensure accurate recording of your payment,
you must send your payment
using the bottom tear-off portion
of this letter with the enclosed envelope.
When your obligation has been resolved,
we will clear this record from our collection file.
Okay, now for those who don't know,
this all stems from
AT&T deciding to bill me
separately from the phone company
on a line where I don't use
long distance.
So basically, every month they were sending me
a bill for tax, just for them.
You know, a service charge for them
having an account, or me having an account
with them, which I didn't want.
And I couldn't disconnect without incurring
another charge of some other sort.
Well, you tried to do this, though.
You've actually called them and said,
I don't want this account, I don't want you
charging me on this line.
I had the option of not having
them be the long distance company,
but I would have to pay somebody, whether it be
Bell Atlantic, Sprint, whoever.
I would have to pay them to have
the line there
for a possible making of long distance calls.
Now, you see, I didn't mind doing this
when it was part of the bill.
It was just, you know, part of those
hundred or so different taxes that you pay.
Okay, big deal. But when they send you
an envelope that is nothing but
taxes, you know, and
nonsense charges for no service,
you kind of feel like not paying
that, because what are they going to do
if you don't? What are they going to do
now? They're going to send these
ridiculous letters for $25.04.
They're going to get increasingly
upset when they realize, is that not a damn thing
they can do to get it from me?
And they can't cut me off, because that's what
I want in the first place, and I don't think they know
how to cut me off. You know, the one thing, though,
that annoys me about this,
my social security number's on this thing, and I never
gave my social security number to AT&T,
so how did they get that?
I think they dipped into my TRW file
or something. Very likely.
That's not right. Not right at all.
You will be reported as a deadbeat, Emmanuel, for not paying this.
You see, here's the thing.
Phone bills never got reported to credit agencies
before. They never did.
Now that it's in the hands of a
credit collection agency, they will report you
to a credit bureau.
Well, you know what? I've had just about enough credit in this life.
I don't think I'm going to be buying, you know, much else.
So, uh, that $25.04
can follow me around for many years.
I'm not going to, uh...
I'll tell the story to anybody who wants to listen.
You know, if I'm sitting in a bank somewhere and it comes up,
I'll tell them the whole saga,
and I'm sure they'll understand.
I've got this big barcode over my name.
It's, uh...
I'm in the system. I'm in the system now.
But I'll tell you, you know, the one thing that really is
reason enough to do this, I'll demonstrate this way
right now, all right? This happened to me yesterday.
And, uh,
it's just unbelievable.
Remember how you used to be able to
ask questions, like, uh...
Well, I'll demonstrate.
We want to call somebody. Pick a country.
Uh...
England. Australia. Australia's good.
All right, let's, uh...
Let's get a dial tone here.
Let's dial zero, which I think will get us
an AT&T operator. Hopefully it's AT&T.
If it's not, we'll try something else.
Yeah.
It always takes forever.
Ah.
Wait, we don't get an operator.
You have to go through all this.
Operator!
Not bad.
Hi, I need to know what time it is
in Australia, please.
Uh, it'd be Melbourne.
Mm-hmm.
Victoria.
It's 1235 p.m.
They're 16 hours ahead.
Okay, that's very helpful. You know, I gotta say,
I asked a similar question yesterday,
and they connected me without any question
to this service where you get charged
a dollar. Yeah.
Why do they do that?
Oh, you're supposed to do that?
Well, I'm very happy you don't.
Yeah, I totally agree with you.
Well, we need more people like you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, bye.
Wow, that was refreshing.
I just hope her name didn't get out
because she'll get fired tomorrow.
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
Yeah, because she would get in trouble.
That's how screwed up they are down there.
They will get in trouble for doing something like this.
That's an operator that should be cherished
because they are a dying breed,
but as you heard from her,
they're supposed to switch you over.
We're very lucky we didn't get switched over
because B.I. would have my head
because they charge you a dollar
when you get connected.
I was in Australia.
Next thing I know,
I'm hearing a different operator
that has charged me a dollar already
just for the privilege of connecting.
And that's why this $25.04
is not getting paid
because of little scams like that.
Well, whoever you are out there, thank you.
Yes, that was really nice.
At least they didn't tell you
what time it was in swatch time.
Yeah, she gave me the right information, too.
That's another rarity these days.
Isaac, have you heard about this?
Connectix announces decisive victory
in Sony lawsuit.
Have you heard about this?
Connectix produced a software emulator
for the Sony PlayStation
so that you could take your Sony PlayStation games,
drop them in your machine.
It sounds remarkably similar
to the whole DECSS case.
Well, something like that.
But the court ruled on the side
of the people making the emulation.
Really?
Well, you know about this already.
You're just playing along.
Yes, I am.
First off, here's the story.
This is the first piece of paper I have.
What does this mean?
What did they do?
They basically said it's okay
for them to do this?
Thank you for handing this to me now
and expecting me to report on it.
Oh, no problem at all.
From what I know,
Connectix basically sat down
with Sony PlayStation and some of the games
and managed to build an emulator
by reverse engineering.
So how come they're not getting sued like we are?
Well, there's a quote here
that I should perhaps read.
The court has recognized that reverse engineering
is a common, legitimate, and valuable
development practice protected under law,
stated Roy McDonald, CEO of Connectix.
We are pleased to be able to bring
our product back to the Macintosh community
and launch it into the Windows market.
Now consumers on both platforms...
I love this whole self-advertisement thing.
These guys got money, obviously,
so they were able to get a decent ruling.
We believe this landmark decision
will have broad ramifications throughout
the software and other media industries.
This ruling supports the clear goal
of U.S. copyright law to allow fair use
of prior works to create new intellectual property
which broadens consumer choice.
This is a great victory for every American.
I would tend to agree,
except it certainly hasn't impacted our case.
Where is this court?
This court is the United States
Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit.
That's good.
That's a higher court than the DVD case
has gotten to so far.
We can point to this as some kind of precedent.
That's serious.
Ninth Circuit Court, that's one step
below the United States Supreme Court.
In California, they're a little more liberal
with this intellectual copyright,
intellectual property stuff.
I have the findings here.
Are we still going to have to go through
with it?
Are we still going to have to waste our time
when we already know the answer?
I guess you could move for dismissal
or something based on something like that.
All right, let's move for dismissal.
Moving right here on the air.
I don't think Judge Kaplan would receive that very well.
Of course you wouldn't.
Isaac, I've got a question about this.
Go ahead, sir.
Was there any means of circumvention used?
In other words,
was there any type of control mechanism
that was specifically designed
to make this difficult to do
that Connectix found?
An actual technical means
of controlling the access
to the Sony games?
Yes, like CSS.
Based on my very quick skimming
of this article,
I'm not seeing anything.
That could be.
To emulate the hardware accurately,
Connectix had to copy the PlayStation BIOS
to test it.
It was its own that worked like the Sony code
but wasn't a mirror of it
to replace the immediate copies
made for testing.
They probably had to do this
in an intellectual clean room
like you may recall
the early IBM PC BIOS croons.
Actually, Compaq.
Compaq was the first company
to really successfully come up
with a functionally equivalent BIOS
to IBM's PC BIOS.
Compaq did it in an interesting way
with a company which was Phoenix BIOS.
You may recall them.
Basically, clean rooming works
that you get a set of engineers,
you hand them the product.
They have the product, they play with it,
and they write up a spec.
Once you have the spec,
you take the spec over to the company
that's going to do the production
and based solely on the spec,
they design the part that will allow
the kind of emulation that you're looking for.
You set up an intellectual firewall.
The engineers that develop your product
have never seen the competitor's product
or played with it in any way.
All they've seen were the specifications
that the other group wrote.
That's one of the problems that I've been
pointing out with the DVD case
where it really should have been clean roomed
and it would have stopped a lot of this
legal difficulty.
I think we found the intellectual firewall
in the court there.
There's definitely a lot of intellect
not getting through.
Hey, Laszlo, say hi.
Hi.
What are you doing here?
Just popped in.
You're on a different station.
Yeah, commercial.
See, it's bleeding in.
He represents the corporate media here.
How's the technophile?
We're doing okay.
We're kind of getting beat down
by corporate radio.
Stations that we've been on
for three or four years
are being shut down
by one of the big two companies.
And suddenly we're no longer
on that station anymore.
Those companies tell all their stations
to only run programming that they own.
That way they can make more money off of it.
So if they don't own you,
then they don't want you on their station.
The TV networks are doing the same thing.
It must be something
to be part of a national trend.
I think it's really good for consumers
to have fewer voices
because then you don't get that disorientation.
No confusion.
Why read a newspaper story
that has different versions?
It saves you from having to think
and assimilate the data
and come to your own conclusions.
Right there on the silver platter for you.
It saves a lot of time.
It's like becoming the board collective.
That's why I read USA Today.
You can get that paper in any city in the country
and it's always the same.
And it's always delivered to your hotel room.
Yeah.
Oh boy.
That's good to know.
Is everything else okay in the corporate world?
Yeah.
I'm not in the corporate world.
Your voice is.
But I am on some NPR stations.
And I'm on a Christian station.
That's good.
Where's the Christian station?
I don't know, dude.
I try not to pay attention to that one.
I actually got thrown off of a Catholic station.
Really?
Yeah.
I did a piece about how you could order hookers
on the internet.
That wasn't appreciated?
No.
You're biting into their territory there.
They don't like that.
I'm going to get letters now.
It's taken me a great deal of restraint
to hold my tongue.
I just like consulting all religions.
212-209-2900.
Let's take some phone calls here.
Hi, Emmanuel.
How are you doing?
It's so nice hearing that friendly voice.
Let's hear another friendly voice.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, good evening.
How are you?
Fine.
How are you, gentlemen?
I'm actually in a very bad mood.
But other than that,
I think everyone else is okay.
I agree with you.
It's not just the internet in every school
in the country,
but they pass it on to the ratepayers.
We're doing that.
They're not doing anything.
Yeah, but isn't that fantastic
how they keep charging all federal excise tax
and they never pay a penny in tax
or federal excise tax?
Anyway, besides that,
Microsoft, that's how they back-engineered
IBM products in terms of the computer.
They did the same thing.
I believe they even pioneered
that technology, that legal maneuver.
Microsoft was in a much more
interesting situation where IBM
actually contracted them to write
DOS and to write their operating systems.
I'm pretty sure that
there were some stipulations in the contract
where they would
actually retain ownership
over the operating system
and IBM would simply license it from them.
IBM just didn't see
what was going to happen.
Unfortunately,
they got screwed over by Bill.
Because I had read
that they wound up going one step
further and back-engineering stuff,
but let me ask you this.
I wanted to know
what you think about the technological
leap from vacuum tubes
to transistors.
I don't think that's ever been really
documented in terms of
how and when that actually
occurred and the research and development
behind that.
You see, you're very perceptive.
That's what some people are saying
in terms of back-engineering,
even stuff like
the Roswell-type connotation
and Base 51-type stuff.
But I mean, what is your understanding?
Don't you think we would have jumped
right into ICs or something, though?
If these guys came here from outer space,
they would have at least given us
decent technology.
My uncle happened to be working
at Bell Labs during the development
of the transistor,
and he doesn't resemble
a Martian in any way.
So you gentlemen believe
then that the research and development
is well-documented in terms of the leap?
I would tend to think that
if I were to look at the records
of the time, you would see
a progression towards, oh, here's a really good idea.
Well, let's do it this way, and
it would just start to fall its way in.
I've never done such
an in-depth search
on my own.
I've heard people have.
I guess maybe I've got a free weekend coming up,
so maybe I could...
Well, if you have web access, which I don't,
you can do that.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yes, go ahead.
Hi, this is Scott. How are you?
Well, I just wanted to clarify
something that Bernie was talking about.
Is this the Scott that I know and love?
This is the Scott that you know.
How are you, Bernie?
All right, let's get past
the social stuff here.
Okay, listen, the UCITA, which is
the Uniform Computer Information
Transactions Act.
It's got to be the worst acronym.
There's one thing I want to clarify.
Everything you said, and also,
this is one of these rare moments where
even the federal government is
against it, which is to say the Federal
Trade Commission.
If you follow the links
on the various websites that have been
reporting on this one, you can actually
read the letter that the Federal Trade
Commission sent
to the, I guess, the executive
committee chair, whatever
his name is, who heads this thing.
So here's an example where
even the FTC
really has serious problems
with it. And that's got to be
a complete rarity. I mean, I've never seen that before.
They actually have a conscience.
It's remarkable.
They have something else planned.
The letter is sent, has a footnote, which says
this letter represents the views
of the Bureaus of Consumer Protection
and Competition, and of the Policy
Planning Office, and does not necessarily
represent the views of the FTC
or any individual commissioner.
The FTC, however, has authorized
the staff to submit this letter.
Wow. Wonderful.
Just in case.
I guess there are portions of the FTC
that are against this
UCITA
for the reasons
that you mentioned and more.
All right. Well,
we'll keep an eye on it, as well as an eye
on many things. Thanks for the heads up on that.
Sounds good. And one other thing, concerning
this case about
Connectix, there's also another
company, there were two companies
actually, that were sued by
Sony. The difference
being that Connectix actually
copied the BIOS
and then
created their own BIOS.
Whereas
the other company, I think their name is
Bleen or Bleep? I can't
quite remember it, but what they did
was just treated the entire situation as if it was a
black box. So they didn't copy
the BIOS to make their own BIOS.
They just said, okay, well,
this instruction puts a red dot up
here, so what do we need to do to put
a red dot up there? And they did it
that way. So the cases were
initially treated separate, but now
it's been ruled that they're pretty much the same.
And by the way, Sony's using the same arguments
on that case that they are,
that
MPAA is using on
us.
On you. Wait a second, isn't Sony
Motion Pictures one of our plaintiffs?
Which is that Connectix software can be used
to pirate Sony Playstation
CDs. Sony is one of the
plaintiffs. One of the plaintiffs in our other suit.
Right. Well, I actually have to
read into this Connectix thing. I mean, I just got
shuffled the papers two minutes
beforehand, and I've heard nothing but rumor. It's actually,
it's so similar that it's remarkable.
In fact, I can't imagine any
court that could look at
your case
as separate from these other cases.
They're really, the only difference,
actually, the only difference that I could say
is that in one case you have
two corporations that are
trying to make money off their products. Right,
exactly. And in your case,
no one was trying to make any profit,
and it was essentially what, either freeware
or shareware. That's the only difference I've
noticed at all. It's the same difference, the same
way corporations are treated differently than
individuals. If you, you know,
change a letter on a corporate webpage, you've
committed a crime. If a corporation robs you of service
for a week, doesn't matter, you can't even
complain about it. So it's like, you know, totally
different rules. I'm extremely
bitter about this. The latest analysis that I've heard
concerning what Sony is trying to do with Connectix
and their cases, is they're basically,
and this ties to a
question that Bernie had concerning whether
or not there were any copy control mechanisms.
What they're trying to do,
I think, is they're going to try to tie this up
in court, and I think they can,
long enough so that by the time
a definitive answer
comes down, Sony
will have already released the latest
PlayStation 2.
Exactly, and I can guarantee you
that that will have any number
of measures that will prevent this from happening.
Right, which will make it enforceable under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Sure, and I'm sure Sony has
crashed alien spaceship technology
where they can just make it so that it's impossible.
I mean, maybe there's something on the
discs themselves that will just prevent
it from being, you know, something
physical on the disc itself, like a hologram
or something, who knows.
But that wouldn't surprise me. So I think that's
their strategy, is basically keep this in court
for as many months as it takes.
And I'm sure they're feverishly working
to make PlayStation, the next
generation PlayStation, immune
to this.
Thanks for the info.
Hey, Scott, email me.
I needed to get
reminded of that. I can't email anybody.
Actually, maybe I can.
Maybe the system is off now.
What's that?
It'll bounce if it emails me in 2600.
Yeah, it'll bounce there and it'll bounce all over the place.
We're going to try and fix the bouncing and stuff.
We were talking earlier.
We're going to try and fix Bell Atlantic 2.
I'm not taking part in that.
You're driving.
I ain't driving anyway.
I use the word ain't on the air.
All right.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello?
Yeah, hi. If I'm not mistaken,
in the Connectix case,
this is only an overturning of a preliminary
injunction, isn't that right?
You got me.
I have to look into it.
Reverse and remand
a preliminary injunction on sales, yes.
Right. What it seems to me is
this is actually good news for you at the moment
because you have a similar case.
In the long run,
though, the case still has to be
tried.
That's it.
There might be one trial that happens before
us or we might have trials at the same time.
Who knows? We might wind up
deciding the precedent for that.
Yeah.
Okay, that's it.
Well, if that's the case, he's absolutely right.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yes, I'd just like to give out my email address.
What are we going to do about this?
I don't know.
Our hands are really tied.
It's gotten to the point where, you know,
to not do something makes us look bad.
We have to act.
All right, we'll talk after this.
Go ahead, act.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello. Yeah, there's a couple things I want to talk about.
Put it on the phone, not the speaker phone.
Sorry, I've been having a lot of phone problems
anyway.
One, I was part of the
leafletting campaign
and I had some great results.
My friends and I stood in front of the movie theater
on 86th Street.
We actually spoke to a film producer.
Really?
He was probably like an indie film producer, though,
but he said he was a member of the MPAA.
We talked to
another member of the MPAA
who's an actor. He's kind of famous.
See, they're out there.
They're everywhere.
He wholeheartedly agrees.
He said it's being dominated by gigantic companies
when it's meant to be
for the filmmakers.
It's being dominated.
We need to get people from the MPAA
that believe this to actually sign on.
I'd like to see somebody who is
fairly well-known somewhere.
They won't be part of the MPAA
for much longer after they do that.
Exactly.
Do these guys have any guts or not?
Are they willing to stand up to some monolithic entity like this?
I think there are people out there
that have some guts.
We need some of them to stand up
and put their name on our site and say,
yeah, we're with you guys and these people suck.
That's what we need.
Weren't there a few people in the motion picture industry
during the 50s that tried that?
Well, yeah.
They're blacklisted.
The thing is, there are people now
that say those people were courageous.
This is their chance to be courageous, too.
I'm calling on MPAA members
who might side with us
to step forward.
Name one of them.
I don't know who they are yet.
One of the ones from the 50s.
One of the ones from the 50s?
They seem to be so memorable for their courage.
Wasn't Zero Mostel one of them?
There are lots of actors, lots of writers.
I think Woody Allen did a film about this, too.
Remember Woody Allen,
but you don't remember more than one person?
I wasn't around then.
None of us were alive.
That's the thing.
I went to Radio Shack
and I wanted to buy a certain part.
It was a crystal, I think,
an oscillating crystal.
I was told that I could not purchase
this oscillating crystal.
Then I went home and I called customer support
and I said,
I was told I can't buy an oscillating crystal
from them.
To my knowledge, oscillating crystals
are pretty innocuous on their own.
You were purchasing it to put into
a computer motherboard in order to
accelerate its processing capability, correct?
No.
It doesn't do a lot of things
that you might think it does.
46, speed it up.
Did you call 1-800-THE-SHACK
and try to order it through their mail order department?
I think I did do that,
but anyway, I talked to them.
Apparently,
if the retailer thinks
it's going to be used for an illegal purpose,
they can
refuse to sell it.
Did the retailer tell you this?
Did the retailer ask you anything?
No.
I said,
I'd like to order a crystal
because I talked to him earlier
and he said, sure.
He just said, no.
I was like, why not?
He said, you need to be a certified technician
I was like, why?
You have to be a licensed crystal operator.
Yeah, exactly.
He can refuse to sell you something.
Yeah, he can refuse to sell me something,
but there's no grounds.
I walk into the store
and I ask for the crystal
and he processes somehow,
kid, crystal, criminal?
I just don't get it.
It's a good alliteration.
It's definitely
the thought process at work there
Maybe you could do like
when people buy beer,
they stand outside like,
hey mister, will you buy me beer?
Hey, will you buy me a crystal?
No, you got me the wrong kind,
I need the oscillating one.
What are you going to use this for?
You're not going to get drunk, are you?
I'm flipping through the RadioShack.com catalog,
which is a much fatter catalog
than the regular store catalog,
and it seems to skip over
a particular frequency
I noticed that too, actually.
It's like a conspicuously absent frequency
in their list of...
But I'm pretty sure they actually have that crystal,
because I spoke to somebody at RadioShack
and they said, yes, we do carry that crystal
and we can buy it for you.
Of course they carry it, because it has other uses
than what they think you're going to use it for.
Other uses.
We should sell crystals on the black market, you know,
just hook people up.
This is going to be one of the longest in-jokes in history.
We're going to get so many emails like,
call Mouser Electronics.
They will sell you one.
Can't you just order some of this stuff online?
Digi-Key is nice.
That's why the internet has to be regulated,
because kids can go out there and get crystals
without anybody overseeing them or saying no.
Think about that. It's horrible.
Hey, thanks for the call. We've got to run.
Thank you.
Should we say disclaimer or something now?
Disclaimer for what?
People want to buy crystals. I mean, come on.
Let's get with it here.
Oh, boy.
It's going to be harder.
Yeah, you could be from the West Coast.
They're into that whole amber crystal.
It's going to be harder to get a soldering gun
than it is a real gun.
One more call. Let's go over here.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello.
Hi, how are you?
I heard how upset you were with the Atlantic,
but I wanted to find out what you thought about Roadrunner.
I just got it hooked up through Time Warner Cable
on Saturday, and I love it.
When I asked them about the security concerns,
they said, and I'm just going to give you verbatim,
that the IP changes every day,
so it shouldn't be a problem.
So I don't know.
I mean, you know better than I do.
That's a problem in itself.
But it doesn't affect me.
I mean, it's always on.
I turn it on.
I don't have to enter in any codes or anything,
and it races.
I mean, it's a million times faster than I'm used to.
Well, you're going to get spoiled now.
Yeah, well, what's your uplink, though?
Huh?
I mean, your downlink.
I mean, it's basically, you know, with cable modems,
you get one speed one way and one speed another way, right?
Yeah, well, I have to tell you,
I'm not as sophisticated to be able to tell you
how fast it's coming in and how fast it's going out.
I cannot do that.
Do you get the impression that it's faster one way?
Is it asymmetrical? Is it faster one way than the other?
I don't get a sense of that at all.
All I know is that it's a lot faster
than I've been doing before.
You have to deal with Bell Atlantic first
to get them to make sure the line was kosher.
It's a cable modem.
Yeah, if it's coming in over the cable.
Oh, it's a cable. I'm sorry.
I thought he said it was DSL. I'm on a state.
Yeah, well, let's not talk about DSL anymore.
I've had my fill of it.
It's the taboo word of the week.
I'm going to hang up if you have any comment on it.
Okay, thanks for calling.
I have no comment on it because we're out of time.
You know, they told me never to even ask them
for a cable modem, you know, in my area
because we barely have phone service.
I just like that they managed to call it Roadrunner
because it's Time Warner.
I guess that's the only reason they got rid of it.
Yeah.
Okay, well, that's it for this week.
Bernius, thanks for lending your expertise.
Isaac, thanks for stopping by.
I thank Sprint PCS for cutting us off.
I have no expertise.
Yeah, Sprint PCS didn't cut us off
for at least a few minutes.
Next week at this time, I'll either be in jail
because I will have murdered somebody
in the presidential office,
or I actually will be enjoying SDSL
for the first time in my life.
We'll see. Good night.
♪
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