And you're listening to your radio station WBAI in New York.
The time is 8 o'clock.
Once again, it's time for Off The Hook.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two,
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook.
Ah, that's better.
Every week I come in here, every week the headphones are kind of messed up.
So this week I had to change them around.
Well, good evening. It's another fun occurrence here.
As the boat prepares to leave, bear with us a moment.
Let's try something. Get us a dial tone here, please.
There we are. Okay, we're going to try something.
That's the way I'm going to find out.
We're sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed.
Please check the number and dial again.
Well, that's not right. That's my number.
That's my number in the 516 area code. I know. Okay, I know.
As of April 1st, I was supposed to officially start dialing 631 as my area code.
But I thought they'd give a warning. I thought they'd give some kind of error message
saying that you have to dial that area code.
Now you just get a recording like this. That's not right.
That could just be because we use a company other than Bell Atlantic that's happening.
But I don't know. It seems rather unforgiving and strange.
So it's not nice when you lose your area code.
I don't know how many people have had that happen to them.
It's something that is more traumatic than you might think.
I mean, when you grow up with an area code, you live with it your whole life.
516. It means something to you.
And then one day to be told it's no longer who you are.
You're now 631. Who makes that decision? Who is it that says that?
My God. They just don't think about the ramifications or something like that.
And, you know, it could have been so easily fixed in a different way.
They didn't have to rob us of identity.
There was talk of that. Remember when they were talking about splitting 212?
And they finally resolved it with 646.
You know, being sort of a half-and-half type of area code where new phone numbers we get assigned 646.
But there would be no geographical line that people over one side would be 646 and others would be 212.
Because there were those who would take up arms against something like that.
And 212 means a lot more, obviously, than 516.
But still, you know, it's a bit of culture.
We don't have very much of anything out there.
So 516 was something that we valued quite a bit.
All right. Well, now that we're out of... we're finished with that.
Some exciting news.
Now let's play some exciting music.
Yeah, okay. That's about as exciting as we're going to get.
We have a new telephone company.
Or actually, just a new name.
A new name of a new company.
So that we can prepare to hate this company and do all kinds of mean, nasty, horrible things.
Yeah, you're never going to guess.
The new company is called Verizon.
Stupid name, huh? Verizon.
Bet you don't even know how to spell it.
Verizon is spelled V-E-R-I-Z-O-N.
And I guarantee you, you will know that name.
You might not know that name today, but you will know that name in the next...
I'd say in the next month you're going to know that name.
And certainly in the next year, you will have cursed out that name at least a dozen times.
At least.
Yeah, we've seen New York Telephone turn into 9X.
We've seen 9X turn into Bell Atlantic.
It's not over yet.
Bell Atlantic is changing their name.
Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that.
They're changing their name and they're merging.
They're merging with GTE.
The new company will be called Verizon.
Of course, it's all contingent upon FCC approval.
But Verizon is the new name of the combined company.
Bell Atlantic and GTE said the new name and its associated logo will become the master brand...
...under which the combined company will market its services to residential and business customers.
The company has announced the name and brand strategy to employees yesterday, April 3rd...
...in anticipation of the launch of the wireless venture between Bell Atlantic and Vodafone AirTouch...
...which was planned for today.
Anybody know if that happened? I think it did.
The joint venture to be known as Verizon Wireless will be the first entity to use the new name.
The word Verizon, pronounced the way I'm saying it, according to them...
...was selected from more than 8,500 names.
The new name comes from the Latin word veritas, which means truth.
Oh, boy. They're going to attach truth to the name of a phone company. That's a first.
Okay. And also connotes...
Oh, boy. This is the clincher. Certainty and reliability.
Yeah. I guess it's like one of those sarcastic names.
You know, like when someone says something is really bad, but they mean it's really good.
That's what Verizon is going to mean.
And also, of course, the word Horizon, which signifies the possibilities ahead.
Oh, yeah. We know those all too well.
The new logo is a bold red, black, and white rendition of the name...
...with strong graphic accents highlighting the V and the Z.
Bell Atlantic and... I love corporate press releases. It's just so funny.
Bell Atlantic and GTE said that Verizon differentiates them from the rest of the Bell operating companies...
...and the other players in the telecommunications industry...
...and it is capable of assimilating significant brand equity over time.
Furthermore, Verizon signifies a company that will provide customers...
...with both stability and a forward-looking vision.
The company said they will adopt the name and support it...
...with significant marketing upon FCC approval of their merger.
Immediately following merger closing, the name and logo will appear on buildings...
...pay phones, vehicles, customer bills, and other materials, maybe even your house.
They're going to put that logo everywhere.
You won't be able to sleep without seeing that logo.
The companies are targeting completion of the merger in the second quarter of this year.
And they said the full rebranding will take from 12 to 24 months...
...although the new name and logo will be visible in key locations quickly.
Amazing. This is why we don't keep repainting the 2600 van. It's pointless.
We're still in the New York telephone mode. We never switched to 9X...
...because if we had switched to 9X, we would have had to switch again to Bell Atlantic...
...and then we're going to have to switch again for this.
So we'll just hold on to the old New York telephone logo. I think that's kind of cool.
Now, these guys are kind of uncertain as to their future or their control of the net...
...because, well, they registered verizon.com, verizon.net, verizon.org.
I guess you kind of expect them to do that, but they moved pretty fast on that.
But they didn't stop there. Oh, no. They went on.
What's the first domain you'd want to register?
VerizonSucks.com? Too late. They got that one, too.
That's right. They have VerizonSucks.com.
I don't know why corporations want to take something with their name followed by the word sucks.
It's as if they know that they suck, and they want to run the web page that explains why.
Well, these guys have set some kind of all-time record for the number of domains they've gotten.
They've got VerizonSucks.com, .org, .net.
And not only that, they've got Verizon spelled wrong in all different connotations as well.
So these guys are really seeking to control every possible web access.
But you know what site they don't have?
Well, there's the one that I can't say on the air, which may be assigned really, really shortly.
But there's also VerizonReallySucks.com.
He didn't think of that one.
So look for some fun to appear on that site.
Verizon, wow.
And it's all registered to people in Illinois and Virginia for some reason.
The headquarters of the new company are going to be in Texas, I believe.
Yeah, it's really something.
Remember how happy everybody was that Bell Atlantic was going to be headquartered in New York?
Well, those days are gone.
Yep, new multinational corporations will control things from afar.
We'd like to get your feedback on the new company.
In fact, we're going to be adding Bernie S. into things in just a moment.
I don't think he even knows about it.
I don't think he even is aware what's going on.
Well, let's talk about something that's rather important.
We're going to be talking about this throughout the hour.
That is, of course, the lawsuit filed against us, 2600, me personally.
And there was a web page that just got published a couple of days ago, actually,
of people who sent in reply comments to the, I guess, government is the best way to say it.
They were due on March 31st.
And a bunch of people sent in comments about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
and why that was a threat, why that was something that was not a good thing to pass.
And how many people actually submitted things?
Not as many as you might think, 128 people.
128 people submitted things.
And you'd expect that many hundreds of thousands of people would submit things.
But that's just the nature.
That's the nature of most forms of feedback.
How many people call in a radio talk show?
How many people write letters to the newspaper?
How many people call their congressman?
It's relatively few.
But there's good in that because it means that if you're one of those people out there
and you do care enough to write something, your words are going to count all the more.
It's very simple.
So that hopefully will be some inspiration for people to do this in the future.
There will be other forums in which to express your opinions on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
But we have actually one of the people who successfully submitted something to the website.
And it's now, let's see if I can get the address of this thing.
Okay, lcweb.loc.gov slash copyright slash 1201 slash comments slash reply.
Yeah, we'll repeat that later.
But Shana is here.
Shana, hi.
Hi.
How are you doing?
You actually submitted something and it actually got printed.
Well, I guess everybody submitted something.
Everybody's got printed.
It's kind of amazing.
I can try for three days to call who wants to be a millionaire through the toll-free line.
And I can never get on.
But, you know, I submit e-mail.
I've never even seen that show.
I submit e-mail to the Office of Copyright.
And, you know, it's on there.
It's on a government website, although I think that their domain name should be a bit easier,
though being the Office of Copyright of the government.
They make things difficult.
And I remember when they asked people to submit things, you couldn't just submit it.
You had to submit it as an attachment.
Yeah, you had to submit it as an attachment.
I think either they had about four different types of attachments.
I mean, there's Word Perfect or Word Document.
I don't even know if they let you send it as a text file.
Well, I think you could send it any way you wanted as long as it was an attachment.
You could send it as a text file if it was an attachment.
I believe that was okay.
Maybe we can hear from some other people who submitted things.
I see at least one other name on there that I recognize.
So what did you say?
I don't have the printout here.
Oh, right, right.
I basically just said that I thought that the DMCA was a big violation of the idea of freedom in the marketplace,
of the marketplace of ideas that came out of people like Justice Holmes and Justice Brandeis.
And I thought that was really important.
It's a huge violation of First Amendment rights.
And artists from abroad, you don't want to buy a DVD made in England because you can't play it on your DVD here.
So that's basically what I said there.
So I think artists are going to lose a lot of money on it.
How long was your statement?
It was probably about five sentences, five to eight sentences, not terribly long.
It was enough to get my point across.
I told them that I thought the legislation was frightening.
It was really bothersome, though.
And I wish that more people had written in.
Well, I think it's inspiring that at least some people did.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm very glad that people did, though.
But I think people should definitely hit the Electronic Frontier Foundation site, too,
because they always have a lot of DMCA updates.
Okay.
Again, we're going to give out that URL.
It's lcweb.loc.gov slash copyright slash 1201 slash comments slash reply.
And we'll be putting up a link to that on the 2600 page.
Hopefully you can read what everybody has to say.
Actually, did you read the other comments from other people?
There are some people from the Motion Picture Association on there, too, as well.
They said some interesting things.
I haven't had a chance to read it all.
Yeah, I haven't read all of it.
Both slides are represented here.
But I think we outnumbered them just slightly.
Yeah, I think that I would actually have a chance.
I think you could have gone to the hearing, too,
and you could have been put up on a podium or something and said your piece.
There is a hearing coming up, I think, in May?
Yeah, I think it is May.
Okay, and where is it?
It's in D.C., right?
It's somewhere in D.C. I don't have the information here.
Maybe somebody can call.
Oh, maybe someone is calling up right now.
Oh, it's Bernie S.
Isn't that great?
Hang on a second.
Hey, Bernie, is that you?
Okay, we're going to call you right back on the real phone.
Okay, we're going to call you right back.
All right.
Bernie is warning us that his Sprint phone is malfunctioning,
so we have to exercise some patience.
Maybe he should get Verizon.
Yeah.
Oh, boy.
Let's think of some good catchy slogans for Verizon now that we have advance notice.
We're going to test Bernie S, see if he even knows what the company is.
We might have a chance to talk about this before the show.
Okay, Bernie, where is your phone?
There it is.
Hello.
Hello, Bernie, how are you?
Oh, that's much better.
We're going to say a word to you, and you're going to tell us the first thing that comes to mind.
Are you ready?
I hate these word association tests.
I mean, what if something sexual comes to mind?
Well, that's just a chance we're all going to have to take.
We're grownups here.
Okay, go ahead.
Children, turn on the TV.
Do something else.
All right, you ready?
Mm-hmm.
What is Verizon?
Ah.
A very bad taste comes to mind.
A bad taste of what?
A bad taste of a –
Oh, bad taste.
A bad taste comes to mind.
And why do you say that?
Well, because there's an insurance company called Horizon.
It was my – up until recently, it was my health insurance carrier.
Oh.
A division of Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
And it was the most horrible.
There were about 50 people at the company I worked for, and we were all just completely upset with this company
because they were just the worst.
They would just challenge every single claim you made.
So it was Horizon of New Jersey or something.
All right, well –
They sucked.
Okay, that may be so, but Horizon is not the word I said.
I said Verizon.
Oh, Verizon.
You're familiar with the Latin.
I know what it is.
It's one of these words they came up with.
They paid probably hundreds of thousands of dollars for some consulting firm to come up with this name for this new merger,
for this, you know, Bell Atlantic and Vodafone.
Oh, he knows about it.
Man.
I knew all about it, but I thought you said Horizon.
It's one of these non-word words that is going to have zero recognition to everybody.
Yeah, people are going to mix it up with Horizon and think bad insurance.
I wonder what –
I really wonder what they paid and how they researched these stupid names.
I mean, there's other –
wasn't there one of the other –
one of the other baby Bells came up with an equally stupid –
how about 9X, for instance?
9X was a stupid name.
Well, actually, 9X kind of like at least it flowed.
It was an abbreviation.
It was New York, New England, X.
Yeah, X meaning the unknown, but I don't know.
But we found out what that unknown was.
It flowed.
Oh, yeah.
It flowed a lot better.
Verizon, though, as we mentioned, comes from the Latin word veritas,
which means truth and connotates certainty and reliability.
And I just thought that was –
None of those things come to mind when I think of Bell.
Well, they're being funny.
Don't you see?
They're showing that phone company –
I see.
They can have a sense of humor.
Yeah, phone company people can have a great sense of humor,
and that's how they picked that.
Also, Horizon signifies the possibilities ahead.
So I can hardly wait.
I can hardly wait for these possibilities to start manifesting themselves.
I did read today that they were going to, after this merger,
they were going to have access to over 90% of the wireless market
and something like 91 of the 95 top wireless markets in the United States
or present in 91 of the top 95 wireless markets in the United States.
That seems like a fair competitive edge.
Well, they're still probably going to blow it, and I have no hopes for this.
I'm not going to buy any stock from this IPO.
Well, it should be interesting.
Everybody's going to have to get used to this one.
So this is going to affect, what, everybody who's in Bell Atlantic territory
and also, I guess, everybody who's in –
does that mean every GTE phone company throughout the country is going to be a –
I can't remember the name – a Verizon company?
I have no idea how they're going to do it.
I was ambiguous when I read this press release.
Is Bell Atlantic going to change its name to –
I guess that's what you're mentioning.
What I guessed it meant was, in the press release,
is that just the wireless company was going to be called Verizon.
Oh, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
The whole thing.
Let me repeat what they said here.
Bell Atlantic and GTE said the new name and its associated logo
will become the master brand under which the combined company
will market its services to residential and business customers.
So no more Bell Atlantic.
Verizon.
That's ridiculous.
Just when you get used to who you're supposed to be hating,
they change their name.
Bell Atlantic.
I mean, just the word Bell has incredible name recognition.
Yeah, that's true.
In fact, if you recall, I'm sure you recall,
some of our listeners probably recall also,
AT&T wanted to keep that well-known and trusted Bell name
after the divestiture, but Judge Green wouldn't let them take it.
And remember they wanted to call themselves American Bell?
I think they did call themselves American Bell for like a year or something,
didn't they?
I seem to recall some really bad logo for American Bell.
They wanted to call it American Bell.
They also wanted to use the Bell logo, the Bell symbol,
but they were prohibited from doing so by Judge Green.
You know, Judge Green recently passed away.
Did you know that?
I didn't know that.
I just read it in a little tiny section of a newspaper someplace.
Wow.
Yeah.
That was truly a historical judgment he made.
Absolutely.
Just to quickly reprise what we said before,
that these guys have wasted no effort in registering names.
They've got Verizon.com, Orgnet.
They've got Verizon spelled wrong.
They've got VerizonSucks.com.org.net,
but they don't have VerizonReallySucks.com.
Somebody else has that one now, and they don't have a couple others,
which I'm not going to say on the air.
So it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the weeks, months,
years ahead, but there's a new company,
a new company that we'll all have to get used to,
at least those of us here, I guess, in the New York, D.C.,
Boston area, but maybe people on the other side of the country.
You're safe for a little while until they start expanding.
It was kind of a crazy day in Philadelphia or in Pennsylvania today.
Why is that?
Today was the Pennsylvania primaries.
Did you vote again?
I had to exercise my civil disobedience and cast my vote.
Oh, boy.
You're just going to keep getting them in.
I went in, and I pulled that lever.
Now, wait, wait.
What's this a vote for?
This is a vote for presidential candidates?
And local offices as well.
I don't understand this country.
And for delegates.
What is the point of voting when there are no opposition candidates?
I mean, it sounds like something that happens in third world nations,
but right here in this country,
you're voting for people that aren't running against anybody.
What's the point?
I felt very strange standing in that voting booth, Emanuel.
There were very few candidates running against anyone,
yet they still had a lever there.
And I felt, well, like you can cast your vote as long as it's for this one person.
And it was just like I thought, wow, this is like the Soviet system
where they had elections, but you had to vote for just the one person.
Can you bend the lever back the other way and break it,
and that way register your discontent?
Well, what I did is in the cases where there was no opposition,
I just didn't pull the lever.
But where there was an actual contest, I did cast a vote.
So I sort of abstained from voting in races where there was no opposition
because there was no point in it.
Well, we really need a category none of the above.
I really would like to see that.
I kind of like what the Soviets or Russians actually did two weeks ago
where Vladimir Putin had to win by 50% or more,
and if he didn't, he'd have to face a runoff.
I always thought, I don't know if this idea has ever gained any popularity, Emanuel,
but I always thought you should be able to cast a negative vote also.
Or not also, but instead of a positive vote for someone,
you can cast a negative vote because that would show in the polls
that maybe you don't support the opposition,
but you definitely don't support this person,
and I think it would be a very powerful thing to be able to cast a negative vote,
so you could take somebody else's vote away.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Hey, Bernie, let's quickly wrap up what we did this past weekend.
We had a bit of fun, didn't we?
At ICON?
Yeah, ICON, the science fiction convention at Stony Brook, New York.
I thought it was a great conference.
It was.
You talked about a lot of interesting topics.
We certainly did.
We did about five panels and had a lot of interesting people coming up to us,
asking questions, a lot of awareness about the whole DVD lawsuit,
which I was impressed with, and a lot of support,
and I think that's something that will be important in the months ahead.
You know, it's really been very frustrating.
I have to tell you, just knowing what it is that we're facing ahead,
knowing all the effort that's going to be expended on this,
when we know damn well what's right and what's wrong,
we have to take ourselves away from things that I think are far more important.
It's taking away our efforts to the conference that's coming up in July.
It's taking away our efforts for the film we're trying to finish by the conference,
for the magazine, the radio show, everything.
We have to worry about defending ourselves.
And, you know, Microsoft is facing problems, too.
They may be broken up into many little companies,
but this could take years, decades even.
But nobody is threatening Bill Gates.
Nobody is going after Bill Gates and saying,
yeah, you know, we can take away your house, we can do all kinds of horrible things to you.
And that's not the case here.
Individual people are being targeted.
And why?
Why does it become something personal when it involves smaller corporations,
such as 2600, but the mega-corporations like ExxonMobil, Verizon, and Microsoft,
they're never touched.
They can commit all kinds of atrocities.
And, yeah, they'll get fined maybe.
They'll get broken up into different companies where they can compete against each other
or do God knows what.
But people are never targeted as individuals.
And that has not been the case here.
We have people that are being intimidated, people that are being scared,
scared into complying.
And that's what they count on.
They count on people being afraid and settling.
I think you should correct your statement.
People are not individually targeted who have lots of money.
Bill Gates, for instance, was not targeted.
I heard the federal, I don't know if it was the U.S. Attorney's Office,
I'm from the Justice Department, was saying how all these consumers were victimized
by Microsoft and so forth.
And, you know, there are cases such as mine and plenty of others where it was documented
by the federal government there were no victims in the offense or the case,
yet people went to jail for long periods of time.
So as I heard the results of this announcement by the Justice Department yesterday,
I thought, well, isn't this very interesting that big companies like Microsoft
and very wealthy people like Bill Gates are being accused by the federal government
of victimizing millions of people, which you may or may not agree with,
but the fact the government stated this and yet refused to do anything to the alleged victimizers
who happen to have a lot of money is very telling to me.
Or even consider them to be victimizers.
Exactly.
Because in our case, it's always been not only 2600 being targeted,
but people like me, people who run ISPs, individual people are being targeted.
And what does that lead to?
It leads to people being intimidated, realizing that they could lose everything just to make a stand.
I mean, how many people will go that far?
How many people are going to stand up until every last cent is taken from them,
every possession may be thrown in jail as well, just to stand up for freedom?
I mean, it's a difficult choice, and I understand why people back down.
I don't hold them responsible for that at all.
It's the system.
The system is not fair.
If you don't have the resources for an effective defense, then you have to fold.
Absolutely.
Fortunately, we've got a damn good defense.
Oh, we are very fortunate.
Yeah, we're not going to fold, and we're not going to back down.
But it could be costly.
It could be costly in many ways, and that's why we hope that people out there stick with us
and stick with the whole case.
Just last week it was announced that there's now going to be a legal Linux DVD player called, I believe, LinDVD.
Now, okay, that's lovely, but that doesn't change anything.
That really doesn't change anything.
It's not going to be completely open source, which I know is something that bothers a lot of people.
But more importantly, what about the next operating system?
What about the next operating system that comes along and doesn't have the right to have a DVD player on their particular OS?
There are all kinds of platforms out there, Emanuel, besides the Linux operating system.
We still do not support playback of DVDs.
I think you're in a wind tunnel, so I'll wait for you to get out of there.
But, yeah, you're absolutely right.
There's all kinds of different operating systems.
And even if there weren't different operating systems,
the whole point that they're seeking to control the access so thoroughly to the technology
where they're saying where you can play this, how you can play it, when you can play it,
there's all kinds of doors that we're opening here if we permit this to go through.
It's a frightening prospect.
And you have to ask yourself, well, would you rather cave in and live in a world where that becomes law
or stand up till the end and maybe lose but at least know that you stood up for the right thing?
I know what my answer is.
Well, a lot of people, I think, aren't seeing the fact or aren't recognizing that this is just a foot in the door.
Once these purveyors of access-controlled intellectual property succeed in a case like this,
all other forms of digitized or digital intellectual property will be controlled even more so.
So people may say, well, I don't even have a DVD player, so this doesn't affect me.
Well, face it, people, virtually every piece of intellectual property you consume in the very future
is going to be digital.
And do you really want to be threatened with jail or enormous fines for simply being able to exercise
what has been your right under the fair use doctrine to consume that intellectual property in any way you see fit,
aside from obvious copyright violations like giving copies to other people necessarily
or charging people to consume intellectual property you've already paid for?
We're not talking about that.
So this is really going to be so sweeping and broad, the effects of this decision,
that people should really get behind it because there's not a person listening to this program
that this is not going to affect down the road.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And if you're part of the Linux community, I really hope that you see through what has happened
with the Linn DVD announcement.
I mean, yeah, okay, it's great that there will be something to allow you to play DVDs on a Linux system.
I'm not sure exactly how good the product is, but it's a step.
But the bigger question has not yet been addressed,
and that's where we need the support of the entire open source community.
I don't think this announcement is that significant, really.
I don't think it really has much to do with this case.
I agree, I agree.
It's a blip.
Yeah, okay, so somebody came out with a licensed Linux DVD software player,
but that doesn't address the real issue, which is the access control schemes
that deny people their pre-existing rights to fair use of intellectual property,
which has been traditional for years, and that's being criminalized now.
Right, it's a scary thing, and we have to not lose sight of that throughout the whole thing.
As months go by, you get worn down, you lose enthusiasm,
you say, oh, I don't want to do this anymore, and that's why we need people.
We need lots and lots of people to be showing their support however they can,
whether it's putting up stickers.
We just came out with the new Stop the MPAA stickers.
They're going to be available on our Internet store really soon, probably tomorrow.
We have a new MPAA shirt that also will be put on the store tomorrow.
We have a new issue, which has a pretty interesting cover,
which I think the MPAA is going to really like.
Great cover.
Oh, yeah, and all kinds of other things that are happening,
all kinds of other things that are moving.
But we have other projects.
We have the conference, which is scheduled for July, H2K,
which we hope a lot of you show up at.
We're going to have a lot of DVD panels there
and really be addressing this with some experts.
But having to deal with lawsuits, it takes away time from other things,
which is already overextending our efforts.
So we need more people to come in and help us with those.
Please go to h2k.net for information on that.
Aside from the obvious things like putting a Stop the MPAA bumper sticker on your vehicle
or telling other people about this to educate them,
it's just kind of a weird situation.
I wonder if it would benefit our side of this case to write legislators,
because this has already been decided by Congress that this law has been set in stone.
It will get to the Supreme Court eventually, but I feel it will.
Who can we write?
What people in power can we write to try to change their minds, Emanuel?
Well, I suggest going to the site opendvd.org,
and that's kind of our clearinghouse of information.
That gives you information on the facts, what you should put in a letter,
who you should contact, because it does change.
It changes quite frequently, in fact.
Obviously, write to your local congressman.
Write to whoever it is that represents you.
Make sure they understand the facts.
And if you're in a position where you actually get to talk to some of these people,
by all means explain the situation to them.
And if you're not clear as to what exactly that means, go to the opendvd.org site,
read the FAQ there, understand how everything works
and how to explain it in layman's terms,
because that's really the people that we have to reach.
Yeah, the other egregious law that's coming down the pike
that's being enacted at the state level that is as egregious as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
is this UCITA, U-C-I-T-A, which is, as our listeners probably are aware,
is an amendment to the Uniform Commercial Code,
which also criminalizes fair use of intellectual property at the state level.
So I urge everyone listening to write their state legislators, their state senators and representatives
to not enact this UCITA law.
I think it was just passed in Virginia.
It has to go through every state.
So everybody, please try to stop this law from being enacted
because once it's in every state, it'll be the law of the land, basically.
Absolutely.
Again, the more people that step on board, the better.
Also, another group of people are those of you that are already in the business, as it were,
in the Hollywood scene, makers of films, people who the MPAA allegedly is protecting.
If you understand what this case is about and you've come to the same conclusions that we are,
that that's not what it's about at all, we need you to speak up.
We need you to take a stand and say, yeah, I'm Steven Spielberg.
I make some films, and I believe this is wrong.
Do you have enough guts to do that?
I'm personally calling on Steven Spielberg.
Yeah, I just picked you out of random.
Say something. Speak up.
Of course, he's probably going to speak out against us, but regardless, I tried.
I'm sure there's somebody out there that's well-connected, that is willing to put their name on it.
And the more people that do that, the stronger our case becomes when people realize,
hey, this guy wouldn't say something that was completely wrong and uninformed.
Obviously, he's thought about it. I'll look into this some more.
The more people we have that will do that, the stronger our case will be.
Again, if you're part of an organization, take a stand on this one way or another.
It will affect you sooner or later, and if it affects you sooner, it will be under your rules.
You'll be the one bringing yourself into it.
Later, you'll be brought into it whether you want to be or not.
We have a couple of bits of news, which I think we should go over,
and then we'll take some phone calls, 212-209-2900.
Some of you may know that with regards to the DVD case, I guess,
Sony recently, by accident, released their PlayStation 2.
They didn't do that by accident, but apparently the accident was that the PlayStation 2
was able to play DVDs from all over the place. Isn't that right, Bernie?
I heard that. What I didn't find out is whether they would play DVDs in...
Do they use NTSC in Japan, Emmanuel, do you know?
Yes, they do.
Well, that would be the machine to have. I want to get one of those machines.
Well, what's happening is that there's now a recall.
Sony has recalled 1.25 million PlayStation 2 utility disks.
They will recall the utility disks and drivers for the units that they've shipped in Japan to date.
It's a costly attempt to fix a bug that allows the consoles to play foreign DVDs.
Due to an international agreement signed by DVD player manufacturers and film companies,
it is illegal in Japan to play back the content of DVDs sold overseas.
In light of the serious bug in current PlayStation 2 consoles,
SCEI has had to ask owners to return the relevant software by mail by April 1st,
and following that, through 7-Eleven convenience stores nationwide.
A presumably downcast SCEI official said production of replacement software and its mailing will cost us substantially.
PlayStation 2 consoles will now ship with software that does not support the playing of foreign DVDs.
So you see what they have to go through to enforce...
I mean, this is Sony. Sony's one of the companies suing us, for God's sake.
And they violated it. That's how ridiculous it is.
And it's funny that they didn't get sued, because they would have had to have sued themselves.
I wonder if this would almost be worth a trip to Japan to try to seek out and obtain one of these things.
Yeah, I'm sure we'd be locked up for espionage or something if we even tried that.
Probably conspiracy just for talking about it.
So, yeah, the whole thing...
I didn't understand from the story manual whether it was utility disks that enabled...
Are they going to actually recall just the utility disks, or the actual PlayStation 2s?
It looked like they were recalling the utility disks, which would indicate that that's what was enabling that.
So if that's the case, and you simply have to copy the files on that disk,
it doesn't matter how many times they recall it, it's always going to be out there.
Well, that's good. That's good news.
If the information is out there, and I'm sure some enlightened person
might make this information available to other PlayStation 2 owners as they increase.
Now, the next thing that we're going to be hit with, of course, is in this whole courtroom battle,
I'm sure they're going to be going after us, trying to get us to take down the links to other sites that have DECSS still up.
Now, if they do that, that's a real risk to freedom of speech, because all of a sudden they're saying,
not only can you not have this on your site, but you can't point to other people that have it on their sites.
As we've said in the past, if they do that, then what we will do in exchange is...
If in federal court we are ordered to do this or face imprisonment, we'll take down the links.
We'll keep up the list, the list of names.
They'll have to tell us to take down a list, then, and not have a listing of names.
And then after that, if we're told to take that down, then we'll simply incorporate it into a paragraph of conversation.
And then we'll have to be told to stop talking about it.
So, yeah, we're prepared to take this all the way to repealing the First Amendment if necessary.
But we're not going to back down on this very important fundamental.
What we need people to do is get as many links up as possible, so that if we do go down one way or another,
if we are taken out of the picture, there will be other people that will take up the cause.
And it sounds kind of crazy, but that's the way we have to think of things.
Sorry, Bernie.
With each successive challenge to this, if we then are forced to put up lists of links as opposed to the actual links,
and then just embed it into more obvious speech, with each successive challenge,
this obviously becomes more and more obviously a restriction on free speech.
It becomes clearly, if it's not clear to everybody now that this is a First Amendment issue, it will as these challenges increase.
That's right.
And someone buy me a new house if they take my house away, because that's what they're saying they're going to do.
Okay.
We can all pitch together, I think.
Here's an interesting story that we got sent about 15 million times from the...
Bernie, I know you're an avid reader of the Weekly World News.
The Weekly World News, that's the one that has the aliens on the front cover sometimes?
Well, usually, yeah.
It's either that or, like, you know, Debbie Reynolds or something.
Like, Al Gore is an alien, that sort of thing?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I've seen that occasionally at the supermarket.
Well, there's an interesting story in this week's, I believe, and some of you might want to run out to the supermarket and pick up a copy.
This actually was on the net.
I assume they printed in their real version as well.
Hackers can turn your home computer into a bomb and blow your family to smithereens.
That's right.
Now, listen carefully, folks, because this is an important story.
This is the kind of thing that Americans need to pay attention to.
Dated Washington.
Right now, computer hackers have the ability to turn your home computer into a bomb and blow you to kingdom come,
and they can do it anonymously from thousands of miles away.
Experts say the recent break-ins that paralyzed the Amazon.com, Buy.com, and eBay websites are a team compared to what will happen in the near future.
Computer expert Arnold Yavinson, president of the Washington-based consumer group National Cybercrime Prevention Foundation, NCPF,
say that three times fast, says that as far as computer crime is concerned, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.
The criminals who knocked out those three major online businesses are the least of our worries, Yavinson told Weekly World News.
There are brilliant but unscrupulous hackers out there who have developed technologies that the average person can't even dream of.
Even people who are familiar with how computers work have trouble getting their minds around the terrible things that can be done.
It is already possible for an assassin to send someone an email with an innocent-looking attachment connected to it.
When the receiver downloads the attachment, the electrical current and molecular structure of the central processing unit is altered,
causing it to blast apart like a large hand grenade.
As shocking as this is, it shouldn't surprise anyone.
It's just the next step in an ever-escalating progression of horrors conceived and instituted by hackers.
Who is this guy?
Well, I intend to look him up, the National Cybercrime Prevention Foundation.
This guy's a moron.
Well, let's get on... I don't think he even exists, but let's get on the blower here.
Dial to him, please.
Okay, we're going to call information.
Oh, wait, can we call information or is that blocked?
We're going to see if we can actually get through.
We're going to see if that place exists.
I'm not getting anything.
It's sounding like I'm in a tunnel, though.
Okay, I think the geniuses in management have decided that we cannot call information,
so there's no way we can find out if this exists, but maybe somebody out there can look it up for us.
Somebody on an unrestricted phone line can call up and see if there is such a thing
as the National Cybercrime Prevention Foundation, NCPF.
You should get this guy on the phone next show.
Oh, I intend to. I intend to track him down, one way or another.
There's more to the story.
Yavinson points out that these dangerous sociopaths have already vandalized FBI and U.S. Army websites,
broken into Chinese military networks,
come within two digits of cracking an 87-digit Russian security code
that would have sent deadly missiles hurtling toward five of America's major cities.
You know, just like in war games, where they were basically getting one digit at a time.
Yeah.
As dangerous as this technology is right now, it's going to get much scarier, Yavinson said.
Not before it gets a whole lot funnier.
Soon it will be sold to terrorist cults and fanatical religious fringe groups.
Instead of blowing up a single plane,
these groups will be able to patch into the central computer of a large airline
and blow up hundreds of planes at once.
And worse, this email bomb program will eventually find its way into the hands of anyone who wants it.
That means anyone who has a quarrel with you, holds a grudge against you,
or just plain doesn't like your looks can kill you and never be found out.
Well, this sounds like something the federal government would do, but not hackers.
But anyhow, we've got to get this guy on the phone.
Yeah, definitely.
And if anybody has that email bomb program,
please send it out to us because we'd like to look at it.
I hope the federal government law enforcement agencies, like the Secret Service and the BATF,
don't start using this Weekly World News article as probable cause
to start raiding people's computers in search of the bomb program.
Why, you think it will make things worse than what they've been reading up until now?
Well, I've heard these agents say equally ludicrous things under oath.
But, you know, it's their job.
I don't think it makes any difference.
212-209-2900, let's take some phone calls, see who's out there.
Good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Hey, Emmanuel, Tommy Pickles.
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
Just got back from Atlanta this weekend.
AtlantaCon was pretty good.
Well, that's good to know.
Excuse me?
That's good to know.
Yeah, well, a couple of OCDC people were down there.
Sardistic was down there.
He did a little thing on Windows exploits.
And Optics, big props up to him for working on a program now called CAT Scanner,
which is basically that program like NMAP that will map out exploits or little holes.
Cool.
And then big ups to Rhiann and Johnny X, who tried to make the con better and better.
But it was good, you know, and, of course, Moloch made a good show down there.
So we can't wait till Hope.
And hopefully this weekend at the 2600 meeting someone will bring down those cool new shirts that you advertised in this month.
Well, actually, that's not going to happen because they're not done printing yet.
Oh, darn.
Yeah.
Well, maybe the stickers will be there at the meeting.
The stickers will definitely be there.
All right.
And then Moloch will help raising money for the MPAA that you're struggling through.
Okay.
So it will be pretty good.
And since it's late in the show, we're going to free up this line right now so that you can answer other calls.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
All right.
Have a good time.
All right.
Have a good time.
Thank you.