A musical thunder from one of God's greatest and most gifted natural wonders as we move further into a new millennium.
And as we move up to the 8 o'clock hour, you're in tune with radio station WBAI in New York, where every Tuesday night at this time, it's time for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call. It couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
I hope that's understood.
And the very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you. Isaac over there.
Hi.
Mike over on the other side of the room.
Hello.
And other assorted people straggling around. And it's Halloween.
And okay, let's do this right away. We have one remaining H2K t-shirt that's just lying around.
212-209-2900. The first person who can call up and identify this piece of music gets it. 212-209-2900. Who is this?
It's Halloween, it's Halloween. It's time for scares, it's time for screams. It's Halloween, it's Halloween. The ghosts will spook, the spooks will scare. Why, even Dracula will be there.
It's time for games, it's time for fun. Not for just one, but for everyone. The Dracula lenses are all lit up. All the dummies are made of stuff by disturbing you to see. It's time for beer and cans. It's Halloween, it's Halloween. All the kids are happy and gay. There doesn't seem to be...
We have a winner, so stop calling.
But when it's over, you think it'll live on. You wish that Halloween had just begun.
Oh, there are witches, goblins, vampires, devils, Frankensteins, and zombies. And there are pranks, Cinderella, pirates, angels, and juicys. So let's have lots of fun and give many cheers. For Halloween comes with once a year.
It's time for games, it's time for fun. Not for just one, but for everyone. It's Halloween, it's Halloween. It's Halloween. It's Halloween.
I think it was technically the first caller that got it right. The first caller was just a crank call, I think.
Well, someone wanted to talk about something else that I really didn't care about.
I wasn't paying any attention to what we were saying, so they called to say something completely different. And it wasn't Rebel either.
But the first person who called up with a guess, or with an educated guess, got it right. Those are, of course, the Shags.
And you either feel passionately about them one way or another. But you either love them or you hate them. I happen to love them. I happen to play them all the time. Yes, I'm admitting it.
And, you know, one day I'd love to use one of those songs in a film. I just think it would be so great.
You're going to have to build a film all around the song.
Yeah, obviously, because it's not background music, which is why we couldn't talk while that was playing.
But who's our lucky winner?
That would be Jay here from the beautiful city of New York.
New York City, great. Great.
Low Reset.
And that Shag song, of course, comes in honor of Halloween.
That's from the late 60s, early 70s, so I don't think they're still active as far as music anyway.
Yes, Halloween. Well, it's an appropriate day because this is kind of a scary occasion because of all the things that are going on.
In fact, you might even say that I saw Babylon 5 last night.
There was a quote on there that I just thought was so appropriate from the character Jakar.
Weep for the future. Weep for us all.
This is the universe.
Big, isn't it?
And unfortunately, it's alive, all right.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, of course, is what we're talking about.
Yeah, we're still talking about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it just won't die.
In fact, it's getting more and more life.
Within the last few days, you may notice that this is the end of October.
It's being Halloween, and we've been telling people about this for several months,
that the rest of the DMCA is something that could be really dangerous.
Well, the United States Copyright Office Friday endorsed a new federal law
making it illegal to break the technological safeguards for copyrighted works
that are stored and distributed in digital form.
Now, what this means,
it means that basically, in addition to what we were sued under,
which made it illegal to distribute certain tools,
it is now illegal for you to even create such a tool,
for you to circumvent access control.
If you're able to figure out how to make that DVD of yours,
skip those commercials, you've just broken a law.
You're looking prejudiced, Isaac, but it's true.
Why isn't your mic not working? Because I put the wrong one up. Go ahead.
Yes, it's very scary stuff.
It is.
Imagine buying a car and not being allowed to pop the hood open.
It's really frightening.
The ruling was a defeat for several constituencies, including the American public,
as well as universities, libraries, computer programmers,
who had argued that the law should preserve traditional rights
to archive and lend out copyrighted material,
or to use so-called reverse engineering
to understand how a piece of technology works.
Unbelievable.
Media companies, including Sony and Time Warner,
had argued that the statute was necessary to protect their digital material,
like computer games and movies, from widespread unauthorized use.
But groups like the Association of American Universities,
the American Library Association, and the Commerce Department's
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
maintained that broad exemptions were necessary
to preserve the fair use rights of individuals.
Basically, they said that there are a lot of people who wrote in.
We read some of them on the air a few months ago.
A lot of our listeners wrote in, explaining why fair use was important,
why DVDs should not be crippled in this way,
and why the whole case that was against us was just a big waste of time.
But the Copyright Office said repeatedly in its ruling
that the proponents of these kinds of exemptions
had not demonstrated evidence that there would be substantial harm
if an exemption was not granted.
I don't know what they want.
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Yeah, yeah, you would think so.
So that those who are seeking these kinds of restrictions
should prove that there would not be any harm to the...
Sorry, here I am thinking...
No, it's like the world has gone crazy,
and I really am kind of in shock here.
What we're looking at right now is penalties, statutory damages,
for gaining access...
Now, listen to the phrasing of this.
Gaining access to a piece of copyrighted material
secured by computer code.
The civil statutory damages range from $200 to $2,500.
Criminal penalties include fines of as much as $1 million
or 10 years in jail for repeat offenses.
Now, gaining access to a piece of copyrighted material
secured by computer code.
Do you have any idea how many things that encompasses?
I mean, you can do this without even leaving your home.
You can do this without accessing anything outside of your four walls.
Simply by figuring out how something is encoded.
Figuring out how to get around something,
how to play that DVD without seeing the commercials or the FBI warning.
It's now illegal.
You can go to jail for it.
I mean, how do you respond to something like that?
Quite easily.
I intend to send an email to the Copyright Office.
I'm going to encode it with ROT26.
And when they read it, it will be subject to these criminal actions.
Great. Are you going to send a cop over to enforce it?
Oh, yeah.
That's great.
With every intention of doing so.
We've already gotten some listener feedback on this,
even though we haven't talked about it yet.
I'm sure you've got this already.
I wanted to put it in my two cents.
This review decision, whatever it's called,
shoots down all the legitimate qualms we have with the DMCA regarding DVDs.
And it does so quite poorly.
For one thing, they say that we haven't shown that we have been harmed
or substantially adversely affected.
They say that since it's only an inconvenience to us,
it doesn't actually harm us, it's okay.
Two problems with that.
First, they're wrong.
I consider an inconvenience, especially in this situation,
to be actual harm and adverse effect.
And second, their solutions to this inconvenience involve spending more money.
I count three examples of this, but there may be more.
Buying the movie in VHS format.
Buying a PAL converter.
I don't know why this is included, as it applies only to analog, as far as I know.
And three, buying a player made for a different region code.
These are all ridiculous, especially the last one.
What if I have a DVD from every region?
There are six or eight regions, I think,
so according to this, I would need up to eight DVD players.
I consider having to spend more money than necessary in actual harm and adverse effect.
Also, I thought I'd highlight one thing they said about halfway through the report.
There is no unqualified right to access works on any particular machine or device of the user's choosing.
I thought if I owned something, I could do anything except distribute copies of it.
I guess now I can only do what the works creator want me to do.
How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?
You just put that needle in what is known as my flip side.
I won't be able to sit down for a week.
How could I possibly?
You know, that's fair use.
That's fair.
You went big the other time I put that out and used that Alpha Hitchcock quote,
maybe out of context a little bit.
Oh, I would imagine just a touch.
I probably couldn't do that today.
I'd probably get in a lot of trouble.
The whole region code argument is ridiculous.
I can't pick out a portion to highlight for you because the whole part is crazy.
This one in particular pisses me off because I own a foreign DVD, Region 2 Fight Club specifically,
and I have to be careful how often I play it because I can only change regions five times.
I just don't understand it.
It doesn't make any sense, and it's obvious to me that they're in bed with the MPAA
and their bias shines through in most of all their arguments.
The only recourse I can see is talking to one of my congressmen and explaining the situation
because this report seemed to say if you want real change, it has to be from Congress.
Well, you know you have an election coming up in a week, too.
You might want to take that into consideration, see who –
well, pretty much anyone in power has voted for this thing already,
so you might just want to consider that.
You might want to consider all the people that are in there right now
that don't seem to care about such things as fair use.
Now I have something interesting here.
This is from when I went up to Cambridge
and met face-to-face with the evil Jack Valente,
the head of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Thanks to fellow broadcaster Dave Goodman over at WNBR in Cambridge,
we got a copy of this on cassette,
and we can actually listen to how the whole thing transpired.
It's basically me asking him some questions,
and you'll hear the way he kind of ducks the whole issue.
You'll also hear some other questions by the moderator
and the opposing lawyer on the other side.
So let's listen to this for a couple of minutes,
and then we'll be back with some more sobering news
and phone calls and things like that.
Stay tuned.
Oh, you know I'm going to make the same mistake I made last week.
Yeah, okay, it's not cassette one.
It's cassette two.
All right, here we go.
It would help to turn it on too, I guess.
Hi.
My name is Manuel Goldstein from 2600 Magazine.
I don't know if you know me, Mr. Valente.
You're an MPA defendant, right?
You guys just won a big lawsuit against us.
Congratulations.
It's cost the Electronic Frontier Foundation about $1 million so far.
I know it's cost you guys about $4 million.
I know you tried to make us pay for that, but the judge didn't want to do that.
My question, though, basically revolves around conceptions
because while I lost the lawsuit, I don't think I've yet learned the lesson
because I thought I knew what a thief was.
I thought a thief was someone who stole something with intent to steal something.
But I learned that it's not necessarily that way,
that a thief is actually somebody who writes software
that can be used by somebody who wants to steal something.
And then I learned that not only is the person who writes the software a thief,
but somebody who calls attention to the software is also considered a thief
because at 2600, that's what we did.
We had a website that pointed to the program or the source code
that was used by someone to play a DVD on a Linux system,
which was interpreted by the MPAA as thievery.
I'm just a little confused as to how far, how many different levels this can go to.
With the help of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
which I'd also like to know why I shouldn't be scared to death of this thing,
it seems that any time somebody tries to figure out technology,
they can be guilty of thievery if it's ruled that they shouldn't try to figure that out.
I'd also like to know, I saw at the trial, I saw people outside the courtroom,
literally across the street, selling videotapes of movies that had just come out that day.
We told MPAA people this, the lawyers on their side, we told the media this,
and nobody cared, and those people are still there to this day.
Somehow, I'm a thief, so just clear up my confusion, please.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What was the question?
The question is, how is somebody who publishes information on a website
about a computer program that shows how encryption has been hacked, is a thief?
Well, I suggest you read Judge Kaplan's decision.
Oh, I'm very familiar with it.
If he was here, I'd be asking him the same question, but since most of it was word for word what you guys said,
I'd like to know the answer.
You know what, it's the American judicial system at work.
He looked at reverse engineering.
He looked at security.
He looked at fair use.
He threw them all out the window, said they had no bearing.
They violated the DMCA.
You cannot circumvent encryption.
That's the law of the land.
Now, if you want to change the law, you have to go to Congress to do it.
I don't have a vote in Congress.
Well, the DMCA did change the law, and that's the thing.
Congress voted on this with an unwritten vote, a voice vote, unanimous, everybody agrees,
that you cannot circumvent encryption anymore,
and I'd just like to know why it's so important to control how people use technology.
Why is it important that I not be able to skip over commercials on a DVD?
Why is it important that in the future with HDTV that the same kind of controls be in place for recording programs
and for playing back programs?
I don't think a lot of people are aware of this yet, but that is what is going to happen,
and the DMCA is what's going to make it possible.
I'd just like to know what the intent behind this was.
I mean, wasn't it good enough already before for you guys?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
I skip over commercials all the time.
Well, you won't be able to, and if you try, you'll be breaking the law.
That's my little controller.
I'm saying again to you, no laws are lapidary.
They're there to be changed or revised if the circumstances benefit the majority of the American people.
So I'm saying if you have a quarrel with the DMCA—
So, Jack, Jack.
Sorry, I'm behind you.
Let me just ask to focus it a little bit.
You think it's been unfocused, of course.
I do, too.
Do you have a personal view on the issue?
I do have a view on the issue.
If Congress were to ask you, they're going to say,
Jack, you tell us what do you think, and we'll follow your lead.
What advice would you render to the Congress about it?
Keep the DMCA in place.
And if they said why, what would you say?
I would say it's in the long-term interest of the American people for copyright
and the rights of authors, creative people,
to make sure that their property is protected from the unauthorized use of that property.
That's my simple answer.
I am an author, and I do create things.
In fact, I just made a film, and I've never had the desire to tell people
where, when, how they can view my work
and what will happen to them if they try to do something else.
If you say I want my work to be offered to the world without compensation,
may the Lord bless you, may Allah praise you, go on.
But, Jack, wait.
There's a big difference between saying you should have the right
to exercise perfect control over the use of the content
and saying you should have a right to be paid.
I personally don't think that people ought to be able to get things for free
in the sense of zero cost, not in Richard Stallman's view,
not in the sense of free beer.
That's not what's important to me.
What's important to me is free in the sense of free speech, in Stallman's words,
free in the sense of being able to be used in any way that the person wants to use it.
Now, I think the real thrust of the question, the excellent point of the question,
is this perversion of the language that's going on in this debate,
to call this theft.
I don't think you sort of brought the biggest part of it out.
What happened in the DVD case?
DVDs are technologies that have a bit of code called CSS
that encrypts the DVD movie so that only unauthorized players can play it.
DCSS is a bit of code that cracks that encryption system.
To what end?
It's not as if the objective or any evidence was offered
that the people who were prosecuted in this case were taking DVD movies
and, quote, pirating them.
They weren't distributing anything illegally.
What it did was make it possible for someone with a Linux computer
to take the disc and put it in their computer and play it,
a disc which they presumably bought.
So where's the theft in that story?
Where's the pirating in that story?
What's happened is Washington Speak has transformed people's ability
to use copyrighted material in ways different from Hollywood's desire
into what's so simple for everybody to understand,
the American way of protecting private property.
But it isn't that.
That's the point.
It's not theft.
It's about free use of the content.
What's the complaint that you have
that somebody plays this on a Linux machine?
When you say Hollywood, let's understand what we're talking about.
We're talking about 95,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild,
10,000 members of the Writers Guild,
9,000 members of the Directors Guild.
We're talking about all the people who work in the movie industry.
There are many creative people, and they believe,
and I think not without some reason,
that their property in which they make a living off of
ought not be devoured or used in a way that they don't approve of.
It's their property.
It's not property, Jack.
It's just not property.
It's not property in any sense of what we ordinarily mean,
and no justification exists for protecting it as you protect your car.
If you don't have a fair use right to use my car, that's right.
You have no right to get into my car and drive it around the block
and say, oh, I'm just taking advantage of your car without my permission.
That's what we talk about when we talk about property.
Intellectual, quote, property is not that.
The very same Constitution that gives Congress the power to set up,
restricts Congress by saying,
if Congress takes property, it must pay for the taking of the property.
That's in the Constitution.
Fifth Amendment. I know about it.
The very same Constitution says Congress cannot create
what you call intellectual property unless it guarantees
that after a limited time, it gets turned over to the public.
The very same Constitution says you must turn it over to the public
for limited times.
Now, in the first 100 years of Congress's life,
they changed the term of copyright once,
and in the next 50 years, they changed it once again.
In my lifetime, they've changed the term of copyright 11 times.
Under the limited times clause,
every time Mickey Mouse is about to fall into the public domain,
logically, there's some excuse.
The Europeans made us do it for extending the term of copyright.
Now, how is that consistent with this requirement?
Let me answer you, I will.
I'll give you two answers.
Answer number one is the word limited.
Now, what do you suppose that the founding fathers put on there?
If they wanted to say 14 years, they would have said it.
Correct?
They said limited.
Now, we can say that depends on what the word is,
but limited time could mean 90 years or it could be 5 years.
A thousand years, is that a limited time?
Why don't you just pick a number?
You're doing the same thing.
You picked out 14.
Actually, the Congressmen don't know.
Let me get my other answer to you.
If you believe you're right,
and you're a distinguished professor of law,
and when I go to law school, I would like to have you teach me,
why is it that every court that has confronted this issue
takes issue with you?
Only one has, and we're appealing their decision on Thursday.
Well, I think there's several courts.
Listen, if some court at the Ninth Circuit overturns Napster,
so be it, then we'll just have to figure out something else.
Right now, every court that has examined this issue from all of its aspects
has taken issue with it.
In the introduction of the Copyright Term Extension Act,
the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act,
Mary Bono, Congressman Bono,
said that you would propose the copyright term of forever minus a day.
Is that limited times?
Limited means a specific amount of time,
and that's what the Congress has done, Larry.
Is that a limited time, though?
I beg your pardon?
Is forever minus a day a limited time?
I said earlier that I didn't think any law is lapidary.
The Constitution has been, what, almost 27 times has been amended,
and that's what this free and loving land does from time to time.
But we haven't amended this part of the Constitution yet,
so I want to know, is that a limited time?
Well, I'm not clear of what you're saying.
Okay, that was a repeating theme, Jack Valenti,
not being clear what people were saying.
But, boy, that was a lively discussion
that went on for about an hour and a half or so,
and that was my confrontation with Jack Valenti.
What do you think, Isaac?
You were laughing hysterically before.
There were parts in there that were pretty funny.
It was some priceless gems,
but also pretty damn scary, too,
when you think that the things he's saying actually are coming to be.
Well, it gives...
Have the weight of law behind them.
It's somewhat disquieting that he genuinely does not understand
what the intent of copyright law is
and just how far it was meant to go.
How was he wrong as far as the intent of copyright law?
Well, all right, you want to go way back to Jeffersonian understanding?
Just in a couple of sentences.
We don't have to do a whole American history thing here.
Well, it's an important thing to do
if you actually want to understand what's going on.
Jefferson was originally all for having no such thing as copyright.
He was one of the dissenting members of some of the first people...
That's right.
He's even quoted in 2600, this issue, as saying just that.
But he basically got smacked on the back of the head
and realized that it's necessary to protect the interest of the author
so as to compel him to continue to write,
or just about any artist.
You have to give him some brief period in which he can monopolize his work
so he can manage to continue his work later on.
So he said somewhere on the order of 5 to 15 years.
Well, it seems to have jumped from 15 years to 30 years
to 50 years to 75 years to the lifetime of the author,
which I thought was always really amusing
because the idea of copyright is to compel the author
to continue writing his works.
The man is dead.
How does a continued monopoly over his work
up until the point where he is dead
give him the means by which he can continue to produce his work?
He can't.
And that turned into 75 years after he's dead.
What I find amazing is that Jack Valente goes up there
and says that this is to protect the author, the creative person.
And 19 times out of 20,
they're not the ones that have any control over their work at all,
probably a lot more than that.
He's talking for the motion picture industry's interest,
not for the author, for the creative people, for the business aspect.
But the creative people did, in fact, monopolize on their creation
and sold it, and that was their exercise in their copyright.
Well, I'd like to know of a single...
I'm sure there are some very successful musicians
that are able to hold on to their...
There are plenty of them.
When I see David Bowie songs being used for stock trades
and John Lennon songs being used to sell telephone systems,
you have to wonder, the most successful musicians
don't always seem to maintain control over their artwork,
and it winds up in the hands of big business.
Now, these are the people who...
He should just be honest about that and say,
those are the interests we're protecting.
It's not the artists, it's not these creative people,
because I don't see them coming up and testifying
unless they have the backing of big business behind them,
unless it's somebody who's already way up there,
like Metallica.
I don't see new artists saying that we need
these kind of controls to protect their interests.
Well, pause a moment for your David Bowie argument.
You seem to think that Mr. Bowie is upset
that his work is being used in specific ways.
I don't know.
I don't think he has any control over it.
I don't think he owns his music anymore.
OK, well, that's...
But that's the point.
The point is, the way Valente poses this whole premise
is that these artists are the ones being victimized
because their work is under their control,
but it's being taken by these roving bands of pirates
that are going around copying everything.
That's not the case at all,
because they no longer even have rights to their own works.
It's not even their own work in the eyes of business.
So, I don't know.
I think the whole industry is really pretty messed up
to start with.
Well, it's an industry that was based on
allowing individuals to allow themselves
to collect on their works.
This is an industry based on copyright law.
But it's not...
Which was supposed to be for the individual
to continue to go about his artistry.
But let us not delude ourselves and say that DMCA
is there to protect artists,
because it is not there to protect artists.
I fail to see that in any conception.
It's there...
It's there to protect the copyright holder.
The copyright holder, correct.
Whether it be the artist,
or whoever happens to own the copyright
after the transaction.
Well, in the case of films and...
It's called first sale.
And, you know, mass market music,
it's very rarely the artist that has control over that.
Which is their choice.
Well, I don't know.
You don't have to accept $5 million
to make your single onto...
You might want to get Courtney Love in here
and have her tell us if it's their choice.
I don't want to hear Courtney Love.
She's going to be so hurt to hear that.
Well, fine.
She's in the other room.
Well, after the show we can meet and talk,
but I really have no interest in listening to her rant
for 45 minutes.
She's editing in the other room.
Okay, we'll talk to her afterwards.
A couple of other things.
I'm going to take some phone calls.
212-209-2900 on this and other issues.
I hear about the case of the cyber squatter
being told to give up his AltaVista sites.
Basically, sites known as ActaVista,
AliaVista, AtaVista, and AntaVista
are registered in bad faith
according to the UN's WIPO panel.
And they said that this guy
who has addresses in Panama and Latvia
must give up 43 domain names.
Is he the one who has AtlaVista?
A-T-L-A-V-I-S-T-A?
Yeah, I think that's one of them.
I've been there a few times.
How about AstaVista?
You know, I don't know.
They're a whole different ball of wax.
That's a whole different thing.
Yeah.
Well, basically they're saying
that the Geneva-based
World Intellectual Property Organization,
which runs an arbitration system
to evict cyber squatters or net users
who register famous names
in the hope of making a quick buck,
they said the names were confusingly similar
to the AltaVista trademark.
And apparently that was enough right there.
Well, how can you argue that, you know,
A-L-T-A-V-S-I-T-A
is something that someone would try to visit
other than trying to trap someone
by making a typo?
Well, okay, does that mean
that we're entitled to 260.com and 26,000.com
and 2,500.com?
No, I don't think you're entitled to them.
I think you should be registering them
and making sure that you continue to own them.
Otherwise, someone else can grab them.
Are you saying that if you have a long name,
you have to register every possible typo
that you could...
I mean, do you know how many names that is?
Do you know how much money the registrars will make?
If it really bothers you,
you should be going about that.
No, let other people do it and then sue them.
Okay.
Well, that's a different tactic, yeah.
What happens if somebody else does it?
You know, somebody else registers it instead.
The only thing I think they should be
held accountable for
is if they pretend that they're you.
Period.
If they're not pretending they're you,
what's the problem?
Someone obviously types something.
It's the whole thing
with the Guinness record site that we have.
It's spelled with one N instead of two.
Theirs is spelled with two Ns.
Ours is spelled with one.
We make it clear we're not them.
It's a parity site.
We registered it to make a point.
And, of course, now they're trying to use legal means
to pry it from our hands.
But regardless of what WIPO says,
I believe parity is a protected thing.
And you can spell something similarly
to make it look the same.
But you shouldn't try and make people think
that they're someplace they're not.
And I don't think we were trying to do that.
Oh, and by the way,
we didn't get to talk about this last week.
This is something that happened two weeks ago.
General Motors has now joined the list of people
that are threatening us with lawsuits
based on one of our sites.
Well, it's this site that we just had lying around.
It's got the nasty four-letter word
followed by GeneralMotors.com.
And they say that's a dilution of their trademark.
Now, I really doubt that they were going to use that site
to further their trademark.
And I think it's pretty obvious that such a site
with a four-letter word in front of their name
is there to criticize them or to, say,
have a complaint line,
whatever you might want to put on a sign like that.
It's similar to GeneralMotorsSucks.com,
which we don't have.
Well, I think that they wanted to register
TrucksGeneralMotors.com,
and it was confusingly similar.
Yeah, whatever.
But the point is...
That's a two-point excuse. I like that.
They can go whistle for it
because they're not going to get it from us.
Well, how long have you had it?
Over a year.
Have you put up this complaint board?
No. Basically, we haven't done anything with it.
It's just been sitting there.
I mean, they must have found it on their own.
Can you prove intent to put up this complaint board?
Well, we haven't tried to make people think it's them.
Hey, I'm just asking the questions
that they're going to ask six months from now
if they drag into court.
It's a site we've had in reserve along with other ones.
There's other ones out there, too.
So you're working on a complaint-based software
which you can put on display.
As we said on the website,
if someone out there has a site like this
that they'd like to run,
we will gladly point to them.
Again, send us email.
We'd love to see it.
OTH at 2600.com is the email for this radio show.
Claude, you're motioning.
Do you have something to say or are you just fidgeting?
Just fidgeting.
Okay.
I could want to speak at any moment.
All right.
I'll leave your mic down there
so we'll hear you if you start talking.
All right.
A bill approved Monday
would make a monthly surcharge on phone bills
go the way of the rotary dial.
This is in New Jersey.
It's about bloody time.
Telephone companies now charge customers a fee
for having touch-tone telephones.
Can you believe that?
It's going away?
In New Jersey.
In some cases, that fee is $1 a month
and up to $2 for businesses.
State law allowed the surcharge.
Just another example
of how people get ripped off all the time.
They allowed the surcharge
as a way for telephone companies
to recoup costs associated with installing
the once state-of-the-art telephones.
Telephones?
Telephone switches.
Yeah.
But now that touch-tone phones are ubiquitous,
assembly members voted to cut the fee.
Isn't that nice?
It's $2,000,
and people have had touch-tone phones now.
If you refuse to pay that fee,
touch-tone dying will still work on your line.
No, that's not true, actually.
That's not true
because they can program the switch
to ignore touch-tones.
They can, but they don't
in at least one experience of someone I know.
Well, I know back in the days of Crossbar,
and you can trace it
through the history of this show
because we used to have a Crossbar switch.
We would have a phone
that was not paying for touch-tones,
but since the Crossbar switch was primitive,
it couldn't tell who was paying and who wasn't,
so everybody got it.
Electronic switching, though,
they had the ability to differentiate
between those who were paying
and those who weren't,
and they simply programmed their computer
to ignore the touch-tones
of the people that didn't pay.
Gosh golly, you had to flip a little switch
on your brand-new phone that says rotary?
Well, yeah, that's one way around it,
but obviously you were being ripped off.
You were being denied a service
that was a basic service.
It went away in New York some years ago.
I was surprised to hear
that it was still in New Jersey,
but it's finally going away,
but people feel like
that accomplishes something.
It should never have been there to start with.
Claude, now you really want to say something.
Yeah, now I am,
but I believe you said yourself
that the pulse dialing
is converted in a machinery into tones.
I mean, it's an entirely spiritual...
Different tones.
Back in the day of in-band signaling,
it would be converted into MF tones.
Right.
Yeah, everything would be touch-tone,
rotary dial, whatever.
They really didn't approve of you using MF tones.
It's known as blue-boxing.
Uh-huh.
So I don't think we'll see those
approved any time soon.
Not that they work anyway.
Not anymore.
Okay, also, just in case you think
everything's all peachy keen,
citing the potential for consumer rate shock
and other concerns,
the New Jersey State Board of Public Utilities
yesterday put on hold a proposal
by Verizon New Jersey
to double local phone charges.
Isn't that great?
They take away one charge,
and then they do this.
What is rate shock?
I don't know.
I think it's when your $20 bill
turns into a $40 bill.
No, it's a $20 bill
turning into a $10 bill.
At issue is Verizon's request
for permission to scrap
currently regulated local calling rates
now set at $8.19 a month
in favor of a choice of plans
priced at $15, $16, and $17.50 a month.
The new rates would remain in effect
for two years,
after which the company would be free
to set prices at market levels.
So that's progress for you right there.
What a choice.
What a choice indeed.
Okay, anything else going on?
Isaac, you have a couple
of news items over there.
Yes, I was past these little bits
and pieces here.
Cybercrime treaty targets hackers
from MSNBC.
Uh-huh.
Remember way back when
I mentioned ILITS?
Okay.
It's an obscure acronym
in regards to the FBI
basically having a big picnic
for various law enforcement agencies
from Europe down in South Carolina?
Uh-huh.
Well, this is the product of that.
All right.
It took a little while to come out with.
So what are some of the highlights
we have to look forward to?
Well, basically, let's see.
I wish I had a highlighter here.
You know FIDOR?
He wrote a little tool called NMAP.
It's a wonderful little...
I know NMAP, yes.
You know NMAP, okay.
Well, he wrote it.
And basically, it's a wonderful little tool
that allows you to port scan
a particular target
and see what's available
that you could close off.
I tried it on the White House last night.
You tried it on the White House last night?
Yes.
Okay, well...
There's nothing wrong
with port scanning the White House.
I'm sorry.
There isn't.
I'm not even going to touch that issue.
How could there be?
I mean, basically,
you're just looking at their sites
and, you know, it's there.
It's a public eye.
It's right out there.
It's not behind passwords
or anything like that.
I'm not touching that issue at all.
It's like taking a picture
of the White House.
For God's sake.
We're losing our minds here.
You're not causing any traffic
on their site.
You're not slowing things down.
You're not ping flooding them.
It's nothing like that.
Well, we can argue that some other time.
I'll show you the results too.
I don't think I want to know.
You said before the show
that you wanted to...
Oh, okay.
We'll talk about it later.
Wow, I just keep getting
further and further incriminated
in this one.
Yeah.
Anyway, it's a tool
that both administrators
and, you know,
actual hackers use.
I mean, you can either
target it at your own system
or target it at someone else's system.
It's a completely legitimate service.
It's a tool.
And, basically,
possessing this thing,
out the window,
writing it,
Fido is in trouble, man,
if he does another release.
So this is something
that's being formulated in Europe now.
It sounds remarkably similar
to DMCA, doesn't it?
Well, it's in that
whole vein of...
Possessing a program
will be illegal.
Possessing a tool
will be illegal.
Yeah, they tried that
a year and a half.
They tried to have a law
very similar to this
outlawing reverse engineering tools
and hacking tools.
And it got, basically,
laughed off the floor
because it wasn't ready yet.
They weren't.
Where is this?
In the United States?
They actually laughed
that off the floor.
Well, I mean,
it didn't get very far.
And I can look up
the references for that.
Because when this came out,
this is basically,
word for word,
what the proposed legislation here
was going to be.
Which is reasonable
because it was the
wonderful United States
Justice Department
who coached
all of these European nations
into coming up with
this wonderful little treaty.
So now, through things like WTO,
we'll be forced,
even if our Congress
doesn't agree,
which I think they probably will
in the end anyway,
to go along with these crazy...
What, the House voted for it?
No, it's a treaty.
Oh, I see, I see.
Gratified by the Senate.
You know,
banning these tools
sounds like an unreasonable
restraint on trade.
I think we should challenge
this treaty under the WTO.
I can't do trade as efficiently
if I can't use these tools.
You know, I kind of like that.
All right, you guys work on that later.
That's got a possibility.
They also mentioned
this gun thing here,
but we agreed earlier
that we're not going to touch that.
We only have a one-hour show.
Oh, okay.
If we bring guns into it,
it's going to take a few more hours.
And then,
you also passed me
this Og Vorbis thing.
It's an alternative
to the MP3 file format.
Now, a lot of people
seem to think that MP3
is a wide-open,
freebie kind of deal.
And also,
as mentioned on the show,
there's a particular university,
Fraunhofer,
which basically owns
the rights via a patent
to the encoding technology
and everything else.
And they seem to think
that they're going to
charge some fees for this
by sometime at the end of the year.
Oh, boy.
$5 per unit for an encoder,
$0.50 per hardware sale.
Digital download sites
will pay 1% of the price charge
to the listener.
And there is a $15,000
minimum licensing fee
for every company.
Now...
How does this affect us
with our MP3s?
Well, quite concisely,
I'll say they're
out of their minds.
Yeah, I think they're
out of their minds.
If they think they're going
to get any of this.
I mean,
even if you had a judge
that was your best buddy,
they would...
There's already
a good amount of...
Motion to ignore.
We'll just ignore this one for now
and see if it comes back later.
But anyway,
the idea is that
this wonderful Vorbis thing
is going to come
and it's going to rescue MP3
and I think it's not going
to go very far
because it's just
another one of those
alternate MP3
free open source GPL,
you know,
not quite going to be any...
I don't know about that.
I mean...
It's not going to happen.
I have to say that
I've listened to the
Og Vorbis compression
and it is, in some ways,
better than MP3 compression.
And it's smaller, too.
Yeah.
And it's smaller, too.
And not that MP3 compression
is stellar by any means.
No.
And MP3 is the...
They're both
lossy compression schemes
but this one is unhindered
by licensing
and they've stated
from the beginning
that you can do
whatever you want
with it forever.
Well, I think that's...
Presuming you abide
by the GPL restrictions.
Right there.
That's the winner.
But admittedly,
you know,
MP3 is...
You're waving my hand.
Well, it's just
we only have a few minutes
so we don't have time
for a protected debate on this.
Well, I'm kind of going into
a technical argument
but that's okay.
Microsoft is at it again
with all kinds
of security problems.
Basically,
you probably heard
on the news
about Microsoft
being victim to a hacker.
Yeah.
There was a whole hoopla
over the weekend
where first
they had this hacker
who broke in
and stole all
of Windows 2000
and then they turned out
that they didn't steal
any Windows 2000
and then it turned into...
Well, they didn't modify
Windows 2000
before it released
so you don't have
any back doors
to the things
he's paid of.
It turns out
they knew about the hacker
all along.
They were just watching
and the whole thing.
And they were watching it
but they...
I find it odd
that within the same breath
this person claimed,
Microsoft representative
claimed that they were
watching him at every turn
but they're not sure
if he managed
to do anything
to what he managed
to get.
So,
they were watching him
like a hawk
but they don't know
what he was doing.
Kind of doesn't jive
if you know what I mean.
All I know is
that if they actually
have sensitive things
available on the net
they're even bigger morons
than I thought they were.
You get into
the corporate intranet
and you roll around
in there.
Yeah,
but I mean
to have something like that
go on and not be detected
and to have some harm
actually come to the company
I have no sympathy
for that kind of a thing
at all.
They were warned about
this kind of thing
months ago.
Repeatedly.
Now,
something else
also interesting
is happening
with domain listings.
I don't know
if you've noticed this
but if you do
you'll see
little messages
that say things like
Microsoft.com
is secretly run
by Illuminati
terrorist.net
Microsoft.com
is at the mercy
of detriment.org
Microsoft.com
inspires.copycat.wannabe.subversives.net
Now,
I'm told that
What is this?
Basically,
what you do
is you register
an address
as a name server
and then it shows up
on the who is.
You have to go through
rs.intranet.net
so right now
if you're online
and you type
if you have a
username
if you have
the normal who is
whois-h
to specify
the who is
server you go through
whois-h
rs.intranet.net
and then type
aol.com
for instance
is another one
or microsoft.com
you'll get a list
and you can take a look
at it over there.
You'll get a list
of all the different
name servers
that have been
registered
with that
and a lot of them
are kind of goofy ones.
I haven't tried
this myself.
Oh,
people are just
registering hosts.
Yeah.
But apparently
this is a new sport.
It just started
in the last week
because I've been
getting mail about this
all over the place.
Well,
what good is this?
It's a lot of
if you do a who is
and you see
all these crazy
messages
I don't know.
They're needlessly
filling the database.
According to the
mass media
it's hacking
but who knows.
Okay.
We're quickly
running out of time
so let's
move on really
fast here.
Let's see.
National Association
Mike,
what do you know
about that?
Well,
as far as I can tell
he's the only
candidate to
speak out
against.
They have a bill
to prevent
the creation
of low power
community based
FM radio stations.
The FCC opposes
the bill
and supports
the stations.
The National
Council of Churches
opposes the bill
and supports
the stations
so when
people like us
and the National
Council of Churches
and National
Association of
Broadcasters
and National
Public Radio
they've lost
sight and they're
hogging the bandwidth
and they have no
right to.
So,
listeners should
call and write
their senators
because if the
bill passed the
house it's now
going to the
senate.
Tell them to
vote against
the bill
to stop
low power
FM.
Okay.
I'm also told
there's a
fundraiser
going on
and in fact
one of them
is our own
shape shifter
who does
layout for
2600.
The trial
will be two
weeks from
today in
Philadelphia.
We'll have
more details
for you next
week on that
but the
fundraiser is
taking place
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
happening
next Monday
November 6th
at Fergie's
Pub 1214
Sansom Street
in Philadelphia.
It goes from
6 to 8 p.m.
and it's
On Saturday, November 11th, from midnight to 2 a.m., the women of hip-hop are taking
over the Underground Railroad.
Join me, DJ Mecca, as we explore the vital female presence in hip-hop culture.
We'll have some top female MCs live in the studio, and our special guest DJs will showcase
all the hottest ladies on the scene, so tune in to this special edition of the Underground
Railroad as we inject some much-needed estrogen into the hip-hop bloodstream, Saturday night
from midnight to 2 a.m. on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
On Saturday, November 18th, year 2000, from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., WBAI in New York City, 99.5
on your FM dial, is proud to present a Stevie Wonder holiday broadcast.
Tune in for some new musical thunder from one of God's greatest and most gifted natural
wonders as we move further into a new millennium.
I'm just so thrilled to be here, over here in America.
I'm so glad y'all took me out of die, homie.
I used to live to be 150, now I die of high blood pressure by the time I'm 52.
Richard Pryor, comedian, social commentator, and one of the most compelling figures of
the 20th century, will be the focus of a Midnight Ravers uncensored special, this Friday, November
3rd, from midnight to 3 a.m.
We are gathered here today to celebrate this year of bicentenniality.
We're celebrating 200 years of white folks kicking ass.
That's this Friday, November 3rd, from midnight to 3 a.m., only on listener-sponsored, non-commercial
radio in New York City, WBAI.