Protests of qualified listeners will be burned or thrown in the river at the discretion of
the Atlantica Board.
Will there be a contest period?
The Atlantica Radio Empire bylaws say a listener wishing to contest an Atlantica Radio Empire
mandated personnel change will be allowed to wrestle a 200-pound Tallahassee alligator
to determine if there's any merit to the listener's complaint.
Would the U.S. Supreme Court have jurisdiction?
Only if you can provide employment at a law firm for a family member of a judge.
Now, will I be taken out and shot if I object to this takeover of my radio station by the
Atlantica Radio Empire?
No.
Why would we take you anywhere?
Thank you, Atlantica.
We interrupt this...
No, no, no, no, no.
Enough of that.
And you're listening to Atlantica Radio in New York.
This is Pacifica Radio in New York.
I'm sorry.
Well, it was very confusing.
WBAI, New York.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
example, 99.5 FM, we're broadcast from the top of
the Empire State Building, you know, you have no
trouble reaching us in the entire tri-state area, or
we have no trouble reaching you, that is.
Third adjacency, well, the first adjacency to that
would be 99.3 and 99.7, so you could not put a
station there.
Second adjacency, 99.1 and 99.9, couldn't put a
station there either.
Third adjacency is, I lost track, 98.9, it's absurdly
far away for a station that's 10 watts or even up
to 100 watts, there's no way a station like that is
going to interfere with the radio station of our power
and really any power, even a moderately powered
station would not, by any FM radio I've ever seen in
my entire life, there would be no interference.
Yet, the National Association of Broadcasters
and National Public Radio and all kinds of other
people have been complaining that that isn't
exactly what would happen.
And I've seen reports from radio engineers that said
that basically a lot of hogwash, that that's most
definitely not going to be a problem.
Assuming the transmitters are being well maintained
and regulated.
Well, obviously you have to assume that, you know,
people follow the law, that's how laws are written,
you know, and in this case, you know, basically they
said third adjacency, it was overkill as far as I'm
concerned.
I think you could easily put a station in second
adjacency and not have any kind of a problem.
For the NAB, NPR, it wasn't enough.
And they lobbied long and hard.
Through the first couple of paragraphs of the story,
you'll get the whole depressing outlook right
out there.
Tucked away in the budget legislation that President
Clinton will soon sign, and this is the same guy that
said he would veto this, you'll find out why he's
not going to veto this in a moment.
It's a provision sought by the nation's largest
broadcasters that sharply curtails the ambitious
plans of the Federal Communications Commission
to issue licenses for low power FM radio stations to
a thousand or more schools, churches, and other small
community organizations.
The provision by setting new technical standards and
repealing those already determined by the FCC makes
it all but impossible for licenses to be issued in
cities of even modest size.
Officials say that the tough standards will mean
that at most a handful of stations in the least
populated parts of the country may be started,
although even that is now uncertain.
Taking a direct slap at the regulators,
the new law shifts the policymaking authority from
the FCC to Congress to set standards and issue
licenses for low power FM radio stations.
The FCC doesn't even have the right to say what's
technically possible anymore.
It's now your congressman that says this.
Unbelievable.
This is the first time in recent memory that the
lawmakers actually stripped the agency of the power to
manage an important part of the spectrum.
It makes me sick really to see this kind of thing
going on and to think that all these broadcasters
will be silenced as a result of the successful
lobbying by the multi-million dollar businesses
that currently control the FM spectrum.
Organizations like Clear Channel owning more than a
thousand radio stations.
These are the people that have to be protected against
the 10 watt station that might somehow interfere
with them three frequencies away.
It's simply unbelievable.
If anybody has ever, and I issue this as a challenge,
if anybody has ever detected interference to a
50,000 watt or 100,000 watt radio station by a 10
watt or 100 watt radio station three positions
away, I want to see it.
I will go to wherever this is to witness this amazing
phenomenon, but it just simply is not possible.
Now, here's something else though that really is kind
of like the utter irony here.
Something that we did after the show last week.
Remember we went, I showed you that new internet cafe
with thousands of terminals.
They got a book out of me too.
Yeah, you paid a dollar for five hours.
I thought it was three hours, but it's actually five hours.
Boy.
Well, we'll get to that later.
That's a whole adventure in itself, but we mentioned
this briefly last year.
I don't know if anybody remembers this, but we were
trying to figure out, actually a listener told us
about this, that at 88.1 on the dial in Times Square,
for some reason, they were hearing MTV.
Yeah, they were hearing MTV on 88.1 FM.
So I've been going over there a few times over the last
couple of months, and you know that station is still there.
It doesn't only play MTV, it plays Nickelodeon,
it plays TV land, it plays all kinds of Viacom programming.
And the Viacom.
Interestingly, Viacom has a large building in Times Square.
In fact, their big building is right there in Times Square.
I've asked many times, many different Viacom people
about this, including the receptionist,
we can get to occasionally if you hit enough buttons.
They know nothing about this.
Nobody knows anything about this.
Yet, there is a radio station there, and I looked up
FCC records, there's a 10 watt license.
Now, interesting how a 10 watt license was issued
in the middle of New York City for a low power FM radio
station that's being used by a major corporation like
Viacom.
And not only that, but Viacom is breaking the law
by using it because they're broadcasting commercials
on the non-commercial band,
which is 88 to 92 on the FM dial.
You will not hear commercials there.
You're not supposed to hear commercials there.
Now, of course, the FCC has been stripped of their
regulatory power by Congress.
Maybe they're just going to overlook that now.
Who knows?
But the fact of the matter is there is a radio station
there that under current law is operating illegally.
Nobody's touching them.
You can get this station for about, I'd say eight blocks
in all directions from the middle of Times Square,
which doesn't seem like a very large area,
but when you consider the number of people that come in
and out of that area on a typical day,
millions of people can hear this radio station.
Now, organizations that have been trying to get low power
FM stations are told that there's no way,
not even in moderately sized cities,
that you can have a voice.
Well, I'd like to know if these people,
these same people that are applying for these LPFM stations
would accept a 10 watt station in the middle of Times Square
that broadcasts seven or eight blocks in every direction.
I think they would.
I think they'd take that deal.
Why was that deal given to Viacom?
Why has nobody done anything about this?
I call on our listeners to help us out here
because we're only a few people,
but you're a lot of people and you have a lot of connections
and you can start asking some questions.
Go down to Times Square yourself, tune to 88.1.
You'll see what we're talking about.
Something really, really bad is going on here
where basically the rights of people are overlooked
and the law is just flagrantly broken.
Nothing happens to the violators.
And meanwhile, people who just want to broadcast,
who want to broadcast good, honest, non-commercial radio,
they're being shut out.
They're being told, sorry, there's no room for you.
It's a scandal.
Have you contacted FCC enforcement yet?
I've tried.
You only get an answering machine at best.
You have to hit a bunch of buttons
to even get to that point,
but getting a person at FCC is very difficult.
You really have to go down and visit them.
Maybe somebody out there has a number
that actually rings through to a person,
but any person I've ever gotten at FCC
has always referred me to a computer.
They say, call this number
and maneuver the voicemail system.
So I don't know.
I don't know if we'll get any answers directly from them,
but those are the facts.
You can look this up on the web.
You'll see there's a license for a 10-watt station, 88.1.
It doesn't say who owns the license,
which is kind of fishy in itself.
It was 10 watts, New York, New York, 88.1.
And if you go to Times Square,
you will hear probably right now.
We went there last week and it was silent.
They were playing around with something,
but they were playing-
It was quiet and it was interesting.
It was quiet, but then they played some audio
for a couple of seconds and then they stopped.
But I've been there before and I've heard a simulcast.
Imagine MTV on the FM bandwidth,
on the non-commercial FM bandwidth.
How insulting is that?
Or hearing the Brady Bunch.
I've driven by there and I've heard the Brady Bunch
on the radio.
What's that doing there?
And know what?
It's not something like Channel 6 at 87.7.
I know about that.
People have said, no, you must be listening
to the TV on Channel 6.
First of all, we don't have a Channel 6 in this city.
Second of all, it's most definitely 88.1.
And simply by going up one position,
you can verify that because there's 88.3, WBGO and Newark.
And hey, how about those guys?
Aren't they being interfered with?
I mean, we're not talking about a third adjacency here.
Now we're talking about a first adjacency.
The next station over, no problem.
Yeah, we'll just put a station there
and it's not gonna interfere.
I don't think anybody has been complaining
that WBGO can't be heard.
But the fact of the matter is they break their own rules
and they put these things there and they overlook it.
So we need answers.
We need a lot of answers on these things.
And this whole LPFM, it's a scandal.
It really is.
I don't know where we're gonna go from here
because a lot of pirate radio stations,
so-called pirate radio stations have gone off the air
in anticipation of getting an LPFM license.
And now basically they've been lied to.
The door has been closed in their face
and they're not getting anything.
And they've taken their stations off the air
in anticipation of getting these new legal licenses.
Where is this going to lead?
It's probably gonna lead to all kinds
of mayhem on the airwaves.
And maybe that's the only way to deal with this situation
because an FM license, an AM license
is not something that you own.
It's something that you borrow,
something that you're granted.
The electromagnetic spectrum
is not something you can buy into.
It's the public airwaves.
And the public has got to realize
that these stations do not have the right to be there.
They're there because you let them be there.
And don't let Congress get away with this.
They're basically selling out.
They're selling out portions of the electromagnetic spectrum
to the highest bidder and pocketing the change.
Call your congressmen.
Yeah.
We don't care what you call them.
Just call them fast.
The FCC chairman who, I mean,
I'm not a particularly huge fan of the FCC in most times,
but he said, this is a resource that everyone has to share.
We can't allow people who have the spectrum
to use their political clout to shut out voices
that don't have the same clout.
This highlights the power of incumbency,
companies that have spectrum guarded jealously,
and they can use Congress to prevent new voices
from having access to the airwaves.
That's the FCC chairman.
William Kennard gets it.
Bill Kennard, yeah.
I like him.
Yeah, I like him too.
He gets it.
He understands the importance of this,
at least this particular aspect of it.
And he tried.
He tried really hard to do this.
Look what he got in exchange for this.
The FCC stripped of its power.
I can't believe I'm defending the FCC on the air,
but I am.
They've been stripped of their power by Congress.
Now, Clinton said he would veto anything
that would hurt LPFM, but the way they wrapped this,
they put it in some kind of major budget appropriations bill
or something, so it's too small a thing for him to veto.
Well, maybe if he gets a few thousand phone calls,
he'll change his mind on that.
202-456-1414, that's the White House.
So I'm pretty upset by this, I really am.
Also in this wonderful budget bill,
all public libraries that get federal funding
are going to have to install internet filtering software.
Oh, lovely.
That's just great.
Yeah, who's internet filtering?
It's not mandated in the bill.
Oh, great.
None of them are any good.
I think it's time for me to release
the Isaac internet filter, which just removes the letter E
and then replaces it later on.
How about we have a filtering software thing
that just cuts off any access to governmental websites?
No, no, no.
It has to filter out things.
Well, the people who write these bills.
I mean, I'd like to prevent people from seeing this.
It has to filter out things that are visual depictions
that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors.
All right, now who determines what's harmful to minors?
There's a definition somewhere.
Yeah, you find that, and I'll tell the story
about what happened to us last week after the show
where we went over to that big easy everything place.
Is that what they call it?
Yeah, I think so.
Huge internet cafe that's selling internet access
way below cost, probably going to drive everybody
out of business before they raise their rates.
A dollar for five hours.
I mean, come on.
I remember paying $10 for one hour at normal places
not too long ago.
They basically just have, I say, close to 1,000 terminals.
Right, wouldn't you say it's about that?
The spec on the web was like 1,078 or something like that.
Unbelievable amount of access.
And they have rent in Times Square.
It must be really expensive.
They have bandwidth.
They have all kinds of costs,
and they're advertising everywhere.
Well, we went there.
We played with the terminals for a little bit.
And well, it's not something we meant to do,
but it happened where the machine rebooted.
Whoops.
Yeah, well, it happens, right?
When you play with computers, they reboot.
And these aren't Macintoshes.
These are like regular, what are they running?
Windows 98 or something?
Win 98 or something like that.
So it rebooted.
We had some sort of a choice
in the little diagnostic menu that comes up.
That's to boot from the network or boot from the hard drive.
And we decided to boot from the hard drive.
Now, we had been rummaging around the net,
looking at various sites.
And of course, 2600 was one of them.
We went to the 2600 site after rebooting,
and all of a sudden, we couldn't get there.
It was forbidden by this web filtering software
that had their address on it.
It had Easy Everything's address on it.
And they said that you're not allowed to look at this site
because it has to do with hacking.
The manufacturer of the software is WebSense.
WebSense?
Okay.
Well, I was fit to be tied at that point.
I mean, you know, I guess I never felt this before,
but when you're restricted,
when you can't look at something that you want to look at,
especially if it's something of yours,
and it's being categorized in a way
that is completely unfair,
you just basically want to start ripping things apart.
I mean, I was almost at that stage.
I recall.
Yeah, well, fortunately,
we decided on a more technical solution.
We said, well, you know,
this worked only a few minutes ago.
Now, either somebody is watching us
and messing with our heads,
or we somehow fell into this.
Triggered this.
Yeah, so we rebooted again.
All right, this time we came off the network,
and it worked fine.
We were able to get through.
Yeah, it actually rebuilt the drive,
and then did some kind of silly thing there.
But then we rebooted yet another time,
this time off the drive again,
to see if we could replicate what we had done the first time.
We weren't able to do it.
It wouldn't happen, yeah.
But the thing that really is troubling here
is that they do have this web filtering software,
because it has their name on it.
But it wasn't in use.
It wasn't in use, but it could be turned on
at a moment's notice.
And when it is turned on,
that means our site is going to be blocked
because it has something to do with hacking.
And I just find that so offensive.
How dare they say that you're not allowed to...
I mean, look at our website.
We don't have burglary tools on there.
We don't have stolen information.
We basically have news stories.
We have copies of this radio show.
We have all kinds of interesting information
that's got nothing to do with anything illegal.
It simply is a source of information.
I mean, CNN links to us.
And to just be categorized,
lumped into this criminal activity
because of what we talk about, it's really offensive.
So basically, I'd like to find out more
about these filtering programs
and how many of them block us and why they block us
and kind of declare war on it, you know?
Challenge each and every one of these people
and make them realize that blocking sites
based on not liking the subject matter
is, I'd say far and away, the wrong thing to do.
And their customers have to let them know that as well.
So please write to us if you know of things like that,
oth at 2600.com.
We'd sure like to find out more about it.
But that was my first experience with that.
Of course, I was able to get around it pretty easily
just by using my anonymous proxy,
but that's not the point.
The point is, lots of people can't look at your site
as a result of that.
And it's really, it's a horrible form of censorship
that pretty much cuts you off.
And this bill, did you find more information
on what constitutes objectionable material?
The term harmful to minors means any picture,
image, or graphic image file,
just to disambiguate any of them,
that taken as a whole and with respect to minors
appeals to a pure interest in nudity, sex, or excretion,
depicts, describes, or represents
in a patently offensive way.
Offensive is undefined.
An actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact,
actual or simulated normal or perverted,
perverted is undefined,
sexual acts or a lewd exhibition of the genitals.
Anything that had to do with sex or excretion.
And taken as a whole,
lacks serious literary, artistic, political,
or scientific value as to minors.
And that is wildly undefined.
That's taken straight from the indecency standard
that the FCC has been using to confuse people for years.
But that's it, that's the whole definition.
That's what harmful to minors means.
Well, what's wrong with that?
That's got nothing to do with what we're talking about,
for one thing.
That's got nothing to do with blocking a site
based on discussion of a certain subject.
That simply has to do with the community standards
of sexual activity and excretory activity,
which I don't even know why that's in there.
In relation to children.
In relation to children, right.
Why should they be seeing this kind of stuff?
Well, I don't know.
Maybe you wanna ask them why they keep going to it.
What's interesting is the software doesn't work.
The town of Essex in Britain has had its website blocked.
Spell the name.
Oh, geez.
Oh my God.
I just got, okay.
They're gonna have to change their name.
That's disgusting.
What were they thinking?
Okay, let's get to a couple other matters
of business here.
We've been getting mail.
We've been getting all kinds of mail from people.
We've got mail.
Oh God.
You've probably seen some of these, too.
Every couple of days, somebody tells us
that we sent them a virus.
We talked about this on the show earlier.
But basically, there's something going around,
some stupid email thing that takes advantage
of, guess what, Microsoft Outlook,
and does that whole send mail to everybody on your list
and delete all your audio files and your JPEGs.
Except in the title, it says something
about visiting www.2600.com.
And here's one of the letters we got today.
It was pretty funny.
Someone named Cheryl emailed me four letters,
each with one of the following files attest.
There's three GIFs and one JPEG there,
all with a .vbs extension.
Please tell me what these files are supposed to do.
One had a link to your site.
That's why I am emailing you.
It's not like I'm going to turn you in or anything.
I think hacking is cool.
I wish I could do it.
I wish I could do it.
Cool website, by the way.
Signed, Andrew.
And then Andrew got so excited looking at our website
that he wrote back again a couple hours later,
saying, I was looking at your past magazine covers.
I stole over 20 payphones my senior year of high school.
I started a phone graveyard outside of my city.
I've made so much money.
I got $170 out of one phone before.
Just thought I'd tell you that.
You see the kind of people that somehow get drawn
from a misperception in the first place.
That's wonderful.
A, we did not send any kind of virus.
And simply by having something in a subject line
does not mean that's where it came from.
It's pretty simple to fool people, apparently.
And B, we have no interest in the kind of absurdity
this person is talking about.
And we say that over and over again,
but apparently it just doesn't penetrate some heads.
It's blatant theft.
It's illegal.
Yeah.
These people should read the Secret Service guide
to tracking email, then they'd know.
Yeah, that would be nice.
We had that here last week.
And we got another letter later on in the day.
This came from this guy, Jerry.
His last name is Sharp, actually,
and apparently he's not very sharp.
He's over, I won't give the exact machine,
but he's over at something at army.mil.
You sent the file to my government site that was infected.
C message, attachment, something.jpeg.vbs
was quarantined for the following reasons.
Virusvbs.plan.b was found.
Please cease and desist.
Was that an automated phrase?
I'm pretty scared, man.
Getting mail from the military,
some guy telling me to cease and desist, all right?
That's frightening stuff.
Look, you morons, it's got nothing to do with us.
Someone put our name in a subject.
It's been going on for months.
Months this has been going on.
People just can't seem to figure it out, you know?
It seems to be very slow, Warren.
It feeds on very slow minds.
And speaking of slow minds,
have you gotten this junk mail from NSI lately?
Speaking about how they're sorry I can't visit their website
because they've gotten so much traffic.
They sent junk mail out a couple of weeks ago.
Then they send more junk mail out saying,
we're sorry, we had such an overwhelming response
that you probably weren't able to reach us,
so here it is again.
Yeah, that's the junk mail I'm talking about.
Yes.
Unbelievable.
Anyone with contact info gets that stuff now.
Yeah, yeah, I realize that.
Now, basically what it is,
it's a pitch for you to actually register with them
for the new top-level domains.
That's right.
They give you a little URL to click
to request your preferred domain names
using the new web extensions
or to sign up for our free domain update e-newsletter
to get weekly updates.
Yeah, you can register domain names
using the new web extensions .name, .pro, .coop,
whichever one's going to say .coop, .arrow and .museum.
God knows why anybody would register .museum
if they weren't a museum.
To request the names you want,
before they become available,
just go to the same stupid URL
and follow our simple step-by-step advance request process.
And then way down further,
they say listing your request
does not mean that the domains will be registered.
You will need to submit a registration request
at a later date.
So what in God's name is this?
Why are they sending mail to people
telling them to list what they want,
but you're still going to have to register it later?
You have to register it later anyway.
What exactly is it that they're doing?
Some kind of preferential treatment or something?
No, they don't have the power to do that.
They don't have the right to do that.
That's ridiculous.
I went over to their site
and there's all kinds of articles.
Oh, you got through.
Oh yeah, no problem at all.
Very few people are going through their site
now that people can go to register.com
and transfer all their domains to them
at a cheaper price or any other registrar.
Anyone who's followed,
this is part of an article that is posted there.
Anyone who's followed the action
and domain names this past year
knows that adding a psychic and a fortune teller
to your group of advisors might be a good idea,
but uncertainty over the new top-level domains will soon end.
Actually, this article is outdated.
This is the new updated article
and it's still written before they decided
on the new top-level domains.
Basically, they put the fear of the Lord into you,
saying, what does this all mean to you?
Well, simply put, your business will have
to have an increased presence on the web.
You'll have to have an increased presence on the web.
Whether or not you've got the perfect.com name registered,
you'll have to look beyond the familiar
and consider branching out.
After all, if you don't, your competitors definitely will.
Do they use the phrase cover all your bases
or is that something that's in here somewhere?
It's in here somewhere.
Then they give the wrong top-level domains.
They say .web for businesses related to the World Wide Web.
Nope.
They list all the ones that were possibly going to be used.
They haven't even updated their own page.
These are people who can't manage
to update their database until the next morning at 5 a.m.
Come on.
Yeah.
Jumpstarting your web business.
For those needing a jumpstart,
here are some good reasons
to consider picking up several domain names
for your business.
Multiple domains mean you can increase
your search engine ranking and boost your listings.
This can translate to more hits, more page views,
and a lot more spam.
And a lot more money for them.
Oh, yeah.
If you lock up all the major variations
of your business's name,
consumers are less likely to confuse you with someone else.
As a nameless philosopher once put it,
everywhere you go, there you are.
Nameless or they just didn't bother to look up his name.
Sorry, one at a time, please.
Nameless or they just didn't bother to look up his name.
Ah, that I don't know.
That would be Buckaroo Banzai.
That's a nameless philosopher?
Yes.
All right.
If you've registered a trademark or service mark,
its presence in multiple places acts as a form of protection
by preventing other businesses from using
a common variant of your domain name.
Don't let your name be diluted.
And what if you joined the party late
and got shut out of the best names?
Not to worry, you'll get another chance
with new top-level domains.
Just be careful to check trademark rights.
Yeah.
Can you spell?
Can you type?
Many otherwise intelligent people can't.
Hence the rash of misspelling or wrong key registrations.
Covering all the oops bases means that you'll benefit.
There it is, covering all bases.
Yeah, you'll benefit from the horde of bad,
horde, one horde, not hordes.
The horde of bad spellers or typists out there,
not some other business.
If you're one of the lucky ones who owns
a particularly newsworthy name,
you're a likely target for parody.
And you'll like the example they use.
Think BillClintonIsAnIdiot.com.
Obviously, parody, yeah, okay.
The bigger your reach in locking up harmful variants
of your name, the better.
So they're the ones encouraging people to go out there
and BillClintonIsAnIdiot.com,
well, then he's going to have to register
BillClintonIsAJerk.com, BillClintonIsAMoron.com.
But not just com, .info, .museum,
the rest of this stuff.
BillClintonIsAnIdiot.museum.
BillClintonIsAnIdiot.museum.
I will pay an award to anyone who can get that domain name.
That's not bad.
The internet has shattered borders
and country code domain names make us realize
just how much geography we forgot.
Many surfers abroad use country codes
as a matter of course.
So if you want your business to be found,
whether in Germany or Nigeria,
then add the relevant country code
to your domain name, even more.
And cyber squatting aside,
if your domain name is a popular one
and you might someday want to expand your venture
and have an appealing domain name to describe it,
consider registering variants of your name.
Think business.com, business.net, et cetera.
And they end it all by saying ka-ching.
Anything that ends with ka-ching,
I immediately dismiss.
Sorry.
I like that one list that you can sign up for updates
as new top level domains come out.
Why?
Because as they come out, they're going to send you,
hey, you know, we got this new one, .fubar.
You should get your name on there and give us $35.
Well, I registered.
You know, they require your credit card number
for some reason, even though you're not paying anything.
But I figure, you know,
I might as well bite at this to see what they do.
You know, I'm doing this for everybody.
So no one else needs to do this.
Basically, I pick four names.
I pick Microsoft.biz, Microsoft.info,
then computer.biz and computer.info.
And those are the domains I'm interested in
and we'll see what NSI does for me
in my quest to get those names,
which I don't have a chance in hell of getting.
We could get computer.museum
and give it to Boston, couldn't you?
Yeah, you know, basically.
But they're going to do the same old garbage here.
They're going to basically just, you know,
cheat on how they get the name.
Someone's going to register 10,000 of them
and they'll go to some squatter someplace.
Who knows?
You hear about this one?
British Telecom suing people over using hyperlinks.
What?
BT is going to court to enforce its claim
to have invented the hyperlinks
that bind the internet together.
They're out of their mind.
This week, it filed a lawsuit in a New York court
seeking damages from a US internet service provider
over its use of hyperlink technology.
What?
Earlier this year, BT claimed to have invented hyperlinks.
It's funny how they waited till this year to claim that.
Well, they were going through their patent archives
and they found they had a patent for the hyperlink
just sitting there.
Hey, wait a minute.
We created life and the earth and the universe.
Oh, that's hilarious.
BT says the lawsuit could be the first of many.
I'm sure.
As it seeks to win fees
from those using its intellectual property.
You see how silly this is all getting really fast.
They're actually out of their minds.
In June this year, telecommunications giant, BT,
announced that a troll through its archives
had unearthed a patent application
that it claimed gave it intellectual property rights
over hyperlinks.
The patent application was made in 1976
by post office researchers who were developing
the Prestel and ViewData text-based information services.
Researcher Desmond Sargent
was the man credited with making the advance.
The US Patent Office granted patent number
4873662 in 1989.
And following the announcement,
BT started discussions with US net service companies
with a view to extracting payments
for use of its intellectual property.
It's only pursuing US companies
because it only had a patent granted
on the technology in that country.
US, yeah.
Now, after talks with Prodigy have broken down,
BT has filed a lawsuit
seeking an unspecified amount of damages.
A spokeswoman for BT said it did not know
how long it would take for the court case to be settled,
but was expecting it to take a long time.
She did not rule out legal action against other companies
or if discussions with them proved fruitless.
BT has yet to receive a penny in license fees.
But folks, you gotta be careful out there.
Don't link to things.
I mean, it's not what you link to.
It's the fact that you're linking now.
This is, I-
Yeah, you're speechless.
I know.
I'm speechless too.
Very speechless.
Well, I mean, hyperlinking has existed
before the World Wide Web.
I mean, tech, tech info, stuff like that.
You keep going way back and you can find all this stuff.
60, 76, they said they applied?
I saw a video linked to on the web
of the first time there was a public demonstration
of a mouse.
They used it for hyperlinks.
So there's clearly prior art.
No kidding.
You're speechless.
You're totally speechless.
Listen to you, you're sputtering away there.
Well, it's just part of the fun things that happen
week after week as you listen to our little journey
through technology and it's totally falling apart.
Really out of their minds.
Well, you know, they're encouraged
by all the lawsuits that are going on.
You know, all this DMCA crap, you know,
where you can sue people for all kinds of things.
It's just, you know, it's opening up the door.
I think the PTO is out of their minds with them.
They're all like in a little, you know,
rubber dinghy going out into the middle of the Atlantic.
Well, then you'll be happy with this news
because this is actually good news.
Basically, there is a company known as Find Us.
They were a frozen food company, F-I-N-D-U-S.
And they've been refused the rights
to the internet domain name findus.com
after a United Nations arbitrator agreed
the name could be read as find us.
As in find us, look for us, find us.
That's right.
The owners of the address could reasonably claim
the address was intended as a search engine
to track down people on the web.
Now, these people whose name is find us
for some reason actually thought
that they had the right to take that back
because they ran a frozen food company called Find Us.
Remarkable.
Yeah, so.
Does this search engine exist?
I think so.
Or, you know, if it doesn't exist,
it certainly could exist.
Well, how long has it not existed?
When did they register this thing?
Like four years ago
and they still haven't written their search engine?
Actually, I'm not entirely sure.
Maybe it does exist.
Worth further research.
The point is, though, if they registered it
just to extort money from these people,
then obviously it's invalid.
But if they registered it to use for anything
that they want to use it for,
you know, it's a perfectly valid use of words.
They can do that as far as I'm concerned anyway.
Okay, this announcement concerning the Pacifica situation.
Demonstration tomorrow, Wednesday, December 20th,
5 p.m. outside the law offices of Epstein, Becker,
and Green, 250 Park Avenue between 46th and 47th.
And an update on this situation
we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
Weeks after Pacifica's undemocratic actions
against New York station WBAI 99.5 FM, that's us,
the Pacifica Foundation has refused to budge
from its attempted removal
of WBAI's longtime general manager, Valerie VanIsler.
While the staff at WBAI continues to refuse
to honor the decision,
the listeners are taking to the streets
to reclaim their radio station.
Outraged listeners say it is up to them
to rescue the people's radio
from an increasingly corporatized Pacifica National Board.
The removal of VanIsler is not the first,
but the most recent assault on the autonomy of WBAI
and other Pacifica stations.
Many fear that Pacifica's attack on the station
echoes the 1999 removal of KPFA's general manager.
This firing led to the temporary closing of the station,
the arrests of staff and listeners.
How'd you like to be arrested
for listening to the radio, huh?
It could happen.
And Pacifica's controversial hiring of armed security guards
who prevented staff and volunteers
from broadcasting for several weeks.
Hey, that simplex lock better not have anything to do
with this whole plan of armed thugs marching in
and things like that.
They put a brand new Pacifica lock.
Simplex lock, excuse me, I didn't mean to say that.
No, simplex lock.
They put a brand new simplex lock on our door.
What's wrong with this electronic system we have
with all the mag locks and strike plates?
I don't know, it seems to work pretty good.
Just, you know, when you see something stupid
like a simplex lock suddenly show up,
you have to wonder, you know, why?
But they're easy to get around,
so I wouldn't put too much faith.
They think that's going to keep people out.
They're sorely mistaken.
But maybe it has nothing to do with Pacifica.
Hopefully it doesn't.
The protest will take place outside the law firm
of John Murdoch, who is a recent addition
to the Pacifica National Board.
Murdoch's law firm, Epstein, Becker & Green,
proudly specializes in maintaining a union-free workplace.
That's in quotes.
At the same time, Murdoch's law firm
is currently representing the Pacifica Foundation
in several lawsuits filed against Pacifica.
And this is all sponsored by Concerned Friends of WBAI.
Again, the demonstration tomorrow, December 20th, 5 p.m.
at 250 Park Avenue between 46th and 47th
outside the law offices of Epstein, Becker & Green.
Mike, you were at one of those.
I was at, I guess, the first one.
I don't know if it was the last one.
Now, it's funny because you were outside the building
and the cops came and they told everybody
they had to move across the street.
Right, to the side of the street
where this law firm wasn't.
So what if you had been protesting
on the other side of the street?
Then you could move to the side where the law firm is, right?
Eventually, the cops decided they had made a mistake
and let us be on the proper side of the street.
Oh, okay.
Well, you got more out of cops than most people do.
I guess so.
Good, they admitted they made a mistake.
Well, they realized that they weren't moving us
and they decided they would move the barricades instead.
Good, barricades are a lot easier to move
than BAI listeners.
That's true.
And again, it's gonna be cold tomorrow.
It's gonna be freezing, but that's the idea.
Controversial things get done
when it's most unpleasant to protest them.
And that's when we really count on people to show up
and prove what they're worth.
So hopefully, we'll see a lot of people there.
You won't see me there, unfortunately,
because I'll be on my way over to Europe
for the Chaos Communications Congress.
And no, I won't be stopping in France, unfortunately.
Yeah, nice choice of music.
No, I'll be flying over France, I guess.
But it's Germany, Holland, and Denmark.
Going to Denmark?
Yeah, I've never been to Denmark in my life.
I wanna see what it's like there.
Cool.
Yeah, so hopefully, we'll be showing the film
in all three cities.
I know we're showing it in Amsterdam and Berlin.
And hopefully, we'll be showing it
at a place near you soon, too.
Again, email us, oth2220.com.
We'll give you info as it comes out.
Our phone number is 212-209-2900.
We can take some phone calls, I guess,
if people are interested in talking to us.
Isaac, you'll be here next week?
I will be here next week.
Yeah, I'll be on the phone, but.
I will be manning the console next week.
Yeah, well, personning the console,
is the way you wanna say it, but.
Personning the console.
Yeah, 212-209-2900.
Do you realize if Rebel can keep himself
from calling for two more weeks,
he'll be back on the air in February?
Oh, you decided to allow that?
I said, you know, if you don't call back
the remainder of this month.
He's in the clear.
He's in the clear, but if he does,
oh, anything could happen.
212-209-2900, let's take our first phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello, Mr. Manuel Goldstein, this is Fear Free.
Hey, how you doing?
Just wanted to tell you about a,
I guess you could say, a radio problem.
Okay.
As you were talking about before,
about the low-power FM kind of stuff
and having stations be too under
any powerful station, correct?
Right.
Well, here's a perfect example.
WXRK in New York City.
KROQ.
KROQ.
Yeah, 92.3.
The flagship station of Howard Stern.
Right.
There is a station here in Northwest New Jersey,
a very powerful radio station
that if you probably try and get out
in the middle of Long Island,
you could probably get.
91.9.
91.9?
Is a college radio station
of Centenary College in New Jersey.
I know that from a card.
You can get it all the way to Wayne.
Okay, I don't think you can get that in New York.
And my point being,
it's a extremely powerful radio station.
It's in the hills of New Jersey.
And that is a college radio station.
And that's the kind of thing
that may not be able to happen in the future.
From what you're saying.
Is that true?
Well, basically I think that's proof
that it can happen.
You can have a station
that would be the second adjacency
away from KROQ.
Right.
And there's no substantial interference.
There's no interference at all
from what you're saying.
Yeah, but I don't know.
It's just strange how they work out the whole thing.
You would think that they would make
the commercial stations further away
from the school stations.
Theoretically in the United States,
you were supposed to get a good education, right?
Well, you would think that they would allot
more, I guess you'd say,
airtime and airwaves to education.
Yeah, absolutely.
And just why?
Non-commercial broadcasting.
I know that my high school
just recently applied for a license
and they were denied.
Hands down.
I mean, they threw the book at us.
No way.
No way in hell.
It's sad because you have so much repetition,
so much is just devoted to big business
on the FM dial, including now the non-commercial band.
And all these people-
We need more stations like WBAA.
That's about it.
If it wasn't for the non-commercial spectrum,
none of us would be on the radio now.
A lot of us got our training at college radio
and we just learn the appreciation
for something different.
Well, and without college radio,
this is a dumb example,
but for those of us who like Howard Stern,
he would never be around.
Well, that's true.
That is true.
And all kinds of other people, too.
I don't know if you saw his movie,
but if it weren't for Howard Stern
screwing up on college radio,
he wouldn't be here today.
I liked his movie a whole lot better than I liked the show.
The movie was great, actually.
But I don't know if anybody else is interested,
but the panels from H2K are up on the H2K website.
That's right.
I think we'll have all of them finished
later tonight, hopefully.
And I mean, a large amount of them are up there, right?
In MP3 and real audio format.
Right, right.
And that's it.
Okay, thanks for calling.
And also, real quick,
there was a gentleman last week
that was talking about cell phones
and having problems with echoing.
It's not...
With Verizon, I just got a new phone from them
and it's the phones,
specific phones from them that are doing this.
Really?
It's very strange.
It's a feature, I guess.
Protocol problem.
I had one of their older phones
from the Bell Atlantic days, an audio box.
That, I had an echo problem on.
This new one, I just got a Qualcomm, don't have it.
So I guess it all has to do with the phones that they're using.
Okay, thanks for the info.
Speaking of phones,
I don't know if anybody else in the room have a,
well, I guess it's a Voice Dream phone now,
on the point, David, you have one?
Did you get a message today?
Come up to our microphone.
You get a special little message today?
No, I didn't.
Tell me what it said.
Basically, everybody I know who has watched,
only know one other person so far,
has one of these phones,
the former OmniPoint phone.
Got a message today
and basically the message simply said,
SIM download.
That's all it said, SIM download.
SIM download?
Yeah, and when you got that message,
right after you got that message,
instead of saying OmniPoint,
it suddenly started to say VStream for VoiceStream.
Your company is identified.
Right, but mine still says OmniPoint.
It still says OmniPoint.
Turn it on now, let's see.
You have to read that message in order for it to change.
And it comes from a special number.
This number has been the same
for the other person I talked to.
And that number is
one nine nine seven,
seven zero zero zero five zero.
And then above it,
on the right-hand side are two more zeros.
Now, I don't know if that means that
I did get this phone in 1997
and I think the other person did too,
but we both had the same exact number there.
So I'm not sure.
I'd like to hear what other people got today
if anyone did get that message today.
Now, the interesting thing is
that I'm out in Suffolk County.
I did not get this message until I was almost into NASA.
Then all of a sudden my phone beeped.
I got that message.
I'm not sure if it's a regional thing
or if it was something that, you know,
I just got late.
But I'd like to know where people are,
where they got this message from.
David, did you have it or don't you have it?
I'm still checking through the messages.
I haven't gotten it.
Okay, well, if you should find it today, we'll see.
And your phone just now,
when you turned it on, it said OmniPoint.
Okay, mine says Vstream.
It'd be interesting when I go back
to see if it flips back to OmniPoint
or stays on Vstream.
Well, you'll never know once you cross the Suffolk line
because like everyone else in Suffolk County,
you, of course, turn your telephone off
to comply with the latest county regulation.
Yeah, right, Isaac.
That's what I do.
I like to be in compliance.
That's interesting, though.
I think you can have the phone on
as long as you're not talking about it.
That's right, I can have the phone on.
Oh, you can have it on?
You can probably even look at it.
Yeah, they say it's legal to have a headset on instead.
I have to think that that's kind of dangerous, too,
because you can't hear if you have a headset on your head.
It only goes on one ear.
It's just, it's wires and things, you know?
I kind of like to.
Well, what if you're involved in an accident
and you get all tangled up in the wires
and you can't get out of your burning car?
People who use those headsets
deserve whatever happens to them.
That's what I say.
That's why I continue to use my handheld unit.
I find it interesting, though,
that it's just an SMS message?
That manages to reprogram the phone.
That has potential.
Well, you know, it does reprogram the phone,
because you don't need to reprogram the phone
to change the name.
That's done in, I guess,
their version of the central office.
But what does happen, and I've noticed this,
when you turn your phone off and on again,
you get a little welcome message.
You'd think they would've changed welcome to OmniPoint.
They didn't.
Mine still says welcome to OmniPoint,
but now it has my phone number at the bottom,
which OmniPoint never put because of security reasons.
Well, apparently, VoiceStream doesn't care
that much about security issues,
so they just add the phone number.
Yes, David?
What was the number again you said you got it from?
Hold on, I got it.
1997 something.
Yeah, 1997, and it's a long number.
Hang on, I'm finding it.
Okay, it was 19977000050.
You don't have it?
Okay.
I guess you've been picked out for some reason.
Not getting the VoiceStream.
I had to talk to VoiceStream earlier
to get them to turn on.
This is ridiculous.
When you go overseas, the whole purpose of the SIM card
is so that you can use your phone in other countries.
You have to call them to get permission
to have it turned on overseas.
And when people come here, they have to call them
and pay a fee to get it turned on from other countries.
No other country does this.
It's really silly.
Yes, David?
Well, isn't your phone tri-band?
No, my phone is one band.
That's why.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hi, I actually have a reason for you to stop
in France.
Their DVD players, they're mandated by law
not to be region coded.
Now, that's interesting because there's some kind
of a bill floating around in France
that is going to make it a crime for you to have
to import DVDs with other region codes
other than region two.
Did you hear about this?
They did say something about having a six month
waiting period for US DVDs and Canadian DVDs.
Yes, something like that.
They're making it actually a crime now.
Well, that's for theaters.
No, it's for people.
People are not allowed to have.
But the justification they give is that
when the, if the movies are available on DVD
before it hits the theaters,
the movie houses are going to go out of business.
Well, the movie houses are not going to go out of business.
I think we both know that's not,
that's a fallacy right there.
But basically, it's the equivalent of you buy a book
overseas, you buy a book in England,
and then like halfway back to the United States,
the pages go blank, you know?
And you're not allowed to read it,
and you're not allowed to even have it.
You know, it's illegal.
It's absurdity.
It really is crazy.
If you buy something in a different country,
you should be able to take it back with you.
That's simple logic.
Whether or not they release it in your country or not,
that's part of the joy of going to another country.
You bring back things that you don't have here.
You know, it's pretty simple.
Anything else, caller?
Yeah.
Can you try deleting the message on your OmniPoint?
Oh, I don't dare do that,
because if I delete that message,
I'll never have it again, you know?
Well, write down what it is.
Maybe if you delete it,
it'll go back to being OmniPoint.
Well, why would they do that?
That wouldn't make much sense.
I don't know.
Maybe the little text thing that pops up,
maybe it's reliance on that message.
Maybe there's a goal.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I would bet that deleting it would ensure
that it would stay forever,
whereas having it here might,
maybe I could do something else with it.
Maybe I could send it to somebody.
I don't know.
But the fact that you can, you know,
write to your SIM card remotely,
I think that's kind of fascinating.
Yeah, that has possibilities.
It's never been done before that I know of,
you know, publicly anyway.
Well, it would be without precedent, but.
Yeah.
They could have done this secretly,
but instead they were very, you know, open about it.
Although for some reason,
David didn't get his little update.
Still waiting, huh?
All right.
Other OmniPoint slash VoiceStream people out there,
let us know what happened with you.
And we solved the problem
as to how they were going to fit VoiceStream on there,
because it's too many letters.
They just simply say vStream.
Ah.
Yep.
Let's go over here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hi, Emmanuel and Isaac.
It's Paul here from Namespace.
How you guys doing?
How you doing?
A couple of comments about the new domains.
Just to clear up any misunderstanding.
First of all, the .info, pro, and museum domains,
regardless of what ICANN may have published
or what they resolved at the board meeting,
are already in use and have been published
previously by Namespace.
And we're going to challenge ICANN and NSI
because they don't have any right, basically,
to seize our assets and reassign them to those guys.
For your information,
computer.info is previously registered
to a Shelby Hudgins out in Oklahoma.
So-
Shelby, huh?
Shelby Hudgins.
And yeah, and basically,
all of our customers have a prior claim to their domain.
Now, if they wish to establish rights to them,
they actually can do that.
And according to the Patent and Trademark Office,
whether or not the domains are recognized globally,
they can print t-shirts or make coffee cups
or whatever that contains it.
And basically, they establish use in commerce
and rights to the domain.
Well, that's going to be a very interesting fight.
I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing that.
But further to that, just so also people understand,
there's been a lot of PR and spin.
Basically, what happened in California,
and of course, I was at the meeting
because Namespace paid that extortion of $50,000.
You actually did that.
You actually paid $50,000.
Yes, we did.
And you didn't get anything for it.
Well, no.
And actually, this is quite controversial
because I don't know if you're aware of the letter
that Congressman Ed Markey and Lois Kapp
sent to the Assistant Secretary of Commerce Rode,
basically telling them that they were concerned
that ICANN's process was arbitrary with no clearly
stated criteria, and that they were concerned
that the so-called awards of PLDs
were going to go to the entrenched people who
were in control of the market, namely, NMI and company.
That's exactly what happened.
And in fact, that's controversial.
And I've been speaking to our congressman in our district
here, and basically, they're on our side,
or so it appears, because they don't think that, of course,
ICANN's actions were appropriate.
They're questioning their lack of process
and the apparent fait accompli of who
they awarded the domains to.
And as well, their opinion is, open it up.
There's no reason to restrict it.
All these restrictions are artificial.
Right, absolutely.
It's a line of text in a file.
That's all they have to change in the root zone file.
That's exactly right, what it is.
In your case, though, I think it was something
personal against you guys, because how many did you
submit?
You submitted dozens.
Well, actually, we submitted 100 and some.
Not one of them was accepted?
No.
There was a discussion.
There was some, if you look at the ICANN archive,
actually in the Harvard archive, there's
a webcast from the three minutes.
We paid $50,000, and we had three minutes
to go up before the tribunal.
It was really Kafka.
And to pitch to the company and answer their questions
and answers.
Do you at least get a receipt for the $50,000 somewhere?
Well, we have a canceled check.
You write it off.
Yeah.
Man.
$13,000 a minute, these people.
$50,000.
So basically, they were entertaining,
or Esther Dyson appeared to be entertaining,
.sucks for us, which is one of the ones that we.
That would have been good.
Well, actually, we do register .sucks now.
And any registration is legitimate.
And we will work with our customers
under any of the domains that we publish to defend rights.
So basically, there's an impending class action
down the road.
And any of our clients who signed up with us
will basically be parties to that suit.
And I think probably about 20% of our customers in our survey
said that they will litigate.
So if we have to do that, this is what's going to happen.
All right, Paul, we're running out of time.
But tell us how people can get a hold of you.
Quickly, two more things.
Well, they can go to the site.
Go to namespace.org.
If they have questions, send info at namespace.org.
But I just want to say very quickly that the ICANN decision
to select these TLDs is nothing but a board resolution
of ICANN.
Because ICANN has no authority to do anything.
They can only make a recommendation
to the NTIA, National Telecommunications
and Infrastructure Agency, who will then,
pursuant to the Cooperative Agreement Amendment 11,
direct NSI to amend the root zone.
So basically, this is just a ceremonial thing that happened.
It's not consummated in any way.
And it's subject to challenge.
Congress has oversight over NTIA.
And with the appropriate congressional action,
it probably can be reversed.
You notice, though, how the appropriate congressional action
never actually seems to come?
Well, yeah.
But I think, well, actually, it worked last year.
Because ICANN tried to charge for all the dot-com
registrations $1 per domain tax.
And that got shot down by the Commerce Committee.
So there has been actions.
And there have been hearings in the past.
And in fact, when they questioned ICANN
at the hearings last year, House Commerce Committee,
they basically gave them a bunch of crap.
And they didn't end up doing what
they said they were going to do.
Yeah, you got to keep trying.
I know.
I know.
So for people out there now, actually,
we're running kind of a contest for the best dot-sucks websites.
We're going to pick 10 of the best dot-sucks websites
and give free domain registration under sucks
and free web hosting for as long as people
will maintain the site.
So they actually have to create something.
And so just go to namespace.org.
And you can sign up for a dot-sucks domain now for free.
Or if you send a submission to dot-sucks at namespace.org,
build a home page somewhere and point us the URL.
And we'll pick on January 1st, 2001,
we're going to make the selections of the winning
sites.
So anyone out there who wants to enter that, please do.
And switch your DNS to Namespace.
OK, thanks a lot.
Good luck.
Say hello to Andy.
I wish I could go to Berlin.
But give my regards to Rolf von Kreip and the company.
I'm sure Andy will have a lot to say about all this,
him being on the board now.
Isaac, we've got to move for these calls real quick.
For those people interested in more ICANN stuff,
there's an interview with Vince Cerf, who was recently
elected to the chair of the board of ICANN
in that German magazine.
The Spiegel?
No, no, no.
Tell us something or other.
Teletubbies?
No.
Well, when you have the information, let us know.
OK.
I'm sorry.
Let's go to another phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hey, Emmanuel.
It's Tommy Pickles.
Hey, how you doing?
OK, first of all, the radio thing.
I would try calling to the building 1515.
It's that 846 number.
Call and try to reach MTV Radio.
MTV Radio is in that building.
I believe it's on the 29th floor.
Interesting.
But what do you think gives them the right to broadcast
out onto the street?
I do not know, but you know ViacomTBS
owns that big radio station in the New York City, 92.3.
Well, I want some kind of action taken.
I want them to either give the station to a group that
deserves it or to be fined for breaking the law or whatever.
I want some kind of result here.
I want them to lose their other licenses.
Yeah, that'd be nice too.
Give us channel two.
But I figured I'd give you a heads up on that
so you know which place to look next if you needed to.
The second thing that I wanted to mention
is the hypertext, hyperlinking thing.
You have 15 seconds, by the way.
Way back when, Ken Nelson from Keough University
actually wrote down the idea for hypertext and hyperlinking.
Tim Berners-Lee from the World Wide Consortium
is the one who put into action and is giving credit
for hyperlinking.
OK, well, I'm sure the controversy will
rage on for years to come.
Thanks for that call.
Thanks for all the calls.
And sorry for all the ones we weren't able to get to.
Next week, Isaac will be here by himself.
Actually, Lazlo's going to be here too.
Lazlo's going to be here with you.
Keep you in check, yeah.
Shoot rubber bands at each other.
I'll be calling in from somewhere over there.
I don't know exactly where yet, but we'll find out.
And I'm sure we'll have more bad news to report by then.
Merry Christmas, folks.
Yes.
Stay safe.
Good night.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call.
It could be yet much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Only live on for the best, expect the worst.
Oh, that's understood.
Bum, diggity, boo!
On Christmas Day, Adam, IFCO, WBAI Radio, The Point,
Black Meal Force, and the Mega Everest Student Government
will feed the homeless and people in need in all five
boroughs and Newark, New Jersey.
To accomplish this feat, we'll be turning words into food
at a benefit poetry reading on Wednesday, December 20,
from 8 p.m. until at The Wetlands, located at 161
Hudson Street.
Join the word wizards, Abbey O'Doom of The Last Poets,
Amiri Baraka, Ross Baraka, Kathy Smith, Reggie Gaines,
Roger Bonet-Agard, Sharaka Elsa, Tracy Smith, Jumaane
Raine Jordan, and host, Brother Shine, and a special
performance by song stylist, Maria.
For more information, you can call 212-340-1196, or 212-2096.
Or, 212-209-2990.
The materials of life are the proper materials for poetry.
And I have only one definition for poetry.
Poetry is life distilled.
I've said that three million times.
Monday, December 25, beginning at 11 p.m., a heart time
special, Gwendolyn Brooks, poet, writer, bright shining star,
A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, Maude Martha,
The Bean Eaters in Mecca.