These outlets won't often touch, but Free Speech Radio News can only stay on the air
with your financial support.
So won't you please make a donation to Free Speech Radio News online at www.fsrn.org.
That's www.fsrn.org.
Or call 510-287-5551.
That's 510-287-5551.
Thank you for your support.
And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI-New York, where it's 7 o'clock on the nose.
Let us rejoice.
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.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bon dilly bon, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bon dilly bon.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
Bon dilly bon, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bon dilly bon.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
I hope that's understood.
Bon dilly bon.
I'm sorry to disappoint you.
It's okay.
I'm staying.
Yeah.
If anyone wants to give us,
well, you know,
if anyone wants to pledge money to us,
do that next week.
Just, you know,
make a reminder to yourself.
Well, we've got a bunch of things to talk about
and demonstrate and do
and all that kind of thing.
Let's see.
Well, let's go into some of the mail
we didn't get to last week.
A lot of people wrote in
concerning the plus one Devacle.
Did we get any more hate mail?
We always get hate mail,
but I don't know if I brought any of that in.
There might be kind of subdued hate,
you know,
the sarcastic hate that you don't quite get right away
until you read the letter on the air
and then you realize they were making fun of you.
No.
These are all people who are very upset and confused
about the fact that here in New York,
in the New York metropolitan area,
starting in February,
actually starting now,
but becoming mandatory in February,
everybody is going to have to dial an area code
in front of every phone call they make,
except, I guess,
if you're inside an office
and you're calling an extension inside the office.
But if you're calling another phone in your house
and it has the same area code,
the same exchange,
you're still going to have to dial the same area code
and the same exchange.
It's ridiculous.
But the thing that really annoys me,
more than anything,
is the fact that you have to dial a 1 in front of it.
My question is,
why in the world do you have to dial 1
when it's obvious that there's no other phone number
you can dial anymore?
You have to dial 10 digits.
Unless you're calling the cops or information
or something like that,
every area code is going to have to be dialed.
So what is the point?
It used to be that 1,
prefacing it with a 1,
told the phone company
that you were about to dial long distance
and to bill you appropriately
or some nonsense like that.
For a long time,
I know area code 516 didn't require 1
and area code 202, Washington D.C.,
also didn't require 1.
But that changed as they moved to digital switching.
But now it doesn't seem like there's any use for it.
Anyway, we have a bunch of theories and comments
and some of them are pretty funny, actually.
This person has a theory.
Why would they add a 1 at the beginning?
Why would they add area codes for local calls?
How about this?
So that they can sell shorter numbers
at enormous cost to businesses.
That's from Matthew.
Well, Matthew, that's a good theory,
but I don't think it's quite right
because you won't find them
selling you small numbers anywhere.
I mean, that'd be kind of cool
if they sold you a vanity number,
you know, of 1, 2, 3, 4.
You can have that for 50 bucks a month
or something like that.
Everyone else has to dial 11 digits.
You can dial 4.
No, it doesn't.
Everyone's going to be in the same boat here.
I mean, the only people that will have,
you know, speed dial numbers,
quick numbers are people like 911,
and I don't think that number is up for sale.
So that's really not it.
This person writes in from Brazil.
On September 25th, off the hook,
you were asking,
why dial 1 if everybody has to dial 1?
What's the point of it?
I'm really not familiar with USA phones,
and apparently neither are the people
who make these rules.
I'm from Brazil.
I hear off the hook one day
after it gets posted on the website.
But have you tried other one-digit numbers
like 2 or 3
and see if you get a call completed?
I'm not quite sure what this person
is asking us to do,
to dial 2 in front of the area code
or 3 in front of the area code.
He seems to think that 1 has to mean something
like, hi, I'm a phone user,
and I would like to make one local call.
Well, no, I don't think that's it either.
That's from Marco over there in Brazil.
It's an interesting theory, though,
sending a little message
before you actually dial the phone number.
But no, it's stupidity.
It's something that we have in abundance
here in America,
and perhaps if you visit sometime,
you'll see it all over the place.
Let's see.
How about this one?
The 1 is needed on the 11-digit phone number
because that is the country code for the USA.
Well, that's correct.
It is the country code for the USA,
but why in God's name
would you have to dial the country code
when you're inside the country?
I guess it's the same kind of logic
because you're dialing the area code
inside the area code.
You're dialing the exchange
inside the exchange.
Why not dial the country code
inside the country?
But I don't think that's the reason
that they have for doing this.
Wouldn't that be 0111 plus?
No, no.
Boy, here we go.
011 is not a country code, all right?
011 is simply what we dial
to get access to overseas, all right?
But wouldn't it then be 0111?
No, no, listen to me.
1 is the country code.
011 is nothing.
That simply is telling the phone company
that you're dialing overseas.
If you're in Europe,
you dial, I think, what, 00 to get overseas?
But it's telling them
that you're dialing a country code.
It's telling the local switch
that you're dialing a country code, yeah,
but it's not the country code.
Well, if 1 was the country code...
It's like dialing 9 to get out, you know,
onto an outside line or something like that.
It doesn't have anything to do
with the actual phone number itself.
And this person also writes,
this person's from New Jersey, by the way,
New Jersey has had to dial all 11 digits
for almost a year now.
Almost a year now.
That's true.
And you're from New Jersey.
That's right, that's true.
That explains a lot, doesn't it,
why people act the way they do.
But we're forgetting the financial aspect.
It could be that they're going to start
charging by the digits as well as time.
They swear they're not going to do that.
They've gone on the Bible
and said they're not going to do that.
Time will tell.
Yeah, now, you have to do this,
you dial a phone downstairs,
you have to dial 11 digits.
Can you do us a favor?
Can you go, not now, but when you get home,
dial without the 1 and see what happens.
Or have you tried this already?
Well, if I'm in my area code, I'm okay.
You don't have to dial the 1 inside your area code,
but you have to dial the area code.
Yes.
But you do have to dial the 1 outside the area code.
Yes.
Now, that makes no sense at all to me.
Okay, this person has a bunch of suggestions,
and I think they're pretty good suggestions.
Remember when four-digit dialing
would get you someone in your own exchange?
We could get rid of this 11-digit dialing nonsense
that the phone company just counted digits before a call
and using the pound sign as a, I guess,
kind of like a return or something like that.
You dial, excuse me, using our phone number here,
which is 212-209-2900.
You dial 2-9-0-0 pound.
You dialed your own line in your local exchange.
You dial 2-7-0-5 pound.
You dial a different line in your local exchange.
If you dial 2-0-9-2-9-0-0 pound,
you dialed your own line with 7-digit dialing.
2-0-9-2-7-0-5 pound, you dial a different line,
7-digit dialing in your local exchange.
Or you dial our old phone number, 2-7-9-3-4-100 pound.
You dial a different line, 7-digit dialing,
foreign exchange, but same area code.
It continues on into the area code as well.
I guess you always have the option to dial the area code,
and anything longer is out of the country.
Kind of makes sense, I guess.
Why is it to be so complicated?
Overseas, it's not this complicated.
It looks more complicated, but it's not.
This person writes in saying,
I have two cell phones in the 646 area code,
one from Sprint and another from VoiceStream,
or T-Mobile, or whatever it's called today.
I can dial other numbers in the 646 area
without dialing 1646.
And also, VoiceStream or T-Mobile or whatever
may become part of Singular.
Oh boy.
How many different companies are we going to have to deal with?
Mike, you're in 646.
Yes, my cell phone is in 646.
And I believe we tried this,
where you can dial 7-digit numbers inside 646.
I don't know anyone in 646.
That's because you don't dial.
Dial some 7-digit numbers and meet some people in 646.
All right.
The thing is, 646 is landlines.
917 is mostly cellular phones and beepers and things like that.
There are a few landlines now for some reason.
Okay, speaking of VoiceStream, T-Mobile,
whatever it's called today,
OmniPoint was the old name.
They've done something monumentally stupid.
We talked about this a couple of weeks ago,
where VoiceStream is no more.
It's been taken over by a company called T-Mobile,
which is actually Deutsche Telekom,
a German telephone company.
And they've made some changes to the system.
They tend to do that when phone companies are taken over.
We're going to demonstrate.
Actually, we can't demonstrate this,
because you need the actual phone to do this.
But they upgraded their telephone system
or their voicemail system
so that everybody, everybody who has voicemail on T-Mobile
no longer has to enter a password.
Isn't that nice?
You don't have to enter a password anymore.
So what I'm going to do right now, first of all,
before anything bad happens...
Why are we getting feedback?
Okay, that's why.
I'm going to dial my VoiceStream number
and hopefully be able to fix this
before somebody is able to spoof-call our ID
and enter my voicemail box,
which is all you need to do.
It's not very hard.
The feature is this.
The feature basically allows you to bypass that
if you're using your own phone.
So if you call voicemail from your own phone,
it assumes that you're you
and lets you in without a password.
Uh-oh.
Maybe I'm too late, because that was my password.
All right.
Now I know your password.
That's the one.
Never done that.
Never did that.
Never did that either.
That's what I have to do.
No, I never did that.
That's what I want. Okay.
Thank you. Thank you.
Now, everyone has to do that who has that service,
who has VoiceStream or T-Mobile or OmniPoint
or whatever it was called when you signed up for them.
And the reason for that is security.
Anybody can spoof-call our ID.
It's not that hard. We demonstrated it at H2K2.
If you have control of a PBX,
if you are able to social engineer an operator someplace,
you can send whatever number you want
as your originating number
and show up that way on someone's caller ID.
But more importantly, call into someone's voicemail,
and the switch will believe that you're that person,
not require a password.
It's not very smart.
Now, we're going to do something else, too.
We're going to call these people,
these friendly people over at, uh...
whatever the company is called,
and ask them some pointed questions about this
because it's really kind of disheartening what they've done.
They've, um...
They've gotten rid of a feature...
People, while we connect your call...
Okay.
They've gotten rid of a feature that most of us are used to.
When you get a message on...
Welcome to T-Mobile Customer Care.
Para servicio en español, por favor oprima el número 4.
No, that's not necessary.
Um...
They've removed a feature...
Please enter your ten-digit mobile number
starting with the area code.
I'm not going to do that.
If you are not an existing customer, press 1.
How about if I have a rotary phone?
I'm not going to press anything.
On voicemail, if I can get this out
without the computer interrupting me...
We did not receive a response.
I'm just going to turn you down
until you connect me to a human.
When you get a voicemail message on your voicemail,
it usually tells you the phone number
that they're calling from.
They no longer do that.
They've taken that away for some reason.
Nobody knows why.
So we're going to try to find out why,
and if this was intentional, maybe it was a mistake.
You know, it's always possible.
And while we're...
We transfer you to a representative.
For quality purposes,
your call may be monitored or recorded.
Okay, and while we're waiting for that to happen,
let's talk about our other favorite company,
Sprint PCS.
Yeah, according to MSNBC...
Ooh, touch tones.
Wow.
Oh, yeah.
So those touch tones activate the music.
Oh.
Something's happening.
More touch tones.
Three touch tones.
I'd like to know how...
Well, this is my convenience.
I'd rather not hear this.
I'd like to know what those touch tones actually do.
Okay, this sounds promising.
Calling T-Mobile.
My name is Teresa.
How can I help you today?
Um, yes, can you hear me?
I can hear you.
Hi.
I was just wondering,
I no longer get the phone number on my voicemail
of the person calling me.
Is that intentional?
I don't know, but I can help you with that.
Well, I...
Basically, when they call you,
their number used to show up on your voicemail.
And go into preferences.
And adjust it in there.
You can adjust it in there?
There's all kinds of ways to set up your voicemail in there, yeah.
Uh-huh.
And getting caller ID is one of them?
No, caller ID is on your phone.
Well, okay, that's true.
But, I mean, on the actual voicemail,
to have it announced with the message,
to say it came from this phone number.
I believe it is, yeah.
Okay, I'll give that a try, then.
Okay, can I help you with anything else?
You too.
Well, it's interesting.
I've called a few times, actually, about this.
And I've gotten calls from people.
And this is the first time they suggested doing something like this.
The other times, they said that it was no longer supported.
So I'm not going to bore everybody
with my voicemail options.
But anybody who has T-Mobile out there,
or VoiceDream, or OmniPoint,
maybe they can try that during the show.
Call us and let us know if it actually worked.
I don't think it will.
I don't think preferences has that as an option.
To turn and call our ID off,
or whatever it's called when it's on voicemail.
Okay, going back to Sprint PCS.
Apparently, they're the cell phone company
people love to hate.
They got more
complaints per subscriber
than any of the top five carriers
over the past year.
And as its customers drift away,
the company is adding
new fees and restrictions.
Since the start of the year,
it has rolled back the time that night minutes start
to 9 p.m. on some plans.
And has started charging
customers airtime for checking how many
minutes they have left on their plan.
Some customers, typically those with poor
credit, are even charged a
$3 fee to speak with a customer
service agent. We've mentioned most of
these things on these airwaves.
At Sprint, there is a specific target for
customer frustration. Who is that,
Mike?
Gee, I have no idea. You don't know?
No, why don't you tell us? Claire, a friend of yours.
Ah, yes.
She is the virtual service representative
that answers customer calls.
Claire can transform even the most basic
customer query or billing question
into a nightmarish chase
with her tendency to misunderstand speech commands
and direct customers to the wrong departments.
So, yeah, there's a bit of problems
over at Sprint PCS.
I think I'm not going to be with Sprint PCS much longer.
Reason being that
they annoyed me to hell last month
when the bill that
they sent me was a few days
overdue, like maybe three days overdue.
They started calling every day, started leaving voicemail
every day, filling up my voicemail box.
And this month,
this month they didn't
send me a bill. I didn't get one at all.
Now, they're going
to start calling any day now.
And when they call, they're going to be met
by my obstinate policy
of not being able to pay bills
that I have not received.
And they're going to say something on the order
of, sir, you have to pay the bill,
or we're going to have to disconnect your phone,
and I'm going to say, well, ma'am or sir or whatever,
I can't pay the bill unless you send
me the bill, and it's just going to get worse from there.
And I have a feeling, I have a feeling
this is going to end with somebody getting disconnected.
All right.
That's all I'm going to say.
I will. It's about time I checked out another company
and had something else to complain about.
You know, Sprint is all...
You can't say any more about it.
Some feedback
about other issues.
Dear OffTheHook,
I accidentally got Real One.
We were talking about that last week.
So I checked out the BBC World stream.
It seems you do
have to pay to access it as you need
a real super pass
Europe.
Unbelievable.
So I figured out a way to charge for that.
That's really bad news because that was the only way people here
could see that. And for those who don't know,
BBC World is a video stream.
Some people wrote in thinking it was an audio stream.
Now it's video.
Well, yeah, you can hear what they're saying,
but, you know, it's a TV channel.
There's a radio stream, too.
Well, there's BBC World.
Is that what you're thinking of? Yeah.
That's a shortwave service.
This is a 24-hour news channel
that nobody in this country can get
except if you get Canadian issues.
It's called BBC World.
No, no. BBC World service is not the same as BBC World.
BBC World is the TV channel.
I have documentation
to prove this.
Alright, fine.
Let's see.
This person is interested in running an Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
only rebroadcast stream during off the hook.
Would that be okay with us?
I'm not quite sure. How would you limit it to
Ottawa only?
Rebroadcasting
over a radio station, that's okay with me,
and that's why it would only be in Ottawa,
but rebroadcast stream
only in Ottawa.
I don't know.
I mean, yeah, by all means,
rebroadcast anything you want.
The person to email is Junz.
Yeah, Junz.
Junz.com
Or you can email
all of us at oth2600.com
That works, too.
Except for now, DSL is down.
DSL just down. No reason.
Nobody knows.
When there's three companies involved,
we have our provider, we have the provider's provider,
and we have Verizon.
They all point fingers at each other,
and that takes about two or three days
before they sort it out.
Maybe it'll get fixed.
Email us, by all means.
It'll sit in a queue somewhere
and eventually get to us.
Hopefully by next week.
FCC News.
Studies that make the case for a radical overhaul
in the nation's media ownership rules.
Doesn't that sound so good when you say it that way?
But when you realize what they're actually saying,
it's horrible.
FCC Commission Chief Michael Powell
told Wall Street yesterday
to expect a vote on changes
by next spring.
Actually, he told them this last week.
I'm reading a story from last week.
Most of the media ownership rules are old.
The media industry has changed.
Changes in the current regulations
would pave the way for
community radio, alternative ownership,
more radio stations.
No, it would pave the way for companies
such as Viacom and News Corporation,
who figure they don't have enough power as it is,
to own TV stations
and newspapers
in the same city.
They also want the FCC to axe the rule
that forbids broadcasters
from reaching more than 35%
of the national audience.
They'd like to reach everybody.
Well, we'd all like to reach everybody.
But, uh,
it's not like
there are infinite resources here.
The study,
this is interesting too, the study found
network-owned affiliates produce more local news
than local affiliates,
turning the argument for the rule on its head.
Now, okay,
let's look at New York, all right?
Now, first of all,
where is there
an independent station
that's not part of a network of some sort?
I don't think there are any left.
They say that
network-owned affiliates produce
more local news. Everything is
owned by a network.
And I don't think
there's much local news being produced by,
you know, I'm not going to pick on a particular
radio station, but those radio stations that are playing music
all the time.
I don't know where we
fit in. Are we considered
network-owned because we're owned by Pacifica?
Or, I mean, Pacifica owns five
stations, so I don't think we're in the same ballpark
as Clear Channel.
And we certainly produce a hell of a lot
more local news than anybody
in the city
put together, I think.
So, I don't know.
They're playing around with words here.
Another study found the proliferation
of independent news outlets
in a survey of ten major markets since
1960, a factor
that could challenge the so-called
duopoly rule, which
caps the number of TV or radio stations
that can be owned in a single market.
It's
not looking good. Not looking good for
alternative radio.
What else is
not looking good?
Jeffco stores. Have you been to a
Jeffco store? I don't even know where they are, but they're
some part of the country.
Jeffco stores are going to be requiring
fingerprints to go shopping.
Consumers
who use checks or credit cards
will have to give their fingerprints to merchants.
It's a new tactic.
Actually, you know what? I think
Jeffco, according to this particular
news report,
means Jefferson County,
which
in typical
net style, they don't say where Jefferson
County is, and it's probably Jefferson County in every state.
So,
somewhere that's Jefferson County near you,
you should be careful,
the touch pads
are easy to use and don't
leave residue on your finger.
Police agencies say the policy has resulted
in less check fraud,
probably because less people are going shopping.
They are now asking all merchants in the county
to require fingerprints. The important thing
about this to remember is that
it doesn't put an honest customer's fingerprint
into a database somewhere.
The only people who
are actually going to have their fingerprints processed
are the crooks.
Does that make any sense?
How do you process something
to find out if it's a crook without processing it?
Maybe
they use a retinal scan to see if
you're honest or something like that.
The fingerprints will be kept on
file until the transaction is clear.
If there's a problem,
the prints will be passed along to investigators.
How many times has there been a problem?
I was using my credit card on
one of the MetroCard machines earlier and there was a problem.
It wasn't my fault, but there was a problem.
Does that mean my fingerprints will be passed
along to the MTA?
Hey, speaking of which, where's Jim?
I don't know. Maybe the MTA got him.
Maybe you touched the screen.
You're right.
They trick you.
They're probably grabbing your fingerprints there.
Anyway, the new policy will take effect throughout Jefferson County
in the next few weeks, so if you live anywhere
in Jefferson County, wherever that is,
here's a hint.
This story came to us on the net
from something called Nine News,
so if you have a TV station called Nine News,
that's probably your Jefferson County,
although it's going to be every
Jefferson County soon, I'll bet.
Some people
notified us of potential
problems, which I think are kind of funny.
This person goes to
namedroppers.com, where you can
type in any word and get all the domains
that use it.
I typed in 2600,
and it said there are 199 domains
registered. A lot don't work, most are pretty
lame, but
one of them was called 2600hacker.com.
I tried it out
only to end up at a greatdomains.com
site, and smack in the middle
of the page, it says, to make an offer
on this domain name, please enter an amount
below in US dollars.
The minimum offer amount
is $20,000.
Yeah.
Above that, it says
list price $30,000.
I had no idea your name was worth so much.
After sitting on the page
for 20 seconds, it redirects you to greatdomains.com
where they list other domains that they are
squatting on. Kind.com
is going for $15,000.
We're more expensive than kind.com.
Swap.com, $25,000.
And some of the big ones,
USamerica.com,
$100,000.
It doesn't even
make sense. No, it doesn't.
I almost said USamerica,
which, I guess if I was
more clever, I could figure out a way to say that where it sounded
good, but that's $100,000
for USamerica.
Litigate.com,
$150,000.
And it just
goes on and on.
Just letting you know, someone is trying to make a great deal
of money off your name, signed Mike from
San Diego. Thanks for that info.
Yeah, it's
true. People are out there
trying to use familiar names to make money
and that's pretty sleazy.
But what are you going to do?
We got a letter from a lawyer, a real letter from a
lawyer, in an envelope and everything.
Dear 2600
Magazine, I write to alert you
that you may be the victim of cyber
squatting. It's nice to be the victim occasionally
instead of being accused of cyber squatting.
Someone has registered a domain
name that is confusingly similar to your domain
name, 2600.com.
Specifically, someone
has registered www.2600.com.
Yeah,
without the dot.
This domain name is identical to yours
except for the addition of www
at the beginning of it.
The likely purpose of this domain name is to divert
internet traffic that is intended for your website
by taking advantage of a typing error
omitting the period between www
and the domain name that
users commonly make when searching the internet.
Indeed, this is probably the most
common error that users make when entering
a domain name. This form of
cyber squatting allows a bad faith registrant
to redirect to its own website internet
traffic that is intended for your website. In doing
so, the bad faith registrant can misappropriate
your economic opportunity
or create the impression that its website
and the content thereof is your website
or is affiliated with you.
My law firm specializes in
intellectual property litigation and has
particular expertise in litigating
domain name disputes and this goes on
and on. Attorney's fees
will vary from attorney to attorney. My law firm
will bring a UDRP administrative
proceeding for this type of
cyber squatting for a flat fee of
$5,000.
I don't know what to consider this. Is this
spam? Is this a
cyber squatting thing of its own?
What's to say these people don't register names
and then send out these letters? What's to say
that they just are looking for this
kind of thing all over the place? I did
look at the site and the site simply redirects to us
so that's fine. I don't care.
It's perfectly okay, but it's kind of weird to be
getting letters from lawyers urging
you to take action against somebody.
Usually, don't you call a
lawyer to take action against somebody? They don't
call you. It just seems very
strange.
Well, I don't know. Do you think
they just scan through various domains
and try to find things that they could
fight in court?
I think what you said before is probably
closer. They probably own it.
I don't know about that.
It redirects to you. Yeah, because they are lawyers.
I don't want to accuse them of anything. Their names are
Turner Green
Afrasiabi
and Arledge LLP. They're
in Costa Mesa, California.
Their website is turnergreen.com
People
feel like suing somebody. I guess these people are
hungry for the activity.
Okay, new action in the
world of piracy.
Have you seen this one? This is from Time Magazine.
The slumping
record industry's best hope is glue.
That's right. To combat
online piracy, Epic Records
has started shipping music critics personal
CD players that are glued shut,
sealed inside the
Walkmans to prevent any unauthorized copying
or upcoming releases by Tori Amos,
Pearl Jam and Audioslave.
There's a picture of
a little Walkman here that's sealed
shut. It's a low-tech
response to a high-tech problem, said
Epic spokeswoman Lisa Markowitz.
A Walkman costs $50, and we could be
saving hundreds of thousands of dollars by preventing
this music from getting out.
Of course, don't they want the music to get out?
Isn't that why they make records in
the first place? Anyway,
critics are asked to return the CD player,
and the first critics who were sent the Pearl Jam
album, shockingly, all did so.
After that, the players are recycled
for other critics, like a lending library.
And as for the high-tech method for sealing
up the players, we have two wonderful guys who sit
with little masks on, gluing these
things shut.
And that is the record industry's solution
to piracy,
gluing CD players shut. I think there's all
kinds of symbolism in there.
Did you hear about the pirate ship?
No, you're going to have to tell me about this.
There's a pirate ship, apparently, in Asia somewhere
that goes
off the coast, a few miles
or whatever, and copies CDs and then
comes back.
I don't understand the point, but I think it's really funny.
You're not joking. This is really a pirate ship out there.
There's a pirate ship.
Where did you read this, just out of curiosity?
I read it online.
It's got to be true.
And it's got a little CD and crossbones underneath.
Mickey Mouse's
days at Disney could be numbered,
and paying royalties for
warbling George Gershwin tunes could become
a thing of the past if the U.S. Supreme Court
sides with an Internet publisher
in a trademark copyright case this week.
In fact, this case was heard today in the Supreme Court
down in D.C.
One of our people sat outside,
Mackie, who you may know, sat outside the Supreme Court
all night waiting to get into this.
And I haven't heard from him since.
He's probably fallen asleep now.
So we have no idea what happened inside there.
But that was the case that basically
it could plunge
the earliest images of Disney's mascot and other
closely held creative property into the public domain
as early as next year.
If upheld, the precedent-setting challenge
could cost movie studios and heirs
of authors and composers
millions of dollars in revenue
as previously protected material
becomes available free of charge.
That issue was a 1998
law that extended copyright protection
an additional 20 years for cultural works,
thereby protecting
movies, plays, books, and music
for a total of 70 years after the author's
death or for 95 years from publication
for works created by
or for corporations. So basically what they
do is they keep extending this
and making it
far into the future when these
works become part of the public domain.
This case will decide whether or not that
actually is allowed to stand.
If I were Walt Disney, I would want Mickey Mouse to be in the
public domain.
What does Mickey Mouse being in the public domain mean, anyway?
We can put Mickey Mouse on the front cover of
2600? Well, we've done that already.
We have, but isn't that the point at which
something becomes a classic when you can
buy it as part of a Dover book
or it's otherwise just
everywhere because there's no copyright
on it anymore?
I don't know what they're so worried about.
I don't know what...
This is really pretty silly, but
hopefully this case will
knock them on their ass a little bit
because it's really gotten
a bit crazy as far as extending these
things into infinity.
It goes against the whole purpose of what copyright was all about.
Oh, my.
Look at the time.
We should be taking phone calls.
212-209-2900.
Let's see if I can fit in one or two more stories here.
The Space Shuttle
launched a couple of days ago
and this one was interesting because
they attached a camera
to the side of it.
That's right. The camera was attached to the
shuttle Atlantis that soared into orbit on Monday.
The shuttle cam view started
with the launch pad and
the whole launch site and all of Cape Canaveral
and the eastern seaboard as Atlantis
blasted off and climbed higher
and higher.
I tried to find this. I even went
to the NASA website
and they had video of this, but it
cut off after a minute and a half.
If anybody has the actual video
of this
camera outside, the video that the
camera shot outside the Space Shuttle as it
went up into the sky, I think that would be really cool to see.
See the
whole United States and then the whole
Earth or whatever. I think it runs for about 30 minutes.
I'm not sure how far the Space Shuttle
gets in 30 minutes, but that's one way to find out.
Email us if you know how to
get a hold of that.
That's pretty cool.
Cameras on Space Shuttles.
Why didn't anybody think of things like that?
Because nobody thinks of things like that.
212-209-2900 is our phone number.
We have some phone calls
online already, so let's
see what's out there.
Good evening. You're not on the air.
You're on the air.
These phones are moving faster than I can keep up with them.
Yes, go ahead. You're on the air.
Yeah, hi. I just wanted to say
the Jefferson County thing about the
fingerprinting? Yes.
That's actually in Colorado.
I read the same story last week on
I think it was the Drudge Report had the same thing.
Okay. It's Colorado.
Jefferson County, Colorado.
That's good to know.
My listeners can always provide you with information almost immediately.
Take it easy.
Thanks for your call.
Let's go over here now.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Speak up, please. Go ahead. I'm here.
Yes, what's on your mind? I was going to say about the
thumbprints. Actually, it's not the first
time it's been used. Back in
1979, I worked someplace, and they did
that. In stores? Yeah, retail
stores. It was a stereo
store. They got ripped off a lot.
But anyway, it was only the people
that, like you read on the thing,
the people that ended up not
paying the bills and so forth
that ended up getting busted.
Was this just one store's policy?
Yeah, it was. See, now, what they're talking about
in Jefferson County is every business.
Well, you know, considering the fact that it
was done back in 79, I mean, you
sound kind of surprised that it's
starting. I find it
kind of weird that more people aren't using it,
as much as I don't like it. Well, more people
aren't using it because there's been such an outcry
about privacy rights, and I think
there's less of an outcry now because people think
that somehow it makes them more secure
to give up their privacy. No, I don't think
it's more. I think if you ever own a business
or run a business, and you
experience how many people
actually do try and rip you off,
you do try and come up with things like that.
I'm not saying I agree with it totally.
Well, you know, there are technological solutions
as far as having particular
numbers on credit cards that
only the owner is supposed to have.
How
were people getting ripped off?
Well, the credit card bill would
go through, would be approved, and then a month later
the store would get, you know,
say this is stolen, this has been
stolen, it's been gone, and
a court case would ensue,
and then you'd need evidence to the fact.
But if it's a store, I assume
it's a store people walked into?
Well, then they had possession of the credit
card, and if they had possession of the credit card,
the merchant is not responsible.
Yeah, but they turned out it was stolen, and then the
store would have to go.
The store would have to go to court.
If they were satisfied
that the person was who they said they were,
for instance, the signature has to match
on the back of the card and on
the piece of paper, then the merchant is not
liable. That's why they're supposed to look, they're
supposed to compare. A lot of times they don't, and if they don't do that
then they are liable. Well, I'm just saying that I
spent a few times in court
fighting over it.
Again, I'm not saying I'm for it, I'm just
trying to say that you might want
to look at other sides of it rather
than... Well, you know,
they will always say, and the laws
do vary from state to state, that is true,
but they will always say that
if you give up
some of your privacy
that somehow that's going to make things more secure.
I don't know if this is true in this case,
giving your fingerprint when you make a
purchase. Wait a minute, you don't have
any privacy if you pay with a check or credit card?
Well,
I mean, you're not giving out your DNA,
you know, to... No.
I know a lot of people are very fearful of it,
and I agree to a certain extent,
but I also know from the viewpoint
of working at a store or being
a part owner or something
that, you know, you do
end up getting screwed down a lot.
And you do, you know, tend to do
these sort of things.
And that's all I wanted to say.
Okay. Okay, thanks. Thanks for your call.
I'd like to know what other people think about that.
212-209-2900.
Good evening. You're on the air.
I don't understand if they say that
honest people's
fingerprints are not in the database,
how it would work, because obviously that
means it can't be confirming that you
are who you say you are,
because if honest people's
fingerprints aren't in there, it can't do
a check that way.
So I guess it would mean perhaps that
it can tell whether you've been convicted
of credit card fraud or
bad checks in the past, but that
would mean that if you ever were convicted of that,
I guess you would give up for life
your right to ever use
a check or a credit card again.
Yeah, well, what would happen if you were writing good
checks, you had written bad checks in the
past, would you be flagged for that reason?
And if
you just continue to write bad checks all
the time, well, odds are you're just going to get somebody
else to, like, go in on the scheme with you
whose fingerprints are not in a database.
Right. I don't see unless they did
have a database that had everybody's fingerprints
and was checking your identity, how this is
supposed to work at all. It doesn't seem to make sense to me.
No, it doesn't.
To me, whenever I see things like this,
I'm always very wary that it's actually
just part of
a bigger plan
to, I guess, make us
get used to the fact that
our fingerprints are being given out to
various agencies without our control.
We've given up social security numbers
as being private at all. We give
those to everybody. You know, we were
talking to T-Mobile before, and
you can't get an account with that phone
company unless you've given your social security number. What does that
have to do with social security? Nothing. But we've
given that up. And if we're not careful
in ten years, we'll be giving fingerprints
to phone companies to get accounts.
The other thing that was interesting about the story
was that the police were
encouraging all the merchants to use it. I hope
the merchants have enough sense to say
no, we're not going to subject our customers to that.
Well, I mean, you heard what
the previous caller, who was a merchant,
at some point... Well, I'm a merchant, too, as a matter of
fact. I have an Internet-based
business, and, you know, we do put up with
some credit card fraud. Well, Internet is
totally different, and I have some
degree of familiarity with that. Obviously,
fingerprints aren't going to do you a whole lot of good.
And it's not... What I want to say, it's
not terribly... You know,
maybe we're lucky as a merchant,
but it's not a terribly horrible problem.
There's some level
of fraud. You build your awareness
of that into your business. If you
follow some common sense rules, you can...
You know, if I get an order
for $3,000
to be shipped to
Bulgaria, which is charged
to a woman who lives in Peoria,
you realize that there's something funny
with that particular transaction. Right.
If you're aware of the problem, there are
things you can do to counter
it, both in real life and
online. A lot of people aren't aware of this,
and the companies, the credit card companies
themselves, they don't go to very much effort
to let merchants know this. And especially
online merchants, they're 100%
accountable for fraud
because they don't have possession of the credit card.
Right. So they have to be especially careful
and, you know,
this talk of, you know,
it resulting in higher rates
for us and the credit card companies eating the
charges, it's not true. It's the merchants
that eat the charges on those kinds of things.
In my experience as a merchant,
you don't really need a high-tech
invasive of people's privacy
to deal. The problem is not
to me, it's not that serious
that would require the kind of
draconian solutions that are only
being proposed for.
Okay. Thanks for your call.
212-209-2900.
Good evening.
Thank you for
calling us. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello? Yes, go ahead.
Hey, I'd like to know, where can
I get a video stream of the BBC
World as shown on PBS?
Oh, boy. Everybody
asks this question. Well, it used
to be available. You used to be able to go to
bbcworld.com and see it there. Now you have to be
part of some real one-player
thing where you pay for it. All it
takes, really, is somebody in
Canada or somebody who has access to
it somewhere, setting up a video stream
and putting it on the net and having some bandwidth.
Of course, you'll wind up getting sued. I don't know who
you'll get sued by because I think the BBC
would want people to see what they're broadcasting.
Maybe you'll get sued by
a real player because they have exclusive rights
to it. I don't know. But that's
really the only way. The other way to see it, of course,
is to somehow get it
onto your TV set, which in this country is
almost impossible.
But we get asked this question all the
time, and unfortunately it's not
as simple as it used to be. And, of course,
there's also
the shortwave service, which
anybody can get with a shortwave radio.
I think 5975 is
the frequency you'll hear in this country.
You're nodding. Is that right? Yes.
How's the reception on that? Because it's not broadcast
to North America anymore. It's broadcast to Europe.
But we can still hear it.
At night. Yeah. At night only.
Okay. It's getting
harder to hear alternative
news of any sort.
Good evening. You're on the air. Oh, hi.
With the fingerprinting
and the checks, I believe
that the system
is that you give your fingerprint.
It doesn't actually check it at the time of the
transaction. If the transaction
bounces, then they would
keep the fingerprint and submit it to law
enforcement authorities to help track you down.
Okay, but my problem with that is how do you know that they've
gotten rid of it in the first place?
Well, I'm not arguing with that. I'm just saying
argue the point on its merits.
You're talking about
people were discussing it as having been
it gets scanned at the time
that you're making the transaction
and it checks if it's valid or not. And that's not
what's happening. At least not now.
It could happen. Oh, well, I mean, anything could happen.
Sure. Right. I mean, you know, I think
this is ridiculous.
But, you know, at least
argue it for what it is. Well, we don't know
what it is because we haven't seen it. So,
it could be anything.
From the description
in the article, it was pretty clear
to me that, you know,
it's a catch
after the process.
Not a catch before the process. Well, again, if somebody
is actually in Jefferson County, we'd like
to know exactly what it is that, you know, is going
on with that. And, you know, other merchants, too.
There are other places that are using this kind
of system currently.
Yeah. But with credit cards also, the
credit card companies
say that merchants are not
allowed to ask for identification
for you to make the transaction. All you need to do
is to present the credit card and sign
and have the signature match what's on the back.
Well, in New York State, that is
true. But on the
MasterCard website, that's what it says.
Okay, then it might be a MasterCard thing
then that exists in all the states.
Visa and MasterCard are virtually identical.
But if there's an exception to that, if your
signature is not on the back of your
card or if it's illegible or something,
if they don't see it there, they can ask for ID
there. Yeah. And that's
that happens a lot. All right? Cool.
Thanks for calling. What I understood
that used to happen with the check is you would actually
put your fingerprint on the check
and if it bounced, it came back to them.
Otherwise, it would get processed and come back to you.
Except you don't get checks anymore.
I do. My bank does.
A lot of banks don't send you the checks anymore.
Okay. So they wind up someplace
else.
Who knows? But
fingerprints are only one thing they could do. They could do all kinds
of other invasive type of things.
The thing is
once these tools get put into place, they stay.
So that's why we have to be very careful with this.
You know, if we
say, okay, let's give this a shot, it's going to be
the norm. It's going to be what we're using
all the time. So that's why
you have to be extremely careful.
212-209-2900.
Good evening. You're on the air. Yeah. Hi.
I'm in the 2-in-2 area code in
Manhattan in a business and
we call people in different area codes.
New York City, sometimes Long Island.
And it happens
a lot. Then it won't happen. Then it happens.
You call clients.
Their answering machine kicks in.
You hang up.
They call you back. It's like the phone
company is getting a double fee. They get my
fee to them at the business rate.
But now they're popping them a bill.
And I complained
to a lot of people.
Do you know what's going on?
I was just wondering if you're aware of that.
It happened today with five different area
codes. Well, okay.
Now, basically, I missed part
of what you were saying. All right. I have a business
phone account. Which means that you pay a lot
more right there. Yes. Because they even
pick Manhattan up.
I mean, if I call above 14th Street,
it costs me more money. I'm on 5th Street.
Really? That I did not know.
It's outrageous. But the thing I'm getting
is they just doubled their fee.
And it's been going on for over a year.
And I would just like you to put it out there
to other listeners.
If I call
somebody in 718 area code,
they're not home. Their machine kicks in.
We go, dang it. We hang up.
And then the phone rings and it's their
machine. So they get a bill
for calling me. And this happens
in Long Island. Why do they get a bill for calling you?
Because they call you back. Because it's a long distance call
for them if it's another business.
It's actually called long distance?
Inside
Manhattan, it's called long distance?
On a
commercial phone account,
even within Manhattan,
above 34th Street, it's more money.
Above...
But the thing I'm
pointing out to you is
that this... I mean, they're getting
a double... They're charging the other
end a fee when I call them.
Because they had no
volition. And we
get this call back. It comes from
Long Island. It'll come
from other boroughs of the city. And I was just
wondering if you guys were aware of it.
I wasn't aware of how much it cost
to have a business line. Actually, at
the conference, we installed...
We had to install a line to demonstrate the
games that we were playing.
And inside a hotel, you
can only have a business line.
And it wound up costing over $1,000
just to have a phone line put in for
two days. But I meant the call back
feature. Because that screws the other guy
who was innocent.
But when you have a business line,
things that don't cost money ordinarily
cost a whole lot more.
So if you were a resident and the same thing was
happening, you probably wouldn't be paying anything
for this, right? To have somebody
call you back. I don't know. What I mean is
I'm sure that when I called somebody
in Brooklyn, they got
nailed a bill for calling me
when their machinery calls me back
after I hang up.
It's kind of unclear. Why is their machinery
calling you back exactly? We don't know.
It has to be somebody's software.
It's found money
for the company. And that's why I'm asking
if it happens to other people. I've never heard of that.
What does it do when it calls you back?
Does it say something? Their machine.
We hang up.
If we call 716 Buffalo,
we'll hang up.
Dang it, they weren't in.
It's their voice. Their machinery.
You know what it might be?
Do you have three-way
calling on the line?
You might without knowing it.
What you might be doing is
flashing the switch hook and then hanging up
and then the call that supposedly you
put on hold is calling you back.
That's a very good point.
I'm telling you, we just hang up.
Does the message start at the beginning or is it
sort of in the middle?
No, we'll give up the minute we find out an answer machine.
We'll just hang up the phone
and dang it, we get a call back.
And it's been going on for a year but not
all the time. It sounds like it's
calling you back with that same call. That's my
theory. Thanks a lot.
Hopefully that solves your problems.
But again,
they put three-way calling on
phone lines and they charge you
75 cents every time you make a three-way call
without telling you. It happened to me
this weekend on my cell phone.
A friend tried to call me.
They couldn't get through but my phone rang.
I picked up the phone. It was their
message on their machine.
But they had to call me back.
So it was strange.
Yeah, and all cell phones
have call waiting
and three-way and all those kinds of things. I don't think
you can take them off. I think you're stuck with those.
I don't use it.
Well, you did that time. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello. Thank you for
taking my call. This is an easy question.
I'm in Manhattan
and I just want to know
what do you dial if you want to
check the ring
on your own phone? What number?
Well, it depends. Where did you say
you were? In Manhattan. 646.
Okay. It was 660
plus
either the last four
digits of your number or the last
seven digits of your number. And I've seen in some cases
even the full area code plus phone
number. Sometimes
you dial 660 and you get another dial tone.
Then you dial that number. And what happens is
after you dial the right number, you get
a dial tone or some other type of a tone.
You flash the switch hook, hang
up, and it should ring back. What's
switch? What?
Oh, right. Just one more time.
660.
That's where it gets kind of strange
because it's different for every exchange. It could be
660 plus the last four digits
of your phone number. It could be the whole
seven digits or it could even be the whole ten
digits. Or it might not work at all.
You know, there's all different ways.
But if it does work, you'll know because
you'll hear the dial tone or some other kind
of a tone after you finish dialing the last
number. And then at that point, you hang up,
pick up again, hang up, and it should ring.
Hang up, pick up
again, and hang up? Yeah. And then it should ring.
That's flashing the switch hook.
All right. Thank you.
Good luck with that. Yeah, ringbacks.
They used to be a lot more fun,
you know, because they all kind of work
the same way.
I don't know. It's not as
much fun anymore. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello? Yes, go ahead.
Oh, the
BBC World stream, I think they
did away with the 100 and 300k
streams. But I think you can still get
like a low res 56k
stream. Where's this?
You know, I'm
not sure.
The computer's not on right
now, but I think the 56k
stream's still going.
But where is,
what site is this?
Well, I think it's coming from them.
It's coming from them. But what site
are you connecting to to get this?
You know what? I don't have the computer on right
now, so I can't tell you. I'm sorry.
All right. But
yeah, the
high bandwidth streams disappeared,
unfortunately. Hey, I have a question for you.
Yes.
First of all,
you made a movie about Kevin Mitnick, right?
Freedom Downtime, yeah.
Do you sell that movie? It's on our
internet store.
I'm just curious what your position is
on the fact that it was unused
and I downloaded it. That's fine.
If you saw it that way, that's great.
We wanted to get out.
That's the whole reason we made the film.
If you buy it from us, you get the nice
packaging and you have a videotape. That's kind of cool.
Probably better quality, but
it's your choice if you want to buy it or not.
All right?
All right. Thank you.
Let's see if we have time for one more phone call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello. Yes, I'm calling
actually about an internet
problem. I hope you can
address it. I've never had this happen before.
I've had my
domain name stolen.
Uh-oh.
I run a couple small websites.
They're not commercial, but
they're for sports and
they're for women and they have some traffic
on them.
My company went out of business.
I use small hosts usually.
It just went out of business and disappeared.
I've had that happen before, so I thought I'd rebuild.
The domain name seemed locked
up because they're out of business.
They can't do the permissions format
of the DNS change.
I thought I would just let it expire and buy it back.
Someone else grabbed it?
No, no. I think they grabbed it.
I think they grabbed all of their clients' names.
I think they did DNS.
As in my name, it's still valid to me.
It hasn't expired yet. I know the date.
It's less than four months to go to work.
We're kind of out of time here, so I don't really have time
to go into this very much, but have you just tried
paying for it and see what happens?
I can't. They've stolen it
and they've re-registered it at a new
registrar's office.
If you let it expire even a day,
they can do things like that.
It didn't expire yet.
It has about four months to go before expiration.
Then they shouldn't be able to get away with this.
You might want to try calling the personal
computer people who are here right now, in fact.
Yeah, because it's a very reputable
company that registered it, and I'm
dealing with them.
I wish I could spend more time on this, but unfortunately
our time is done.
If you want to call back next week or call the personal
computer people, maybe they can help as well.
That's it for us here off the hook.
We'll be back again next week with Kevin Mitnick,
our special fundraiser,
and we'll
see you then. Stay tuned for the personal
computer people. See you.
And we'll never end
Round and around we go
Where it's going
The WBAI
Arts Magazine
Tuesdays, 2-3pm
featuring
Rhymers,
Mimers, and Old Rag
Timers