You've been listening to FSRN, I'm Deepa Fernandes.
Thursday, September 11th at 6pm, join us at the Riverside Church with former Congresswoman
Cynthia McKinney, editor and publisher Mike Rupert, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Dr.
Faust Khan, and John Judge for a film exhibit and forum, Reframing 9-11.
This is the kickoff event for a weekend-long forum at the Riverside Church, exploring alternatives
to the current path of endless war, environmental devastation, corporate welfare, and the dismantling
of our U.S. Constitution.
This event is sponsored by WBAI, 9-11 Citizens Watch, and the WBAI program Ain't That Good
News.
Two years later, and it is obvious, the truth has been kept from us.
Come to the Riverside Church at 490 Riverside Drive, take the 1 of the 9 to 116th Street.
This is a free event with suggested donation.
Visit WBAI.org for more information.
Seek truth.
Sounds like a good idea.
And this is WBAI New York, where truth sometimes filters out.
And it's time for Off The Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off The Hook Manual, back here after six weeks away, and it's good to be
back.
I hope I, that wasn't condescending what I just said about truth sometimes filtering
out, was it?
No, no, no.
What I meant was, you know, truth is such a rare commodity these days that if you listen
to BAI, you're going to hear the truth in ways you don't expect to hear the truth, you
know, different types of things that you assume are true in a different way, and, well, yeah,
we all know.
Anyway, yeah, I just got back.
I'm still kind of jet-lagged.
It's weird, though.
It's weird being back in New York City after such a long time.
You just kind of, like, fall right back into it, and I've been to so many weird places
lately.
I've been to Minsk and Belarus and Moscow and St. Petersburg and all the Baltics and
Poland.
It was all great.
It really was all amazing.
And the people there are very friendly, very diverse, interesting, and definitely want
to go back, and I recommend it to a lot of people.
It's good to have you back.
Well, thank you.
Thank you very much.
What have I missed?
Everything looks different.
Everyone's grown a beard.
Gained about 30 pounds, looks like.
I got a haircut.
Yeah?
Yeah, it's very nice.
Very nice.
Very dashing on you.
This is the back-to-school or asylum look.
Wow.
You must be sick of back-to-schools by now.
Oh, no.
Today was the very first day that we came back.
Well, yeah, you can only go back once.
I know, but I'm just saying, over the course of your life, you must be sick of all the
back-to-schools.
No, no.
Really?
Okay.
Well, thank you.
Thank you very much.
What have I missed?
Everything looks different.
I know, but I'm just saying, over the course of your life, you must be sick of all the
back-to-schools.
No, no.
Really?
Okay.
Well, thank you.
No, it's actually exciting.
I use the summer to charge up and get ready.
Oh, that's good.
That's good.
And we have a full cast of characters here tonight.
We have Mike over there.
Hello.
And Red Hack.
Hey.
Evan.
Hello.
Jim.
Yeah.
And Mitch.
Hello.
How you doing?
And, okay, well, let's start.
We have a lot of material to cover tonight and only an hour to do so.
So let's start with what happened here in New York yesterday.
And that was the appearance of our own hero, John Ashcroft, right?
Mike, tell us something about what was going on with that.
First of all, we were talking about the tour last week, and we asked our listeners to let
us know if they found out anything.
A bunch of them did.
We posted the story on the website, but unfortunately, now, a week later, it's all over.
I think that the tour is finished.
But I'm not sure about the town meetings.
They may still be going on, the quote-unquote town meetings.
They're not telling anyone.
No.
They don't tell anybody about the town meetings.
And as Bernie told us last week, when they have the town meetings, they have a meeting
in front of the town, and they literally have their back to the town as they're talking
to a crowd of people up on the podium, and they don't take any input.
So it's great and wonderful.
It's Soviet-style democracy.
It really is.
So what do you have on this tour business?
Well, it's not exactly clear what John Ashcroft said inside because we weren't invited, not
being members of law enforcement, but it seemed to be the same old, same old about how wonderful
the Patriot Act is because it defends us from terrorists or something.
John Ashcroft had the nerve to say that.
He spoke at what's called Federal Hall right here on Wall Street.
And he said that because we don't think the Patriot Act is such a good idea, that implies
that we have forgotten how we felt on September 11, 2001.
The most interesting thing I have to say about this is actually the media coverage
of this event.
The New York Times pretty much printed his speech, more or less.
I mean, they summarized it in parts and whatever, and they talked about the heavy security,
and they mentioned that there were protesters, but the quotes from the protesters are reserved
for the last and second-to-last paragraph.
What are those quotes?
This is from Rosalyn Amelskoff.
No, I'm sorry.
They're not quoted at all.
The signs are quoted.
The signs say, Stop Ashcroft, Defend the Constitution.
And the placards say, Ashcroft, Go Home, Leave Our Civil Liberties Alone.
By the way, just to break in, did you happen to see during a Rumsfeld press conference,
there was a demonstrator, I think it was today, that jumped up and said, Mr. Rumsfeld, you're
fired.
It was, I think, in front of the National Press Club.
And the interesting thing about this, it was good to hear this.
It was good to hear someone just speaking out in some way, even though it was disruptive
to what he was trying to do.
But in the middle of this, while this person was shouting, some people were shouting, Go
Home.
Now, who was shouting, Go Home?
Members of the press?
Is that appropriate, to be shouting down a protest?
Shouldn't they be covering the story and not injecting their own opinions?
If I understood it correctly, it was a press conference of some sort.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe it's a different crowd of people.
But I just thought that was kind of weird.
And then, after that, he went on to talk about how, well, that was very interesting, wasn't
it?
But today, in Iraq, there's 5,000 newspapers coming out on every street corner, and everyone's
free to say what they want.
And of course, this person, while he's saying that, is being dragged away, kicking and screaming,
and thrown into prison.
Go to Iraq, they have freedom of speech there, I guess, is the message.
Well, yeah, I guess that's the message he's saying.
I just wanted to contrast the Times with OY, a Spanish-language newspaper, which has
a full color photo on the cover of the protesters, with lots of people in front of the courthouse.
An act of protest is the headline.
And then, inside, on page three, they do have an article about the speech itself.
And then, down below, they have a similarly long article about what people think about
the Patriot Act.
They have, quote, Pakistanis, people from the ACLU, United for Peace and Justice, people
for the American way.
And then, over on the side, they have what is the Patriot Act, and an expansion of surveillance
with fewer legal restrictions, and so on.
So I just think it's an interesting contrast, one paper to the other.
Well, OY is published by the same people that do Newsday, so you would think Newsday would
cover this as well.
Well, Newsday is printed by the Los Angeles Times, isn't it?
Ah.
You may be right.
Now, our own Evan was there at the demonstration yesterday, in support of John Ashcroft.
I'm sorry.
I'm just so used to that.
No, in opposition to John Ashcroft.
Tell us, how many people showed up?
What was it like?
There were a few hundred people there, at least.
It was pretty big and loud.
There's a large police presence, of course, a lot of officers with rifles, and one officer
was patrolling up and down the roof of Federal Hall.
So would you say the police outnumbered the demonstrators?
No, they didn't outnumber, but they certainly had a heavy presence.
That's so crazy.
You know, when I was in Krakow, Poland, I noticed there were a lot of cops, and that
disturbed me.
You know, all these cops everywhere.
And I was wondering, why are all these police here?
They all seemed very, you know, easygoing, not intimidating in any way, but there were
still so many of them, and there's this big open square where everybody likes to gather
and listen to the clock chime, and things like that.
By the way, there's a clock there that chimes every hour, and it plays a melody, and the
melody is abruptly cut off.
And the reason for that is because it's based on a melody that some guy was playing to warn
of oncoming troops, and that's the moment his throat was slashed.
So they mark it by doing it that way.
I thought it was kind of interesting.
But anyway, all these police were there, in vans, and motorcycles, cars, and I was wondering,
when in the world is going on here?
And there's just more and more of them.
But they're not, you know, they're not, they don't have their arms folded, they're not
intimidating, they're just sort of hanging around, making sure people don't go down a
particular street.
And I asked someone later, who spoke English, what exactly was going on, and they were like,
well, actually, it's the president of Poland, and also the president of Croatia, and a few
other presidents that were just sort of hanging out down there.
Now, can you imagine if something like that was happening in New York?
The presence, helicopters, you'd have barricades, you'd have SWAT teams, everything like that.
Here you just have a bunch of cops standing, not looking particularly threatening.
It's probably, you know, the only situation I can think of that would warrant that kind
of police presence.
And nobody seemed really upset or intimidated by it, which I thought was kind of interesting.
But anyway, so, to get back to this demonstration yesterday, how long did it last?
Was there any kind of, I don't know, response to it at all?
I don't actually know how long it lasted.
I fortunately couldn't be there for long, but I got there at least an hour and a half
after it started, and it was quite loud.
They had a lot of good speakers, and the crowd kept shouting, Ashcroft, resign, and there
were some humorous signs, a few of which bashed the singing senators, which is the group to
which John Ashcroft and Trent Mott and two others belong to.
If any of our listeners, by the way, have like an MP3 of the singing senators, I would
really like to hear it.
Yeah, I imagine that's going to be making its rounds as the campaign heats up.
But, all right, so the Ashcroft tour is over, and he went on this tour because there's been
a lot of criticism about the Patriot Act and all the new powers that are given to government
as a result.
The Patriot Act, I believe, expires in 2005, or is it 2004?
Maybe.
Okay, we don't know.
But, of course, they're going to want to extend it, and this is part of the way I guess they're
going to do this, is by getting overwhelming support by having closed hearings in front
of law enforcement people and town hall meetings where nobody's allowed to speak.
Now, there's an interesting law that prohibits government officials from using government
money to try and influence what legislation does and doesn't get passed, and Ashcroft
seems to me to be violating this law, but he claims he isn't.
Something else is violating this law, that I think, anyway, someone wrote in about this.
After listening to your show from September 3rd, I visited the Department of Justice's
website and was shocked by the following quote on www.lifeandliberty.gov, yeah, go to that
one.
That's a lot of fun.
Basically, this is what it says, it says, visit DLJ's new website, www.lifeandliberty.gov,
launched to educate Americans about how we are preserving life and liberty by using the
USA Patriot Act.
Now, this reader says, after some browsing of that site, I was shocked by the sheer audacity
of the Department of Justice in placing such misinformation slash propaganda on an official
government website.
The ACLU has responded to the dispelling of the myths about the Patriot Act at www.aclu.org
slash files slash open file dot, oh boy, dot CFM question mark ID equals 13375.
By the way, someone else wrote in, with a very helpful site that can be used for fixing
URLs that go on forever.
This person was listening to last week's show when I heard a manual rattling off the
URL for the wacky Canadian passport photo requirement news items.
I guess that reading long URLs over the air can be frustrating.
So here's an online tool that may be of interest to you, www.tinyurl.com, that's right, tinyurl.com.
What this site does, it takes a lengthy URL and reduces it.
In the case of the URL you furnished, which I don't want to read that again, it was really,
really long though, 52 characters.
It reduced that to tinyurl.com slash MLG9.
Yeah.
Now, that comes from Winston Smith.
We've heard from him before, haven't we?
Definitely.
Well, that's something to use if you want to make a long URL shorter.
Now, we also have something else special happening tonight.
There is a flash mob gathering.
We've sent Leo out there to cover this for us and we hope to be hearing from him at some
point tonight during the show from the flash mob site, telling people.
Now, are we supposed to tell people about the flash mob site?
What's going on?
Are we supposed to keep it secret?
Nothing I have is a secret, I don't think.
All right.
So why don't we tell people?
Maybe people can run out to where the flash mob thing is happening.
We've got about half an hour at this point.
They're supposed to go to these bars by 7.20 and there's six bars depending on the month
of your birth.
I don't really want to read them all.
7.13 now.
So if you live in the west part of Midtown where most of these bars are and you have
seven minutes to go online, find out what the bars are and go to the bar, by all means
do.
You can't just list the bar names?
Okay.
For January and February.
No, forget the month.
I mean, people just run down and they're not going to check their birthdays.
There's the Bellevue Bar, Dave's Tavern, the Bull Moose Saloon, the Mercury Bar and Grill,
Siberia and the Smith's Bar and Grill.
Okay.
So people are right now congregating in those areas.
And they're going to meet there at 7.20.
Now what happens?
What happens at 7.20?
There then or soon after a mob, all capitals, representative will appear in the bar and
will pass around further instructions.
Here's my question.
This is being passed around everywhere.
How do you know which is the real mob representative?
Anybody could claim to be the mob representative, right?
Someone from the mob could come, I don't know.
And sue them for copyright infringement or something.
It lasts from 7.41 for five minutes.
And you're supposed to ring two $1 bills if you do go.
Okay.
Well, most people should be able to manage that.
7.41.
So at 7.41, something's going to be happening shortly thereafter.
We're going to hear from Leo as to just what it was that did happen.
This by the way is the last of the mobs.
What does that mean, the last?
Who's going to stop this?
The frequently asked questions, the first question is the end.
The answer is yes.
The question is why?
The answer is it can't be explained.
Ah, shut up.
That's what I say to them.
All right.
Speaking of copyright infringement and silliness and things like that, you hear about the 12-year-old
girl sued by the recording industry of America for, I mean, how stupid can you be?
This is what we're going to do for public relations.
Sue a 12-year-old girl who lives in a housing project in Los Angeles.
And the thing is...
In New York.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Upper West.
Because the recording industry is in Los Angeles.
Okay.
And the thing is that she didn't think she was doing anything illegal because she actually
paid for the peer-to-peer sharing software.
So she thought that by paying for the software, she was paying to download music.
Peer-to-peer software costs money?
Apparently.
That's what I found confusing.
Yeah.
I didn't know where to go to pay for it.
Perhaps she was just ripped off.
Someone made her pay for a link to one of the popular softwares.
There is a...
The Kazaa will sell you some CDs that allow you a premium downloading tool.
You know, I think this is very interesting because I visited a lot of people when I was
overseas in Eastern Europe, where things, by the way, are extremely cheap.
You can get all kinds of food and drink and pay less than $10.
It's really amazing.
You can get places to stay for like 20 bucks.
I really recommend it for people who want to save money.
But when I visited people in their homes, with their permission, of course, I noticed
that many of them did not have actual CDs.
In fact, the CD that I got from my Russian friend...
Oh, gosh.
Oh, gosh.
You know, I can't even say the name of the band, which is really popular because it's
spelled in Cyrillic and I never took the time to learn the Cyrillic.
Does anyone here know how to pronounce things in Cyrillic?
Leo does.
Oh, yeah.
He'll be at the Smartmob.
So, well, okay, maybe a listener can help us with this.
The word in English is spelled K and then the backwards N, H, and then O.
So if anyone can call up and tell me how to pronounce that, at the end of the show, we're
going to play a song from them.
Anyway, the point is the CDs, the CD collections that I saw from people almost in very, very
variably were not real CDs that were bought at a record store because, well, as I said,
things are cheap except for CDs and other things that come from the West like that.
But what people do pay for are the CD-ROMs that they burn things onto.
And I think that's a very significant thing that people are buying the equipment they
need to have the music that they want because they can afford that.
And I think when you have CDs that cost $16, $18, yeah, of course, you should expect that
people are going to try to get the music some other way.
When I was a kid, and I'm sure a lot of people have done the same thing, I recorded music
off the radio all the time.
I've said it.
All right?
Now, what do I do?
Do I sign that little amnesty form that the RIA is sending around and say, hey, you know,
I'm sorry, but I was recording music off the radio when I was a kid.
I didn't buy it.
What do I do to make things right?
That would be an instant judgment.
Don't sign the amnesty form, says the EFF and other credible legal folks.
The other thing, the other thing that I was wondering was I have a very big vinyl collection,
all right?
And I've already bought some CDs that are duplicates of my vinyl collection.
But according to what these guys are saying, it's OK to download music if you own the music
already.
Now, I own the music already.
I own it on vinyl.
Can I download this and have it in digital format and not have to buy the same thing
twice?
Huh?
No one's ever approached this before.
So I'd like to know, if you have the vinyl copy, can you download the digital copy?
Well, I think maybe you should call them up and ask.
And it just so happens that the RIAA's phone number is 1-800.
And I can't remember the numbers, but it happens to spell BADBEAT, B-A-D-B-E-A-T.
Oh, look at that, Dalton.
That's 1-800-BADBEAT.
Yeah.
I'll feel so embarrassed if it happens to be 877.
Was that their idea to get BADBEAT?
No, it's just coincidentally.
As far as I know, they've never advertised it as that.
I doubt you'd see that.
RIAA really advertising their phone number.
Well, this is their phone number now ringing.
At least, I sure hope it is, Tim.
I know it's one of the toll-free numbers.
Yeah, you didn't check it before you came into the studio.
Giving out phone numbers?
I've dialed it before.
This could be some grandmother in Queens somewhere, and you're giving out the phone number.
Most grandmothers have an 800 number.
Thank you for calling the Recording Industry Associates of America.
All right, we're redeemed.
All of our lines are busy.
If you know the extension of the person you are calling, please enter it now.
If you know the last name of the person you are calling, please press 1 now.
We don't know anything.
If you need our address, web address, or fax number, please press 2 now.
If you want information on our fax-on-demand service, press 3 now.
If you want to leave a message in our general mailbox, please press 4 now.
If you want to leave a message in our internet piracy mailbox, please press 5 now.
I just want to talk to a person.
If you would like to continue to hold for our receptionists, please stay on the line.
All right, that's what we're going to do.
Thank you for calling.
Hold for the receptionist.
That's all we get is a receptionist.
5 is tempting, though, isn't it?
Please hold.
All right.
We're just going to ask that question, and then we'll move on.
What I want to know is, doesn't it cost them...
Music, do you think they're paying for this?
Doesn't it cost more to sue these 12-year-old girls and the 90-year-old grandfather down in Texas
that his grandkids were using his computer?
It's a little silly.
Yeah, I mean, the whole thing seems to be a public relations disaster.
Thank you for calling the Recording Industry Association of America.
All of our lines are busy.
If you know the extension of the person you are calling...
We've got to go through this again.
Bring her down.
Yes, Jim.
The reason that they lose money in these particular suits is the fear factor.
And I don't mean the bad TV show.
They scare other people that they aren't suing into stopping.
Yeah, well, that's the effect that they think it's going to have.
Are they really stopping them, or are they forcing them underground?
In talking to people, they've become...
I've heard the talk of boycotting RIAA music more than ever before.
And people are really angry by this.
I mean, a 12-year-old...
That was even on Fox News.
They were upset by this.
And if they're upset by this,
I imagine most of America is going to be upset by it.
One of the few times I've seen a front-page story on the New York Post
that I've said, you know, right on.
Yeah.
Please hold.
We're holding already.
Put us on hold twice.
So anyway, the 12-year-old settled.
I don't know how she did this, but she settled the music lawsuit.
She's a quick mover.
$2,000 her mom had to pay.
Her name happens to be Brianna Lahara.
L-A-H-A-R-A.
How is it legal to give out a 12-year-old's name?
I'm just reading what was on CNN.com and the newspapers.
Uh-huh.
So, you know, just extending a previous...
You think this goes on forever?
It's an endless loop.
Well, it's about 4.30 in Los Angeles.
Uh-huh.
Well, um...
Maybe they're closed.
Well, you know, they should say they're closed.
They really should.
Anyway, so the 12-year-old settled the lawsuit for $2,000,
which I imagine is a good chunk of change
for someone living in a housing project.
I guess, as she said, she issued a statement.
I'm sorry for what I've done.
I love music.
I don't want to hurt the artist I love.
I imagine it's fairly easy to get a 12-year-old to say that.
And the recording companies that take most of the profit.
Well, anyway, when I announced her name,
I was suggesting that, you know,
if you support downloading and not the RAA,
send the girl a card with a buck or two in it.
I wanted to give out her address, too, while you're at it.
Or maybe you have her phone number in your pocket.
No, I'm leaving that as an exercise.
Hello?
Is anyone there?
I thought I heard a voice.
I'm leaving that as an exercise for the audience
to look her up.
I mean, if the Daily News can find her, I'm sure.
But here's the thing, okay?
I would donate, you know, whatever I could afford
for something like this.
But what about the next kid?
You know, what about five kids down the line?
There are about 1,300 subpoenas right now,
or at least that the EFF has in their database.
That's why...
All right, the music stopped.
Is anyone there?
Thank you for calling the recording...
This is a live person, isn't it?
It's a live person with a sick sense of humor.
Yeah, I mean, there's going to be, like, you know,
thousands more lawsuits.
They'll...
Just like Jack Valente said with the MPAA,
they'll file one every day if they have to,
or every minute, or 100 lawsuits a day.
What did he say?
That's got to cost a lot of money.
Yeah, and who's paying for that?
The people who buy the CDs and the DVDs and all that.
Now, with the whole DCSS thing,
I was kind of...
A couple months later,
I was in a computer store,
and I saw software that was intended
to back up DVDs onto CDs,
which is essentially the same thing
as what people were doing,
or at least they were...
I mean, that was what the whole lawsuit
was about, copying these movies.
And so I was kind of curious about how that was,
you know, being done legally,
to have this software that you backed up.
I mean, maybe because it was a backup,
but still, it was using the same kind of technology.
Please hold.
Yeah.
Mike actually suggested we enter
Rosen as the last name,
but Hilary Rosen is no longer
the head of RIAA.
Oh, no?
No.
She stepped down.
The CEO of the RIAA and chairman
is Mitch Bainwall,
who, regarding the case
of the 12-year-old girl, said,
and as this case illustrates,
parents need to be aware
of what their children are doing
on their computers.
I love how they've tied it
into child pornography, too.
Thank you for calling...
All right, wait.
How do you spell his name?
Let's try to reach him.
B-A-I-N-W-O-L.
How dare he use our letters
over his name?
All right.
If you know the last name
of the person you are calling,
please press 1 now.
Spell the last name first
using the keys on the telephone keypad.
For a queue, dial 7.
Yeah, yeah.
B-A-I...
Mitch Bainwall.
That's him.
Please hold.
All right.
That was easy.
I think he's still going.
He has good musical taste,
I'll say that.
Rather subdued, but...
If he's there,
what are you going to do, interview him?
Well, I'm going to ask him
the question I want to know.
Hi, you have reached
the voicemail of Mitch Bainwall
at B-R-I-A-A.
Doesn't sound like Mitch.
Unfortunately, we were unable
to take your call at the moment,
so please leave a message
along with your name
and a phone number,
and we'll get back to you
as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Hey, Mitch.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein
from WBAI, Off The Hook.
We had a question here
at the radio show
concerning being able
to download music
if someone already owns the music.
For instance, it's been implied
that if you own a CD,
it's okay for you
to download the music
and use it for personal use.
My question is,
if you own the music
in analog format,
such as an LP
or something like that,
is it okay for you
to do it in that case
or do you have to go out
and buy the CD again
in order for things
to be legal?
Email us back, please,
if you will,
oth at 2600.com,
and we'd like to read your response
on the next program.
Thank you.
Have a nice day.
All right.
Was I nice enough?
Quite polite.
All right.
So, you know,
that's what you got to do.
You got to call these people
and ask them pointed questions
and see if they respond.
So we'll report on that next week
and tell you if that gets anywhere.
Now, speaking of
silliness,
tying things
into things
that really aren't related,
you see this story,
Man Accused of Luring Minors
to Sex Websites.
Sounds pretty horrible,
doesn't it?
But read into the story
a little bit.
I read this
somewhere in Europe
in the International Hero Tribune.
Federal prosecutors
in Manhattan
have charged a Florida man
with violating
a new law
that makes it illegal
to use misleading
Internet domain names
to entice minors
to pornographic websites.
Prosecutors said
that as part of the scheme,
the defendant,
John Zuccarini,
had registered
3,000 domain names
that included
misspellings
or slight variations
of popular names
like Disneyland,
Bob the Builder,
and Teen Magazine.
Zuccarini also used
more than a dozen
variations of the name
Britney Spears,
according to prosecutors.
Now, here's the funny part.
Well, to me, it's funny.
A child who accidentally
mistyped a name
into an Internet browser
would be directed
to a website
controlled by Zuccarini
and barraged
with X-rated advertising,
the authorities said.
The child would also
be mouse-trapped,
they said,
and be unable
to exit from the site.
Now, this is the only
thing they have in there
to indicate that children
are being lured
in that a child
could do this.
My thinking is,
couldn't anybody do this?
Yeah, a child could type
anything on the Internet,
but that doesn't mean
this person
was targeting children.
And, you know...
But they are
young children's sites.
And you know why
he did that, right?
You know the purpose.
Well, I don't know.
I don't think he explained it.
It's to get hits
so that he could then
charge more
for his advertising.
Okay, but I think
it's a big reach
for children.
You know,
Disney Builder
is a children's,
I think,
television show
as far as I know.
Yeah, he misspelled
the number
of popular sites
for children.
You don't see
the connection?
Well, I don't see
the intent.
No, I don't see
the intent.
There's a new federal law
that says you can't
misspell and redirect
to an adult site.
You can misspell
and redirect
to a gambling site.
You can misspell
and redirect
to a hacking site.
You can misspell
and redirect
to any one
of these sites.
You can say,
yeah, it's a children's site,
but how do you determine
they're the ones
that are doing it?
There's really no,
I don't see any way
you can do that.
Well, yeah,
but the law presupposes.
So the law was put
into effect
to avoid asking
that legal question.
There is a federal law
that now makes it
illegal to do that.
But now,
you know,
we could say
that children
like to go
to 2600.com
and then some idiot
out there
registers 26,000.com,
directs that
to a porn site.
Right.
Regardless of it.
Whether or not
it's targeting children.
They happen to.
So, okay,
the law says
that any misspelling
cannot be directed
to a porn site.
What if the person
just speaks English badly
and misspells something
on purpose?
Well, not on purpose,
but because he thinks
that's the way it's spelled.
As long as they don't
get to a porn site,
that's not a problem.
This is really getting silly.
The chances are, though,
that an adult
would not do the misspelling
as a child
trying to go
to one of these places
probably would.
They may not get any benefit
from having a child
on a porn site,
but they will register the hit
on their counters
and charge.
That's the intent.
Sure.
The intent.
It says here
that he gets a referral fee
of $0.10 to $0.25
each time a visitor
to one of his sites
moved to the site
of one of the advertisers
he earned $800,000
to $1,000,000 a year
through the scheme.
I've got no sympathy
for this guy.
I'm just saying
the thing is kind of
crazy logic here
because you have no way
of knowing who it is
that is going to these sites.
Obviously, this guy
is just trying to make money
and I don't think he said
I'm going to get children
to go...
I mean, look at the headline.
Man accused of luring minors
to sex websites.
That's not what the story is.
It just is designed
to get you thinking
that this guy is a pervert
and that's not...
He's a scum.
He's just trying
to make money
by directing people
to porn sites,
but it's not exactly
what it's saying it is.
But he's a very wealthy scum.
Oh, he's a wealthy scum.
Yeah.
They make the best kind of scum.
Anyway, he's the first person
charged in the United States
with committing a crime
under the truth
in domain names law.
I'm sorry.
That's just a good one.
Truth in domain names law.
What's that mean?
A domain name has to be
what it says it is.
Can't be anything
other than that.
Or be what it's spelled
similarly to.
The provision is part
of a comprehensive
legislative package
signed by President
George W. Bush
in the spring
that included the creation
of the National Amber Alert
Network for Child Abduction
cases,
all tied together.
Do you see the connection,
though, to kind of
a truth in advertising
kind of thing
where if you're doing this,
it's...
I mean,
I see, you know,
oversight in saying
what's on websites.
I don't like that.
I just don't.
I'm not saying
children should be
directed anywhere, but...
And you know,
once they're there,
you know,
are you over 18
is just an invitation.
It's not really
something stopping them.
Yeah.
I wonder,
did they warn this guy first?
Did they just do this?
He also had a prior
restraining order.
He had done this
before it was a law,
and they sued him
and managed to convict him
of something.
Other bits of news.
The Arab satellite channel
Al Jazeera
began operating
an English-language
website on Monday.
Yeah, this may sound
like old news,
but actually,
this,
according to this news story
from the New York Times,
happened five months
after hackers
brought down
a temporary site
at the height
of the Iraq War.
Yeah.
Suzy Suri,
news coordinator
and spokeswoman,
said the site,
english.aljazeera.net,
that's spelled
A-L-J-A-Z-E-E-R-A,
was a site
that was
called
aljazeera.net,
aims to fill
a niche
for English speakers
who want to get
the other side
of the story,
the Arab perspective.
U.S.,
British,
and even Arab officials
have criticized
Al Jazeera's
coverage of events
in the Middle East
and its airing
of al-Qaeda statements,
including one today,
accusing the station
of sensationalism,
bias,
and incitement.
Others in the region
view it as a courageous
addition to the Arab world's
mostly state-run media.
Now, months ago,
we were telling people
that we were not
encouraging people
to hack the site.
I would be curious
if it was actually
a form of censorship,
high-tech censorship
by a government agency.
Yeah, definitely.
But, I mean,
who better to blame it on
than hackers,
as everything else
is blamed on.
But the thing is,
they had launched
a temporary site
way back then
in English,
and now this is
more of a permanent site.
I imagine today
would be a good day
to go there
because of the statement
that was just released
today from Osama bin Laden,
the alleged Osama bin Laden.
English.aljazeera.net,
read it for yourself,
decide for yourself.
If you don't agree with it,
then, you know,
deal with it
and no need
to cut it off
to anybody else.
And these literally
are bits of news.
These are tiny pieces
of paper you have here.
These are tiny pieces
of paper because
I was sitting on trains
and airplanes and things
and I was reading,
you know,
when you're over there
in Europe,
you just read
the International Herald
Tribune because
there's no other
English paper
you can really read
unless you want to read
the Wall Street Journal
Europe.
This is the front section
so if anybody in the station
has the front section,
please bring it to us.
On, I think,
page A14,
we were alerted
by our friend Chris
that there's a huge ad,
huge front page ad
that just says
goodbye hackers,
hello customers
and something like that.
I don't know
who it is exactly
but if you want to see it
in Wall Street Journal,
you better hurry up
and get out there
and maybe send us a copy
since we don't have one.
The European Parliament,
in addition to recommending
that the homosexual
be allowed to legally
marry and adopt children
in its annual report
on human rights
issues for the European Union,
also said that
they were urging
airlines operating
transatlantic flights
to immediately stop
handing over
the personal information
on passengers
that is demanded
by the United States.
So some interesting
legislative moves
by the European Union.
Shows you how far apart
the two parts of the world
are growing.
And over there,
really, you know,
people just ask me,
is it true
what we're reading
about what's going on
over there?
And it's hard to answer.
It's hard to answer.
By the way,
this shirt I'm wearing
is very,
um,
popular in many places.
I was in Finland,
in fact,
wearing this shirt.
The shirt that says,
uh...
This would be
the American Traveler
International Apology shirt?
Yes.
On the back it says,
in all the UN languages,
that, uh,
I'm sorry,
my president is an idiot.
I did not vote for him.
Uh, and that,
it was popular in Russia,
but it was very popular
in Finland as well.
Available at
AmericanApologyShirt.com
for everyone who's interested.
That's right.
That's right.
If they're not shut down yet.
Uh, some listener,
uh,
sent us a mail,
or feedback.
Um,
we were talking about
the person who's being blamed
for the, um,
um,
Blaster.
The Blaster worm.
Um,
and we had a,
we had a number of pieces
of mail, uh,
on that.
Uh,
I,
I asked a question.
Um,
that, um,
someone said that the thing
was, um,
was renamed by this person.
It was, uh,
Blaster.b,
I believe,
was the name of the file.
Um,
and he renamed,
uh,
Blaster.b.
And all the news items
would say,
all the news stories,
Associated Press,
New York Times,
they would just say that
it was named after
anatomical reference.
Apparently,
they couldn't say that
it was named
penis32.exe.
Apparently,
that was too much
for them to print
in the newspaper.
Good Lord.
So that's what it was called.
That's,
that clears up the mystery
as to what the
anatomical reference is.
Uh,
now,
um,
this person says,
I don't know,
I don't know about him,
but, uh,
T-Kid,
that's T33 Kid,
aka Jeff,
and just wanted to
correct the things
that you have said
about him.
Of course,
keep in mind,
we were reading
news stories,
we weren't saying
it ourselves.
I went to school
with him,
and we and I,
we and I,
uh,
well,
okay,
I,
I may try to read
this without,
uh,
saying anything
wrong here.
Uh,
and I know
that,
uh,
it's,
him,
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