Both agree that the remaining sheep should be destroyed humanely at sea.
Whatever their fate, it's unlikely that Australia's live export industry will
return to business as usual.
Today, amid new calls for live exports to be stopped,
animal rights activists successfully blockaded live animal export ships from
entering Portland Harbour in Victoria.
For Free Speech Radio News in Sydney, Australia,
I'm Guy Deegan.
This is Free Speech Radio News. I'm Deepa Fernandes.
And it's one minute after seven o'clock, time for Off The Hook.
Off The Hook.
Good evening to everybody.
These dials are working kind of a strange way tonight.
The program is Off The Hook.
And we have a lot of ground to cover tonight.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on WBAI New York.
Jeff, you're here.
I'm here. How are you doing?
Mike.
Hello.
Jim, Evan, Leo.
Bah.
Welcome, everybody.
Well, we have exciting things to talk about,
including a late-breaking story concerning the do not call list.
Now, we talked about this a few weeks ago,
about how people can register to prevent those evil telemarketers
from calling you right about this time, in fact.
Yes, your phone might be ringing even as we speak
with somebody offering you all kinds of incredible offers and deals.
And the idea was you could register to be put on a list not to get such calls.
And that list would be given to the telemarketers.
I still can't follow the logic exactly,
but they would look at that list and say,
okay, we can't call this person, and then they wouldn't call you.
And that's basically the theory behind the whole thing, right?
Otherwise, there were fines involved.
But I don't understand.
The whole thing, when there's fines involved, you don't get the fine.
The person who's offended does not get the fine.
Who gets the fine?
I was under the impression that you used to be able to get a fine
if you were told, do not call my number, and they proceeded to call.
I don't think you get the fine.
I don't think you get the fine.
Evan, you have the story. What's the latest on this?
The U.S. District Court in Oklahoma
ruled that the do not call list was not constitutional
because it gave too much power in the decision-making process to Congress,
not the FTC.
Well, they said the FTC can't enforce it.
They're not able to.
They went beyond their power, supposedly.
Well, basically, this is all behind the Direct Marketing Association.
They sued to block this list shortly after Congress approved it back in January.
And they're saying it violates free speech laws,
discriminates against the telemarketing industry,
which employs millions of people.
I don't know. Does anybody see that here?
Well, they're probably mostly in Oklahoma.
The argument does work, but the parallel argument is
anti-smoking laws discriminate against the tobacco industry
as opposed to the banana industry.
You're not going to start an anti-smoking argument here, are you?
No.
Because it will go on well into the personal computer show and throughout the night.
No, no, no.
The point I'm making is that similar arguments for similar laws
have not garnered support, have not garnered legal backing.
The argument may exist, but there are precedents against it.
The only problem is, I pay for my phone.
If someone's going to use their business,
I think I should have a say in that.
I don't think it's free speech when they're violating something I pay for.
No, I agree. I totally agree.
Because you're the one setting it.
But you could also apply this to spam as well, right?
I agree.
Hang on.
Sorry, this game will carry away with the music, though.
All right.
Okay, well, this is bad news, then.
It's suspended, I guess indefinitely,
until they have to re-hear the case or whatever.
What happens to all the people who registered on the site?
That's what I'd like to know.
I'll find out.
I deregistered you, remember that?
In the little security hole we found.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm on there.
I checked, and then my number said that.
Then we gave your number out at the 2600 meeting,
and I think you got registered a hundred times.
So we'll see.
Okay, so that's the latest as far as that goes.
Let's see, what else?
This is an interesting story.
I don't know if you guys heard about this.
Remember the guy David Smith from New Jersey?
He was someone who was accused of writing the Melissa virus.
Oh, yes.
And he was sent to prison for, I think, 20 months or so.
Yeah, he could have faced 10 years, and he got 20 months.
But it turns out this guy is helping the FBI
to track down people who are sending out viruses now.
Court documents unsealed last Wednesday
at the request of the Associated Press
show David Smith began working with the FBI
within weeks of his 1999 arrest,
primarily using a fake identity to communicate with
and track hackers from around the world.
According to the U.S. attorney from New Jersey,
Christopher Christie,
Smith provided timely, substantial assistance
to the United States in the investigation
and prosecution of others.
And that's one of the things that helped him
get 20 months instead of 10 years.
He's serving a sentence in federal prison,
Fort Dix, New Jersey.
A letter says two months after his arrest,
Smith gave the FBI the name, home address,
e-mail accounts, and other Internet data for John DeWitt,
the author of the so-called
anachronicovirus in the Netherlands.
The FBI passed the information on to authorities
in the Netherlands, and DeWitt was arrested
and later sentenced to probation.
Don't you think it's kind of ironic that people
in other parts of the world are sentenced to probation
when the person who got sent to prison
helped to get them caught, and they get probation,
while he gets prison, and this guy is helping
the people who put him in prison.
The logic escapes me, you know?
I mean, if someone's sending you to prison,
I don't know, somehow helping them doesn't seem like...
Even if, okay, it's changing from 20 years to,
or 10 years to 20 months, but it's still prison.
It's still prison, right?
Okay, Leo, you had something too much.
You say that 10 years is also ridiculous for the crime.
20 months is ridiculous.
I think probation is appropriate,
depending on what the intent was,
and from what I remember of this case,
Smith did not try to spread this around.
I think he posted it on a Usenet board or something,
and someone else spread it around,
but he simply wrote the thing.
I don't know.
It's kind of weird.
Smith also said, concerning his virus,
when I posted the virus, and no, this says posted,
not mailed, when I posted the virus,
I expected that any financial injury
would be minor and incidental.
In fact, I included features designed
to prevent substantial damage.
So, take that for whatever it's worth,
but it's just kind of a strange turn of events, you know?
We had a lot of feedback for last week's show.
We have a lot of feedback all the time,
and let's catch up on some letters.
Mike, you want me to read the hate mail, don't you?
I'm always a fan of hate mail.
Yeah, well, you can send your hate mail
to oth at 2600.com, and we'll be happy to,
well, no, we're not going to read
all the hate mail on the air.
Some of it's just, you know, silly.
We're not going to dignify it by doing that.
If you want to send us hate, physical mail, rather,
than hate email, the address is 120 Wall Street,
New York, New York, 10th floor.
You're going to have to say the zip code
if you're going to say the whole address.
I don't know the zip code.
Well, then don't start saying the address.
10005.
If you don't know how the book ends,
don't start reading it.
That's what I say.
Yeah, 10005.
I'm looking for the hate mail.
We're looking for hate mail that's intelligent.
Oh, there it is.
I thought it was only one piece.
It was right on the top.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I was going to subscribe to your publication.
Thank God I read your Ashcroft article before I did.
Actually, this is more geared towards 2600,
but it got sent to OTH.
Thank God I read your Ashcroft article before I did.
Obviously, you people have no understanding
of the effects of 9-11.
Keep happy in your little shells
of rehashed 60s liberalism,
and hey, thanks again, Science Scott.
Well, Scott, we're happy not to have you
as a subscriber.
It's a little harsh.
It is a little harsh,
but I'm not in a good mood.
Well, you know, whatever.
People are entitled to their opinions,
but to lump people together and say,
define, it's that same thing people do
when they don't have anything else to fall back on.
They lump people together
and say that we're all part of rehashed 60s liberalism
and we don't understand the effects of 9-11
as if you can hide behind that
and say that somehow means something
to your argument.
I'm hurt by that.
I voted Republican in every election since 1980.
And you just can't stop mentioning it, can you?
Well, I have to.
I mean, my contract here says I'm the token Republican.
Yes.
Let's see.
Leo, you told us that CNN would stop saying
that they were part of AOL,
but it still says it on the bottom
of every single web page,
so I think you'd need to deal with that.
Well, although...
It still says it, Leo.
It's, I'm sorry, I was wrong, it'll never happen again.
No, how about, I'm sorry I was wrong,
I'll fix it for next week.
It's official.
It doesn't mean that they have to comply.
You told us they would.
You told us that you would no longer see
AOL Time Warner Company.
It says that.
I'm looking at a page right now
and it still says that.
When did you check?
Wednesday or Thursday?
I checked today, this morning.
I don't think that the change has taken effect yet.
Maybe it hasn't taken effect yet.
They have millions of web pages.
They're taking their time.
I thought it took effect immediately last week.
Well, yeah, probably in all the boilerplate
on the physical announcements that they send out,
the SEC, press releases.
But on little minutia, or to them,
little minutia like web pages,
this won't get corrected for a long time.
Leo, I think you should contact them perhaps
and just remind them.
Yeah, I thought you were talking about the TV channel.
I didn't realize you were talking about...
Hey, I know pay phones in my neighborhood
that still say Bell Atlantic, okay?
I still see not much of that.
Yeah, but your bill doesn't say Bell Atlantic, does it?
This is not a bill.
This is something minor.
This is the equivalent of a pay phone.
But it's something current.
What you're looking at is something that's outdated.
No, no, no.
Well, sorry, these web pages are, like,
probably automatically generated,
and they haven't changed...
If it was an old story, I'd buy that,
if it was an old story.
But this is a new story.
If they were serious about changing their name.
What's the story?
You know, in all the mayhem, I lost a story.
I understand they're going to be using the letterhead
for a while, too.
They're just going to let it run out.
My point is proved.
Yes.
There's a small story about the FCC.
Basically, there were some rumors
that Michael Powell was going to resign.
But in today's Daily News,
he mentioned that he's going to stay on
until Bush finishes his term.
Why would he resign?
The FCC fiasco with the 45%?
There was some news magazine,
I don't remember which one,
reported that he told them in some private interview
that he's going to resign
to spend time with his wife and kids.
But apparently, that was not true.
And I didn't report on that, so I'm proud of myself.
That's the main reason these guys get wives and kids,
is so that in case something bad happens to them,
they can resign and say
it's because they want to spend more time
with their wife and kids.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Wow.
You don't see very many single guys retiring
because they know they're right, you know,
and they stand up for what they believe in,
and they don't make stupid mistakes
and back policies that have failed.
Because they know they don't have something to fall back on.
They can't say they want to spend time
with, like, the dog and the cat, you know?
It's true.
Look into it.
You'll see.
Oh, I think there's something here.
Yeah.
All right.
Interesting story.
A hotel is being sued for using the Dewey system,
Dewey Decimal System.
Ah, yes.
The non-profit library cooperative
that owns the Dewey Decimal System
has sued a library-themed luxury hotel in Manhattan
for trademark infringement.
That's called the Library Hotel.
It overlooks the New York Public Library.
It's divided according to the classification system,
with each floor dedicated to one of Dewey's ten categories.
Room 700.003 includes books on the performing arts,
for example, while room 800.001
has a collection of erotic literature.
In the lawsuit filed last week,
lawyers for the Online Computer Library Center
said the organization acquired the rights to the system
in 1988 when it bought Forest Press,
which published Dewey Decimal updates.
The center charges libraries that use the system
at least $500 per year.
I didn't know that.
Wow.
Anyway, Melville Dewey created the system,
used in 95% of all public
and K-12 school libraries in 1873,
but it's continually updated with numbers assigned
to more than 100,000 new works each year.
A person who came to the hotel's website
would think they were passing themselves off
as connected with the owner
of the Dewey Decimal Classification System.
Who cares, you know?
I mean...
It really was a nice idea for a theme.
It's a nice idea for a theme.
I don't know why they're getting all upset about it.
I think actually it gets people involved
in thinking about Dewey Decimal System
and libraries and things like that.
It gets people interested.
Exactly.
It's free advertising for them.
I would love to hear from a librarian
who could tell us what the Dewey Decimal number is
for a certain body part,
so we can send it to the people
who own the Dewey Decimal System
to tell them what we actually think of them.
That was the voice of Jim, by the way,
suggesting that,
not anybody else at this program.
It's not that specific.
Are you sure?
There's also, by the way,
the Library of Congress catalog system
that a lot of, especially larger libraries,
are now starting to use,
which is, I guess, copyright free.
So if you run a library,
you might look into that.
Someone sent us some interesting comments
from the recording industry of America
in response to the questions
that we've been having over the past few weeks
concerning whether it's okay to download music
if you own the music already.
Basically, according to this particular part
of the RIAA's website,
it says if you own an album,
you can rip to MP3,
and this leads this particular person to ask,
why should it matter
whether you downloaded the files or ripped them?
The results are the same in the end.
You own the material,
and you possess a digital copy.
Well, listen to what
the recording industry of America says
in response to the question,
what is your stand on MP3?
This is one of those urban myths
like alligators in the toilet.
MP3 is just a technology,
and the technology itself
never did anything wrong.
There are lots of legal MP3s from great artists
on many, many online sites.
The problem is that some people
use MP3s to take one copy of an album
and make that copy available on the internet
for hundreds of thousands of people.
That's not fair.
If you choose to take your own CDs
and make copies for yourself
on your computer or portable music player,
that's great.
It's your music,
and we want you to enjoy it at home,
at work, in the car,
and on the jogging trail.
But the fact that technology exists
to enable unlimited internet distribution
of music copies doesn't make it right.
But what did they say there that's significant?
Can I listen to them on the subway?
Honestly, why not?
It gives a list.
But the point is,
the point is that they say it's your music.
But they don't believe that.
Well, they say it on their website.
You can go to www.riaa.com