creditors coming after us, that can have a tremendous effect on the rest of the
network and our ability to continue as an organization. Support WBAI's future by
going to the Emergency Transmitter Fund by calling 516-620-3602
or pledge online. Give the number to WBAI.org. That's give to WBAI.org.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York. The time is seven o'clock. Time once
again for Off The Hook.
I cut myself while shaving. Now I can't make a cut.
We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would.
Bum diddly bum, but the best is back to worst.
I hope that's understood. Bum diddly bum!
Bum diddly bum, but the best is back to worst.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike. Hi. Rob T. Firefly. Good evening. And Bernie S. down in Philadelphia.
Greetings from Pennsylvania.
And we have all kinds of things to discuss tonight. But of course we also have the ongoing struggle to keep our transmitter broadcasting.
And I believe we have until the end of this month, which means this is the last program that will be doing this, to get to the goal.
I don't have updated figures. I have not checked actually. But I know that it was a pretty lofty goal.
And I think that we were doing well last, last I did check. I know that the signal means a lot to our listeners.
So please call 516-620-3602 and donate what you can to keep us on the Empire State Building, which costs $50,000 a month.
But is, I don't want to say it's well worth it because, wow, that's a lot of money.
But when you consider where this radio station goes and the reach it has, not just on the Internet.
It's not just one thing, but an actual radio station.
And I just read an article today, in fact, about how radio is still very relevant.
Six out of 10 people listen to radio on a regular basis.
It's in cars. It's still in people's homes and various other places.
Maybe people we don't know that a lot of people we know don't have radios.
But I do know people that listen in various parts of the world.
And they're out there. And that's why we need to keep broadcasting.
That's why every radio station wants to keep broadcasting.
That's why radio stations sell for tens of millions of dollars because they're still very valuable commodities.
And that's why not having a transmitter would be a big hindrance.
That's also why there are a lot of corporate entities, for-profit organizations,
who would love to get on our spot on the Empire State Building if we should lose it.
So if that would happen, it would be pretty irreversible.
So if you call 516-620-3602, you can help keep us there and keep them out.
And you can also donate by pledging a certain amount every month that will get automatically transferred.
That's all kinds of new modern ways that we have of doing this.
There's basically all manner of methods of donating.
We take credit cards and various other things.
516-620-3602, that was the phone number to call.
And I believe this is the last week that we will be asking.
And if you don't hear us next week, it means that we didn't reach the goal.
How about that? That's what it's boiled down to.
So, look, if you haven't pledged yet and you've been thinking about it, you've been putting it off,
you're like, do I want to keep WBAA on the air?
Do I care if it just disappears into a puff of smoke?
This is the week to make up your mind.
Call 516-620-3602.
Yeah, you hear what I just did?
I just cut Mike off mid-sentence.
He didn't even know.
He kept going.
That is the effect that it has.
You panicked there for a second, didn't you?
And Mike didn't even realize.
I had to stop him physically.
But that's how it goes on.
They just yank the cord and all of a sudden it's dead air.
I didn't cut myself off that time.
I tried to, but I failed.
So, yeah.
And these corporate masters have no sympathy whatsoever.
I'm sorry.
Continue what you were saying, Mike.
Well, I was telling people that this is the week to keep us on the air.
516-620-3602.
And I said no one heard me, but I said you can also pledge on WBAI.org.
You can mail us a check if that's your thing, but do it today.
You said it better the other time.
You shouldn't have cut me off.
I know.
I didn't know you were going to say it so eloquently.
They shouldn't cut all of us off.
He was speaking in rhyme.
I don't know.
It was incredible.
Barney, go ahead.
There's really no other option for WBAI but to stay on the antenna that's on the Empire State Building.
Its license is for that location.
It would take a long time, like probably more than a year, to move it to someplace else.
So, there's really no option that WBAI has, but you can do broadcasting from this location.
It provides 80-plus miles range in every direction to the New York metropolitan area, really four states.
And without that, there would be no internet feed going to the rest of the world.
The air broadcast is what brings in the donations that we're trying to get now.
It keeps everything else rolling.
So, I want to encourage people to call and pledge, or you can just mail your check or money order in to,
old-fashioned way, to WBAI, P.O. Box 7032, Church Street Station, New York, New York 10008.
As Mike says, this is the time to do it.
We've been waiting all this time.
It doesn't even have to be a lot of money.
If you can only contribute $5 or $10, do something, and you'll feel better for it.
That's right.
You won't feel better if all of a sudden there's country music being broadcast on this frequency next week or in a few months.
Well, okay, maybe not country because there's already a country station that's taking over another frequency.
But something, something else would definitely take over, and I don't think you'd like it as much as what we broadcast.
So, again, 516-620-3602.
Last week we were discussing various quote-unquote options and why none of them would work,
but that didn't stop a bunch of listeners from writing to us and continuing to suggest these options.
I thought we had made it clear that we have to be on top of the Empire State Building.
That is how it works in New York City.
You can't broadcast from a lower place.
You'll get all kinds of interference.
But here's someone who wrote in with another idea.
We're not mocking you, but we are saying that we are firm in our belief that we need to stay on top of the Empire State Building
or another skyscraper, maybe downtown, but it's going to charge exactly the same, so I don't think that's an option.
This is from Ben.
I was listening to you guys' runoff ideas in a recent show on how, if possible, to reduce the rent for the transmitter of WBAI.
I'm amazed nobody mentioned the potential idea of trading 99.5 for an AM signal and some cash.
Has anybody at Pacifica considered this?
AM radio, done right, can sound good enough to even play music.
Plus, if somehow WBAI was to obtain, say, 10.10 or 8.80 AM, I wouldn't have to balance my radio on a tin can to listen to 99.5 all the way out here on eastern Long Island.
Ben, I sympathize with you as far as balancing on tin cans and things like that, but AM is no substitute for FM.
That's just – I don't know where to begin on that.
Mike?
Does that even help?
I mean, you still have to broadcast from a high place, and the highest place around is still the Empire State Building, and you still have to pay them rent.
Yeah, and also the frequencies you mentioned are what is known as clear channel – well, actually, 8.80 is a clear channel frequency, not the company clear channel, the phrase clear channel, which means that they don't have to reduce their power at night.
I'm not sure about 10.10.
I always have a lot of trouble getting that signal anyway, but, yeah, it goes a tremendous distance, and that frequency is probably worth a lot more than our frequency because of that.
So you wind up – and this has already happened.
This happened to a station known as WNWK at 105.9, which is now the crippled WQXR.
I don't want to get into that tragedy, but basically what happened to WNWK was a station where people did all kinds of different sorts of music programming.
It was kind of like one of these stations where you paid to be on the air.
You got your own commercials, and you paid the station a fee, and those stations exist in various parts of the country.
But what they wound up doing was they decided to sell the FM frequency and move everybody to an AM frequency instead.
And what they wound up doing, it was a frequency that could only be heard maybe in the greater New York area, and even then it wasn't that great.
It sounded awful, and the station just basically faded away, and that's what happens.
When you're on a 50,000-watt FM signal on top of the Empire State Building, you don't give that up, not unless you really run out of ideas.
And here at WBAI, that's one thing we don't run out.
We run out of money on a regular basis, but we don't run out of ideas.
So let's pool our resources and come up with ideas, come up with money, and keep this place going.
516-620-3602.
We're at City Community College now, CCNY.
City College.
All the acronyms, City College.
I'm sorry, acronyms.
There's CUNY, there's CCNY.
It's too much.
But we're here.
By the way, I think it's spring break.
It is indeed.
Because I came here.
I was looking forward to seeing all the happy people running around, the students of CCNY, and I saw nobody.
It definitely was a downer as far as that goes.
But being here, sharing facilities with WHCR, is a very positive thing because I think it gives us the youth that we need, the spirit that we need.
But it is a temporary solution.
We are, in effect, homeless.
We are looking to buy a building and have a permanent place with WBAI.
But obviously, there has to be a signal for us to do that.
And these are positive steps.
We are making progress.
It might not seem that way, but in the months and years ahead, I think you'll see a very positive change.
That is the hope.
516-620-3602.
We're going to move on to other issues with the program right now.
But, again, anyone else want to say anything about the need to call?
Yeah.
It's really imperative that if you want to keep us on the air, you keep us literally on the air by making sure we can pay our transmitter bill.
So, 516-620-3602, WBAI.org.
Either of those methods, you can mail a check.
And help us out.
Keep us on the air.
Be part of things.
Okay.
We also have this update from last week.
We were talking about premiums being delivered.
We have successfully delivered the premiums.
Hooray.
All right.
Okay.
What that means is we brought in the premiums from October.
What was that?
Yeah.
Right before Sandy, we had a fundraiser and we were giving away calendars and various other things.
And those have finally been delivered to the radio station.
We're sorry for the delay.
And thanks very much to Tony Ryan and to Jennifer for their extra efforts in making sure.
The problem is people downtown in the administrative office, they're on the 26th floor of the World Financial Center, which is this crazy big building.
And it's free office space that was given to us as a result of Sandy for displaced organizations.
Now, what that means is you're not allowed to have regular phone lines.
You can't have things that are wired.
You can only have wireless.
On the 26th floor, which is where we are, wireless phones don't work very well.
So, we couldn't reach people.
So, we had to basically jump through all sorts of hoops and send emails and things like that.
And there were some Skype numbers, too, that they gave us, which were fairly helpful.
But mostly it was basically communication.
And it was a misstep last week.
It's been fixed.
And we have other premiums, too, that we'll be dropping off.
So, I think we're back on solid footing now as far as that goes.
So, again, thanks to the people that made that happen.
And thanks to our listeners for their patience.
Here's a listener who wasn't quite so patient.
Actually, I'm not sure if this person even donated.
But this is from Mike.
Not you, Mike.
I don't think it's from you.
No.
It's not.
Tell me if it's from you.
It's not.
If these words ring true.
You know my email address.
And, of course, I have only one.
You couldn't get another one.
All right.
If you delivered a word I can't say on time, the last show, a calendar from last October still hasn't been sent out?
I'm adding the yelling, but I think it's there.
Come on.
That is with everything.
And it looks like you are lazy and incompetent.
Come on.
That is with everything?
I don't know what that means.
And that goes with everything you offer as a premium.
How come some goof idiot on eBay can send something out in three days, no problem, easy, without being an Uber geek?
Breaking promises constantly and constantly begging for money is pretty, another word I can't say, lame.
Well, Mike, I am looking at you while I say this, but I'm speaking to him.
Mike, I don't think you understand how this place works.
We're not professional home shopping type people.
All right.
We're all volunteers.
We're working as hard as we can.
We're doing the best.
We're going to make mistakes.
And we're not always 100 percent as far as these things go.
But we are trying.
We are trying.
And, you know, the pictures on the calendar are going to be just as good when they get to you.
And we apologize for the months that you missed on the calendar.
But you are getting everything that you pledged for.
I don't know if you pledged for anything.
But remember, the reason to give to WBAI is not to get stuff.
It's to get the radio station.
We donate extra things.
And oftentimes, we pay out of pocket for this ourselves just as a thank you.
And we get overwhelmed.
We get very overwhelmed because we're doing other things.
And when something like Sandy happens and it results in our offices being split all over Manhattan,
it becomes more difficult than normal.
And I know that's probably not good enough an excuse for a lot of people, but we're trying as hard as we can.
Emmanuel?
Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I also wanted to point out that Mike probably doesn't know, not our Mike, but the Mike who wrote in,
that we don't have these premium gifts that we donate to WBAI.
Either 2600 donates them or other people donate them.
Sometimes 20% goes out and buys them.
A lot of them are donated, like Mitch Altman donating the TV guns and other stuff like that.
We don't have that stuff just here.
And then people pledge, and then we can just send it right out.
We have to, once we find out how many people pledged for them,
and that takes a while to get all that data and get accurate and verify that the pledges are paid and whatever.
Then we have to get the actual premiums, the gifts, and get them.
And then they have to be, and there's all these steps.
They have to be boxed up individually and packaged and then taken to WBAI.
And then there's a fulfillment process, and then they move to new offices.
There's a lot involved.
It's not just like you have it.
It's not like selling something on eBay, like you said,
where you just have this thing sitting on your shelf, and somebody pays you with PayPal,
and you know you got paid right away, and you can put it in priority mail the next day.
You can't even compare the two situations.
There's a lot of work involved in this like this, and it's all volunteers.
None of us get paid for all this, and some of us actually have to pay a lot of money to make it happen.
So that's why it seems more arduous than it needs to be.
Yeah, and we're also trying to do a radio show.
We're publishing a magazine.
We're organizing conferences and trying to live lives at the same time.
Again, that doesn't make you feel any better if you haven't gotten something that you pledged for,
but it's not out of neglect.
It's not out of us not caring.
It's just we get overwhelmed sometimes, but we are basically getting our heads back above water,
and I think everything is going to work out in the very, very near future.
Yeah, and just speaking from personal experience,
I oftentimes am the goof on eBay who's just sending one thing out every now and then.
It's a much less complex process, and I'll just leave it at that.
Yeah, maybe we should just operate on eBay.
That might make things simpler.
Okay, so anyway, that's all the housekeeping that we have for now.
Something that happened today, which was kind of interesting.
I don't really know enough about this.
I've heard something in the news, but apparently there was the biggest attack in history on the Internet today.
Yeah, so some kind of fight happened.
It's like a schoolyard fight of some sort,
and they say the Internet around the world was slowed down.
Security experts are describing it as the biggest cyber attack of its kind in history.
Wow.
A row between a spam fighting group and a hosting firm has sparked retaliation attacks,
which affected the entire Internet.
It's having an impact on popular services like Netflix,
and experts worry it could escalate to affect banking and email systems.
Five national cyber police forces are investigating the attacks.
SpamHouse, a group based in both London and Geneva, is a nonprofit organization
which aims to help email providers filter out spam and other unwanted content.
And to do this, they maintain a number of blacklists,
a database of servers known to be being used for malicious purposes.
Recently, they blocked servers maintained by CyberBunker, which is a Dutch web host,
which states it will host anything with the exception of child pornography
or terrorism-related material.
Sven Olaf Kampfhus, who claims to be a spokesman for CyberBunker,
said in a message that SpamHouse was abusing its position
and should not be allowed to decide what goes and does not go on the Internet.
SpamHouse has alleged that CyberBunker,
in cooperation with criminal gangs from Eastern Europe and Russia,
is behind the attack.
And that's pretty much where it stands right now.
A lot of victims, a lot of grandmothers trying to read email
that are going to feel the brunt of this fight between these two giants.
Actually, you know what?
I read a story like this, and I couldn't care less.
It just seems like a whole lot of silliness.
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the stories said that there was 300 gigabits per second
of bandwidth being used in these attacks.
And that, for folks who don't know, is a great deal of bandwidth
to be thrown on something like this.
And usually when a server on the Internet gets hit with something like this,
the Internet is good at routing around the damage,
and you don't see much as a random Internet user going to some other random site.
But this is at such a magnitude that it's starting to affect things around the Internet.
I think it was reported that Netflix was a bit slow because of this.
And so now it's enough of a big deal to get the cyber police
and the regular police and everyone else on it.
What is a cyber police?
Yeah, that's a good question, and I'd like to meet one,
see what they're all about.
Do they wear those weird futuristic sunglasses that they used to have in sci-fi movies?
I sure hope so.
They have chips on their shoulders.
Yes.
They have what?
They have chips on their shoulders.
Yeah, well, that's true of any cop, really.
Literally.
Yeah, so there's that.
If things have been a little slow for you, well, maybe that's why.
But the whole thing is really extremely silly, extremely funny, too.
Then there's this whole Google thing.
Yeah, there's another Google thing.
Speakers of Swedish who want to say that a search term cannot be found using a search engine
will have to think twice about how they express that thought.
The Swedish word used to describe searches that return no results is known as ungoogleable.
I think I'm pronouncing it right.
That's how you say it in English.
Or ogooglebar in Swedish.
And it's been removed from a list of newly recognized Swedish words
following Google's objection to the term.
Now, ogooglebar entered common parlance in Sweden last year.
It was submitted to the Swedish Language Council,
which is a regulatory body that attempts to define the scope of the Swedish language.
And as a result, the council added ungoogleable to its annual list of new Swedish words in December.
In a statement, however, published on its website yesterday,
the council said Google had asked the organization to refine its definition of ungoogleable
and to include a disclaimer.
And instead of doing that, the council said it deleted the word from its list of words
as a way to express its displeasure with Google's attempt to control the language.
And, you know, it's interesting because the final part of all this is that Google Translate will not translate that word.
So, you know, that's the thing.
When you have a corporation that actually does control the language
because it won't translate certain words and it doesn't agree are legitimate words,
that's a lot of power.
That's a lot of power.
And it's something that I could sort of see their point.
And how do you stop people from using a word?
I don't know how this Swedish language authority works.
I know that the French language police are notoriously angry when people use words that are not French.
But I don't know if they care so much in Sweden.
I don't know how much authority this thing has.
But I can't imagine it can actually prevent people from using words that they want to use.
Well, yeah.
It would seem that in this particular case at least they might have gotten their attention
and just by doing this, taking this action, maybe they'll be pressure put on and they can actually use that word.
But I'll say ungoogleable.
It's hard to say.
That's the problem.
You need a better word.
Well, that's an English word, ungoogleable, or English word like collection of syllables.
But the Swedish—
It's an official word though.
Will that come up in Google?
If it doesn't come up in Google, it's not a word.
Is that how it works?
I think so.
So instead of the language police that they have in all these countries, we're just relying on Google?
That seems even worse.
Well, people rely on Google for everything these days.
So, yeah.
Why not?
How to speak and what words are legal and things like that.
I just want to know if I can still use the word O'Googlebar as the name of my Irish pub that I'm opening up in Silicon Valley.
I think you might have some problems with that, Rob.
All right.
Okay.
Now, there's this whole thing with T-Mobile.
Have you guys seen this there?
The CEO of T-Mobile had this rather impassioned speech, and he said he was fed up with the crap the wireless industry has been feeding cell phone customers over the years.
He said T-Mobile is here to shake things up.
They had an event known as Un-Carrier here in New York City.
And he basically was introducing the no-contract plan that they now have went into effect this Sunday, and also they launched a new 4G LTE network.
Now, this guy, whose name is John Legare, basically was wearing a black blazer, jeans, a T-Mobile T-shirt, looked very stylish.
Why do we care?
Well, because this could revolutionize the way –
But about his outfit.
Oh, well, I want people to have a picture in their minds.
This is radio, after all.
I can't show you the picture.
He said the pieces were finally in place for T-Mobile, the nation's smallest national carrier, to disrupt the industry.
And he immediately started berating his competitors for creating overly complicated plans and pricing structures, did nothing but confuse customers.
He said these rate plans are so complicated they make no sense.
He said contracts unfairly lock consumers into a particular device for two years.
Within a few months of being in a contract, he says, the devices usually become outdated, and yet customers are stuck with the phone and the contract.
And in the end, he said carriers are only nice to their customers every 23 months when they're looking to sign them up for a new contract.
Stop the – wait, I can't say that word on the air.
Stop the obscenity, he said.
Wow, you can say that when you're a CEO.
Well, okay, stop the BS, he said.
But he didn't say that.
It's $1,000 less for a T-Mobile phone over two years and on AT&T.
Okay, I keep reading this particular story.
It's going to sound like an advertisement.
But what I wanted to discuss was whether this is the kind of thing that could change the way cell phone companies treat their customers, not roping them into contracts, allowing them to – I believe in this particular case, T-Mobile is going to sell iPhones.
And they'll be unlocked as soon as the phone is paid for, which I guess is a good thing.
The phone should never be locked in the first place.
But I don't know.
You guys think that's a positive step?
I don't know.
I'm endlessly amused that this guy is ranting and raging and is so personally offended by the way the industry, including his own company, has been doing business for the last decade or two.
So this sort of thing has gotten him where he is today, and now all of a sudden it's terrible and wrong.
But in the end, maybe it is a good move.
Maybe it's something decent will come out of this.
Like what?
Cheaper phones, less locking.
If it makes enough noise, the other companies might be forced to pick it up and start doing things in a fair manner themselves.
Well, they are the smallest carrier.
So it seems like they're trying to just ruffle some feathers and get some attention.
Right.
But they are still pretty huge, though, in the grand scheme of things, in the scheme of companies with money and things.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
This really is going to give consumers more choices is what it comes down to.
Because if you're not in a contract where you have to stay with a company, you can just leave them, like the next month.
Now, if you bought a phone on the installment plan, that's a whole separate matter.
But the point is you can bring your own phone.
For a long time you've been able to bring your own phone to T-Mobile if it's compatible with GSM.
And any of their plans now, you're not locked into anything.
You can leave them right away.
And I don't know if it's going to change what other wireless carriers do in the U.S. unless this develops more market share for T-Mobile.
If they start getting more customers, then I think the other mobile telcos will fall in line and have to do the same thing.
And I really hope that happens.
It is also a good way for the issue of things like phone unlocking and consumers' rights to use their own property in a manner that they choose to get that issue a bit out there.
Now that there's one of the companies saying, okay, you know, you can do this.
Maybe the next time some bill goes through Congress or something about unlocking phones, maybe it will go in the right direction.
All right.
What else?
I'm sorry.
I've got all these things going on.
Well, okay.
We were hoping to have somebody from the EFF on tonight, but unfortunately they didn't get back to us in time.
But there has been some negative motion as far as, I guess, legislation that we already considered to be bad.
And now I hear that it could actually get worse.
And this has direct connections to Aaron Schwartz's prosecution and the tragedy of that particular case.
What have you guys heard as far as what is being planned by Congress now?
So the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is a bill we've discussed on this program many times, it's the bill that Aaron Schwartz was threatened with being punished for violating.
And it's this super vague law that says basically if you violate the terms of service of someone you do business with, then that's a crime.
And I don't know anyone who reads the multi-volume terms of service for every little website they sign up with.
And probably most of us violate these terms all the time because who knows.
But so if some prosecutor wants to, they could prosecute us.
And so there was a bill.
Maybe there will once again be a bill to sort of dial this down a bit.
It was called Aaron's Law.
It would have benefited all of us who do anything on the Internet.
And so now there is a counter law that says, no, no, no, no.
We do not want to dial this bill back.
In fact, we want to make it worse.
If you violate the terms of service, which is, again, a civil thing that no one reads anyway of the service you use, that could be considered racketeering, which is insane.
There is a provision that would make you guilty if you plan to violate the law.
So if you think maybe I will overuse Twitter's rate limit, then even if you don't do it, that could be a crime.
And, of course, you probably won't be prosecuted.
But if the government decides it doesn't like you for whatever reason, then they have a new thing they can charge you with and you've probably done it.
And the punishments go up, and it just goes on and on, and it's insane, and we should stop it.
Well, yeah.
What I can't understand is how could it possibly have gotten worse?
After all the negative press that came about as a result of what happened with Aaron, who in their right mind would say that they need stronger penalties and more prosecutions and things like that?
Yeah, and let's just get this straight.
We're giving private companies the ability to get you prosecuted for doing things that normally aren't against any civil laws.
It's just going against the spirit of whatever agreements you have with them, which, yeah, as Mike said, we all do pretty much every day of our lives, I'm sure.
Emmanuel?
Yes, Bernie.
This is really a really bad marriage of two bodies of law, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Title 18, Section 1030 of the United States Criminal Code, and the RICO statute, which is racketeering in something in organized crime.
The RICO statutes were written years ago to prosecute organized crime members.
They couldn't get them on anything else except just talking about stuff amongst themselves, and now they're marrying this.
The Department of Justice wants to marry this to the RICO statutes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which, as Mike was pointing out, if you violate the terms of service, that whole thing, that whole yada, yada, yada thing, and if you just click yes, then you've agreed to it.
If you violate that terms of service in any way by just not even knowing about some obscure thing in it, then it's considered unauthorized use of that computer, even though you felt you had authorization to use it.
It's marrying these two really vague and broad laws, and it is a perfect – this was not done out of stupidity.
This was done as a power grab, and when you marry these two really vague and broad laws together, it is a perfect tool for, as Mike said, prosecuting almost anybody.
The government just wants to prosecute for something.
And we should be clear, the penalties for this are severe.
It's not they prosecute you and you have to do whatever, a few hours of community service.
They prosecute you under this bill, and you could be facing years or decades in prison.
Which is what Aaron Swartz was facing during his prosecution.
He was facing that possibility of – what was it?
Some ridiculous amount of time.
For copying academic papers that were meant to be seen by people.
Which he already had access to.
The prosecution's statement was he faces up to 10 years, and then after things happened, they clarified, oh, no, no, no.
We just meant that as exaggeration.
We only would have sent him to prison for 18 months.
18 months, that's insane.
Yeah.
And they want to make it easier to do that.
18 days is insane.
Prison of any sort is insane for so many reasons.
All right.
Well, we're going to take some phone calls.
Our phone number is 212-650-5782.
Every week we get a little bit more back in the swing of things.
And this week we can now take two phone calls at once, which is great.
So we can keep Bernie on.
But I wanted to focus a little bit of attention on this other document that has come out.
It's actually a manual.
It's about rules of cyber war, and it's been published by NATO.
It's a handbook that lays down the rules of cyber warfare.
Did you know there were rules?
Yes, there are rules.
This manual is the first attempt to set out how international law applies to online attacks by the state
and warns that online attacks could lead to full-blown military conflicts.
How do you like that?
Yeah.
Now, the handbook, which is the result of three years' collaboration between international experts for NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence,
defines a cyber attack as one that is, quote-unquote,
reasonably expected to cause injury or death to persons or damage or destruction to objects.
An online attack on an electricity grid, how many of those have there been?
Does anybody know how many attacks on an electricity grid there have been?
Probably lots if you count movies and television, but I don't know about the real world.
There was Hurricane Sandy.
Does that count?
Well, I don't think the Iranians did that or North Koreans or anybody like that.
But yeah, okay, that's always what they hold up.
But you know what?
Don't put the electricity grid on the Internet and maybe you won't have any attacks.
That's quite possible.
But anyway, an online attack on an electricity grid resulting in fire is one example of the way that cyber war could bring about real physical harm.
How long do you think they stayed up trying to come up with that scenario?
Well, someone could attack the electricity grid and cause a fire.
And all right, that's a cyber attack right there that causes death or injury and therefore qualifies for this particular action.
Now, the Advisory Handbook, which was written by 20 legal experts, including a retired U.K. Air Commodore and several British lawyers,
says governments must avoid attacks on civilians, hospitals, nuclear power stations, dams and dikes.
Attacks on the latter three are particularly sensitive as they threaten to cause widespread loss of life and should be avoided even when they are a military objective.
So I have this straight.
When governments are responding to cyber attacks, they should avoid hitting nuclear power stations, dams and dikes.
Right.
That's apparently that's the only time that that particular rule applies when they're responding to cyber attacks.
I don't understand any of this.
I don't understand rules of warfare to start with.
All I know is it's bad for all the humans involved.
Yeah.
No kidding.
War generally is.
Now, hospitals and medical units are already protected under the rules governing traditional warfare.
So those those those rules cover hospitals and medical units.
The guidelines also forbid using cyber booby traps and attacks to spread terror through the people.
You know, why don't they just forbid war and forbid cyber attacks on on on sensitive places?
Just it seems so silly.
This this document.
If NATO were to forbid war, what would they do?
I don't know.
What would they do?
Good question.
The handbook was drawn up at the invitation of NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, as I mentioned.
I guess I figured I had to mention that again in the story.
It's in Tallinn, Estonia, includes a provision for states to respond with conventional force for cyber attack results in death or significant damage to property.
So now what I'd like to know is, would this also apply to individuals?
They say at the beginning of this that this has to do with online attacks by the state.
But if individuals and since I guess we declare war against various ideas and concepts and groups of people that aren't part of government,
I guess it is possible that somebody could hack into a system and find themselves being hit by physical missiles.
Does that seem logical?
I'm not logical.
That's the wrong word.
But does that seem like something this is this document might be saying?
I'm sure they'll they'll justify it if they want to do it.
They'll justify it.
Okay.
Bernie, how about you?
I think what Mike said is right.
If the United States government wants to do it, they will come up with some rationalization or premise to do it.
This isn't the United States.
This is NATO.
Or NATO, which is really the U.S. government and its friends.
Right.
And it's considered a North American treaty organization.
And North America is the United States.
Right.
We all know the United States will do whatever it wants.
What I'm saying is, is this document, are they actually saying, are they laying it out saying, yeah, this is what we're going to do,
and this is how we're going to do it if this particular action is.
And does that apply to individuals as well?
I think they're certainly not closing the door to that.
I think they're, if anything, they're opening the door to that.
I want to know if what the United States recently did the past few years to the Iranian government,
which was hack into their servers that controlled the centrifuges in a nuclear research facility
and physically destroyed them, they ended up making them blow up or just shake apart into pieces.
That seems to fit under the category of what is being described here.
So was that not an act of war that the United States engaged in?
Yeah.
And then so where does that, once you start making up these rules, then you got to, you can't just play it one-sided.
It applies both ways.
It's a two-way street.
Yeah.
Well, apparently that's not exactly how they view it.
I'm sorry, listeners, right when Bernie started on that long speech there,
that's when I realized that we can hear the other phone ringing very loudly over the air whenever that happens.
The way to solve that is to pick up the call.
But let me just say in conclusion to this that in this article, in fact, they do say that
hacktivists, in quotes, who take part in online attacks can become legitimate targets in cyber war,
according to these new guidelines, even though they are technically civilians.
So that's going to be rather interesting.
And I'd like to see how they're going to try and play that out.
If somebody from anonymous takes down some government website, are they then going to find themselves being hit by drones?
I mean, that's basically what they seem to be justifying.
Am I being paranoid saying that?
Well, I mean, of course, they won't use it against people in North America and Europe first.
They'll use it against people who don't speak languages that we speak and look different from us and all this stuff.
Of course.
But, yeah, that's what they're saying.
Interesting.
Well, that's the world we have to look forward to.
And this is the place you're going to hear about it first.
All right.
Our phone number again.
212-650-5782.
Let's take our first listen to phone call.
Good evening.
You're on.
Really?
After all that?
That's what we get?
A dial tone?
All right.
And it's a stutter dial tone, too.
Isn't that something?
A lot of stuttering.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, goodbye to you.
And let's open up for the next person calling in.
212-650-5782.
On this new system, it takes a little longer for the calls to connect.
So we'll have a moment here.
Oh, there it is.
We can hear it now, though.
You don't have to wait for me to look at the light.
We can actually hear the sound.
Let's pick this up.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Hi.
Yeah.
This is Major Armstrong's surviving patent lawyer from his patent firm to talk about
the Google's dilemma on their trademark.
OK.
I don't represent Google, but the trademark owners, particularly when their mark becomes
very widely used, they're in this danger of losing their mark.
One of the best ways to lose it was illustrated by Otis Elevators when they said,
Otis makes the finest elevators and escalators in the world.
Escalator at the time was their trademark.
By using it as a generic word, they dedicated it to the public.
So somebody like Kleenex or Xerox has to be very careful that people don't use the word
Xerox to mean photocopy, Kleenex to mean tissue, or Google to mean any search.
What you're saying is that with somebody speaking for Google, if they were to use the word
Google as a verb, you're saying that they could be putting that trademark at risk?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, they've done that.
I'm pretty sure I can find recordings.
I'm not sure what I win by doing that.
You might win their trademark as a word in English language, if you could find that.
But they should be very careful about that.
And it's not so terrible a burden on the rest of us, because you don't want to call a Bing
search a Google.
You want to know who you're doing the search with so that you know if the search is as
effective.
A Google search has a different flavor on a lot of the searches than, say, a Yahoo search
or an AVG search.
Well, my understanding is if you Google something on Bing, the results are very different.
Well, it wouldn't be a Google on Bing.
I just did it, though.
Yeah, that's the kind of sentence you've got to watch out for.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And so that's why when somebody starts putting the word Google without capitals into their
dictionary, Google is starting to feel the danger.
But how does that hurt Google?
It seems to me that it would only strengthen what they do.
Anybody can call themselves Google, and Google has spent billions of dollars getting a reputation
for perhaps having the best searches in the world or the most connected to the CIA or
whatever it is.
Well, anyone can call them.
I mean, people don't call themselves Kleenex or Xerox.
They just use the word as a generic term.
Yeah, but if you're using it in conversation, it's hard to bring that into court, whereas
if you put it in the newspaper and Kleenex sees it, they're almost obligated to write
that sort of a letter saying, please don't use our trademark that way.
It's a trademark.
It's not a word in the English language.
I think the competitors would be more upset than they would be upset because it's becoming
part of the common lexicon, and when you see Kleenex in a store, you'll say, oh, that's
what I want to buy instead of the other brand.
Right, but if Kleenex becomes a generic word, then Scott could put Scott's Kleenex on their
package, and now the customers could be confused because they've been used to it being a trademark,
but it's not a trademark anymore.
So the purpose of trademarks is to designate a source of origin, and as long as the trademark
functions that way, then you know who's giving you your goods.
Once a trademark becomes a word in the English language, you don't know where that source
of origin is, and Google would have to go out looking for another mark and build a reputation
in it, and why would they want to do that?
They want to protect their trademark.
They want to keep it for their own exclusive use so you know when you see Google on your
screen or in literature or whatever product they happen to be making at the time, that
it's coming from these same people.
But at the same time, the companies that make Kleenex and Coke and Xerox and all these other
things have been common words in the lexicon for generations, and they still all seem to
be doing all right for themselves.
And at the same time, language is not something that's set in stone.
It's something that does evolve, and so I don't see how we can artificially constrict
how the language evolves.
If it's going to evolve a trademarked word into a common term, that's what's going to
happen, and I think if your business model depends on that not happening, well, too damn
bad about you.
That's not how the world works.
And got a different result than you expected, you'd be a little upset with them perhaps
because you told them to Google it.
You didn't tell them to Bing it.
So the trademark serves a purpose.
Get me a Coke, and then if somebody brings you Dr. Pepper, you might not be so happy.
But there is a part of the country where asking for a Coke and being handed some other kind
of pop would be normal.
Yeah, you know, you get Pepsi sometimes, and you ask for Coke, and nobody says anything
about it, and there are places where that is a big deal, I know.
Coke people will.
Well, if I'm a Coke person, literally, yeah, I guess it would be a big deal.
But most of us, we're just trying to get on with our lives and use the language in ways
we understand.
Yeah, let's say somebody opened up another 2600 site.
Well, that's a good example, actually, because we're very lax with that kind of a thing.
We have 2600 channels on IRC.
We have 2600 meetings, and we don't control this.
We don't say that you can't call it that.
If it basically shares the same basic ideas, it's perfectly cool to do that.
Suppose the military industrial complex wanted to hide one of their nasty operations, say
to infiltrate the Iranian centrifuges behind the 2600 site, and you put a bunch of viruses
up there.
That would upset you, wouldn't it?
Well, if they were representing something bad as part of us, yeah, we'd speak out against
that, sure.
There's the quality control aspect of a trade war.
Right.
But I would wait for that to happen.
I would not say that you can't say that you're a part of this, or you can't use this word
in a particular way because of what you might do.
I would wait for them to actually do something negative.
It's called delusion.
But once you do that, you lose quality control.
It's called delusion.
In fact, even if you wanted to sell your mark, you can't just sell a bare mark.
You sell it with all its goodwill and its quality control.
You can't license somebody to use your mark without doing the quality control, having
a right to quality control it.
Otherwise, you will lose your mark because the next infringer comes along and says, well,
you're not controlling the quality on this thing.
You've licensed 15 different people.
You've never looked at their product.
They're sending out garbage under your name.
You've got really no interest in protecting this mark.
And they'd win the case.
This is why I'm not a lawyer.
These things are lost on me.
But I want to thank you very much for the insight, though.
It's fascinating.
I'm sure it's something we're going to be talking about.
OK.
Anytime.
All right.
Take care.
And our phone number again, 212-650-5782.
Our email address, oth at 2600.com.
If there's something you'd like to say to us that you can't say over the phone, feel
free to write to us.
Did you see the story that the FBI has made its top legislative priority of 2013?
Wasn't there an end to that sentence?
I want to know if you saw it.
Did you see?
Their top legislative priority.
Is what?
Guess.
I have to guess what their top?
Gosh.
Maybe reining in their abusive power, perhaps.
No.
That's our top priority for them.
Oh.
Oh.
Reining in the CIA's abusive power.
That would be nice.
But instead, it is they want to be able to read your email in real time.
Oh, because reading it a few minutes from now, that's not good enough.
Right.
They're concerned that their ability to wiretap everyone is going dark, their phrase.
And so they want more power.
The only thing that's going dark is our freedom and ability to be private.
What are they talking about?
How is it going dark?
They have more ability than ever to read things.
They want real-time access to everything.
They don't want to send your email provider a letter and then wait an hour for them to
get back.
They want real-time.
This is an extension.
Okay.
How do they propose?
How do they propose to do this now?
They have made it their top legislative priority, and we should watch out because the Congress
often gives the FBI what it wants.
And this is an extension to the CALEA stuff that we've talked about all the time where
they can listen to your phone calls in real time.
They want to be able to spy on your internet traffic in real time.
And so if they spy on your internet traffic in real time just at your internet service
provider and you're using encryption, then the FBI won't be able to see it.
So they want to be able to go to the entity you're talking to and go to them and get that
in real time.
They just want everything all the time, and we need to watch out.
Okay.
Just one question.
I want to take another phone call.
Are they saying, not what we're saying, but are they saying that this is only for people
that they're investigating, or is this something that they just want to have on everybody just
to be safe?
So I don't understand the different standards.
This is, according to this article, it is a Title III order under the Wiretap Act, but
what they want to do is they want to force the entities you do business with to set up
the infrastructure to make it possible for them to get the state in real time.
And then once the infrastructure is set up, they're going to use it.
We can figure out the legal standard, but they're going to use it.
Okay.
I think we can all agree on that.
All right.
Let's take another phone call.
212-650-5782.
And good evening.
You are on off the hook.
Speak up.
Did you hang up?
Really?
How could you do that?
I've been ringing for so long.
All right.
212-650-5782.
I'm sure the next call will come in very quickly.
And Bernie, I'm sure you can make it happen by starting to speak now.
We'll hear that noise again.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Hello?
Yes.
We hear you now.
Oh, okay.
You're...
I just thought you would have something to say about the FBI.
If not, we can...
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It's...
One of the interesting examples that they were citing is that people were using...
They're worried about people playing online Scrabble, which has a little chat window.
You can chat back and forth with your Scrabble partner online, and they're worried about
terrorists using the Scrabble game for communications.
But this...
What Mike was saying, this is...
The old collusion between the FBI and the FBI and the FBI and the FBI and the FBI and
Oh
Oh