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And you're listening to WBAI New York.
The time is 7 o'clock time once again for Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bum diddly bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum diddly bum.
Oh yeah, it's the dubbed version of Off the Hook here on WBAI.
Welcome.
Welcome to another Wednesday evening of fun.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Mike.
Hi there.
You were blaming the wind for being late.
Is that what you were doing?
Yes.
All right.
Blame nature.
I will.
I mean, I could have left five minutes earlier, but if I had left at the time I did leave
and there had been less wind, I would have been here earlier.
I like to blame the clouds, but we'll get to that later.
We're also joined by Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
I like to blame it on the rain.
Blame what on the rain?
You were here on time.
Yeah, I'll blame that on the rain.
Okay.
I'll leave that to the listeners.
Bernie S., where are you late from?
I'm actually in Philadelphia tonight, and I blame the cloud.
Well, that's sort of what I was trying to say, but you said it better.
And yes, we have a special program tonight.
Actually, this programming note will be devoting the last part of this program to remembering
our colleague Robert Knight, who passed away this last week.
You've probably heard that on these airwaves.
And if you only listen to this show, then maybe you haven't heard it yet, but he was
one of the giants at this place and someone that I was proud to work with on many occasions.
But we have things to talk about concerning the hacker world, concerning various bits
of technology and the stupidity that sometimes goes with it, and we just delight in talking
about that.
Something that actually is pretty cool is our New Hope website.
Have you guys seen this?
I have.
It's pretty cool.
It's also pretty.
It's pretty?
It's pretty.
It's pretty.
It's pretty.
It's pretty.
It's pretty.
It's everything that we're not used to.
Yeah, hackers always have the most ugly websites, but not anymore.
Not anymore.
If you go to www.hope.net or x.hope.net or all those Xs that we registered, I can't remember
how many there are.
I think, what, 17?
18.
18?
Is it 17 or 18?
Okay, it's one of those.
And you know what?
There's even a longer one.
If you get the current edition of 2600 hidden on the cover someplace, you'll see the really
long URL of Xs, and if you can count the number of Xs in that, you won't gain anything
from it because it'll just go to the same website.
But if you go to that website, x.hope.net is probably the easiest way to remember it,
you'll see our conference website with everything that you would possibly want to know about
the upcoming Hope Conference this July 18th through 20th, Hotel Pennsylvania, New York
City.
And you'll see pictures of dissidents of various sorts.
Dissent, that's our theme.
It's not a theme that we ran into.
It's a theme that kind of embraced us, realized that almost everything we do is some level
of dissent.
This radio show is dissent.
The magazine is dissent.
The conference is dissent.
Our very existence seems to be dissent in one form or another.
I don't know if I can accept that assertion without really questioning it.
Yeah, because you're dissenting the concept of dissent.
Yeah, and that's when it all sort of falls apart.
But if you go to that website, you'll see some famous dissidents of the past and present.
And it's well worth a look.
In fact, there are really well-written pieces on each of them, which I was reading the other
day and learning quite a bit, actually.
So it's one of our better sites, I have to say, that we've introduced over the years.
And hope that people listening can make it because it's going to be fascinating.
It's going to be amazing.
And we have a lot to look forward to.
Yes, we do.
I saw on our internal mailing list just today, there's like fewer than 90 days left.
Yes, 85, I think.
Is that right, Bernie?
85 days.
That's two months and 24 days to go.
Yeah, he spends a better part of the morning doing the calculations.
And 85 days are left before the HILP conference begins.
So that's-
We better get our act together.
We better start organizing.
Yeah.
No, actually, there are people in closed rooms right now organizing, so don't worry about
that.
Yeah, we've got a room full of an infinite amount of monkeys with an infinite amount
of typewriters.
And we'll have a conference at some point.
People can't see this, but my chair just went down about a foot.
I'm practically on the floor trying to talk into the microphone here.
I was short to begin with.
Now it's really- I hope it doesn't go down any further.
Okay.
So we have some stories.
Again, it's going to be a bit abbreviated.
We're going to take phone calls maybe at about 20 after.
I'd like to hear from people who are hopefully listening to us.
But we have some stories that I think are pretty fascinating.
This whole Supreme Court case on the company known as Aereo has caught my attention.
They're the company that puts up all these little antennas in various cities and then
charges people money to watch free television in those cities.
And the broadcasters are going bananas over this, saying that they're getting away with
ripping them off, taking their copyrighted content and not compensating the networks
for it while at the same time charging consumers a la cable TV.
And it's gone all the way to the Supreme Court.
And what the Supreme Court seems to be saying is that they don't quite understand what Aereo
is all about.
At least they don't seem to approve at this stage, at least from the quotes I'm reading.
Here's one from Justice Stephen Breyer.
It looks as if somehow you are escaping a constraint that's imposed upon other companies.
That's what disturbs everyone.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says you are the only player so far that doesn't pay any royalties
at this stage.
That's not exactly...
That's not encouraging, I guess.
Of course, in the Supreme Court, you do get asked a lot of challenging questions and no
doubt they're trying to get to the bottom of all this.
But I'd like for us to weigh in here as to...
We've talked about this company before, but Bernie, you specifically seem to have some
opinions on the worth and value of this company.
Yeah, this is really a fascinating case, Emanuel.
It's going to affect all of us, frankly.
And the case law goes all the way back to the mid-70s, the Sony Betamax case.
So this is really interesting stuff.
Basically what Aereo is doing, to just clarify what you said, is they're not selling broadcasters
over-the-air TV content.
They are renting customers a little antenna, a TV antenna and a virtual DVR so that you
can log into your Aereo account and watch just the local channels that are in the market
where your Aereo antenna is located.
And the Supreme Court justices seem to have trouble wrapping their technologically-challenged
minds around that.
Well, in fairness, let's listen to what they had to say.
Justice Roberts said, there's no technological reason for you to have 10,000 dime-sized antennas
other than to get around the copyright laws.
Do you think that's an accurate statement?
Well, there probably are some technical reasons, too, and he started to go...
The attorneys started to go into that, but good luck trying to explain that to the judges
if they can't even understand the basic concept of renting the antenna is not the same as
renting content.
But bottom line is, yes, the Aereo is using technology to avoid breaking the law, breaking
copyright law.
I don't see a problem with that.
The thing about Aereo, I think maybe it could be explained a little more simply for those
who don't know what's going on.
Basically, theoretically, and there are laws of space and time which might prevent this
from happening, but theoretically, you could take your TV antenna, a regular antenna that
receives free signals off the air, run a really long extension cord, put your antenna up in
a different city to the one in which you live, go back home and watch the free stuff that
would be caught by that antenna.
And what Aereo claims they're doing is basically offering the infrastructure for you to just
rent one of their antennas.
Each one of their thousands of antennas is ostensibly connected to one of their customers,
meaning they're not pulling in content and mass broadcasting it.
They're just letting you use one of their antennas.
There's an important difference, though, between what you said and what Aereo is doing.
Aereo will only sell its service to people who are already in the broadcast area.
So you can't use Aereo, as I understand it, to watch television from a different city.
I don't know.
It's all the same television anyway, but you can't do it.
This is the thing I really have trouble grasping, because I do this all the time, and people
in Canada do this all the time.
They have what's known as time shifting.
You can watch a television station in Edmonton if you live in Toronto.
It's not a big deal.
You can see the advertisements for used car salesmen in a different city, in a different
province.
In our country, we go ballistic when something like that is at risk of happening.
I don't understand why.
I guess they want you to see the local advertising only.
But you know what?
I think it all evens out in the wash, one way or another.
My real question here, though, with what service Aereo is providing, they are providing something
that is over the air, that you don't pay for if you have an antenna.
The reason why you don't put up your own antenna and get this service for nothing is, I guess,
maybe not having access to the outside, not having a building in the way that can prevent
the digital signal from getting through clearly.
I know this personally.
I've had severe trouble in the city getting TV reception now that they've switched over
to digital.
So I could see why somebody would want this.
It being a free over the air service in the first place, what right do the free over the
air broadcasters have to expect payment for this?
So I stand corrected on the multi-city thing.
I thought that was a thing.
So what we're really talking about here is still renting the equipment to pull in something
that you could get under your own means if you had the equipment.
So if you have an antenna and a DVR and all that setup, you don't need Aereo.
But if you don't have that and you'd like to use it, Aereo wants you to pay them to
use one of theirs, which if it makes sense for you to rent a bicycle or a car or any
other appliance, what's different about an antenna that's pulling in the same stuff?
Let's say I have a room in Midtown Manhattan and I rent that room out by the hour for people
to go inside and watch television.
Am I in violation of the copyright in the eyes of the television networks because I'm
not paying them to provide this service?
It's a bizarre parallel, but I think it's one that should be addressed.
You might be in violation of the housing code.
All right, fine.
You know what?
I don't know about that, but I'm still going to challenge the broadcasters.
Now I see their point too, because cable companies pay them to do this.
They pay the broadcasters to carry local channels.
I don't think that's valid.
I don't think that was valid in the past.
Bernie, maybe you could inform us on this, but when cable television first started way
back, weren't there such things as must-carry channels that the cable providers had to provide
and it wasn't something that they paid for.
It was something they were required to do.
Well, when cable TV started in Pennsylvania, I might add, the Blue Ridge Cable TV Company.
Oh, really?
In Northeastern Pennsylvania, yep.
There's a fact, folks.
Okay, that's going to be on the quiz later.
There were no regulations on this, and the cable provider didn't have to provide it.
It was really kind of a master TV antenna system.
They didn't really have to provide any channels, but then the broadcasters said, oh no, you've
got to carry this channel because we're in the broadcast range, you've got to carry that
if you're a cable company.
So yes, there was a requirement like that, and then they started saying other things.
But to answer your question, which you posed, now I've already got a chance to answer your
question.
If you were to charge people to come into your house to watch your TV, that could be
a violation of the law because that could be interpreted as a public performance as
opposed to a private performance.
If you invite a bunch of people over to your home to watch Super Bowl on broadcast TV,
which you're pulling in through an antenna for free, that is not a violation.
But if you're charging people for that, yes.
But I mean, if you're running an Airbnb and you're renting out the apartment and ostensibly
not for them to watch the TV programming, which would possibly constitute a public performance,
then that would be different.
I know it's complicated, but copyright law is complicated.
Well, you know, in case any Supreme Court justices are listening, we do want to try
and make the whole case a little bit simpler to understand.
But for instance, a hotel advertising that they have televisions in their room, do they
have to pay the local broadcasters for sharing that signal?
Yes.
But they pay the provider of those local channels, they provide the local cable TV company for
that, which then...
Oh, you're assuming the hotel has cable TV.
But if the hotel simply has the signal coming from the sky?
There are some TV...
There are some, like, little hotels and motels that still have master TV antenna systems,
especially ones out in rural areas where there is no cable TV.
There are hotels in areas without cable TV.
They are sort of skirting the existing copyright regulations if they're not paying something
for that.
Well, the broadcasters could argue that they are doing that.
But I don't know of any hotels that have little tiny fleabag hotels out in the middle of nowhere
that have been prosecuted under that.
My main point here is that copyright restrictions are out of control.
They're insane and they're just getting worse and worse with the improvement of technology.
And anything that challenges those is worth a good look.
In this particular case, we are talking about signals that are broadcast for nothing.
And if you have an antenna, you can watch it for nothing.
So that's a fundamental problem I have, understanding how these broadcasters think they're entitled
to a dime.
And hopefully that's the way the justices will see this.
Emmanuel, did you hear that two big broadcasters were threatening that if this decision goes
in Aereo's favor, that they're going to shut down their stations or networks and go off
the air?
Did you hear that?
Yeah, CBS was one of them.
They said they were going to go to, I think, online only or cable only or something like
that, but not over the air, yes.
I don't believe them for a minute.
Well, you know, maybe they should.
Maybe they should just give the signal to somebody else that doesn't have such a problem
with people watching the signal.
You know, it's the airwaves belong to the people.
You know, it's been a long time since I've heard that said, but it's still true.
And if they don't want people to watch their airwaves without paying for it, they ought
to hand it to somebody else.
Yeah, I got to say as, you know, one of this crowd here in this room and also on the phone
who produce a program that airs over radio waves, we like when people listen to our content.
We like when people, you know, re-broadcast our content, re-host our MP3s, do whatever
with it, because we do this for you to listen to, and we do this for everyone possible to
listen to.
That should be the reason why people broadcast, true.
How will you ever sell cars with that attitude?
Well, you know, if you want to sell cars or make a lot of money, then you have something
that people pay for, a premium channel or pay-per-view or you sell commercials.
You know, people are forgetting these guys are making a ton of money by selling commercials
in the first place.
So I don't understand the objection to this.
PBS stations, they have more people watching their begophons, you know, that wouldn't be
able to do so if they didn't use aerial to get the signal in the first place.
The whole thing, such a big waste of time.
And it's just an indication of how reality doesn't seem to sync with our world much of
the time.
Here's another example of that.
Buffalo Bills, they're a football team.
That's strange enough, but they're very popular.
And they recently were sued for sending text messages.
Get this, in 2014, actually, this is a story about a player, which I don't want to get
into.
Well, okay, how about this year, a U.S. district judge issued a preliminary approval to a $3
million settlement in a 2012 class action lawsuit filed against the team by Jerry Wolczyk,
a Bills fan who claimed the franchise violated the agreement of its opt-in texting service.
According to the Buffalo News, the suit claims the Buffalo Bills promised no more than five
text messages will be disseminated to fans each week.
Now, when Wolczyk received 13 texts over a two-week span, that's three more than they
were supposed to get, he filed suit on behalf of the nearly 40,000 fans who subscribed to
the service.
The settlement, which will be paid out in gift cards to the team's store or the team's
website, was approved in a Tampa Bay, Florida court last week.
Up to $2.5 million in vouchers will go to the estimated 39,750 fans who signed up for
the service.
Remaining funds will be distributed to Wolczyk's attorneys.
They made $562,500, and the plaintiff himself made five grand off of this.
I'm speechless.
This is real.
This really happened, because this guy got three extra text messages that he signed up
for in the first place.
He can file this kind of a lawsuit, and it's taken ... I thought this was a joke.
But this is real.
Who cares if you get ... I mean, I don't like spam, but if I sign up for it, I'm not going
to be surprised if I get a couple of messages.
The reason you might care is some people pay per text message.
Then you don't sign up for a service like this.
But the cost of three extra text messages is, what, 30 cents?
I mean ...
Well, I'm in the worst situation.
Yeah, I suppose maybe.
Bernie, you had something?
I said there was a contract here.
There was a breach of contract.
I think it was five text messages per week, and he got 13.
Isn't that crazy?
Isn't that what you said?
But in any case, what if he's paying for his text messages?
Not everybody has unlimited texting.
Yeah, but, you know, you have to have some kind of bonehead to sign up for something
that sends you text messages when you have to pay for every text message, and an extra
three?
I want to know why the Buffalo Bills were not charged with violating the Computer Fraud
and Abuse Act for unauthorized use of a computer, mainly the smartphone of the company that
you're working for.
I don't know.
A documentary for a future movie project was dismissed yesterday by a federal judge.
charged the script would not have been widely accessible if Gawker had not linked to it.
So it was on a different site. Gawker linked to it. Gawker got blamed for it being revealed.
Gawker turned down repeated requests to remove links to download the script.
And that's something that I would agree with. A link is not the same as hosted content. That's
something that we fought in court. Of course, we also lost that fight, but it's something that
needs to be challenged. Tarantino told the gossip site Deadline that he had given the
script to only six people, including actors Michael Madsen, who's best known as the killer
in Reservoir Dogs. Weren't they all killers in Reservoir Dogs? I don't know. As well as Bruce
Dern, Tim Roth. Reservoir Dogs was Roth's breakthrough film. I don't know how that's
related to the story. It's kind of irrelevant. Somehow the script leaked. I would look to one
of those six people. It was posted through a site that lets users anonymously upload
and download files. Because anonymity. That's the problem here. Now, CNN, which is where we're
getting this story, they attempted to reach Tarantino for comment, but were completely
unsuccessful. And Gawker did not mention the decision on its website. But according to CNN
affiliate KTLA, Tarantino held a three-hour reading of the script over the weekend and told
audience members he was working on changes to it. And although he had spoken of shelving the project
when the links to the script were posted, he said making the film is still possible. I don't see how
it makes a difference if people know what's going to be in the film. It's like adapting a book.
You don't have to give up the whole project. But what a silly lawsuit that was. Fortunately,
that one was dismissed, although it might come back. But just because something is leaked does
not mean that certainly the sites linking to it are not guilty.
Yeah. I mean, this is a very important fact of the internet that you do not control content
that other people host. And just pointing out the fact that it's there should not be a crime.
We're telling you now over the airwaves that the script exists, whatever the name is.
And you could probably find it on the net now by putting that info into a search engine.
So now we're liable.
So now I guess it's our fault, too. Sorry, Quentin Tarantino, that you're such a bad filmmaker.
Well, a lot more people... You did not just say that. A lot more people listen to our show than
read Gawker, that's for sure.
I listen to our show and I don't read Gawker.
Wow. Okay. I don't know what we've opened up here. Yes, Bernie.
I just want to say Quentin Tarantino should have practiced better information security by
sending his scripts around to six untrusted people, or at least they trust him. He shouldn't
have trusted them all, apparently.
You just called Bruce Dern untrustable, Michael Madsen, and...
Somebody leaked it. Somebody he gave it to leaked it. Or maybe there was more copies
that he didn't tell anybody about. Maybe it was his own mistake. He gave one to somebody
on the street. Who knows? But there was no... The bottom line is there was no copyrighted content
in the URL that Gawker published. And that's all that really matters, I think. Otherwise,
we're going to be in a lot of trouble.
Right. You can't copyright a URL anymore. You could copyright geo-caching coordinates
somewhere. You could tell somebody that if you go to these coordinates on the Earth's
surface, you'll find a thing. You should not be able to copyright or control or block that
information from being disseminated.
That's why we have to fight all these copyright cases, because they want to be able to do that.
They want to be able to copyright URLs and numbers and colors and whatever they can
possibly copyright. All right. We have this interesting story. I'm sure we've heard about
this, because this is actually a trending topic. And this has been in all the mass media lately.
NYPD. Yeah, they thought it would be a good idea to have people post pictures of themselves
posing with cops. Kind of a pleasant, feel-good story. Didn't quite work out that way.
They suggested, apparently they didn't understand how Twitter works, but they suggested using a
hashtag of my NYPD. And what they wound up getting were a bunch of pictures that they
probably didn't want to have shared of, well, police arresting people, fighting protesters,
being abusive. Any kind of criticism you could possibly imagine. It's being posted now,
and they can't do anything about it. Because guess what? In the words of one of the
tweeters responding to this, just because you created a hashtag doesn't mean you own it. So
if you go to pound sign my NYPD, you'll see whatever people post under that particular
hashtag. And some of it is really not very positive to the NYPD.
I think the NYPD made two mistakes. One is not understanding how the internet works and the
ever-present existence of trolls. But the other mistake I think they made is that the NYPD
communications office seems to think that people like the NYPD. And in my experience, at least,
that's a terrible mistake. Yeah, but you know what? A lot of people do like the NYPD, and we
have to face that fact. We don't represent everybody, but if you go to Times Square,
you'll see a lot of tourists there that really would like to pose with the NYPD. And there are
lots of good cops too. But there's also the other side of that. And this is a good thing. This is a
good thing that it's getting out there. And to their credit, they have said publicly, we have
no intention of trying to stop this. I mean, they wouldn't be able to if they did. But saying that
from the start, that's a plus. That says that they did learn something, or they do have some basic
amount of knowledge as to how free speech works on the net. Rob? I just have a lot of trouble
figuring out what they wanted to accomplish with this in the best circumstances, because
the NYPD are not known for being all that tolerant of people photographing them either. There's a
very good website out there called Photography is Not a Crime that catalogs these incidents where
people have every right to take a photo, but they're blocked from doing so. This is very
different. This is taking a picture with the cops, and they do that all the time. I see tourists
posing with cops constantly, but they don't like it when you take a picture of them doing whatever
it is they do. That's for sure. I will say that the NYPD, this is about the nicest thing I'll
ever say about the NYPD, but by and large, they are aware that you have the right to take a
photograph of them even if they're doing something you don't like. This is not universal, but they're
a lot better in this regard than many other police departments. Okay. As per any final comment on
this, I'm going to open up the phones. 212-209-2900. Go ahead. You'd think the NYPD would have good
investigators, but apparently, they didn't investigate what happened to McDonald's because,
I don't know, a year or two ago, McDonald's had a similar Twitter campaign where they wanted people
to tweet their favorite McDonald's stories. Then people started tweeting in problems like
trolls would tweet in, I found a dead mouse in my McDonald's McNuggets or something like that.
This is not the first time this problem has happened where a big organization
did not understand how Twitter worked or the internet worked in general.
So, they need better investigators at the NYPD. Well, just a basic understanding, and for those
of you who are thinking of doing something like this, having a website where you control what
comes in is one thing, but when you have a hashtag on Twitter, basically, anybody can post
anything with that hashtag attached to it, whether you like it or not. That's the nature
of Twitter. That's how it works. You have no control over it. So, you'd better hope that
there's positive feeling out there towards whatever it is that you're promoting, because if
there isn't, it's going to be drowned out by the negative. All right. Let's take a couple of phone
calls in the time that we have here. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook. Hi, guys. Hi, Emanuel.
How are you doing? All right. I just wanted to make one comment that's driving me crazy that
hasn't been stated about this aerial stuff, and that is that, well, I'm one of the managers of
the local public access TV station here in Woodstock, and I know a lot about what the cable
carriage rules are, and whether it's direct TV on satellite or dish that provide local station
service, if you're within the area, or flying burner cable, which is soon to be taken by Comcast,
or Comcast does the same thing. When they retransmit a local broadcaster, whether it's from
New York City, Albany, or anyplace else, they always have a one-minute local commercial insert
that they get to sell in every commercial break on every commercial station they carry, and they do.
Now, that ends up being the reason why the cable companies or the satellite services
pay royalties to carry the program, is because not only are they reselling it to their subscribers,
but they're also reselling it to sell commercials. Now, I don't know how that puts this little
antenna, which, as you said, is a service for people that may be in an apartment where it's
absolutely impossible to get digital over-the-air signals. They're just providing a technical
service, which is done over and over on the internet, but it seems to me they're selling
themselves short if they don't mention that the retransmitters that do pay fees actually sell
advertising on the signal they're re-carrying. What do you see as the proper way to resolve all this?
Well, I agree with you guys. I think that what Ariel has come up with is a fabulous service,
and if you're paying for your computer access and you're using the computer to
supplement your lack of television reception, then I think it's really good that they should
not have to pay copyright on it, because the broadcasters are doing that. I absolutely agree
with you. If a company like CBS sees this little company or anything else that's retransmitting all
of their commercials as a threat, then maybe they should go off the air. But the thing is,
if they're retransmitting the commercials, as you said, they're making the company the
originating signal money. Yes, absolutely. I have more of a radical view on all of this. I think
that if you want to watch a television station in Paducah, Kentucky — and I picked that because
once when I was a kid, I actually received the TV station here in New York from Paducah, Kentucky.
It's great. Why can't you do that? If you use the internet to do that, if you use some crazy
outer space-type satellite thing to get it, you should have the right to watch whatever you want,
foreign countries, foreign TV shows, whatever, commercials from all over the world.
Shouldn't be restricted, shouldn't be shut down and geographically controlled. What is the point
of that except to basically foster these insane copyright restrictions that are being forced down
our throats? Now, TuneIn is a great app for radio stations, and you can put that on your smartphone,
and there's a geographical feature in that where you basically start with a continent,
then you go to a country, then you go to a city, and you can actually see the entire
FM lineup of a particular city. You can pick a station, you can hear a station,
and you can listen to their commercials, you can listen to their music. It's really what it should
be all about. If we're going to benefit from the advances in technology and make this truly global,
that's the kind of thinking that we need, not ways to figure out how to further restrict it.
I agree wholeheartedly.
All right. Thanks for your call.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bernie, I know you've been using TuneIn as well. It's a pretty good app, isn't it?
Yes, neat. It runs on a lot of different platforms. I put it on my mother's Kindle. She loves it.
I'm running it on my BlackBerry. It's only about 50,000 to 75,000 stations. I like the fact that
I can pick up radio stations that I could never pick up otherwise. It doesn't have Radio Havana
Cuba, though. I can easily pick up Radio Havana Cuba on my shortwave radio in my bathroom,
but I can't pick it up on TuneIn Radio, so I wish they would fix that.
Well, I don't know who is in charge of that, but I'm sure if anybody at Radio Havana is listening,
they need to write a letter or something.
Just to clarify the way the system works is the radio stations themselves are broadcasting over
the internet. Like WBAI, we have a web stream. Many, many radio stations have web streams,
and so radio stations without web streams, which may include radio stations in countries
with very expensive internet access, are not going to be available on that service.
I did notice that there was nothing from North Korea as well. That's one of the first places
I looked. There is something in Antarctica, which I don't think is really in Antarctica.
If anyone has TuneIn, it seems to be a musical loop that plays over and over again.
But one of the cool things I like doing with this, I have satellite radio as well,
and I listen to CBC Radio 1 a lot, but what I can do with TuneIn is that I can pick a station
in upper Moosehead or whatever, somewhere in Saskatchewan, and listen to their local station,
listen to their weather report. I was listening to a fisherman report in Newfoundland that went
on for a half hour and was very passionate. Things like that, that you can't get unless you
seek it out, are made easy by apps like this. Why can't we do that for television as well?
It would make things a lot more interesting. Okay, let's take another phone call.
And good evening, you're on off the hook. Speak up. Okay, the light did not turn orange. Let's
try this one. Good evening, you're on off the hook. Okay, something wrong here. The lights are
turning green, but not orange. This happens every now and then. Okay, hold on. We're going to hang
up on that. Such technology. I don't understand what's going on. The light is turning a different
color, and I don't think... Bernie, you're there, right? I'm still here. But caller, you're not
there, right? See, they're not there. That's them not talking. Okay, Bernie, I'm going to put you on
hold because I think you might be causing the problem. Sorry about that. I got to press that
button, press this button, and then press that button. And yes, see, that works. Now I'm going
to press this button and this button. Hang on, hang on. Wait for me to say hello. Good evening,
you're on off the hook. Yes, good evening. I just wanted to let you know that I could hear you
since you seem to be having some problems. A couple points of clarification, and then the
main part of my question. You said the NYPD hashtag so quickly that I couldn't get what it was.
It's my NYPD, M-Y-N-Y-P-D. Okay, thank you. And the other thing about this tune-in,
Bernie, you mentioned that it's any radio station also broadcasting over the internet. So that would
also include AM because Emmanuel just said you can put in any FM station, but it wouldn't include
AM. And I'm concerned because WOR, that used to broadcast the coast-to-coast AM radio program at
1 AM in this market, is now picking up the Mets or the replay of the Mets or the postgame, blah,
blah, blah. Yes, you can pick up a lot of, tune-in radio has like tons of AM radio stations and
shortwave stations, but not all of the stations that are on the air are on tune-in radio. There's
a lot of non-over-the-air radio stations, not radio, there's a lot of non-over-the-air stations,
just internet-only radio stations that tune-in radio covers. And over-the-air radio that also
is broadcasted over the internet, not, well, is also over the internet. Yeah, tune-in radio is
free. I think they have a premium version. Okay, wonderful. And it's only on these smartphones,
is that correct? No, you can do it on a regular computer or a tablet. As long as you have an
internet connection, you should be able to do it. Just to clarify, it doesn't matter if the
station itself is FM or AM or shortwave or whatever. What matters is if that station has
an internet broadcasting stream set up. So all the various stations, FM, AM, shortwave, everything
else that have an internet stream, those are the ones that tune-in can get to. All right, I want
to thank people for calling in. As I said, this is a bit of a truncated show, so we'll be taking
phone calls in weeks ahead. And of course, you can always write to us, oth at 2600.com. We have
an update for a good friend of ours who you may not have heard from in quite some time, our friend
Jim, who actually we haven't seen in quite a while. Now, Rob, I believe you received an update
as to what his condition is right now. Yeah, we've been updated that he had a heart attack in January
and he had a pacemaker put in and he's in the hospital recovering. But he's able to get well
wishes, so we have the address for that, I believe. And I believe he's listening to us now. So Jim,
we hope you get well. We hope to see you soon at 2600 meetings at the HOPE conference and here at
the radio station. You can write to him. Please send all kinds of material. Jim is an avid reader
and is way into technology and mischief and all kinds of cool things. So we want to make sure that
his brain stays as sharp as it always has been. Jim Vichense, I spelled V-I-C-H-E-N-C-H,
and the address is Elmhurst Care Center. That's 100-17 23rd Avenue, room 117A in East Elmhurst,
New York, 11369. And hopefully he'll get a ton of mail now and have a lot to think about and
we'll see him soon as well. Now, the sad news we mentioned earlier in this broadcast has to
do with our friend and colleague Robert Knight, who passed away on April 16th. Those of you who
have listened to WBAI at any time during the past 30 or so years undoubtedly would have heard Robert's
voice at some point. He was on this show a couple of times. He hosted Five O'Clock Shadow in later
years. He was a longtime host of Earthwatch, the program that aired at 12 midnight. In fact, tonight
at 12 midnight, we're having a special tribute to Robert and I believe following that on Hour of the
Wolf, Jim Freund will have some memories as well. Robert was basically, I consider, the face of this
radio station because he was one of the best investigative reporters I've ever known and
somebody who encapsulated the spirit of rebellion and mischief and curiosity, always embracing the
newest forms of technology. I remember his pride in showing us a wristwatch that he could talk into
just like a comic book character. It was a telephone, but it was on a wristwatch.
I hadn't seen him in the last few months, but I had heard him on the radio and he sounded as sharp as
ever and as interested in what's going on in the world. You could have conversations that went on
for hours with Robert about any part of the world. He was especially interested in the
events in Central America. What I'd like to do is play something that aired on a different radio
station. I did a show on WUSB back in 1989 and I interviewed Robert basically about the subject of
something else that he was investigating, the danger of plutonium being launched on a space
shuttle and what could happen if there was an accident. This comes from October of 1989.
And on that rather cheerful note, as we plunge into the 1990s, we begin tonight's program. Now,
next week, a launch of a space shuttle is scheduled. I believe it's the space shuttle Atlantis.
And there is a special little package on board. I believe it's the part of the Galileo mission
headed to Jupiter that contains some rather nasty substances. And there are some citizens groups,
as we discussed a few weeks ago in this program, that are trying to stop that launch and trying to
maybe save quite a few people in so doing. Now, I said I would try to find out more facts about
the matter. So what I have done is I've sought out somebody who knows quite a bit more than me.
And we have on the line with us right now, Robert Knight of WBAI fame. You may recognize
him from Undercurrents. Robert, are you there? Yes, I'm here.
Well, it's good to hear a voice of sanity in this craziness that we plod through each week here.
Yes, in fact, and moving from your short story to this long shot that we're going to be talking
about, it occurs to me that sometimes men making decisions have as little respect for Mother Earth
as they do for its daughters. That's certainly true. That is certainly true. A lot of it is just
the glory of the moment, so to say. Now, was I correct? It is a space shuttle Atlantis?
Ah, yes. Well, next week, something very dangerous could happen. And that is with the launch of the
shuttle Atlantis, which is significant because it is carrying an interplanetary space probe
called Galileo, named, of course, after the astronomer who developed the telescope and
watched the satellites of the giant planet, one which is very interesting astronomically. However,
the problem is that in order to power this probe, which is planned to go to Jupiter and
drop some equipment down in orbit and explore the Jovian system, the Galileo probe is fueled by
a nuclear reactor. And that nuclear reactor is carrying within it 49.4 pounds of plutonium.
And the problem with this launch is that there is a certain margin of error, which could,
in a catastrophic development, result in the explosion and release, the explosion of the craft
and the release of the plutonium on board. Of course, if that were to happen and the plutonium
were to be released into the atmosphere, you would have a cloud of death that would scatter
for the entire perimeter of the remains fluttering back down to Earth. And each of
these plutonium molecules, plutonium has a half-life of about 250 years, any lung, any throat
that came into contact with this material would almost certainly develop cancer.
Now, how wide an area would be affected in the worst case scenario?
Well, that is something that is ultimately unpredictable, because there are variables
of wind direction, time of launch, or the potential explosion and or release of the materials. And
the lower down that this might happen, the more concentrated the fallout would be,
and the higher up, the more widely distributed. There are conflicting reports.
And that's an excerpt from 1989 that aired on radio station WUSB of Robert Knight. We were
talking to him about the hazards of sending plutonium up into space, just one of so many
things that you could talk to Robert about and have a spirited conversation and just learn so
very much from him, because he was so well spoken, so pleasant to debate with even,
he didn't have to agree with everything he said. And he just had this passion and was so sorry that
he's no longer with us. Rob, I know you had some memories of Robert as well.
Yeah, I mean, I was a listener back then. I'm pretty sure I remember listening to the exact
clip you've just played when it first went out. But yeah, I was as much of an admirer of his work
as I was of yours back in those days on this station. And when I started getting involved
five, six years ago, whenever it was, and I would come to the station on Wall Street and hang out in
the lobby. I was very often early, so I would have some time to just hang out in the lobby and chat
with whoever was there. And very often it was Robert. And he just went such a long way to make
the new kid feel comfortable about being there. And the conversations with him were always spirited,
whether they were about big, heavy subjects or minutia. And he was just always so gracious,
one of the nicest people I've met, period. Not just at this station, but anywhere.
And this station, this network, this state, this planet are all poorer for his loss.
He always was open to listening as much as conversing, to learning more. He loved the
hacker world. He loved hearing what we were up to and getting involved in our various projects,
one way or another. But of course, it went so far beyond that too. His involvement was simply
incredible. He was a co-founder of the radio program Contragate, which later was renamed
Undercurrents. That provided daily exposes of the military operations, clandestine operations
involving the Central American wars. And he was also WBAI's news director for a while. He was
a morning show host for Wake Up Call, news director. His work appeared on many different
radio stations as well. He interviewed Manuel Noriega in Panama before he was deposed. In fact,
we have another clip, a little longer, this clip from WBAI when Panama was being invaded
in December of 1989, also of 1989. This gives you a sense as to the reach of Robert's career
that these two excerpts were playing out from 1989. Imagine that kind of intensity
being replicated every single year since then, and before then as well, because he had been
involved in the station for a number of years prior to that. Let's listen to some of the breaking
news that we covered here in December of 1989 on this radio station
with Robert Knight and other people too, who were involved in this.
Report of the Contras. So my worry is that the information has been withheld from the people.
And if you can get to the information, I wouldn't be so quick to impeach the American people,
but I would support Robert Knight's declaration for the beginning, at least, of impeachment
proceedings against the president of this country, Robert. Yes. I am a reporter. I have been a
reporter for a decade, news director, and as you know, Dennis, now senior producer under Currents.
And I just want to say something to clear the public air and to maintain something that I
believe in very strongly, the need for a presumption of innocence. So many of the
reports and reporters that you hear every day now in television, in the papers, say that a person
pleads innocent to a crime. And that breaks down the constitutional structures that we have learned,
that a person is presumed not guilty. And that is the plea, not guilty until the state proves
the charges that are made. Now, I just want to be very clear, because I do not want the very
precise reporting I have made on incidents surrounding my travels to Panama, which as a
reporter, I'm very clear about, very precise about. I have told the story on the air before
that on the way down, Dennis, that my seat was taken by a man whose description I gave.
And I have always said, who identified himself as one Colonel Fred Francis. Now, those two names
are common. That could have been a true name, or it could have been a fabricated name. I do not know.
All I know is the man identified himself by that name. If there is another correspondent who is a
legitimate correspondent for any other news or media medium or media institution who happens to
have that same name, I by no means wish to falsely associate any implications by something which
could be true or not true that somebody on an airplane told me. So I just want to be very clear
about that, that I am not seeking to impugn or otherwise cast any aspersions on anyone else in
my profession. But I will certainly investigate any and all information that comes to me.
But I want to very clearly establish the constitutional and broadcast analogy of
the presumption of innocence. I wish for no one else's reputation to be harmed any more than I
would my own. All right, Robert, just just a couple of minutes. Stay with us. Let's take just a couple
of calls together, OK? WBAI, you're on the air. That's you, please, quickly. Do you have a quick
question for Robert Knight and myself, Dennis Bernstein? Yes, I have a quick question and I'll
hang up on the Noriega tape. You said something about tomorrow the U.S. will violate international
law, etc. When was the tape made and what was the specific U.S. action he was talking about? I wonder
if you might like to ponder on what that might have been. Thank you very much. Listen to the answer.
I can only speculate. I know what was on the tape. I know from previous conversations that
this voice sounds to me the same as the voice I've spoken with on more than one previous occasion.
In other words, I am convinced that it is the voice of General Noriega. I do not know when,
where, or how that tape was made. I know that the means by which I obtained it
is through sources who have in the past been of the utmost reliability and accuracy.
The statement in reference to treaties and so on would, as I would understand the words, mean
that by this invasion, he did not say these words explicitly, this is my paraphrasing or
interpretation of what has been said, that this invasion is a violation of international
treaties and, in particular, the Panama Canal treaties, which explicitly forbid the United
States to intervene in the internal affairs of Panama, even though you can also find a clause
that permits intervention for specifically the defense of the canal. The invasion and the
creation of a government fabricated in Washington is considered by Panamanians or Panamanian
nationalists to be a violation of the 1977 Panama Canal treaties. The Decansini Reservation,
Public Law 77, is also considered a violation by creating a position of chief administrator,
of chief engineer, to override the chief administrator. This very week, the end of
this very month, the United States was obligated by law to appoint as chief administrator of the
canal a Panamanian national of the choosing of the Panamanian government. And at one o'clock
in the morning on a day in this week, when President Bush sends in a military invasion force
and creates a government of his own choosing for the people of Panama and uses that government
perhaps to acquiesce to the nominee and other wishes of the interest of his government,
I think that is the sort of thing that perhaps the speaker may have meant by violation of treaties.
When the speaker, whom I believe to be General Noriega, said that tomorrow the United States
will be violating all of its treaties, what he is saying is, and this is another reason I believe
it's authentic, this is an echo and an elaboration of what he said when I interviewed him on Monday
just before the invasion. And he said at that time that the entire world should be worried,
it should be occupied, preoccupied with this violation of the Panama Canal treaties,
because if a president today can abrogate what a previous president of the United States has signed,
then in the future an American president will abrogate agreements made with the Soviet Union.
And so for this and various... The voice of Robert Knight as heard on these airwaves back in December
of 1989, right when the invasion of Panama was underway, and we say goodbye to Robert.
There will be a special tribute tonight at midnight on these airwaves, so please stay tuned for that.
It's unimaginable that we won't be interacting with him again or seeing his mischievous face
and having these amazing conversations that just go on forever. I've missed him the last
few months, miss seeing him. I'll miss him for the rest of my life.
And please continue to listen to this radio station, because if anything we've learned from
Robert, the greatness that can be achieved in a place like this, where people are encouraged to
express themselves, investigate, and broadcast. And our listeners are a major part of that.
That's our show for tonight. Write to us, oth at 2600.com. Have a good night.
He was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
Every time I think about him now Lord, I just can't keep from crying
Because he was a friend of mine
He never done no wrong
He never done no wrong
A thousand miles from home
And he never harmed no one
And he was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
Every time I hear his name Lord, I just can't keep from crying
Because he was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
He was a friend of mine
Lovely. Well, one thing about, oh what happened to this chair?
We all gonna miss Mr. Knight. Gonna miss him pretty much.
And that's all I have to say about that really.
Everyone's saying everything.
He was one of the greats, I can say that.