I just want to ask the question, who really cares to save the world and despair?
Speculation, poverty, disappearing subsidies, has debt killed the private inner city housing
market?
As shrouded as the world of private financing may seem, it's an industry as old and as legitimate
as the free market system.
Remember the building that collapsed in Harlem last year where three tenants died on West
140th Street?
That was a result of how housing in poor communities serves as cash cows for unscrupulous financiers
and property owners.
It's the private world of unregulated alternative financing.
Tune in and learn how professional real estate investors' motives and methods are destroying
New York City's housing stock in poor communities.
Join Marjorie Moore, host of Talk More, heard on Mondays at 1 p.m. with our guest Andrew
White, editor of City Limits and the co-author of Making Millions Out of Misery, Bob Fitch,
author of The Assassination of New York City, and tenant organizer Ann Pasmanek, executive
director of the Community Training Resource Center, and West Harlem housing advocate April
Tyler.
Learn how the mayor, your city council representative, local community boards, and HPD are neglecting
our city's housing stock and are least able to resist of being destroyed on Monday, February
19th at 1 p.m. on Talk More with Marjorie Moore of a listener-supported WBAI in New
York.
Are they gonna suffer tomorrow?
And you're listening to a radio station, WBAI in New York, where the time is almost precisely
8 o'clock.
And that means it's time for Off the Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody, this is Emanuel Goldstein, the program is Off the
Hook here tonight, FiberOptic, you with us?
Yes, I am.
Oh, great.
What a wonderful week.
I mean, I don't mean to exaggerate too much, but this is the week that it all starts to
fall apart, because what happened last Thursday night, I think we're gonna be paying the price
for quite some time.
The Communications Decency Act was passed, and that's gonna be the main topic of the
program tonight.
But before we get into that, we might also be hearing from Bernie S., I hope we hear
from him as well.
Before we get into that, a little bit of good news, okay, just so that we can start off
on a cheery note, all right?
The battle between 2600 and PSI is over, it's finally over.
And we said we were sorry, we're slinking away, we're not gonna bother them anymore.
No, that's not how it turned out.
How did it turn out, Fiber?
In the end?
In the end.
In the end, well, to my knowledge, they refunded your money.
They just sent us a check.
Yeah, that's all it was.
They sent us a check, and that's all there is to it.
So we took down the webpage that showed everyone how they were being nasty to us, because they
stopped being nasty to us.
But I'd like to read you this story that supposedly is appearing in a magazine called Washington
Technology.
It's called 2600 vs. PSI Net, or David vs. Goliath.
Don't tug on Superman's cape and don't spin into the wind.
PSI Net, Herndon, Virginia, got into a fight they couldn't win with 2600 Magazine, one
of the original hacker publications.
2600, based out of Middle Island, New York, had ordered ISDN service from PSI Net and
were verbally assured by the sales rep on several occasions, yes, you can run data over
a 56K voice call to our ISDN gear.
ISDN allows calls to be in either data or voice mode.
Data mode calls are typically billed on a permanent basis, while a voice call is much
cheaper regardless of length of the call.
Basically, you get 56K worth of data for the price of an ISDN voice phone call.
After signing the contract and having their credit cards socked for install and first
month service, PSI Net technical representatives informed the 2600ers, no, you can't do voice
ISDN calls to our gear, no, you were not promised ISDN 56K voice service, it isn't in the contract,
and no, you can't have your money back.
Several phone calls from 2600 resulted in a terse letter from a PSI Net customer rep,
which is best summarized as, sorry, you signed the contract, live with it.
Billing went on month after month, PSI Net unwilling to release 2600 from their contract
despite numerous phone calls.
Bad move.
To the unenlightened, 2600 is a dumb customer who didn't read all the paperwork, one which
runs a low circulation magazine.
For anyone in the Net industry with half a clue, 2600 is one of the primary mouthpieces
of the hacker-freaker community, a rallying point for the curious and hardcore to skirt
the edges of legality while exploring technology.
Since 2600 meetings, informal gatherings in public places have been monitored and harassed
by various law enforcement agencies, your typical 2600-er knows a bit about what can
and cannot be done with the law.
No persecution complex here, 2600ers are bad boys, the hell's angels of the information
superhighway.
What do you think of that one?
Even hell's angels have the right to publish in free assembly under the U.S. Constitution.
2600 didn't get mad, they got even.
2600 staffers made several phone calls to PSI Net sales representatives asking the same,
can we do data over voice ISDN with PSI Net question.
One was able to hear the .wav recordings of PSI reps answering in the affirmative on 2600's
website under the PSI Hell banner.
PSI Net didn't take too kindly to the original PSI Hell banner, which used a version of PSI
Net's corporate logo, nor to their Pennsylvania employees being recorded, so they asked their
lawyers to send 2600 a nasty letter asking them to take down logo and webpage.
Shark fees to research, prepare, and mail out the letter probably exceeded the $1300
in credit card billing which 2600 could have been refunded earlier without lawyers.
Of course the correspondents from Nixon, Hargrave, Devins, and Doyle, PSI Net's legal firm, immediately
went up on the website along with a reply pointing out that the recorded calls were
between New York and Herndon, Virginia, just between 2600 and the rest of the world.
Nobody from PSI Net in Pennsylvania answers the phone anyway, another .wav file supplied
as proof.
But please look at the appropriate statutes next time rather than try to intimidate us.
As word about the website quickly got out, PSI Net refunded the collected monies and
canceled 2600's contract.
Once done, 2600 removed the PSI Hell webpage and posted PSI Net, the end, found at www.2600.com.
The moral to this story?
With Usenet newsgroups and websites, the old adage, the customer is always right, assumes
much greater importance when a complaint, at least a well-documented one, can be posted
worldwide within hours.
And that ends that saga.
You heard a lot of it here on WBAI too.
We actually won this case because of all the pressure people put on, all the bad publicity
the PSI got.
And they saw a reason in the end.
Well I guess reason is the exact opposite of what the Congress of the United States
saw on Thursday when they voted on the Communications Decency Act by overwhelming numbers, I mean
incredible numbers.
And they passed one of the scariest laws I think of all time.
Fiber, what have you heard about this?
I've heard that it's pretty horrible.
What can we not do now?
Or as soon as Clinton signs it, which is expected to be on Thursday.
It spells a lot of bad news for net users.
The problem I see is how they're possibly going to enforce this because they actually
plan on, at least from what they're saying, they plan on policing Usenet, of all things,
first and foremost, to prevent people from posting racy things.
They haven't got a clue, have they, as to how it all works.
How do you police Usenet?
It's impossible.
People have been trying to do that on their own for years.
There's the Usenet police.
Yeah, the Usenet police.
They exist already.
Do they?
Oh yeah, well you came up against them when you tried to get Alt.2600.
That's true.
Those are just a lot of people with attitudes.
You can say they're Usenet police.
They're vigilantes.
They go out and terrorize people.
When you have one organization, like say AOL or Prodigy or something like that, you can
set up all kinds of rules and regulations that work within that organization.
It's a lot easier to do it that way.
You have software that will kick in at certain points.
But this is the internet.
This is all different computers coming from all different places, all different countries.
How do you make regulations that affect everybody that everybody will follow?
On Usenet alone, there are literally thousands of news servers and anyone in particular who
happens to be a news administrator or a particular site on the net, they can choose to kill a
message or not.
Just because somebody posts something that's considered racy by a bunch of senators, they
could get some net cop type person to send out a control message to kill a kill request
for that post.
The local news administrator can choose to kill it or not, up to their discretion.
Are they going to hold thousands upon thousands of news administrators responsible, whoever
it is that doesn't choose to delete it or miss the request or some other technical problem?
That's what's worrisome.
How are they going to enforce it?
It's probably going to involve court battles of some sort.
It's probably going to involve somebody being dragged into court, maybe not arrested, but
sort of just brought through legal hell where they have to pay tens of thousands of dollars
just to keep from going to prison or keep from being fined a huge amount of money.
In the end, they may wind up proving that the law is unconstitutional, but they're still
out of pocket, all these expenses and all this time.
That's unfortunately where we're heading right now.
Nobody is going to take it on the chin for this, and it's a fair bet who it's going to
be.
I'll say one thing.
I feel sorry for whoever their first example is.
It's probably going to be somebody we know, not somebody in this room.
Well, okay, we have some excerpts from the Senate and the House debate.
You've got something from the Senate?
Yeah.
All right, what do you got?
This comes out of a weekly newsletter known as Bill Watch, which is put out by the Voters
Telecommunications Watch.
It's distributed over the Internet.
And distributed over the Internet, yes.
But they don't use any cuss words, I don't think, so.
Yeah, it should be safe to read.
They have their three favorite quotes from the Senate.
The first quote is from our good friend, Senator Exxon himself, and he says, no one will be
untouched by this legislation.
Is that a double entendre, or he's reaching out and touching people in ways they'd rather
not be touched.
Yeah, really.
I think something should be done about that.
You know, why is it?
Why is it?
I just want to go off on a little tangent here.
Why is it that always the people on the left are the ones that are doing the indecent things,
right?
And when somebody on the right comes up and says, you know, something that's offensive
to somebody on the left, the left people have to say, well, it's just another point of view.
We should respect it.
We should, you know, just let them have their say, freedom of speech and all that.
However, when somebody on the left says something that's, you know, that's offensive to somebody
on the right, the person on the right tries to control the person on the left and say,
you cannot say that.
I will, I will restrict your right to say that.
And it's just, you know, I think we should have an indecency bill where people that say
things that are conservative, that's offensive and we stop them and we outlaw that.
You know, it's the same basic thing, except it's done the other way.
When you do it the other way, you see how absurd it is.
But I guess what's really funny is that Exxon's a Democrat.
Oh, yeah, he is.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that's the Democrat Republican thing just sort of falls apart here.
It's basically you got you stupid and you're smart.
And unfortunately, in fact, the three quotes here that are the worst are all three of them
are Democrats.
That's so.
Well, let's go.
Let's let's let's hear these magic quotes.
OK.
Quote number two is from Senator Feingold from Wisconsin, and he says this legislation
will require all adults to self-censor the speech on public news groups on using it to
what is appropriate for children in the most conservative American communities.
Now, I hope he's not for this bill.
It sounds like he's against it, but that could be somebody saying something, not realizing
how bad it is, what they're saying.
Who is that again?
This is Senator Feingold.
Senator Feingold.
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
I don't have a list of the people that voted against it.
I can have that list on one one hand.
It's not very many people voted against this bill, unfortunately.
But it sounds to me.
And let's assume that that that.
OK.
Yeah.
It says the nose.
Feingold was one of the nose.
Good.
OK.
We're we're we're degrading the Internet down to the level of I mean, there's nothing wrong
with children.
I have nothing against children.
But, you know, I just don't think they should be dictating policy to the rest of us.
And that's what's happening.
You know, we we control radio.
We control television.
Doesn't it bother anybody that that when you turn on the TV set, you know, everything has
to be dumbed down.
You know, you're not allowed to to speak the way people really speak.
You're not allowed to to show things that everybody has seen.
And, you know, if you go on to cable TV, of course, you can you can see these things and
hear these things.
We go to the movies.
You can hear these things and see these things.
We go outside.
You hear and see these things.
But for some reason, when you turn on the TV set, no, no, that's a little magical mythical
world that has to be protected against all these evil elements.
It makes no sense to me.
What what are we trying to do here?
You know, why can't we have people, you know, trained to switch the dial when they see something
they don't like or just not tuned to certain stations that would broadcast that?
Basically what this bill does, it it brings everyone to the level of their own TV or radio
station.
We can't say certain things and we can't talk about certain things because the FCC regulates
us.
Now people are being regulated in the same way.
And that's that's not a good precedent.
It's going to be a lot of FCC commissioners out there finding people for for indecent
speech, indecent speech.
You know, that could be that could be all different things.
You know, talking about about various bodily functions is indecent.
But you know, I think what's really indecent is this act itself.
The Indecency Act is indecent itself.
Unfortunately, I can't outlaw that.
And Clinton should be signing the bill in a matter of days.
You have another quote?
Yeah, we have a favorite quote, number three from Senator Leahy from Vermont.
And he was one of the noes, according to this.
And he says, once this bill becomes law, no longer will Internet users be able to engage
in freewheeling discussions in newsgroups and other areas on the Internet accessible
to minors.
They will have to limit all language used and topics discussed to that appropriate for
kindergartners just in case a minor clicks onto the discussion.
No literary quotes from racy parts of Catcher in the Rye or Ulysses will be allowed.
Certainly, online discussions of safe sex practices, of birth control methods and of
AIDS prevention methods will be suspect.
Any user who crosses the vague and undefined line of indecency will be subject to two years
in jail and fines.
Unbelievable.
And there was also this part that had to do with abortion, not being able to speak about
abortion issues over the net.
I'm not quite sure how that managed to slip in there.
They put that one in at the last minute.
What it means, no one can really say at this point.
Basically, information about abortion is not permitted over the Internet.
We're just talking about how people can get that particular medical operation.
They're not allowed to even mention it, according to the bill.
I guess that means all the wire hangers right out.
I think so, yes.
Or maybe it's right in as far as the way people who want this bill want people to have abortions.
I don't know.
It's pretty depressing.
It's really the only thing I can say about this.
We have a couple of quotes here from the House.
This is from Representative Woolsey, Democrat of California.
While we all agree that children must not have access to indecent or pornographic materials,
I do not believe that government regulation of the information superhighway is the best
way to solve the problem.
Representative Pelosi of California, it is wrong to have the Christian Coalition judge
what is appropriate speech on the Internet or anywhere else.
Representative Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, the battle over cyberporn threatened to completely
throw the progression of telecommunications legislation off track.
Representative Eshoo of California, Democrat of California, the Internet is not a US government
network and giving federal officials indiscriminate censorship authority in this area mocks constitutional
protections of free speech.
And finally, Representative Berman, Democrat of California, we have overlooked serious
constitutional problems with applying the indecency standard to the online medium.
Yes, we are in direct conflict with the Constitution, unfortunately, with this particular bill.
As a result, starting whenever the bill is signed, which is believed to be Thursday,
a lot of websites will be going dark, a lot of websites in protest will be putting up
black pages on their homepages with white lettering.
Hundreds of thousands of Internet users will take part in this international protest, but
you know, I think also what a lot of us can do is call the White House, call the White
House and urge the office of the President to not sign this bill.
Unfortunately, if you look at the numbers of people who signed it, you'll see that,
you know, any veto will be overridden pretty easily, but I do think some voice has to be
raised here as far as saying something, even though it's kind of late at this point.
The consequences of not speaking up, they're pretty staggering, they're pretty great.
We've also got an article here from our favorite person, we all know who that is, that would
be Senator Jim Exxon, who started this whole thing.
Shielding children from porn outweighs rights of profiteers.
And that comes from a magazine called Webweek, have you heard of Webweek?
No.
February 96th issue of Webweek, I had this article, the debate over how we should deal
with the growing problem of pornography on the Internet and computer networks once again
moves to the forefront as Congress considers final passage of major telecommunications
legislation to protect children on the Internet.
Or whether we will simply hand the keys of our homes to pornographers who have free reign
to distribute the most lewd, grotesque, and indecent material imaginable over computer
networks openly accessible to all, including children.
The Exxon Coates Communications Decency Act is a step toward better assuring our kids
a chance to travel safely through cyberspace without infringing on the rights of adults
to access whatever legal material they choose.
It would apply to the same anti-pornography laws to computers that already exist for the
U.S. mail and telephone communications.
If someone were allowing children to freely browse an adult bookstore or triple-X rated
video arcade, I suspect and hope that most people would immediately call the police to
arrest that person.
Yet, these very offenses are occurring every day in America's electronic neighborhoods.
Right now, a child can get on the information superhighway and freely ride to computer red
light districts that contain some of the most perverse and depraved pornographic material
available.
Doesn't sound like he thinks that adults should even go there.
Time, Newsweek, USA Today, and other news organizations have all independently established
that the most grotesque obscenity and indecency, ranging from incest to bestiality, is easily
accessible to minors, and that children are being made targets for sex talk and abuse
by perverts.
The recent FBI sting operation that resulted in the arrest of a number of people nationwide
for distributing child pornography over computers shows that some of our existing child pornography
laws are working in the new world of cyberspace, but we need to provide more legal tools to
deal with this type of problem before more child victims are lured by or into pornography.
Our bill would not only help shield children from pornography that is only a few clicks
away on their computers, it would also make it illegal to engage children in sexual conversations
online.
Now, that's going to be interesting.
How are you going to tell if you're speaking to a child or not?
You know?
Any idea who you're talking to when you're on the net, when you're on IRC?
Sometimes it's hard to tell if you're talking to a human online, much less a child.
Tell me about it.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
You never know who you're talking to.
So, I don't know.
I don't see how they're going to be able to prove this, and in some cases they've prosecuted
people for speaking to phantom children, children who don't really exist, but the person thought
they were a child, so that's something.
The Exxon Coates Communications Decency Act is a carefully balanced response to growing
concerns about inappropriate uses of communications technologies.
It will apply the same principles contained in laws dealing with obscene, indecent, and
harassing messages over the phone or through the U.S. mail, and extend them to computer
networks.
The proposal has been refined to clearly focus on wrongdoers.
Focus on wrongdoers.
Well, that's a good thing, I guess.
Nothing in the legislation applies to constitutionally protected speech between consenting adults.
Indecent communications must simply be conducted in a place out of reach of children.
Well, now, here's my idea.
Why don't we make the Internet out of the reach of children, since, obviously, all the
things going on on the Internet are so disturbing to them, you know?
I mean, don't you think that's more preferable than everybody having to speak in the language
of children in order to protect them on something which so many adults use?
The Internet is within reach of children, right?
Well, yeah.
How do you make the Internet not within reach of children?
Well, I guess you could just waste time moving it that much further away from a child every
time, but I don't think it's going to amount to much.
That's true.
But, I mean, how do you do it?
How do you physically do it?
You know, is there some sort of a, I don't know, a question we could ask that only an
adult could answer?
Well, what I would do is I would have two separate networks, one for kids and one for
adults.
Okay.
And you protect the one for adults, and if a kid happens to figure out how to get onto
the adult one, he deserves to be there.
That's what I think.
That's what I would do.
That could work.
It's kind of like when I was a kid, when I was really small, I wasn't allowed to go
too far down the block, or else, you know, my parents couldn't tell if I was okay.
And then one day, when I was older, I went down the block, and I thought I was going
to be in a lot of trouble.
And I came back, and I wasn't in any kind of trouble at all, and, in fact, I was able
to go down the block from that point onwards.
Now, you see, that's exactly what Senator Exon is talking about, you know?
People like you are stretching the limits, you know?
You don't follow the rules.
You know, you should have been severely punished for that, and there should have been restrictions
put up on that block to ensure that children don't walk around.
Okay, well, I think this pretty much has said everything that they can possibly say.
I'll just conclude.
We have laws against murder.
We have laws against speeding.
We still have murder, and we still have speeding.
But I think most reasonable people would agree that we are very likely, we very likely would
have more murders and more speeders if we didn't have laws as a deterrent.
This measure would not make a pristine Internet, but it would help.
I don't know.
I tend to think that, you know, murders, you know, people aren't, you know, not killing
each other simply because of laws, and hopefully it's because, you know, they don't really
want to do that.
Well, let's put things into perspective here for a moment.
We have murder, speeding, and Usenet.
What's wrong with that picture?
I don't know.
This is some incongruity going on there.
There's a lot of incongruity.
Anyway, that's what we're talking about here tonight on Off the Hook.
You can give us a call, 212-279-3400.
We haven't taken phone calls in quite a long time because we haven't been on for, you know,
we did a marathon last week.
Thanks to everybody who called in.
We were preempted two weeks before that.
So there's a lot of, oh, that little box is over there.
You have one, too.
That's the rebel light.
That must be the rebel light.
Well, you have one, too.
Yeah.
There's all these little boxes all over the place now that tell us how many phone calls
we have.
That's kind of neat.
212-279-3400.
So give us a call if there's anything on your mind as far as the Communications Decency
Act or perhaps you have questions as to how this will affect you.
It's going to affect everybody, like Exxon said, you know.
Everybody will be touched by this.
Some of us will be moved by it, who knows.
OK, 212-279-3400.
As I prepare to shift into the delay mode here, which always is kind of confusing.
So give me a second here to figure it out.
OK, I think we got it right.
Good.
OK, phone calls.
212-279-3400.
Let's go to our first phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
I don't know how serious you were being when you said that instead of making the net safe
for kids, you should find some way of making sure that the net was out of reach of kids.
But I hope you weren't being serious at all.
It's kind of distressing to see that instead of challenging the idea that these things
that are supposedly harmful to kids actually are harmful to them, that you would be willing
to write off the rights of a whole segment of society just to protect your right to be
on the internet.
Well, it's an interesting parallel, isn't it?
You know, writing off all the rights of a particular group of people just to protect
the rights of one group.
I'm glad you saw that.
I'm glad you saw what we're saying here, because that's exactly the point.
Fiber's solution was much, I thought, more to the point to say that anybody that's able
to figure out how to do it has proven that they could probably deal with the information
they found.
And testing people by what they are, as individuals, capable of doing rather than by what group
they belong to certainly is a better way to go.
But how would you do that?
Well, I think that Fiber said exactly as it needs to be said.
People who have the facility to get on the internet and find things on the internet,
that's all you need to do.
Well, that's what it is now.
And apparently that's troubling some people.
Well, I'm sure it's troubling some people, yes.
Troubling virtually all the Senate and all the House and the President, you know?
It's troubling all of them to the point where they would actually sign a bill like this.
Just listen to this one sentence from Senator Exxon.
The current lawlessness on the internet has opened the virtual triple X-rated bookstore
in the bedrooms of every child with a computer.
Now, is that the voice of a man shook to the core?
Well, it's the voice of a man who realizes that there are certain issues that you can
pander to the electorate at.
And I think that what you need to do is challenge the idea that these, you know, ask these people
where they get the idea that it's a given that this material is actually harmful.
And challenge them at that level.
Because as long as politicians perceive this idea that somehow sexuality and children,
you link those two together and all of a sudden you can do whatever you want, they're going
to continue to use that weapon.
And so I think that's what has to be challenged.
All right, well let's hope something is challenged.
Make sure you call the White House.
You got the number?
No, I don't think I'm going to call the White House.
Why not?
Well, actually because I think that the fact that the bill is in committee and nothing
has been done about it means that there's actually more important issues to put effort
into than calling the White House on this.
I don't think that the effort involved would be not worth the result that you would obtain.
Well, you think that there's nothing we can do to stop this thing?
No, no.
I think that in fact I'm quite surprised that in fact it hasn't been passed already and
that I thought this was going to be a thing that was on the front burner.
But my understanding is that since the bill was first introduced, it's remained in committee.
The committee hasn't acted.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It was voted on Thursday.
It was voted on Thursday by both the House and the Senate.
Passed overwhelmingly.
And the President will be signing it this Thursday.
Oh, I missed that part.
It is very distressing.
Yeah.
Check the front page of the New York Times on Friday.
I accept your correction then and I apologize for my...
So now will you call the White House?
Yes, I will.
Okay.
Well, let me give you the number.
It's 202-456-1414 and operators are standing by 24 hours a day to take your phone call.
Okay, thanks a lot.
All right, thanks for calling.
You know, I regret to say that the way this phone, this new phone is laid out, does not
match the old phone.
So a line that was ringing that I thought was somebody else was in fact Bernie S. Bernie
S. was calling in and we missed his call because the numbers don't match.
Hopefully he'll call back soon.
But I just, I just did a little calculation now and I realized that it's, yeah, we were
in error there.
212-279-3400.
Hopefully we'll be hearing from him and an update to his saga in prison, which I have
a feeling is going to be paralleling a lot of people's sagas in the months and years
ahead.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, dial tone there.
We don't want that.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, I myself personally, I find the pornography intolerable, but the denial of my rights for
freedom of information, that's just totally unconscionable.
I just, I regret the whole situation.
But let me ask this.
With the phone company, with the cable per se, and the phone company, they have blocks
that block pornography and things you don't want, but at the, at the end users, you know,
at the end of the phone, you know, but not, they don't take it off the whole system.
If you want to block from your end, you could have a block, so why don't you do the same
thing with the internet?
Fiber, fiber.
What kind of, what kind of a block could you put on, on something like this?
Is anything possible?
Well, I mean, if they're, if they're worried about, of blocking something on Usenet, I
mean, Senator Leahy said it best, if, what, what they'd be expected to do is, is, you
know, rather improbable.
I mean, I, I hesitate to say it's impossible.
It would be extremely difficult to actually censor every single message that, that could
possibly be posted anywhere on Usenet.
I mean, the traffic on Usenet daily is immense.
It's absolutely unbelievable, because it's coming from all over the planet.
Yeah.
You can't censor the hypocrisy of it.
You can't, just like on the telephone, you can't censor every statement a person makes.
The person has the freedom to do whatever he, say whatever he likes to say at the moment,
that you could censor the, the actual places for that type of, of, you know, of talk.
You know, you have those different hotlines and so forth, but to say you're going to censor
what people might say at the direct moment, that's, that's insane, man.
Yeah, I agree.
Are you on the net, sir?
Yes, I am.
Have you ever gotten a piece of pornography that you did not ask for?
No, never.
Nothing was ever forced upon you then?
Never.
So, I mean, you know, if, if that's the case with you, why should it be any different for,
for a child or for anybody, you know, for that matter?
It seems that things are out there if you want to go looking for them.
There's virtually any topic that is addressable.
And the only reason everybody's talking about bestiality right now is because nobody ever
really talked about it before in a, in a group of people.
And there was never, there were never computer users that could send messages and talk about
that anonymously.
Well, my question is, why the net and not cable and not, and not the telephone?
Well, I mean, cable is, is, is pretty heavily regulated in various ways.
The big difference, I think a telephone is a much more appropriate type of, type of comparison.
So the question is, why not regulate speech on the telephone as well?
Good question.
Yes.
Maybe they'll take that up next time.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks for calling.
212-279-3400 is our telephone number.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes.
This is Jacques from Manhattan.
How you doing?
And okay.
I wanted to know if you know of a place in the city where you can buy and sell used SIM
chips.
Used SIM chips?
Yeah.
I'm thinking of upgrading from eight megabytes to about 16.
So I want to sell my one megabyte chips and get three sets of four megabytes.
Does anybody still want one megabyte SIMs?
I think Senator Exxon might need some.
Well, what, what, what publication can we, are these, are these Macintoshes that you're
dealing with?
No, this is IBM.
Compatible.
You know, you should, are you on the net?
No, I'm not.
Oh, you should be on the net.
If you are on the net, you could go, what news group would be appropriate for this?
I have no idea whatsoever.
Used Ram?
Right.
Sure.
Absolutely.
I mean, there's for sale news groups.
Yeah, for sale.
You know, used computer equipment, chips of all sorts.
Yeah.
There might be a for sale in the New York hierarchy, NY.
But he's not on the net.
And I don't know of any place in all the city that actually buys back used Ram.
Really?
I mean, that's not to say there isn't.
I got you.
I'll come to a 2600 meeting.
There's always somebody, you know, that, that wants something.
Where are those located?
We have them first Friday of every month in the city court building, which has been under
construction.
So it's sort of huddled in a hallway now.
But, you know, the conditions are kind of rough, but you'll meet some interesting people.
City court?
Yeah.
That big building with the slant on the roof.
OK.
All right.
All right.
First Friday of the month from five to eight.
OK.
OK.
Good luck.
Thanks a lot.
OK.
Fiber, do you, do you see what's happening to that, that box there in front of you?
Yeah.
How many lines do you see flashing there?
Oh, a whole lot.
Like about how many?
Oh, I'd say.
Yeah.
How many?
About 15 or so.
About 15.
Yeah.
We only have seven here.
So the phone only has seven lines, but apparently we have 15 phone lines and the last eight are
going someplace, but they're not coming here.
They're going to that little box, but they're not coming to the phone.
So all these people are calling in that we can see that we have a lot more listeners
than we used to because we have more capacity.
But there's no way for us to take the phone call at all.
That could be a problem.
Yeah, it could be.
Good evening.
OK.
Nobody there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
How are you doing?
I must say that this whole issue divides me into 15 different points of view.
OK.
On the one hand, and I'm only going to use two hands, on the one hand, I can see that
society has, even in this area, a vested interest in defending minors against unwarranted and
difficult to resist, difficult to deal with pressure from adults who mean them harm.
This is looking at the issue from a standard, traditional point of view.
This is the sort of way of looking at the obscenity versus pornography versus adult
material.
This is the same point of view, and this point of view, I think, is being appealed to in
some ways in Congress in this legislation.
But on the other hand...
Sir, can you bear with us one moment?
Yes.
Because we might have Bernie S. calling in.
We just want to try to take his collect call.
Sure.
Hang on one moment.
All right.
I'll hit this button here.
Good evening.
Yes.
Good evening.
Sorry.
You're calling in on the wrong line there.
Oh, no.
I lost the other guy now.
Somebody called in on Bernie S.'s line there, and that's wrong.
People should not do that.
We wound up losing a valid call that way.
Oh, well.
212-279-3400.
That's the only number you should call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi there.
How are you doing?
Good.
It's sort of ironic that these people say that they want to protect children.
I work in the child welfare field, and it seems like they're really misplacing their
energies because children die of abuse and neglect every day.
People are...
Is anybody there?
We lost her, too.
These phones are not doing very well today.
We're batting 1,000 today.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Okay.
Something you mentioned earlier about the telephone not being censored, it sure is.
If you look in the front of your phone book, there's a federal law that says you're not
allowed to use foul or abusive language over phone lines.
Well, let me see the phone company attempt to enforce that.
Well, of course.
That's what I think this new law with the Internet is all about.
I think it's just something that some politicians got together and just decided to write this
little grant stamp play to satisfy a couple of special interest groups.
I really don't think they're going to try to prosecute anybody on it.
Uh-huh.
That's it.
That's just the comment I wanted to make.
I think it's important to point out that Senator Exxon is supposedly retiring this year.
Yeah, he's done his job.
His work here is done now on to the next planet or whatever.
He's left his black mark on the country's history.
Yes, he certainly has.
All right, thanks for calling.
Let's see if this is Bernie S.
Good evening.
This is Bernie S.
No, it's not.
Good evening.
Hi, I'm back.
Oh, good.
You got through again.
You're very lucky.
Okay.
Well, anyway, as I was saying, on the one hand, I think there is a fundamentally good instinct
here to protect minors against adults who mean them harm.
And I think that that has to be weighed against society's interest in free speech.
And in recent history, it's always come down in favor of protecting the minor.
And I think that the other issue that is also being expressed here, but perhaps needs to be expressed more clearly
and with more thought, is that localities should have some right to determine what standards are appropriate for them.
Okay, sir.
Now, this time I'm not going to mess it up because I'm going to put you on hold first.
Okay.
All right.
And we're going to see if this is Bernie S.
Okay.
Hold on one moment.
There's no way I can lose him now.
Good evening.
Censorship.
You know, why are people such idiots?
You know, when you tie up the line that Bernie S. is trying to call in on, people can't hear from him.
He's in prison.
So stop being idiots.
Do not call that line censorship.
I don't believe it.
Sorry about that, sir.
Go ahead.
No, that's okay.
A lot of idiots out there.
So if you look at those two particular issues, that we have to protect minors, it's a good interest.
It outweighs the interest of society's free speech in many ways, in many cases.
And on the other hand, localities should have the right to determine, you know, what is appropriate for that community.
New York's standards may be very different from Utah's.
Absolutely.
If you look at that, I think this legislation is attempting to deal with it.
But there is a broader issue, and that is that, and we're seeing it in the actions of France and the actions of Germany,
we're seeing an international effort to put Band-Aids on what is being perceived as a huge cancer that spreads from one part of the globe to the other.
And frankly, as alarming an issue as the censorship here in the States is the recent decision by the Chinese to basically cut the Internet off to a billion people
who could, within ten years, based on the growth rate of that economy, easily buy PCs and hook up.
I mean, what we're talking about here is a fundamental problem of interdependence in the technological age that we've created.
And I think that if we don't come up with a clear, moral basis for protecting minors in this area, in this area of telephony or communications,
and stake it out as an area that we might be able to create an international regime, a set of norms and rules,
if we don't do that, then we will be paying lip service to all the other attempts that we have tried nationally and internationally to protect children against unfair practices,
whether it be labor or whether it be abuse, sexual abuse, or what have you.
I mean, here is an area that is, by definition, global.
By definition, everybody's business.
By definition, a fundamental moral problem.
If we look at it in those terms and start beating our breasts on that level, then I think we might have something.
Because we're going to find a lot more like-minded thinking on this issue than you think.
Sure, people will say the Danes will put anything they can get their hands on on the Net, whereas the Mormons will screen everything they can get their hands on.
But the bottom line is there are a damn few societies on this planet that overtly practice the abuse of children.
It happens. It's disgusting. It needs to be stopped.
People need to work together to create safeguards to make sure it doesn't happen.
But all around the world we see in piecemeal fashion evidence of companies and individuals and organizations responding to pressure when minors are being oppressed, when children are being abused.
We now have an opportunity to put this issue in the bright light of the Internet and let the world deal with it in an intelligent fashion.
It's not a national issue, nor is it an issue that necessarily must become mired in 100 million different moral viewpoints.
There is some pretty fundamental ground here that I think 98% of the population of the planet could agree on.
And it doesn't take a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. It doesn't take the ability to write the dazziest software, the snazziest software.
This is something that ordinary women working in villages in emerging economies can vote on just as easily as an Ivy League professor at MIT or Harvard or Yale or anywhere else.
I mean, this is something that people really do have the ability to vote on, and we should be facilitating that dialogue.
Okay. Thanks very much for the points. Very valid points there.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Talk old-fashioned.
All right.
Well, I think in agreement with what that gentleman just said, we need to ask the obvious question again and again,
that while the government seems bent on protecting our children, who's going to protect our children from the government?
I think that's...
We need another law, don't we?
Yeah, we need a law against the government.
Yeah, exactly. We need more laws. It's always the answer that these people come up with.
Well, since apparently this person is really intent on blocking Bernie S. from getting to the radio show tonight, we won't be hearing from him.
I talked to him over the weekend, and he's doing okay as far as can be expected anyway.
And his sentencing is set for March 5th, which is a Tuesday, and we're going to try and visit him on the, I believe, the 18th of February.
So we'll have some more news then.
On the off chance this is him, good evening.
Hear me. Hear me.
You know, what is your problem?
Do you realize that you are blocking access to somebody who has no way of speaking?
But you're censoring.
Yeah, censoring.
You see, now what is the difference between censorship and, I don't know, shutting up stupid people?
It's not the same thing.
Basically, censorship, yeah, censorship is being practiced by that person.
He's censoring someone who's in prison who has no way of reaching us otherwise.
Unfortunately, our phone system is just not sophisticated enough to figure out how to block that person.
Can we say schmuck on the air?
Yeah, we can.
I think that guy's a schmuck.
I think it definitely applies.
Well, hopefully some people out there will recognize that person's voice and find them.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Hi, how's it going?
Okay.
I'd like to know the name of the bill that was being passed that would send people to prison for two and a half years.
Well, it's the Communications Decency Act, and it was basically passed by the House and the Senate on Thursday.
It's going to be signed by Clinton on this Thursday, I believe.
So it's just called the Communications Decency Act?
Yes.
And who is that?
Actually, that's a part of the whole telecommunications bill, which is going to provide sweeping changes to your phone company, your cable company, everything.
This is a whole revolution as far as broadcasting goes.
That's insane.
I also wanted to ask, I guess this is a little bit off the topic, but are you offering the radio show as a VOX file or a WAVE file?
It's up on our site.
We've got some shows from 1988 and 1989 on there right now, as well as some recent ones, so they're kind of interesting.
They're being compressed through GSM, and you can download them using FTP.
And we also have a player there that will work in any version of DOS.
So feel free to check that out.
I will.
Okay.
What day was all the webpages turning their backgrounds black?
It's whenever Clinton signs the bill.
Whenever that is, and he's supposed to sign it this week?
He's supposed to sign it on Thursday.
And I'd just like to mention that I think that person who's calling is more than a schmuck.
Well, thanks.
Thanks for the support.
All right.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Okay.
You're not on the air anymore.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, what's up?
How you doing?
This is Toon Runner.
I'm a devout netizen, and I can't say the kind of things in regards to what's going on with the CDA.
I think it's completely off the wall.
Uh-huh.
I think that if they had the children's concern in mind, they wouldn't let the things outside the world be happening to them,
like disease and poor education and bad nutrition and all that.
I mean, in my whole neighborhood, I'm probably the only one who uses a computer.
Right.
There are lots of kids here, and they're not being protected.
I think, you know, the CDA is probably, I mean, the best way to say it is that the CDA, I personally feel, is the front for something far more sinister.
I think they want to have the Internet as another resource that could be taxed and exploited.
The Internet, I mean, hey, remember the first words that came out of Exxon's mouth, a lawless, free reign.
The key word is not lawless.
The key word is free.
They want it so they can have some sort of control, because they know that, hey, anyone with a computer and access to the net can post and speak their mind, regardless.
And that goes to anyone and everyone.
There are things there on the net that I do not agree with, but I will not do anything to stop them, because I can speak my piece as well as they can.
I mean, the best way to protect children on the net is good parents.
I mean, you don't let your kids go...
And anywhere else, too, for that matter.
Yes.
They don't...
They're using children as a front, as far as I'm concerned.
The CDA is just an attempt to regulate the net.
Heck, I can remember a while back, there was actually a time in which they actually wanted to put a penny charge per minute for net access.
Now, hey, a penny here, a penny there, but hey, that adds up to quite a bit to somebody's pocket.
That's true, absolutely.
I'm just saying that I think that February the 8th will be another day that will live in infamy as far as us netizens are concerned.
Okay.
Okay.
Thanks a lot for your call.
Take care.
Take care.
Okay.
Some really well-informed people out there, I think.
Oh, come on.
Congresspeople and senators using small children for their own political ends?
That's just too much.
That does seem a little far-fetched, doesn't it?
But I don't know.
I don't know.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Okay.
You've got to move faster, folks.
You've got to move a little faster than that.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Your last caller really nailed it.
The kids being used for that purpose, but also the implications for just monitoring the general public.
Kind of like the war on drugs.
They have this great opportunity to survey people and increase just general surveillance of computer users.
That's frightening.
And once again, like the last caller said, they don't care about kids.
That's just absurd.
It's about control.
I just read, I think it was yesterday's paper, where China has now passed a decree saying that all Internet traffic must be monitored, controlled, and go through a single source.
It's like a really strict version of this bill, but you can see the concerns are the same, whether it's a communist country, a rightist country, a leftist country, what have you.
The concerns are the same.
Citizens having access to unimpeded communications is something that worries them.
Yeah, exactly.
I guess on the bright side, it's a real boon for whatever private companies are selling, whatever adult materials.
Because if that goes through, then their business will boom.
So that's one thing.
Also, yeah, that's it.
Those are my thoughts.
Thanks.
Good show.
Thanks.
Take care.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
What kind of noise do you think that is?
It sounds like rain.
It sounds like rain.
It sounds like some sort of FM hiss.
Hello?
Ah, there's a person there.
Mr. FM Hiss.
How are you doing?
Sorry, I was just listening on my headphones.
I got kind of confused.
Well, there's a seven-second delay.
You've got some mean hiss on your phone line.
Yeah, I know.
It's terrible.
I don't know what's causing it.
But anyway, there's some information about the guy who wanted to know where he could sell his chips.
Okay, great.
I sold a couple of them about a year ago for $20 each.
It's in a magazine called Nuts and Volts.
Yes, Nuts and Volts.
It's a place called Add-On America Corporation.
The number is 1-800-576-2349.
And I actually did get money for them, so they're legit, apparently.
Okay.
Yes, thanks for the info.
You have something else?
Second of all, I'd like perhaps one day you guys could do a show on exactly,
it'll sound kind of odd, but how you get caught.
Because let's say some kid wants to hack.
I mean, it would be kind of nice to know exactly how and why, you know, all of these people.
It seems like everyone you know is getting thrown in jail or under surveillance.
I mean, what were the basic mistakes that Fiber and the other guys made?
Well, I'll let Fiber address that issue,
but we're going to disconnect you because your hiss is really very hissy.
That's no problem.
All right, thanks for calling.
So what was your mistake?
How did you get caught?
Well, I mean, there are lots of different things going on.
I mean, it's hard to, you can't really pick out any one particular thing.
I mean, there were obviously certain people that you and me both were associating with
we probably shouldn't have been.
And I mean, that in and of itself is a problem.
I mean, the biggest problem is when somebody does something without thinking
that seems harmless at the moment.
Comes back to haunt them.
Well, not only does it come back to haunt them,
but it comes back to haunt everyone that they call frequently
who then comes under surveillance.
And if they're caught doing anything, then it's sort of like...
So basically everybody you talk to has to be really, really smart
and not do anything that would make anyone suspicious of them.
Or don't ever talk to anyone.
Exactly, which is why I think all the good hackers out there
are people that aren't talking to anybody that nobody knows.
Yeah, but they're probably dead.
Well, maybe so, but they're still good.
I never met a person who never spoke to anyone.
Well, no, they may be speaking to the grocer down the block
or, you know, to the guy who delivers the paper
or maybe random operators on the phone,
but they're not speaking to us.
You know, they're out there someplace.
We know it, they know it.
The American public knows it.
Everyone knows it.
I don't know.
I don't agree with that.
You know it, too.
I do not.
Well, okay, but you do.
All right.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Hey, how you doing?
Okay, how are you?
Pretty good.
Actually, I wanted a question first.
Did you know if someone didn't feel like calling the White House
because of the, you know, the cost and everything,
is it possible to send our feeling to them via e-mail?
Well, you know, I'll tell you, they don't really look at that e-mail.
You'll get, because, you know, I've said some things there
that should have gotten a response from somebody,
and instead I got just a form letter,
so I don't think anybody really looks at that.
As far as expense, it costs about 10 cents to call the White House,
so I don't think that's really that much of a concern.
Yeah, well, my long-distance carrier cut me off
with a non-payment of a bill, but I still have local access to the net.
Oh, really?
So I'm kind of messed up with that.
Yeah.
Well, you know, you can always, well, a payphone's going to be more expensive, obviously.
Yeah, well, that's another subject, the payphones,
because this is related to control of communications
and with the alleged purpose of protecting people from pornography or drugs.
You know, they don't, a lot of payphones you can't,
like a friend of mine called me today, standing on the corner, really cold,
and I said, I'll call you right back, and then I tried to call back.
We don't take incoming calls, and it's just unbelievable,
because most of the drug dealers that you see around don't use payphones anymore.
Right. It's not for drug dealers. That's a smokescreen.
It's basically about profits as usual.
There's no money made for the phone call,
no significant money made when you call a payphone.
A payphone, on the other hand, has the potential to make a lot of money
because they overinflate the charges for the calls.
A one-minute call costs about $2.40 anywhere in the country,
as opposed to 10 cents from a house phone.
Well, I think it's a similar thing with this whole bill about the Internet.
If it was really about protecting kids, I mean, you know, like, I'm in my 40s,
and I can remember as a kid the whole thing about
don't accept candy from strangers, and there was an educational program
where they tried to hip you to that.
If what's going on today was happening back then,
they would have outlawed automobiles.
That's certainly true.
Well, sir, we're going to have to stop here because we're out of time.
But thanks a lot for calling, and keep thinking in an enlightened way,
and hopefully everyone else out there will as well.
We have some dark days ahead of us,
but it's going to be interesting if we all stick together.
Stay tuned to the Net as far as watching things as they happen,
and, of course, this bill is signed on Thursday.
A lot of Web pages are going to go dark for 48 hours.
We'll be back again next week talking about what happened
and how it's going to affect everyone
and anything that we can do to make things a little bit better.
This is Manuel Goldstein for FiberOptic.
Good night. See you next week.
The telephone keeps ringing
So I ripped it off the wall
I cut myself while shaving
Now I can't make a call
It couldn't get much worse
But if they could, they would
For they live on for the best, expect the worst
I hope that's understood
For they live on
For they live on
For they live on
I ain't peeling off the wall
Dirt piling in the hall
Ice on the pipes but no steam at all
Land low, land low
Low down, rotten, good for nothing
Gonna raise your rent someday
Kick you out if you can't pay
You and the goddamn OPA
Land low, land low
Low down, rotten, good for nothing
He's against public housing
Can't stand the fuss we're rousing
We'll take care of him later
With the right exterminator
Pay him a bonus, give him grease
For the right to sign a lease
You can have dogs but kids must see
Land low, land low
Recollecting, disinfecting
Labor made a negro hater
Antisemite, human termite
Land low
Plaster fell on grandma's head
This is what the landlord said
Why you kicking? She ain't dead
Land low, land low
Low down, rotten, good for nothing
Listen to the baker whine
Poor little man Dixie's a fine
He really thought the war was fine
Land low, land low
Low down, rotten, good for nothing
He's against slum clearance
Government interference
Just a slimy old reptilian
Worth a cruel eleven million
Come on neighbors, let's get white
We can beat those greedy guys
All we gotta do is organize
Land low, land low
Low down, rotten, good for nothing
Evil speaking, prophets speaking
Mercenary, reactionary
Land low
And welcome to...