Editorial pages weren't covering this. Newspages weren't covering this and this
guy got it right. So he was a natural and of course he he didn't think that a
hacker crowd would be receptive to him either. He was surprised. Let's listen to
a little bit of Aaron Magruder again. Our phone number 2 1 2 2 0 9 2 9 5 0. Please
show your support. Get those phone calls coming in. Remember pledges of $50, $75,
$125 or whatever you can afford. You'll get some of this amazing material that
we're offering here tonight. 2 1 2 2 0 9 2 9 5 0. Here's Aaron Magruder. I love
Bill Amon by the way. Foxtrot. How many people read Foxtrot? He was mad because I
got to the the DCSS before he did. He actually had, yes he had strips in the
work. What he was going to do was actually run the whole code through
through a few weeks
and try to see if he could get away with breaking the law. And now I'm. All right. I
know everyone's mad now like oh Aaron you suck. He's gonna let him do that. Well
I didn't know. We don't talk. So we're with the same syndicate. I like Bill.
I was talking about 9-11. Yeah everyone got dumb. So yeah so it happened it
happened on a deadline day. On the day I had to wake up and do you know six
strips in a hurry. And you know I woke up is you know you know something huge in
the world has happened when you wake up with 13 messages and it's 6 a.m. in LA.
And I turned on the TV. I checked the messages. I'm I'm watching the towers
burn. And my editor is like don't worry about the strips today because the World
Trade Towers are gone. I'm like no they're not. They're still there. Oh they're on fire.
He's like no no no you're looking at old footage.
So the good news was I got I had a week off.
The bad news was the world just gone to hell. So I sat around literally for five
days watching the news. Because I didn't know if I had a career at that point. I
mean it really felt like oh everything's changed for real. Like this actually is
unprecedented in the history of America. And I don't know if anyone wants to hear
from the smartass who doesn't like the government. But there's a great thing.
This is this was the point I was gonna make. Which is you know when people say
how how is it that you do this? How is it that you have the courage? No. Six strips
all done at the same time at the very last minute is a tremendous amount of
stress. And it's always an all-nighter. So sometimes I do one or two all-nighters
a week. So around four in the morning nothing's funny. And more importantly I
don't want to be a cartoonist anymore.
So then the only things I can come up with are usually the things that are
sort of I feel are so left field that I'm the only person I think they're
funny. And they're usually very subversive and controversial. And then I
think well you know there's no way I can put this in the newspaper. Because if I
do I'll lose my job. But at this point it's six in the morning. And I haven't
slept. I don't really want this job anymore. I swear.
This is how it happens. So I say okay I can either go with this idea that will
allow me to get to bed within you know four to six hours if I start now. And
meet my deadline and great people will get off my back. Or you know and you know
and either you know they will like it or I'll lose my job. Great I'll never have
to do this again. Either way I get to sleep eventually. And that's how all of
these sort of irrational things make it into the newspaper. Because there there
isn't a lot of responsible thought going into it. And obviously when I say
responsible I mean this sort of you know classically responsible. How do I keep my
paychecks coming? How do I make sure I can pay my rent from week to week? That
type of response. Everything I do from that perspective is incredibly
irrational. And just plain dumb. It's dumb. So I was sitting there for five
days trying to figure out what I was gonna do about September 11th. And then I
called the syndicators in. What did Gary do? Gary Judeau. And they were like no he
stayed away from it. He didn't touch it. Oh really? Maybe I should stay away from
it. But see Gary Gary's Gary Gary puts his strips in a couple days ahead of me.
So I had a little bit longer to think about it. And you know I just said you
know hey I just don't care. And so I went hard from jump. I mean I started with the
media and then by week two I got into Bush. And I went for about four months.
Most of which you guys didn't see here because it got banned pretty quickly in
the New York Daily News. Yes that's right you all y'all saw it. I'm sorry.
What was I thinking? I thought I was talking to normal people.
Y'all didn't even know it got banned. It got banned. I got banned in the New York
Daily News for at least a good month and a half two months. It started with the
Reagan strip actually. Where Huey calls I don't even remember. I think he calls the FBI
terrorists hotline to turn in Reagan. That's what it was.
Because he you know had funded and supported the Afghan rebels against the
Soviet Union in the 80s. So hey. And you know and then the Bush administration
gave the Taliban 43 million dollars in May of 2001. There's all this stuff. And
you know outside of the world of wackos and conspiracy theorists and all of that
very few people in the mainstream have been willing to say what I'm about to
say. Which is I really and truthfully believe that George W Bush is somehow
involved either directly or indirectly in the attacks on New York City on
September 11th.
But what's even worse, he stole the election.
Hey look.
Obviously thousands of people dying is a really really bad thing. But as a nation
you know nations survive attacks. Nations survive wars. They survive death.
They survive disease, destruction. People get together. They rebuild. The country
moves forward. Nations don't often survive coups.
You know when you just shred up the Constitution of a nation that's a much
more serious offense.
And it's not like I'm the only guy who knows this. I mean what's scary to me is
we at this point are at a loss for what to do. We don't know what to do about our
politicians. You know we don't know what to do about foreign policy. First of all
there's a few things that should think you should think about. One I mean I
remember at September 11 all these people were like let's go get him. Let's
go fight him. Let's go do this. Let's go do that. Oh yeah like it's up to you. Shut
up. All these people in coffee shops. I hate that. I hate people talking about foreign
policy in coffee. You know what? Why? You have no say. Shut up. First of all you don't know
anything. That's the Americans. I just wish. See I'm the guy to say you know what
I don't know anything. I'm standing in front of a room of people. You all know a
lot more than I do about a lot of stuff that's actually practical. That's
practical uses of the world. God bless you for it. Me I know nothing but at
least I admit to that. I tell jokes. I have a halfway clever sense of humor if
you catch me on the right day. That's it. You know what? Most Americans are just
like me. They'll know anything. So shut up.
You're you are you are an idiot who has been raised by advertising since you
were two and a half years old. You don't know anything.
Americans they they watch way watch like Oh the O'Reilly factor and feel educated
and talk about things as though they knew. You know the problem is with Cuba.
No and you don't either because you've never been there and neither have I.
Cuba could be like nirvana for all I know. You don't know about Cuba. You don't know about Iraq.
You don't you know like so that really angers me. Yes and Aaron went on for
quite a bit of time talking about other things that angered him and were
interesting to him. A fascinating talk very well received by the crowd at H2K
too. Aaron Magruder the author and and writer and and artist from Boondocks the
cartoon strip which you can catch in most major daily papers in the United
States surprisingly enough to this day. It was quite a talk there and again Aaron
Magruder the guy who who occasionally lapses into issues of computer hacking
and and talked about the ECSS in his comic strip and got it right really did.
I'm Manuel. I'm seeing Aaron Magruder in the even more mainstream media outlets
now but his his line has not changed. Fortunately he was on the air on Bill
Maher's HBO show the other night with Michael Moore. Yes it was a good show.
Yeah he always has a very interesting perspective on things. You may not always
agree with what he has to say but the way he says it I think is is very
conducive to inspiring conversation. One of the lines I remember from his
talk at H2K too was in his opinion the smartest the smartest person behind the
keyboard it's a fair fight or two of the smartest behind the keyboard should
win and he think that's a fair fight. Unfortunately that's not how the games
played but I thought that was a good conclusion he came to. We're playing
excerpts from the H2K too conference which are a part of the premium package
we're offering for pledges of $125. By the way we've we're in an expanded
edition of Off the Hook if you're tuning in for the personal computer show it's
not on tonight it'll be on next week they'll have an expanded program next
week I believe from seven to nine o'clock here in WBAI in New York where
the time is eight minutes after eight o'clock we're on until nine o'clock and
we again are hoping that people call in we don't know how many people calling in
right now but Mike you were down in the Italian room and you said there was
some activity. They're busy. Okay well that's what we wanted to see we want to see lots of
phone calls coming in but we have we have a lot of donations we've made to
the radio station the the t-shirts the hats the films the VCDs so please call
us 2 and 2 2 0 9 2 9 5 0 and accept whatever it is that we've given to the
station as our way of saying thanks to to showing your support it's all at one
hand washing the other kind of a thing. They're busy but there's more volunteers
in there than I feel like ever seen before so they can take your call. You
know why there are because we've developed a reputation of having a lot
of listeners who support us so if all these people show up and then our
listeners don't support us we look like fools and you know it's very bad to look
like a fool here at WBAI. I also like these volunteers because at least the
ones whose cards I have have excellent handwriting. Well that's good it's always
good to have volunteers that have excellent handwriting so you send things
to the right people and that's one of the requirements if you want to be a
volunteer too we could certainly use your help. And we also want to
thank the people who already pledged. Kevin from South Carolina. All right. And
we have Greg from Georgia and Jim from Paramus, New Jersey. I was gonna say
everything's from the southern United States so far. And New Jersey.
New Jersey yeah. All right. A little southern south of here. And hopefully
there are a lot more people calling in right now. 212-209-2950. We're up to 750
bucks which is great. I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth but we do
need to to bring that number up considerably. Okay it's up to a thousand
45. Do you think if I say that again it'll keep going up? We okay well I'd
like to you know have that be at least doubled you know. I mean that's that's
what we should be about now. 1,045 bucks that's good. Okay 1495 you're getting
there getting there. One more of those and we'll be okay. I like what they're
doing down there. 212-209-2950. Again a strong showing here is a good
thing. There's no reason. We talk about a lot of bad news and Bernie you know I
think you've you've shared shared your you know your pieces of bad news with us
and we certainly shared news. All kinds of bad things are constantly happening
you know in the world. You may think that we have a negative outlook on things but
I think somehow throughout it all throughout the Kevin Mitnick ordeal
throughout the Bernie S ordeal and the fiber-optic ordeal and and you know the
America going to hell ordeal we sort of have hope. We continue to have hope and
we continue to to look to the future as something something positive because
people are getting together, people are sharing knowledge, sharing your abilities
and and fighting for justice and that's sort of what this place is all about. You
know we have a voice here and having that voice is one of the most important
things that we could ever have. And not having that voice is a very bad thing so
please help us keep this voice 212-209-2950. I guess it's a it's a way of
just investing. You know you're the sponsor, you're somebody that's keeping
this radio station on the air. You know you're our General Electric or IBM or
Microsoft. You know instead of having those guys dictating our programming
policy we have you being a part of it. 212-209-2950. What other place
anywhere on the dial and I even include the non-commercial stations. Most of them
take underwriting, most of them have corporate grants. We don't have any of
that. You know no one's gonna touch us. Nobody wants to you know. Don't we have a
national magazine that underwrites us? A national magazine? Yeah. Is this some sort
of a swipe at 2600? Not a swipe. No. Underwrites the well we donate.
Exactly. That's a form of underwriting but we're not we're not we're not
saying this program is you know is underwritten by a particular
organization. It's it's a different thing because then you have you have oversight,
you have editorial control and while you know we're involved with the
magazine, the magazine isn't dictating what we say. So it's an important
distinction I think. 212-209-2950. Again. Magazine's no good anyway. Yeah it's
really. We're gonna talk after the show. 212-209-2950. You're just testing it to
see. You can say it on the air. You can say it on the air but we'll have
something to talk about after the show personally. 212-209-2950. 1495 is
where we seem to be at right now and we do need to get that above 2000 pretty
soon. Pretty soon if not immediately. I was reading the newspaper or actually
the the online newspaper and apparently the the federal government publishes a
list every so often of foreign terrorist organizations. Not to be confused with
the do not call list. Totally different. But you shouldn't call them either. No
this I well no one can call them. I can call people on the do not call us and
No you can't because you're not touching this list. I got it. It's mine. If you're
on it I can call you. Well that's true. Right. But not with but not if you're a
terrorist. A foreign terrorist anyway. Tell us what you have here. Anyway so on
this list they list aliases because a lot of these groups are kind of shady
and have more than one name. So for example the Basque terrorist group ETA
they they list you know. Oh we're not on this are we? No we're not. Oh thank God.
They list ETA and they they tell you what that stands for some crazy Basque
thing I can't pronounce. They tell you what it means in English and they get a
couple of aliases. Fine. So one of the lists one of the groups on the list is
the Kahani organization. Kahani or Kah which is a kind of crazy Zionist
foreign terrorist organization. From years ago right? Right. Yeah okay. His group except he's
no longer with it because he's. Well he's dead yeah that's why he's not with it but
he certainly inspired a lot of acts of violence in his time and well we won't
get into that but regardless. Anyway so they have a long list of aliases and
something interesting on their list of aliases four websites. Websites? Websites.
Okay. So this website is these four websites are listed as foreign terrorist
organizations. The websites of foreign terrorist organizations? Yeah. The actual
HTML? Okay this is this is interesting. Now what I. Go ahead. Now what I found
even more bizarre than this listing of websites as foreign terrorist. I don't
even know what it means to be a website that's a foreign terrorist organization.
First of all of these four websites at least one of them is no longer owned by
anyone or affiliated with this organization. The domain expired and
someone else snapped it up. You mean they're listing terrorists terrorist
websites and they're not even registered by the terrorists anymore. They're
registered by somebody else. Expired someone else like saw this list saw that
it had expired and snapped it up. So that's kahani.net. So that's just right
out. When did this happen? When did they I mean is it a recent thing that they got
the website or is it? I don't know. They didn't do their research did they? No not
at all. Now the other two the other three websites two of them have just basically
no content so I haven't you know really no comment on it. The only kind of I
guess one that seems to be run by terrorists run actively by by these
people if they're terrorists I don't know kahani.org and now if you do a who
is there's a program called who is that lets you see who owns the domain so you
type who is 2600 a comment says 2600 magazine owns it. Oh now you gave that
secret out okay. You type who is kahani.org and it comes up with some people in
Brooklyn. Now Brooklyn may be a strange place but last I checked it
wasn't foreign. No no but don't they always accuse people in Brooklyn of you
know plotting to blow up bridges and buildings and things like that? Maybe but
this is a list of foreign terrorist organizations and they've listed people
in Brooklyn. That's interesting. Now you would think that if the FBI were so
fascinated by these people they could just go to Brooklyn and get them without
publishing all these lists. I'm not sure I understand what's the purpose of publishing
website lists as I mean are we not supposed to go to these websites now are
we in trouble if we do that? If your child is surfing to kahani.net are we
supposed to take an interest what? It's very very I mean for the actual groups
Al-Qaeda is on the list. It's illegal for a US citizen to give money to Al-Qaeda
because it's on this list. Well what if we click on an ad that's on Al-Qaeda's
website is that giving money to them? I don't know. Do they have ads on Al-Qaeda's
website? I have no idea. Somebody go check. Well okay so what did they actually say
in their statement? Well are they just warning us about this? They don't say it's
just a list of organizations. Where can I get this list? You can get it from the
Federal Register, the Department of State website, all kinds of things. And how
many how many names are on this? It's a fairly long list you know. Are you sure
we're not on it? I'm sure we're not on it. We'll be right at the top because
we're 2,600. I read the list I didn't see it. All right that's good.
No I just wanted to point out the new amount. The numbers are going up
that's good 212-209-2950. Bernie do you have any insight on all this?
Oh well there's dozens of websites on that list and the kahani.net I checked
that out myself using Whois and it's registered to a group here in
Philadelphia just a few blocks from my office. So I reached their face and these
people just snapped up this domain name and expired several months ago yet the
State Department continues to publish that alias kahani.net as a
foreign terrorist organization. So it shows you how confident the government
is in keeping track of this alleged terrorist information. Well I mean you
know if they didn't do their research as far as this goes maybe they're not
doing their research on other matters as well. Now there did anybody go to
their website the current website of that organization? Yeah I went there
kahani.net and it's a guy who he's got a picture of a dove holding an olive
branch and you hear you hear John Lennon song about peace playing with you know
audiophile. Did he pay for the right to play that song? No I don't know.
Because that's how the terrorists operate they they don't obey certain laws and before you
know it it's anarchy. Report them to the RIA. I just might you know it's a lot of
reporting going on. Well they're they're often referred to as a terrorist
organization themselves. Are they on the list? They're a foreign foreign terrorist
organization. Oh they're pretty foreign to me. They're from California by definition. So far
we've had Philadelphia and Brooklyn represented as foreign areas of where
terrorists are. Okay so. They've terrorized a lot of people lately that's for sure.
This is this this is an indication of the absurdity sometimes of the things
that come come out of the news. I should point the people are in Brooklyn the web
server appears to be in like Texas or somewhere which is a strange place. Still
not far away but it's not foreign. Yeah. All right so where can people see this
list for themselves? They need to go to either the federal register and look in
Monday's edition. Go you go to the federal you go to the government website
find the federal register find Monday and then find the State Department and
it'll be right there. Or maybe we'll just get it ourselves and put it on our
website. We could do that. All right we'll talk after the show. Jeff Jeff there
there is an ad from the Al-Qaeda page it's the Victoria's burkas so that's
that's on there you can click on that. A joke I get it. Yeah okay that's good.
212-209-2950 if you found any of that discourse interesting please show your
support by calling us and pledging whatever you can afford to keep this
radio show keep this radio station strong and and I guess bringing you
important bits of information. Did you hear that story anywhere else? Did anyone
hear that story? No. I didn't hear that story anywhere else in fact I heard it
tonight for the first time so that tells you that we don't talk to each other and
also that that there's all kinds of information out there that this is not
being reported. You need to read your email. Yeah I know I get how much email I
get and a lot of some terrorist organizations too or alleged. 212-209-2950
is our phone number please show your support keep the radio station strong
and pick up some really nifty things as well. We have a couple of of other
stories we're gonna get into and then we're gonna play a piece from from
Jell-O-Bee-Oprah from the h2k2 conference. Now that video CD can be
yours along with all the other video CDs for a pledge of 125 bucks you'll also
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of years ago that kind of tells a very interesting story about something that
happened in the hacker world and well I just it's it's it's hard to really talk
about because we spent so much of our time on it but it's it's it's really a
lot of fun to watch. To this day I still get a kick out of watching parts of it
and I think that's that's a good sign when you don't get totally sick of it
after seeing it a few hundred times yourself. 212-209-2950 all pledges
above $50 you'll automatically get the off-the-hook t-shirt and any pledge is
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break the $2,000 mark help us go even further than that we are we certainly
could use all the help we can get here at the radio station as you know the
economy is in the horrible state and it certainly is affecting us here at the
radio station as well so we need as much help as we can get to keep bringing you
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wouldn't be hearing us right now you'd be hearing something well you probably
wouldn't be listening because it'd probably be awful whatever was on the
air so that's why it's important to keep the station in the hands of the
people. 212-209-2950 do we have more people to thank? No we do. Okay it's
always good to have people to thank. I'll thank David from Wayfide, New Jersey.
Okay. Johan from Sweden. How do you say that?
Jo-Johan. What's about that? J-O-H-A-N. J-O-H-A-N. I don't think that's how you say it. Johan.
I'm not sure. Johan. Okay. What was that Bernie? How do you say it? Johan, I believe.
Johan, alright. Well thanks, thanks so much for the call from Sweden. And Zule-Zuleja
from Yonkers, another name mispronounced. Okay, but a lot closer. We thank them
anyway. Alright, thanks so much for your calls. 212-209-2950. Jeff, you have more?
And it looks like we've got Lavasa from Union City, New Jersey. We've got
Doris from the Bronx and Robert from Brentwood, New York. Out there on Long
Island. Alright, thanks so much for those calls. We know there's a lot more
people listening. We know there are people driving in their cars right now
that can legally make phone calls because they have those hands-free units.
Yes, I'm talking to you. Why not make that call now? It's very easy. All you
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it can be annoying hearing people ask for money over the air. I know that. But
every time you hear a commercial, every time you hear a commercial, it's not only
somebody asking for money, it's somebody taking money from you because you're
paying for all those commercials in the products that you buy. Advertising, that's
the biggest expense of any product. So whenever you hear a commercial, it's
something that you've already paid for. You don't hear that on this radio
station. You hear these occasional fundraising drives that are essential
to keep the place going. And if you pledge your support, then a lot more can
happen here. This is refreshing, too, to see that there are people, and the name
probably was Doris. It's just written differently here. But no, no premium. Just
donating money. That's great. Yeah, that's what it's really all about is making
that donation because you know the place is important and you know the voices, the
words, the opinions, the feelings that come out of these airwaves are
essential. And without them, this city, this country, this world would be all the
poorer. 212-209-2950. Not to make us sound too self-important here, but I'm
talking about the station in general. Some of the things you hear in the
station are just things you wouldn't hear anywhere else. I'm not saying, you
know, you have to agree with everything you hear. I certainly don't. And there's
a lot of times you hear things that outrage you, totally. But that's part of
it. That's part of the whole process. If you disagree with something, you still
have to support the ideas, the right to say the ideas, the right to get people
thinking and talking and discussing. And I think, I like to think that just about
everybody here on this radio station is open to to differing thought. We
certainly are here. 212-209-2950 is our phone number. And while we're
thanking all the people that pledged, we also want to thank the anonymous ones.
Yes, yes. You are the true supporters of the radio station as well. And we've
gotten by with with that support for so many years. 212-209-2950. Again, we have
many different packages. You can ask the tally people for for their advice and
help and that kind of a thing. Let's play the the Jello Biafra piece from the
video CD collection that we're offering for $125. Jello, as you may know, showed
up at our conference back in 2000, H2K. He was the keynote speaker then. And he
had so much fun, he showed up a second time, even when he wasn't the keynote,
just to just to talk to a bunch of hackers and and give his state of the
world address. And he went out for quite some time. Not only did he did he talk
about the state of the world, he played all kinds of corporate anthems. And you
know, I haven't seen this talk myself yet or heard it. But it's I've heard so many
good reports about it. And I also should point out, if you're concerned about
sound quality that you're hearing, keep in mind, this is not the sound that we
took from the VCDs. This is sound that we actually pulled off of the MP3s that we
made out of it. So it's not quite as good quality over the air as it will be
over the VCD. You might hear on the VCDs, you might hear some, you know, the
typical AV hum that you get at conferences. It's unavoidable. It won't be
as pronounced, though, because when it's played over the radio, certain things get
amplified. But again, you will be getting video. You'll be seeing a lot of this
material and the faces that made it all happen. You'll be getting Negative Land,
Mark from Negative Land, Aaron Magruder, Jello Biafra, the mentor, who is a hacker
icon, and Bernie S. and a bunch of other people talking about abusive authority.
And Bernie, I still, like I said, I still get all kinds of comments about about
that panel and how informative it was. Well, we just winged it. Well, don't tell
people that. But hopefully next conference, which we're certainly hoping
will be next year, again, these things take all kinds of coordination. They take
all kinds of investment. And if we know people are out there and that it matters
and that they'll be there for us, it's a lot easier to plan for these things. You
know, if you're not sure what's going to happen, then you have to be very
concerned with, you know, what it is that you decide to do. Based on the response
that we've gotten to the conference and to all kinds of things related to it, we
certainly want to go ahead with another one next year. But they are expensive. And
they take so much time and effort. But, you know, if they pay off, if they if they
make people learn something and spread some ideas around and get people
connected, it's it's worth whatever hassle happens. And I hope a lot of
people agree with that, because that's that's going to determine the future.
212-209-2950. Show your support. We're going to be playing a piece from
Jello Biafra now. And we'll be back right after we play that. Hopefully this
machine will work. Jello Biafra. Anyway, I took my time, as you might guess, to
tell this audience why I hated major labels, why I tried to buy nothing from
them, why they deserve to be downloaded and file-shared, and all they put out is
s**t for the most part anyway, and that it's not as though these teams they want to
focus on are not unaware that a lot of these major labels don't pay dick all to the
artists. The Hillary Rose LeRoux claim, oh, we're going to bat for the artists. No,
they're going to bat for themselves, because they take the money and then
charge it back to the artist saying, oh, well, we should owe you all this money, but we
have expenses. We took 50 college radio people out to lunch at a fancy
restaurant without telling you, and you paid for it. We made you go into our
corporate-owned recording studio and pay triple the hourly rate that somebody who
wasn't on our label would go to record there, and we got the big, big-name
producer where we gave them a huge chunk of what's supposed to be your money, then
some of it was kicked back to us, and you get none of it, etc. And, of course, now
that you get to travel in your big rock star tour bus, never occurred to you you
were paying for that too, did you, did it? Anyway, so I made the point that I think
somebody else made, oh, it was Mark again, right before I was on, that what the huge
boom of Napster and then post-Napster says to me is that people want choice.
They want more choice. Clear Channel doesn't own every radio station in the
United States, they just own 10% of them, which is still obscene, because they
really do, you know, kick out all the local news content, for the most part, and the
local public affairs programming, KDIA in Oakland, when it was bought out by a
Clear Channel rival, Disney, it was an African-American station, Kick-Ass, Soul,
Jazz, Funk, Hip-Hop, Library, that all went out the window, so I suppose they could
pipe the music in from Atlanta, you know, people want more choice. And the beauty
when Napster was in full swing was there were all these things like radio shows
from the 1930s and live radio plays featuring very, very well-known actors
that were considered lost to history, and somebody found them, and put them up
there, and so it was recovered, so it was almost a library for the world, in a way.
So the question, the question I had for these folks is, okay, with all the
evidence that people want more choice, and 7-Eleven saying, oh, now you have a
choice, ho, ho, ho, ho. Incidentally, also at the Hilton was, what was it, Voyage to
Freedom, 75 years of 7-Eleven convention was going on there, too. So why is the
industry solution less and less and less choice, and this obsession of, you know,
like the RIA and others, of denying people choice at all cost, denying people
choice. And business, all big business always says they want less and less
regulation, libertarians say this, too, and more marketplace solutions, unless, of
course, the marketplace solution doesn't fit the profit margin that they had in
mind. And if even the teen focus group in this company is saying that they
download because CDs are too expensive, and when you're supposed to only buy a
full-length album, and there's only one good song on it, why not just take the
song? The reason they do this is because they don't have any money, as the
teens the focus group said, but this is dwarfed by people in other countries,
like Brazil, where the record recording industry thinks there's a huge piracy
problem. A legal CD costs 11 bucks, equivalent of $11, less than it does here.
Pirate one, an equivalent of $2, and the average wage in Brazil is $70 a month,
so which way are people going to go? Therefore, sure enough, file sharing and
burning and everything else has turned out to be the marketplace solution that
the privateers preach so much all the time. And the proof, according to
Rock and Rap Confidential, was in India this was going on in such a rampant
scale that even the major labels cut their CD prices in half, and CD sales
went up when the price was cut in half, 150% for Sony and 300% for BMG. You
wonder whether the Ashanti album that just went sky-high on the charts for
Def Jam, maybe part of the reason was they offered a $2 rebate. Plus, the major
labels engage in their own piracy. One of their forms of payola is to give all
these chain stores hundreds and hundreds of copies of an artist's album
for free and not pay the artist for them. That way the chains get to sell all
these and make all the money, but essentially if the artist ain't getting
nothing, that's sort of a pirate too in a way, only it's the major labels who are
doing it. And I reminded them, just as I mentioned here the last time I was here,
that the beauty of the digital age is that for every barrier they try to put
in our, put to block us, and every little toll booth and fence they put on the
information highway, some bored teenager somewhere of any age is always going to
find a way to f*** the whole thing up, every time.
And sure they got their wish and sledgehammered the original Napster into
what it eventually became, but it was kind of a Medusa effect. Look how many
heads grew in its place. It's bigger than ever now. Again, Rock and Rap
Confidential reported 38,000 peer-to-peer sites have been identified,
this time around up 535% from last year alone. People want more choice and
control over what they get to listen to. Okay, we're gonna cut away there. That's
Jell-O Biafra speaking at the H2K 2 conference, and that's one of the
premiums that we have available here for the radio station, a video CD of Jell-O
Biafra, and a bunch of other people too also spoke at the H2K 2
conference. And if you pledge to get that particular VCD, you will hear the
mystery words that we had to turn the volume down for. We have no censorship on
the VCDs. 212-209-2950. Jell-O Biafra gave a really good talk at the
conference, went on for several hours just talking about all kinds of world
events and playing those corporate anthems and things like that. Hopefully
we'll see him at the next conference as well. Bernie, were you there for that? Yes,
it was terrific. He's always got an exciting talk. By the way, I'm still
hearing Jell-O. Oh, you're still hearing Jell-O. Okay, let me tell Jell-O to stop there. Sorry about that.
Jell-O has stopped wiggling. Yeah, that happens sometimes. Okay, 212-209-2950. We're in the
homestretch now. I'm happy to say we're at $2,345. I'm particularly happy because
it's a sequential number, 2345, but I'd like to get that number well above
2,600, which is sort of our magic number there. So it only takes a few phone calls
to do that. 212-209-2950. We have different pledged levels. We have 125, we
have 75, we have 50, or we have whatever you can afford. Different premiums
for different levels and all kinds of fun to be had by all. 212-209-2950. We
take Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and of course we take checks as well.
Jim, yes? I've got a couple people we'd like to thank for pledging. We have
Bob here from Littleton, Colorado. Thank you for calling long-distance, Bob. We
have, it says Arthur, and I don't know if this person is a literary light or it's
just Arthur, but Arthur is from Eastern Connecticut. I'm not sure if that's the
name of the town, but thank you as well, Arthur or Arthur. That's Eaton, Connecticut,
I think. Eaton? Might be. Isn't it Eaton, Pennsylvania? It's Eaton, Pennsylvania. That's what I was thinking. That's Easton.
We'll check, we'll check on Arthur or Arthur. Easton, Pennsylvania. Yeah, that's
right. Bernie, that's where I know it from. That's where you were in prison, wasn't it?
It's also the home of Crayola. Did you know that? One of the stops on my tour, you
visited me there, man. I did. Wait, is it really the home of Crayola? And, and the
Peds Museum. Well, I didn't go there, too, when I visited him. Crayola just had a big
parade the other day. It could have been a lot of fun. It's the world's largest crayon they
just made. Okay, it's nice to know that prisons aren't the only thing. He keeps up
with, with the old hometown, so to speak. Let's continue with people. And, and we'd
also like to thank, finally, Michael from Brooklyn, a local person, and thank you
all for supporting Off the Hook here on WBAI New York. All right. Home of foreign
terrorist organizations. Yeah, well, hopefully not. 212-209-2950. I guess it's all in the
perspective of the people judging. Again, we don't know how many people are calling in
right now, because we don't have that little magic box, which hopefully will be replaced
soon. So other people will know how many people are calling in. It kind of, it's nice to
see all the lights lighting up. You know, I don't see anything, because we don't have
any lights. But we know you're out there. We're going to have to get the blinking lights,
folks, from Germany. Yeah, you know, if they can make lights blink on buildings in
foreign cities, we should be able to get lights to blink here in the studio. It's not
that hard. But we know that people are calling. We have faith that people are calling in,
and we just need you to call in the next less than 20 minutes or so, because we'll be off
the air then, and that's it for us for this marathon. So show your support. If you're
driving now and you think you're going to make it home in time, you know, there's no
point racing. Just pull over to the side of the road and make the call now, because after
9 o'clock, you won't be able to get any of this. 212-209-2950. Just think about the void
in your life without WBAI, without Off The Hook, without these different voices coming
your way, telling you all kinds of different things, such as this. We talked last week
about the guy who revealed that, what, holding the shift key was a way around the latest
CD copy protection? What was it? The MediaMax CD3 copy prevention system. Uh-huh. And what,
all you do is hold the shift key? Yeah. You can keep the driver's one. So we joked about
this last week. We joked about how this high-tech solution to, I guess, this problem is going
to get this guy in a whole lot of trouble, because, you know, he's violating some kind
of a copy protection scheme simply by hitting the shift key or telling people about it.
And sure enough, three days after he posted a paper on the website detailing how to defeat
the copy protection software on a new music CD by pressing a single computer key, the
maker of the software said last Thursday that it would sue him. That statement came from
Suncom Technologies. They said they would sue Alex Haldeman over the paper, which said
Suncom's MediaMax CD3 software could be blocked by holding down the shift key on a computer
keyboard as a CD using the software was inserted into a disk drive. And this is what they said.
Suncom believes that by making erroneous assumptions and putting together his critical
review of the MediaMax CD3 technology, Haldeman came to false conclusions concerning the robustness
and efficient, efficacy, rather, of Suncom's MediaMax technology. They say they lost more
than $10 million of their market value since Haldeman published his report. Now, I believe
we have an update on this story. Do we, Mike? Well, they lost $10 million because their
software is junk, but they changed their mind. They changed their mind. Didn't MediaMax
also say that, but what this guy didn't know was how much better our software will be or
could be, but we didn't tell him, they didn't tell him how much better it could have been.
It's a really ridiculous quote from Suncom. Well, I'm more concerned with, I'm more concerned
what they, this is something recent, they just changed their mind about the whole lawsuit?
No lawsuit. There's no lawsuit. You have this on good authority. It's in the back here.
Okay, read it. The RAA had threatened action under the DMCA against, I'm sorry, this is
the wrong guy, wrong guy, Ed Felton, which is who is his...
It's a different lawsuit, different lawsuit. Right, but that is who was Haldeman's graduate
advisor. Ah, okay, he had a mentor then. You see what
happens? You see what happens when these people, they start trouble, then their students start
getting into trouble too. It's a glorious progression. The whole den of iniquity in
the Princeton University CS department. And we're the den of iniquity right here on
the FM dial. And you can help that den stay open 24 hours a day by calling us at 212-209-2950,
pledging your support, and keeping the bills paid here for another period of time. 212-209-2950.
Oh, I'm dismayed. We're still at 2,345. Now, there could be two reasons for that. It could
be that not a single phone call has come in, or it could be that so many phone calls have
come in that they're so busy that they can't update the calculator over there, which is
what we use to transmit the information back and forth. Please, 212-209-2950, if you don't
get an answer right away, just keep trying. But we do need to hear from you before 9 o'clock,
because that's when we are off. That's when it's over for us, one way or another. So,
okay, so this guy's not being sued. I guess that's good news. But the fact that they would
actually seriously consider it, even for a moment, that tells you what crazy times we
live in. Well, they did lose 20% of their stock. The stock went down 20%. Yeah, but
why did they lose 20% of their stock? Because their product sucked. That's why. But they
need to blame somebody for the stockholders. Blame the people who designed it. Blame the
people who made it possible that holding a shift key can defeat the whole thing. Or just
blame the mentality that makes that kind of thing something that they want to create in
the first place. Kind of like blaming hackers for, Microsoft blaming hackers for security
flaws in their own products. Yeah, I mean, you will never reach a stage where people
won't be able to copy music. You won't. What you can try and do is create an environment
where people want to support the artist and whatever industry the artist is part of, if
it's reasonable. But if it's unreasonable, if it's gouging the consumer, if it's suing
their own customers, if it just has this horrible, smug attitude, then people aren't going to
support that. People will do everything they can to avoid that process. And you can't be
surprised when that happens. If CDs were reasonably priced, people who aren't buying CDs right
now, they're buying something else instead. They're buying CD players or writers or burners
or blank CDs. The money is being spent on something. It's being spent on something that
is affordable, something that there is a need for. And if you wonder why people aren't
buying $20 CDs, it's not too hard to find the answer for that, I don't think. 212-209-2950.
Are we going to take any calls this evening? I don't think we have. We can try. We can
try. But I'd like people to be calling in. I'll tell you what, if that number goes above
2,600, that'll be our cue to open up the phone lines. I don't want to blackmail people there,
but I also don't want to distract them from the important task today, which is to support
the station. I don't think it's blackmail. I think it's incentive. Incentive, yes. But
again, we want to make sure that people really want to support the place, not just calling
either just to get a premium or not just calling just to hear us shut up or something like
that. We want people to really understand that we're serious. This isn't a job that
we don't believe in here. This is something that is very important. 212-209-2950. That's
the phone number. You make that ring and bring our numbers up and keep this place going.
Now, there's another case out of England. This hacker suspect who claims his PC was
hijacked. You notice how you put hacker and hijack in the same sentence. They look almost
identical, which is not a very good thing. But an English teenager charged with hacking
and crippling a U.S. seaport's computer navigation system told a court last Friday his PC was
hijacked by hackers posing as him. Okay. Aaron Caffrey from Dorset in southwest England
was charged last year under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act and accused of unleashing a flood
of data capable of knocking computers offline on a Houston, Texas seaport in September 2001.
He denies the charges. He's accused of triggering the paralyzing data blast on a vital computer
server used to coordinate ship movements in the Houston port, the sixth biggest shipping
port in the world. Sounds like something out of the film Hackers, isn't it? He said that
while the attack apparently was triggered from his computer, he was not the person behind
it. He said his machine may have been taken over by another individual or group who then
set the digital onslaught in motion. My computer was completely and utterly vulnerable to many
exploits, Caffrey told South Walk Crown Court. I wonder what operating system he was running.
That's what I'd like to find out for sure. I mean, if it's possible that somebody can
actually hijack a computer and make it do all kinds of things like that, that would
be something to know. Caffrey was the lone expert witness for his side. He said hackers
could have phished out his security password to steal his online identity. Not much in
the way of hacking there, but never mind. Or he said they could have installed a Trojan
program so named because they can take over a machine remotely. He faces a maximum sentence
of five years in prison if found guilty, and a verdict is expected sometime this week.
Interesting. Interesting story and one of the many different kinds of stories that we're
following. Oh, we're up to 2770. How nice. 212-209-2950. I guess why don't we take some
phone calls now because we promised we would. Absolutely. We still want to try and break
3,000. Yeah, we do. We just keep pushing that number up and it's a good thing. And we're
getting closer. We are getting closer. Up to 2895 now. 212-209-2950. And I guarantee
those of you who are on the fence about this, who are thinking that, well, should I call?
Shouldn't I call? You feel really good after calling. You really do. Because I've done
this myself. In fact, I think most of us have. Because you know, it's like voting for something
you believe in. I know that doesn't happen very often at the polls, but it does happen
occasionally and when you vote for something that you believe can make a difference, you
feel like you've done your part and there's no better feeling than that. It also doesn't
take very long, too. If you call in, you simply give us your statistics, your name,
your credit card number if you have one, etc. And it's done like that and the people on
the other side are really friendly and fun to deal with. 212-209-2950. And look at that.
It's completely caught. A horrible accident. What happened to the calculator? It did go
to 3,020. It does look like it says 3,020, but it also looks like the LCD on the calculator
has burned out. Well, we've managed to hack that, too. Uh-oh. Well, okay. So you see,
we've reached one hurdle and right away we're presented with another one. Now I guess we
need a new calculator. Yeah, so our goals are now higher. All right. Well, again, keep
those calls coming in. 212-209-2950. Just to run down the pledges, for a pledge of $125,
you'll get the video CDs from H2K2. A total of eight video CDs featuring people like Jello
Biafra, Aaron Magruder, and Mark Hosler from Negative Land, as well as such luminaries
as Bernie S. The Mentor. The Mentor, and Shapeshifter, and all kinds of other people talking about
various hacking issues. And that's for a pledge of $125. You'll also get an off-the-hook T-shirt,
which are very cool to wear. I say that from personal experience. For a pledge of $75,
you'll get a copy of Freedom Downtime, our two-hour documentary on the hacker world and
Kevin Mitnick and the Free Kevin Movement, as well as a 2600 baseball cap, which will
definitely earn you respect in whatever scene you happen to be in. They're good for all
kinds of things. And also, in addition, you'll get the off-the-hook T-shirt. You can't avoid
the off-the-hook T-shirt. You're going to get that, all right, no matter what. You pledge
$50 or more, you're going to get an off-the-hook T-shirt, and there's just no persuading us
otherwise. Extra large. You can put an avant-garde phrase to have on your T-shirt these days
too. An avant-garde phrase? You mean the phrase off-the-hook? Yeah, absolutely. That's
true. That's true. We were ahead of the curve. We certainly were. We had it before MTV had
it. All right. I hope they fix that, because it's very hard to read. Can they hear us in
there? Maybe they don't know that the calculator isn't lighting up like it used to. You see,
the high-tech solution we have here, folks, is for us to see how much money we've raised,
we have a little calculator underneath a closed-circuit camera in another room, and somebody types
in the number, and then it changes, and we see over the camera what the number is. Ah,
there's some more light. They're readjusting. Okay, the light's back on. All right, you
know what? I think it's the light just shining down on it. Yeah, that's what it is. Someone
knocked the light. Someone knocked the light. Okay. Thank you. There's so much commotion
down there. They can hear us. There's so much commotion that things are being knocked to
the floor, and that's, you know, we like to see commotion. All right, 212-209-2950 is
our pledge line. Should we take a phone call? We promised. 2-900 is the phone-in line. If
you haven't called in to pledge, though, we ask that you call that other number first
because, you know, that's a limited-time thing. In 10 minutes, that's going to be all over.
So we'd like to hear from... Quite frankly, they're more friendly than we are. Who's more
friendly than we are? The volunteers. Oh, that's true. That's true. Speak for yourself.
And good evening. You're on the air. Hello, this is Tom Ford calling from Direct Satellite.
Now, why is it the first time that we take a phone call, it's a commercial? You see,
this is the kind of thing that can happen. You want me to try it? And didn't I put this
number on the do not call list? Didn't I do that already? I thought so. All right, let's
try over here. I'll bet I know where it is, too. Good evening. You're on the air. Oh,
no, I wasn't. That's actually better than what I thought. Okay, well, hopefully, hopefully
we're getting better calls on the pledge line. 212-209-2950. Oh, you know what? We lost Bernie.
We did. Maybe he's back here. Bernie, could you call that number again that I gave you?
I gave you a special number. Call that number back. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I disconnected you.
I pressed the wrong button. Boy, what an idiot. 212-209-2950 is our pledge line. We're up to
$3,020, and we'd like to keep that number going up in the time we have remaining, which is not
very much time at all. And good evening. You're on the air. You talking to me? Speak up. Yes,
we are. Oh, oh, okay. I got in pretty quick. I just made a pledge, by the way. Well, thank you
so much for my membership. Thank you very much. And I heard you read the article about the young
man in England who said that someone took over his computer remotely, and I recently had a problem
where someone was running a sex website off of my computer. Oh, dear. How'd that happen? They
used some Trojans and some worms, and they managed to get some passwords off my server,
and they were running it. They even set up accounts, and I got some software, antivirus,
and a firewall. That's helping me now, but it's definitely possible. I experienced that. When I
would boot the machine up, I found it because I go into Task Manager, and I would monitor the
things that are loading up. I kept seeing this sex thing in Project One loading up and then
disappearing, you know? Oh, boy. And the software that they used was able X-Tray and some other
T-Kids and all these things. I went on the internet. Well, were you able to purge your
computer of all this? Oh, I had to format the drive. I had to do the whole thing over, reimage
it. Well, I mean, how do you feel after having something like that happen to you? Oh, man,
I felt violated. I felt like I was, you know, raped physically. You know, someone violated my
privacy. Yeah, it might be a bit of a stretch, but definitely a violation of some sort.
I have a very big concern about these cookies now. You know, now that I have the firewall,
and someone's always trying to attack my ports, it's just driving me crazy.
The internet is a dangerous place, my friend. You have to be very careful.
Block your ports.
All right. And good advice for anybody. Thanks for your support. Thanks for your pledge,
and thanks for your comments and thoughts. And please keep listening over the years to come,
which I'm sure we'll be here for. And let's see if we can fit in another phone call. Let's try
this one over here. Good evening. You're on the air. Go ahead. Hey there. It's Cheshire in Florida.
Cheshire in Florida. Wow. That's amazing that we're hearing from you. Well, the problem down
here is that we've got a little rape case coming up. And there's a circus going around the state
called the Public Service Commission Hearing. Okay. Can you sum this up in two minutes or less?
Basically, they want to lower intrastate rates, but in the lowering process, raise local rates.
I'm saying let's lower the intrastate rates and raise the interstate rates,
which is for the FCC for that. People should contact their local Public Service Commission,
and tell them to get in touch with the Florida Commission about stabilizing the rates,
a rate parity between intrastate access rates and interstate access rates. They can contact me
by looking up spaceyideas.com slash rates. My roommate Ozzie has a thing going on. There's
some web links there where they can find their local commission by going to the website for
NARUC, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, which has a convention
coming up next month in Atlanta. So the commissioners will be getting together. Let's
give them something to talk about. All right. And Cheshire, it's great hearing from you. Cheshire,
of course, is one of the former editors of TAP Magazine, has been involved in the phone
freak and hacker scene for many years now. And you are also a speaker at H2K2, where we've been
featuring talks from, I don't know if you, are you aware we're doing a fundraiser tonight, Cheshire?
I was not aware.
Oh, well, yes, you're calling from Florida. And yes, we are doing a special fundraiser. That's
why we're on for that extra hour tonight. And we're trying to get people to call in,
support the station. And we're offering some video CDs from the H2K2 conference, which you were at.
Yes, I was. And my talk on direct resistance is up as one of the MP3s from the conference.
Okay. Yeah. And all the MP3s are going to be up on our website, too, hopefully within the
next week or two. So you'll be able to hear the audio as well. But hopefully we'll see you at the
next conference, which we're trying to make happen next year.
Oh, good.
Yeah. It's so much fun. Yeah. I mean, they're so educational and so much fun to share experiences
with. I'm not sure what you said, but I think you said you had fun.
I always have fun at the HOPE conferences.
Well, that's good. That's good. Well, Cheshire, it's great hearing from you again.
Same here.
All right. And good luck with your fight there.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Be seeing you.
All right. Cheshire Catalyst there. And yes, 212-209-2950 is our phone number to call in for
pledges. We're just about out of time here. Mike, you have some more people to thank?
Just three more people who will let us read their names. So we have Eric from Bolton, Ontario,
Canada.
Oh, wow.
Brother Bill and KJ from Lake Grove, New York.
Hey, I know them.
Those are good folk.
They're good folk. And we thank them for pledging.
Thank you so much.
And Vincent from Brooklyn.
Okay. Thanks, Vincent from Brooklyn and everybody else.
Who's also doubtless good folk.
And if we haven't gotten to your name, it's because it's held up in the queue.
We're up to $3,145, which is really good.
I'm very happy with the response we've gotten tonight.
And hopefully, this is a good sign for the radio station in general.
Certainly, it's good to hear from our listeners like this.
We'll be off until November in all likelihood.
We're definitely not on next week.
And in all likelihood, we won't be on in two weeks.
If we are, we'll post an announcement on the website, www.2600.com.
And otherwise, we'll be on again three weeks from tonight.
So until then, I guess you'll just have to keep awake and send us updates at OTH at 2600.com.
And we'll talk about whatever happens between now and the next time we're on the air.
Again, thanks so much to everybody who called in to pledge.
If you still want to call in, you have a few minutes.
212-209-2950.
And stay tuned to WBAI throughout this whole period.
Keep this place alive.
Because without it, we're definitely going to be losing something.
Good night.
It's a matter of reality
I'm blind, I'm fed up on it
Keep marching, hypocrisy
Oi, oi, oi
I've got my land
In a clockwork land
Oi, oi, oi
I've got my land
In a clockwork land
Out of the streetlight
In a subway in the night
Troops, stand to give up
On a mission of delight
Sing, enemies
And our peace of mind
Nightingale, a windowpane
I'm going to kill a zombie mind
Oi, oi, oi
I've got my land
In a clockwork land
Oi, oi, oi
I've got my land
In a clockwork land
Now, he's a moron
He's got the madness to be found
Speed, a limit
A bloody terror on the roof
Dark, and a red zone
We need an attack to fulfil
Fight for, to be fight
In a distance, on a hill
Oi, oi, oi
I've got my land
In a clockwork land
Oi, oi, oi
I've got my land
In a clockwork land
Night, in a clockwork
Doing the wrong thing
Kill it, in his face
And he's got it on his face
Now, it's the only thing
You cannot, for the time
Ignoring, hearing with
Sighted, and blind
Oi, oi, oi
I've got my land
In a clockwork land
Oi, oi, oi
I've got my land
Ladies and gentlemen
It's star time at the Apollo Theatre
Million dollar seller
Please, please, please
This is a man's world
Post-constructive tune of 1966
Don't be a dropper
Everybody, the hardest working man in show business
James Brown, ladies and gentlemen
James Joe Brown Jr. is probably the most influential African American singer in the last four decades
As a songwriter, producer, performer, entrepreneur, and civil rights activist
James Brown tried a path many have followed
And his influence on today's music is beyond question
It's literally in the groove
Thanks to the magic of sampling
Join the Midnight Ravers on Friday, October 17, 2003
On WBAI in New York
99.5 FM
From 12 midnight to 3 o'clock AM
As we present Soul Power
So remember, that's Friday, October 17
From 12 midnight to 3 AM
It's gonna be raver terrific
The Midnight Ravers
Where every show is a special