One, two, three.
Yes.
One, two, three.
Looking for a better one.
Solid rock.
Bathing in the city's aqua dime.
Rock!
1901 in New York City. You're listening to WPAI New York. It's time for Off The Hook.
I hope that's understood. One, two, three, go!
I hope that's understood. One, two, three, go!
And good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emanuel Goldstein here with
you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Mike. Hello. What's that? Hello. Okay. I
want to make sure the mic is working there. You know, the theme for the previous show is
it's still there. Okay. We've got to turn that down. Redhack joins us as well. Hi. Down in
Philadelphia is Bernie S. Greetings from Philadelphia. And this is actually our last
program before the winter fundraiser begins. And yes, it's beginning right on schedule in
February as we always do. They always begin on schedule, Emanuel. They do. And they sometimes go
long after the schedule to end. But that really depends on our listeners, I guess, if we do well.
And we're brainstorming to figure out really cool things to present, to entice you to call and
support the radio station. It also means we'll be taking more phone calls tonight since we won't
have as much of an opportunity in the weeks ahead. I don't want to spoil it, but I'm really excited
about the guests we have for next week. Well, all I'm going to say about that is that if you
like leaks, and I don't mean the kind of leaks that flood your basement, I mean the kind of
leaks that cause controversy, international intrigue, and headlines, and all kinds of panic
within government secret bunkers and things like that, you're going to love the guests we have next
week. And you're going to love the premiums we have next week. So spread the word about that.
I don't think this would be appropriate to say anymore, would it? Because then a special team
might, you know, take out the person that we're thinking of. Or he might just get cranky and
cancel. That's true too. That's true too. Anything's possible. Well, now you've eliminated
half of the possible guests. Wait, we have non-cranky guests? I mean, we don't have
non-cranky panel members. I don't know. Anyway, we're scheduled to be on, I think, three times
in the next month with different programs. They're all going to be very different. They're all going
to be very different. Our goal is to get everybody to want to pledge three different times,
because we'll have different premium levels and all kinds of cool things, and it won't
be repeated. And by the way, we are pretty much caught up on all the past premiums. Everybody
should be happy with the exception of the people who pledged for MakerBot premiums. Those are the
only ones that are left. And anyone else who has not gotten anything, that's kind of out of our
hands now, because we delivered everything and it's all, I'm told, been sent out. Yeah. So I'm
happy about that. I think that's the first time we've gotten that far in years, and we've pledged
to make it a lot faster in the future. Even people who pledged just a couple months ago?
Yeah. Wow. Everybody except for the MakerBot pledgers, and they will be getting their items
fairly soon. They're working on that. There are a lot of different items there,
but we have all kinds of other things planned, and yes, we'll be delivering them much, much quicker.
So yeah, it's exciting times. And let's just get right into the news, what's been going on in the
last week. A week ago, we were here, we were talking about the great internet blackout of 2012,
and well, that's over. All the web pages have pretty much gone back to normal, with a couple
of exceptions that we'll get into in a moment. But I think it was really a very cool thing to be a
part of. We were part of it, 2600, and Hope.net joined with all kinds of other organizations,
I guess the most prominent being Wikipedia. They're the ones that completely blacked out
their English page. And other sites, Tumblr, Google, they all did something. They all did
something, and I think that was... Well, Google didn't black their website out,
they blacked out their logo. Well, that's what I mean by something.
They did something, and that is significant. That is significant. I would like to see what
would happen if Google decided to completely black out its services. I think you might see
panic in the streets. I would love that. It would just be fun, maybe for an hour or something,
just to show, maybe a show of force. It's an hour that I don't have to work.
See, you're dependent on them too, right? Yeah, completely.
Yeah. I mean, we shouldn't be dependent on anything. We shouldn't be dependent on the
telephone. We shouldn't be dependent on any computer service. The only thing we should
be dependent on is the radio. Emanuel?
Yes. Our friend, Christopher Dodd,
the spokesperson for the... The head of the Emotion Picture Association of America...
Okay, I just want to make sure that everyone knows that your voice is seeping with sarcasm
when you say, our friend, Christopher Dodd, but go ahead.
Oh, yeah. I hope my sarcasm didn't drown anybody's radio, the drool. But anyway,
Chris Dodd, the guy who took over after Jack Valenti, I guess, was it? Or no,
there was probably somebody in between there.
There was, yeah. He had something really interesting to say.
Well, I do want to get into his quote. I have that quote on the list of points to get over.
I'd just like to focus first on what happened last week. And then we're certainly going to get into
Christopher Dodd and various other things that have been going on as well. I'm going to give
our listeners a chance to weigh in on that as well. But here's an interesting article from
The Times that came out last week after the internet blackout. When Wikipedia went dark
and Google blacked out its logo on Wednesday, millions of people could not help but notice.
For most, it was the first time they had heard about the two anti-piracy bills.
One puzzled Twitter user, it's great how they quote one puzzled Twitter user,
how did they ever find this person, wrote, isn't a sopa some kind of food?
And of course, the answer to that question is, yes, if you're speaking Spanish, sopa means soup.
Correct?
Si.
All right. And I believe in Greek, sopa means shut up. Is that right?
Yes.
How about in Finnish? We're going through all the languages here.
You need two Ps for it to be soup. I don't think it means anything with one P.
All right. Okay. So it means different things to different people. But on Wednesday last week,
it meant something to fight against. Now, the protest grew out of a much wider grassroots
movement, a collective flexing of internet muscle that started in some of the less mainstream parts
of the web, like the social news sites, Reddit, and the blogging service Tumblr,
email chains, countless message boards. It's no coincidence that these social sites were among
those that, according to critics of the legislation, which is the Stop Online Piracy Act and
the Protect Intellectual Property Act, they had the most to lose if it passed. And by design,
they were able to take the message about the threat and make it go viral.
And in the resulting groundswell, lawmaker after lawmaker renounced support for the legislation.
Fight for the Future, a nonprofit organization that helped organize the protest,
said more than 115,000 websites participated, 115,000. Three million people emailed Congress
to voice their opposition to the bills. The tech community is using its own technology
to rally around the issue, said Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley patriarch who has invested
in hundreds of startups and runs SV Angel, an investment fund. We probably wouldn't prevail
here if we weren't eating our own dog food. Well, that's an interesting analogy, but I think this
goes to show how the internet is really kind of growing up and flexing its muscles and learning
about power and politics and things like that. This is how politics works, because we've seen
politician after politician say, OK, I don't support this, going all the way up to the
president now. And the only reason they're saying that is because people spoke out. I think that
goes to show that's the only way to get them to say anything is by yelling, screaming, being loud,
being present and making them say something. I totally agree with everything you just said,
but there's also another counter lesson, which is that even with these millions of people voicing
their opposition to this bill, there are still senators like our own here in New York who refuse
to oppose it, who are so entrenched in the Hollywood corruption land that they'll just do
whatever the MPA bribes them to do, that even with millions of people calling them, with thousands of
people standing right outside their offices, they still support this boneheaded bill. And that's
kind of amazing in its own way as well. Well, if you were to send mail to Chuck Schumer, our
United States senator who you've just referred to, you would get this reply. You would say,
dear Mr. or Ms. X, thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about S-968 or the Protect
IP Act of 2011. Over the last several weeks, I heard from many of my constituents who, like you,
had severe concerns about the Protect IP legislation being considered in the Senate.
I take those concerns very seriously. And I agree with you that we need to find a better way to
address the very real problem of internet piracy in a way that doesn't do anything to damage our
dynamic tech community or freedom of expression on the internet. Senator Reid's decision to pull
a vote on PIPA from the Senate calendar was the right one and will allow Congress to work with
stakeholders to craft a better solution that protects the American jobs threatened by illegal
online piracy, and at the same time, encourages the growth of New York's vibrant and growing
technology and internet communities. Thank you for contacting me on this important issue. Please do
not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can ever be of assistance to you on this or any other
matter. Wow, that's kind of a blank check there. But that doesn't satisfy you? Well, look, we know
what's going to happen, which is that they're going to sit down in the back room with Hollywood
again, and they're going to make some minor changes to this bill. And that one's going to
pass. So then why even bother protesting outside their office if they're never going to pay attention?
Well, anything we can get is worthwhile. Maybe it won't be quite as bad. I mean, the reality of it,
right, is that these politicians have two big fears. One is losing financial support from all
of these, you know, their corporate backers, etc. And the other is losing the support of their,
you know, their voting electorate, right? And so, you know, they have to balance which one they fear
more, or if they can kind of balance both, right? If they can get some bill that, okay, well, they're
still going to get, you know, political contributions, great. And then at the same time, if they can swing
it past, you know, the people who are voting for them, so that they're at least satisfied,
then they win both ways, right? So, you know, we can yell a lot, but they have kind of two
masters to bow to.
Well, that's very true. And I also think that this actually was a very good response. This was
clearly saying that the bill, at least as it stands, is bad and to back away from it. I mean,
you must remember, he has to save face. You go from saying this bill is great, and I want to
vote for it, to just saying it's horrible, and I didn't know anything of what I was talking about.
No, they're going to be political about how they say it, and also try not to alienate the people
who help pay for their reelection campaigns. The best we can hope for is that when the discussions
come up on what kind of replacement might appear, that the public continues to make their voice
heard, and that they don't just, you know, modify a few provisions and give us the same thing all
over again.
I think one of the major benefits out of this whole thing, though, is that now the politician
saying, well, I'm not a nerd, isn't an excuse, because that was a lot of what they said back
when they were debating this bill. Well, I don't really understand it, but, you know, I understand
this, you know. And so now, you know, the tech community has spoken up and is telling them,
look, this is why this is wrong, and they're listening at least to a degree.
On that subject, who would we say is the biggest nerd in Congress? And I mean that in a positive
way, but who is the person who gets it? I thought it was Senator Patrick Leahy, but he's really
kind of disappointed me recently with some of...
On this particular issue, Senator Wyden was really the first one to say, this is a terrible
bill, I will stop it. And finally, enough of his colleagues listened to their constituents that
it did get stopped. I don't know if it's because he understands the technology by himself,
or because someone was able to explain it to him, or exactly how he came to be opposed,
but he really does deserve credit for this.
I just want to see somebody in Congress stand up and say, I am a nerd and damn proud of it.
And, you know, if someone has the guts to do that, they're going to get a lot of support.
And I think what happened last week will show how much support is possible when people get
together and actually share information. Remember, when we were talking about this
late last year, we were pretty much of the opinion that this is just going to sail through,
and there's not going to be enough opposition to it because the word's not getting out.
Then something changed. Then word did get out. And look what happened. Look how things have
been changed. Now, it's got to continue because, as Mike said, it's just going to come out in some
other form. In fact, they're already talking about something called the OPEN Act. You've
heard about this one, Mike?
Yeah, it's supposed to be better. I don't know the details.
But is better what we want or is something much better what we want?
I mean, so like stopping piracy is just not a concern of mine and
everyone else in this debate or everyone who's seriously in the debate.
Stopping piracy is not a concern of yours.
Yeah.
No, go on. I want to hear.
It's not a concern. It's not something I care about.
Really? So open piracy is perfectly okay.
I don't care. It's not worth any erosion at all of my civil liberties to stop it, in my opinion.
Okay. Yes, go ahead, Bernie.
I just want to point out, Mark made a really good point that these legislators really,
really fear like two things between pissing off their constituents and losing their next election
or pissing off the people who finance their re-election campaigns. But they also fear
something else, and that is pissing off the people who finance their re-election campaigns
because they won't be able to get a job with them after they're out of office.
Senator Chris Dodd, now head of the Motion Picture Association of America,
was long a lapdog for the motion picture industry and the recording industry while he was a U.S.
senator. And after he left the Senate, who did he get a high-paying job with? The NPAA.
So we really can see who their masters are.
Okay. And we are going to move into that Senator Chris Dodd quote in just a moment,
but I just want to make sure people are aware that we are going to say the quote.
We're not going to hold back on it at all. It's something...
Do we have like some warning music so people know?
No, we don't have any music. We're just going to launch right into it. And by the way,
Mike, I should point out the Twitterverse is exploding with your comments about how
piracy is not a concern. So I suggest you address the issue before it just gets out of control.
It's a bombshell what you've said here. And I've heard a lot of people say the same thing,
actually. But I want to explore the issue. Is piracy a concern?
The motion picture industry comes up with these figures about the billions of dollars that they
lose due to piracy, and they never back these figures up.
Have you seen the way they dress? I mean, they're losing lots of money. That's horrible.
They dress awfully nice compared to the way I dress. Have you seen the way I dress?
They could be dressing a lot better though.
All I'm saying is it's a good thing we're on radio right now.
And look who they have representing them. Christopher Dodd. They could do better than
that. If they had more money, who knows who they'd have.
The thing about it is that the numbers that they come up with are based on,
oh, well, if this many people who downloaded it would have paid for a DVD, then that's
how much money we lost. When in reality, most people who are pirating, well, I mean, of course,
I can't back the statement up. But the feeling I get is that most people who are pirating things
wouldn't actually pay to see the film or listen to the album or whatever it is anyway.
So it's not really lost income. These people have gotten something for free that normally
they would pay for, but they wouldn't have necessarily paid for it in the first place.
The second point I wanted to make was that stopping piracy en masse with the internet
as it is, as an open system, is very, very hard and probably insurmountable without putting some
sorts of crazy restrictions like what they have in China with the Great Firewall and all that,
which is what they were trying to do with the SOPA and PIPA. So they can try all they want,
but I think it would be very hard to stop it without breaking things severely.
You want to know, RedHack, though, the really crazy thing about the Chinese Great Firewall?
It doesn't even work. You can get around it. And their regime is much more totalitarian than
anything that the United States is going to come up with in the next couple of decades. And you
can get around that. So the fact of the matter is that really this is something that is impossible
to stop. And whatever ideas they come up with are sure to be bad ones.
Well, I mean, I think it's important to define piracy properly and to look at some of the actions
of the industry as well. For instance, if you're not allowed to play a movie that you bought in a
particular DVD player because it's in a different region, is that not a form of piracy as well?
Is saying that you're not allowed to hear this or see this at all because they decide to keep
it in a vault someplace, is that not a form of piracy in addition?
And we've been through this kind of thing before, I mean, with cassette tapes and VCRs and all that.
I mean, that was, you know, the content creator said, oh, no, this is going to destroy our
industry. And they, you know, they ended up adopting those technologies and it worked out
great for them. You know, here with the Internet, yeah, it's a lot easier now than having to record
something. But the thing is that they don't make it easy to get this content, by and large.
If I miss some program on television, I have to wait two weeks to be able to watch it, you know,
on the Internet, even with ads. Right. I wouldn't if they posted it five minutes after.
You should talk to me. I can get it for you right away.
Right. That's what I'm saying. If they posted content five minutes after it aired
in such a way, that would be great. But they're hesitant, too, because, oh, well,
then it'll be easier to pirate. Well, guess what? The pirates get it out there before you put it
online anyway. So, you know, make it easier for people to consume the content legally and these
things, you know, and take advantage of these technologies. Don't say, well, we have to block
these people, because there's a reason it exists. It's funny, too, that we're talking about free
television programs lots of times, too, and they consider that piracy. I don't get that. If it's
free on over-the-air television and you watch it on the Internet, how is that piracy?
Their income is coming from the advertising. And the fact of the matter is that there are
distribution mechanisms now, like Hulu, etc., that include advertising. And people watch it,
you know, and they're willing to watch it. But when it's on free TV, I don't watch the ads. So
who was it who said that makes me a thief? Somebody said that a couple of years ago.
Do you remember, Bernie? I don't remember who said it,
but I do remember that quote that if you, like, go to the bathroom while there's commercial on,
then you're stealing the TV show. Yeah, somebody said that. That was a great quote.
Not as good as the Christopher Dodd quote, which we're still going to get to.
Oh, well, just basically, like, you know, this is the crux of the issue of trying to, you know,
this whole thing about the only way to stop the piracy, what they call piracy, is to lock down
the Internet in a way that just would basically eliminate free speech on the Internet. You know,
they're trying to apply the concept of piracy, theft of physical things to intellectual
information. And you're talking about freedom of speech. So it's really silly, this whole argument.
And, you know, these numbers that they throw around, like Mike mentioned, it's true. The
serious—the reason why, you know, people would probably—well, some reasons why people prefer
to pirate versus getting it whatever legitimate ways is it's not as available or it's not
available in their region. You know, they don't necessarily make it easy to get their content
legally in the first place. And on top of that, the fact of the matter is that the industry is not
dying. It's not, you know, it's not dying as a result of this existing. It's still doing fine.
If there's a bad movie, it's going to tank no matter what. If there's a good movie, it's going
to, you know, have record box office sales. It doesn't—I don't think this really—
What are you basing that on? There's plenty of
bad movies that do great in the box office and vice versa.
Sure.
I don't think—
You know what I mean. I don't see internet piracy as, you know, affecting Hollywood in any kind of—
I mean, to me, the important thing is that creative people get a chance to be creative.
And if you start pricing things out of their range so that they can't afford to edit a movie
because they can't afford the software to edit the movie with, or they can't afford the equipment
because the standards change and it's no longer compatible what it is they're using, that to me
is a worse form of locking people out. I think most artists want their material to be seen
and to be heard. And I think that's really why you do it in the first place.
I just want to say that it's not my concern if Hollywood goes away. The internet is allowing
more people to make more awesome content than ever before, than we could even dream of a couple
decades ago. And if, you know, fewer of those people are in Los Angeles, it's just not my problem.
No, that's honestly the real issue, is they're scared of becoming irrelevant.
Well, I think they've already— that ship has sailed. I think they're already pretty irrelevant.
And the point that's been made a lot is that, you know, Hollywood and their lobbyists are trying to
get more control over the internet when really, if you're looking— if you want to look at sectors
that are growing and actually providing people with jobs, look to the tech industry. Don't look
to Hollywood. So, you know, and of course, the big thing is, oh, well, we're losing American
jobs because of this piracy, because of the internet doing all these terrible things.
Now, we mentioned the OPEN Act. I just wanted to give a little bit more attention to this. It's
the online— and of course, they have to spell something again, too— the Online Protection
and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act in the U.S. House of Representatives was introduced,
I believe, last Wednesday. Yeah, the same day as the internet protest. Now, the new bill supposedly
delivers stronger intellectual property rights to American artists and innovators while protecting
the openness of the internet. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, has introduced this act. Now,
I believe that's the guy that you pointed to, Mike, that seems to get it. Yeah, he seems to,
yeah. I don't know. I'm a little wary of these things because, okay, we had one bad bill,
now we have another bill. Do we need any bills at all? I mean, look what happened last week.
This was incredible. We all heard about the mega-upload shutdown. Now, honestly, I wasn't
familiar with mega-upload. Mega-upload was apparently one of these file locker services
where people were able to upload all kinds of files. And supposedly, the New Zealand-based
company was being charged with piracy, with, I guess, storing all kinds of pirated movies and
TV shows and things like that. And the U.S. authorities went after these guys in New Zealand,
succeeded in getting them shut down and arrested, all without having any kind of
legislation like SOPA or PIPA or OPEN or anything like that. Now, we're going to get into the
mega-upload in a moment, but doesn't this show that the legislation is completely unnecessary
in the first place? Yes. Yeah, basically, it does show that they're already able to enforce
their laws. But one big point to make is that this was done in a country that is friendly with the
United States. And not all the countries that these websites operate out of are in jurisdictions
that are as cooperative with the United States government as New Zealand is. And this is the
issue they're having. They're trying to figure out how exactly do we stop these websites that
are operating in basically safe havens, so to speak. Well, I think the difference here or what
I think the lobbyists or whoever wanted to push for with SOPA is that here they had to get warrants,
get agreements with the New Zealand government, actually get physical access to the things. And
what SOPA and people were trying to accomplish were, oh, you know, this thing exists over there,
we're just going to make it so nobody can connect to it. And there's the difference. The difference
is, oh, immediately we can stop access to that without having to go and raid them.
They did immediately shut access to this website. They seized the servers, they shut down the
service, all without a trial. And if that's not enough power for them, then I don't want to know
what is. Well, I think what they want to be able to do is just technically shut it down so they
don't have to raid them. They did. They pulled the plug on the servers. The servers were in
Virginia, they pulled the plug. They also raided them, though. They also had them arrested and
hauled into court. Well, that was just for fun. Okay. Well, now here's the thing. I saw this being
played out on television, and it was straight out of James Bond. You see this mansion, you see this
person with dozens of cars, with all kinds of funny sounding license plates and things like
that that apparently were there to flaunt authority. That's the way it was presented
anyway. And, you know, the question obviously is raised, wow, these guys are evil villains.
Look at them. They're there in their mansion, hidden away, basically thumbing their nose at
authority and getting away with piracy and things like that. That's, of course, the way it was
presented. I think we all know that the way things are presented and the way they actually are very
often are not the same thing. But, you know, it does raise questions. When you think of the issue
of internet piracy, you don't think of people living in mansions making hundreds of millions of
dollars simply by hosting files. Is there maybe something to what the authorities are saying here?
Not anymore. A lot of these websites are now getting scared and they're shutting down their
file sharing capabilities.
Well, now, yeah. But I'm saying they seem to have found what looks like a worthy villain.
Something that people, you know, your grandmother can point to this and say, look at what these
people are doing. They're evil. They're obviously up to something. They're making lots of money.
Off the backs of other people. How do you counter that?
Well, maybe just them. Many other websites that any of us have actually looked at don't really
aren't like that at all. And, you know, most of these sites, it's amazing. I think they're even
able to make that much money.
I'm wondering how they made so much money in the first place.
So, basically, they provided, you know, a service where you could upload files and other people
could download them and they charged money for that. That's how they made money.
You make hundreds of millions of dollars just by doing that? Because, wow, I'll start tomorrow.
So, the reason I think that people flocked to this was because it was essentially a safe haven
for copyrighted content. They turned a blind eye to it. If you post copyrighted content on
other file sharing services and the content creator comes and makes a claim, sometimes,
whether or not it's actually theirs, usually the service will take down that file or take
down that video or whatever it is. And in this case, they just weren't doing that.
On YouTube, they do that all the time. You just have to point to it and they'll take it down.
Now, this has had a chilling effect already. There's a service called FileSonic. And apparently,
there's a message posted to their website where they say, all sharing functionality
is now disabled. The service can only be used to upload and retrieve files
that you have uploaded personally. I'm not quite sure what the...
Certainly, no sharing involved there. It's just, I guess, storage now. And I imagine this is going
on all over the net where services that did this are now afraid and won't do it anymore.
This is part of what... One of the things that many people are actually worried about happening
once bills like SOPA get passed is that many websites would have to cut many of the services
they offer simply because they're scared of the liability that they are now open to.
Yeah. I mean, right now, the way that it works is that they don't have to actively police
this kind of stuff. They have to basically... It's up to the intellectual property owner to
come to a service and tell them this is our intellectual property. And things like SOPA...
Sorry, Red Hat, can you say copyright instead of intellectual property?
Okay. But things like SOPA and PIVA, the idea would be that now it's the responsibility of
the service providers. And so, that really stifles innovation because how can you police
every single user's content? I mean, it's really a monumental task, especially if you're trying to
build an internet service. They'd certainly like to be able to do that.
I mean, that was one of the reasons why a lot of these major internet companies were against it
because, I mean, that would really put a huge burden on them. How do you do that, really?
Bernie, I'm going to get into the Christopher Dodd quote right about now,
but do you have any comments on what we've been talking about?
Yeah, thanks. I wanted to point out that a lot of these file locker services were not... In fact,
all of these file locker services, none of them were used exclusively for using copyrighted
materials that people didn't have the legal right to access. A lot of these file locker services
were used by artists, creators to upload their own works to make them more popular so the world
could share them because a lot of artists don't have the facilities to run large servers with
lots of bandwidth to share their material. And by shutting down these sites or causing a chilling
effect to cause other sites to get shut down, the US government is really stifling the creation of
intellectual property, in my opinion.
Yeah, I think the problem that Mega Upload ran across was that they didn't comply with
laws that do exist like the DMCA. And so that was why the US government went up to them. I'm not
saying that it's a good thing. I'm just saying that that's... I mean, that's how they kind of
ran afoul as opposed to other services.
Well, I heard that they complied, but it was easy to get around it. Like, for instance,
they would get rid of a link, but the content would still be there if you knew what the link
was or something like that.
And then they also were a fairly big target. It's been quoted that the traffic that went in and out
of the site accounted for about 4% of the internet's traffic. They basically were like
low-hanging, very juicy fruit as far as the feds were concerned.
Yeah, the numbers don't add up. None of the numbers.
Which numbers are these?
Any numbers, any number. I mean, so Mega Uploads, the guy clearly has a large ego,
among other large things.
He renamed himself Kim.com. I mean, I'm impressed by that. I'm impressed by the pink cars and all
that that he had in the mansion. It's amazing. It's straight out of James Bond. It's incredible.
But could they really be as blatant as what the U.S. government is saying?
I mean, all I know is that the U.S. government has said that this company did $150 million
in revenue over its lifetime, which is a big number, but not enough to pay for 4% of the
internet's total bandwidth and then still have enough money left over to buy mansions and pink
cars. So some of the numbers are wrong, and I don't know which.
Well, I heard they were renting the mansion, actually. They didn't actually buy the mansion.
Renting a mansion's expensive.
It is, but not as expensive as buying one, apparently.
Okay, we're ready, and we're going to take phone calls in just a moment, too, so we can
take a lot of phone calls. 212-209-2900. All right, Bernie, you ready for the Chris Dodd quote?
Well, you did really build it up, so this is going to be anticlimactic.
Oh, I don't think so. I think this is going to be very climactic because
it's quite a quote, and this is the head of the MPAA, who they refer to as Senator Christopher
Dodd as if he's still senator, which, of course, he is not. Now, he said this, and to make it even
more dramatic, he said it on Fox News. He basically said, those who count on Hollywood for support
need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them
when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job
is at risk, and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake. Now, there is
a petition going around saying that that's an open admission of bribery and a threat designed
to provoke a specific policy goal that was aimed at elected officials. It's a brazen flouting of
the above-the-law status that people of Dodd's position and wealth enjoy. Now, Bernie, could you
maybe give some more details as to what's so outrageous about this? Well, I just think it's,
you know, all those legislators constantly hide behind the excuse that none of these campaign
contributions we're getting, large campaign contributions we're getting, have any effect
on what policies we vote for or against. And here's a former U.S. senator, Chris Dodd, head
of the Motion Picture Association of America, who's basically saying that's exactly what happens,
and he's acting like a spoiled child, saying, what? You're not going to—you legislators aren't going
to toe the line anymore? We've been paying you all this money, and you back out of this
at the last minute? What's wrong with you? Don't count on us to give you money next time.
You know, it's so true. It's madness to say that these big companies and all the money they give
to campaigns don't actually—that they're not expecting something in return. These are businesses
that are designed to make profit, and when they spend money, it's usually treated as an investment,
and you expect a return on that investment. And in this case, they're investing in politics.
I don't think anyone should be surprised by this quote, though.
No, I'm not surprised so much, but it is pretty brazen. And, you know, kind of,
for those people that might doubt what we're saying, I think it's a good eye-opener.
So you mentioned briefly that there's a petition to investigate Senator—ex-Senator Dodd for
bribery, and this—the interesting thing is that this petition is on the White House's website,
and they promise a response.
No, wait, wait, wait. Why is it on the White House's website? The White House actually put
up a petition.
No, no, anyone can post a petition on this website, and if you—it gets more than some number of
signatures, then the White House says that they feel obligated to respond to it. And this petition
did get that many signatures, so I'll tell you—
One second. Anybody can put a petition on the web—on the website of the White House?
Yes.
Yeah.
Really? I didn't know that.
Well, now you know.
It's a fairly new thing. A few months, maybe.
Yeah.
Half a year.
That's kind of cool.
Yeah, so if you can—you can post a petition, you know, to investigate whether or not the
moon is made out of green cheese, and the White House might not do it if you get enough signatures,
but they will respond. And so this petition has got that number of signatures, so the White House,
according to their own rules, if they choose to play by their own rules,
is obligated to respond to this, hey, investigate Senator Dodd for bribery petition.
Maybe we need to start a new petition to petition them why they haven't responded to the first
petition.
It just happened a day ago.
Give him a couple of days. Bernie, go ahead.
I was going to say former Senator Dodd, and I wouldn't just investigate former Senator Chris
Dodd for bribery, but for all the people that his organization gave money to, all the legislators
that his organization gave money to, and who are now supporting this legislation. So
there should be hearings, grand jury investigations.
More demonstrations would be nice, too.
One can only hope that he shot himself in the foot with that quote, so we'll see.
Now, just to give people an idea of just how crazy things are—and we're going to take
phone calls right after this, 212-209-2900—this was a ruling from the Supreme Court. Not the ruling
from the Supreme Court that said corporations are individuals and that they can give as much
money as they want to basically influence elections. No, not that one.
This one says that Congress may take books, musical compositions, and other works out of
the public domain—and that's where they can be freely used and adapted—and re-grant them
copyright status. They ruled on this last Wednesday, 6-2 ruling. They said that just
because material enters the public domain, it is not territory that works may never exit.
Basically, they were ruling on a petition by a group of orchestra conductors, educators,
performers, publishers, and film archivists who wanted the justices to reverse an appellate court
that ruled against them, and they have relied on artistic works in the public
domain for their livelihoods. They claim that re-copywriting public works would breach the
speech rights of those who are now using those works without needing a license. Millions of
decades-old works at issue—things like H.G. Wells's Things to Come, Fritz Lang's Metropolis,
the musical compositions of Igor Stravinsky—but the court was not sympathetic to them. They
basically said some restriction on expression is the inherent and intended effect of every grant
of copyright. So things that are decades, maybe even centuries old, can suddenly be restricted
again from being used fairly and freely by anyone. And I just wonder, who is it who gains control of
these copyrights? Who is it, after all this time, that claims possession? Because none of the people
who created them are around. So this, to me, is a really unacceptable way of restricting
creativity. What kind of petition would someone have to make to get that copyright claim back?
I mean, it doesn't make much sense. Yeah, well, they must have some link somehow. Either—
If you let it lapse, then too bad. Well, it sounds like it could be something that Congress
is empowered to decide. But still, the argument that the Supreme Court gave for this is one of
the most bizarre that I've ever heard. You know, the whole point of copyright—I mean, the whole
point of having the open domain in the world of copyright is to be a sort of a counterweight,
saying that, sure, we're going to take these things and lock them away so not just anyone
can actually make use of this. But on the plus side, eventually it will come back into the open
domain. And to simply say that, oh, you know, it's not just a one-way street, it's kind of like
defeating the whole argument of how people justified copywriting in the first place.
Well, it just goes to show how you might think the system is fair. You might think that after a
certain amount of time goes by that, okay, you're free to do whatever you want. No, they'll take
that back too. They'll take back whatever they can. They'll, you know, take back the creation
of fire and copyright that if they could. What this seems to show is also just, you know,
this goes back to the Hollywood and how they're complaining about all the money they're losing has
to do with things like piracy. Really, they're losing money for all sorts of reasons, such as
they can't seem to come up with much new content anymore. And now it seems like the industry is
trying to, you know, bring things back into copyright because they can't come up with new
things. It's plenty of new content. It's just they don't have any new ideas. They don't have
any new way of working in the digital age. They want to use the old business model from
decades ago. Look, if you adapt to the times and you change what it is you're doing to reflect the
technology that exists now, you will do well if your content is worthwhile. And I think this is
what the music industry fails to understand, what the movie industry fails to understand,
and what those in power don't want to understand.
Unfortunately, if you want to have a business model where content is churned out in an extremely
fast cycle and, you know, and you have a formula to, you know...
Did it say in that article who was on the other side of the case? You said who was kind of fighting
this idea of re-copywriting, but did it say who was for it?
I'll pitch it over to you because I'm trying to work with the phones over here.
Evil people, I'm pretty sure.
In the article, there was another much more interesting or much more positive
Supreme Court decision this week. Do you have the...
I didn't bring the whole Supreme Court...
You should have.
No, I'm sorry.
Because they ruled that it is illegal for the government to place a GPS tracker on your
vehicle without a warrant. And it was a very narrowly tailored decision. So all that's
currently illegal is for the government to place a GPS tracker on your vehicle without a warrant.
But they left open the possibility that they would consider a much more
broad protection of your right to privacy in the digital age. And so the next few years are going
to be interesting in that regard, I think.
To me, I just don't get how anybody could say it's legal for anybody to put something on your
car without a warrant and just be able to to flagrantly do... I mean, obviously, you need to
have some kind of legal reason to go onto somebody's property and do something. That just
seems like common sense.
So that's what the Supreme Court said in this case. The five of the justices said,
all right, yeah, it's so illegal for the government to just be sticking things on
vehicles that we don't have to discuss anything else. But they did say, it's a really interesting
question whether even if they found some legal way to start the tracking, whether the tracking
itself would be legal. That's the question I'm much more interested in. And it's going to come
up.
All right, Redhack, you have some information and we're going to go to the phones.
Yes. So what it was, was that there was a that these things had copyrights overseas
and they were in public domain in the U.S. And so there was some international copyright
treaty called the Berne Convention. And Congress is basically moving to make what works were
copyrighted in the U.S. in alignment with what works were copyrighted overseas, according to
this treaty. And that's basically what the... So it was a fight against that law. So it's not...
I don't think that it's actually saying that they can just re-copyright things at will,
but it's just saying that this happened, putting the copyrights in the U.S. in alignment with this
treaty is okay.
Maybe in this case, but I see it as a step in that direction.
Sure. But I'm just saying that this isn't just an open-ended thing.
Okay. Really want to take phone calls here. So we can keep this conversation going for hours,
I know, but unfortunately we don't have hours. 212-209-2900, join the discussion. Oh,
that person just hung up. Let's try over here. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Speak up please. Yes, go ahead.
Hi, am I on the air?
Yes, you are.
Excellent. I just want to make a couple of quick points.
Quickly.
One is that your conversation about the corporations, the media corporations is simplistic.
They are monoliths, they are large corporations, but there are thousands and thousands of
hardworking, essentially blue-collar technicians and other people who work for them,
whose livelihood is being sapped or undermined by the rampant piracy of the property that the
corporations own. The workers don't own those properties, but their livelihood depends on them.
And you should bear that in mind. I don't agree with the Supreme Court that corporations are
people, but they are composed of people and they're not all the fat cats that you are
simplistically imagining that they are. And the other point I would make is that before you rant
too long and loud about the shutting down of the file sharing service, you should educate
yourself a little more about how they work compared to YouTube is not appropriate. YouTube
is a file sharing service, but it's also a visible and public index of what's on it. You can search,
you can find it. The kind of service that will shut down, it's an important distinction,
it is not. They hold content, but there's no way to search their site to find out what's on it.
The public learns about it from independent sites all over the internet. And to express
surprise that there's huge amounts of money at stake is to indicate that you are unaware
of the enormous amount of legitimately copyrighted material that's being trafficked on these sites,
legitimately because we're not talking about things that are 100 years old, we're talking
about things that are brand new. Okay. Thanks for expressing that. Anybody
wants to address this, we'll address it on the radio. Go ahead.
I agree that there are people employed by the Motion Picture Association's member companies,
but it requires more than a bare assertion for me to believe that these people are losing their
jobs precisely because of piracy. It requires experiments and actual studies based on the
available evidence, and there just haven't been any. There's no evidence that people are losing
their jobs precisely because of piracy. And if we ended piracy, these people would all get more
jobs. There's just no evidence for that. And that's my point. I think, why does piracy exist?
Exists because what, people don't want to pay anything for content or people don't want to pay
an exorbitant amount for content? That's something I'd like to know more about.
How can piracy be discouraged so that people actually are contributing something for the
things they support? Well, intellectual property piracy is a complicated issue for sure. But the
thing that I wanted to actually touch on was the caller making the distinction between YouTube
and the mega upload service. Now, one was searchable and the other was not. And sure,
this is a distinction, but if you're talking about freedom of information, freedom of speech,
who gets to make these distinctions and which one is considered valid and which one is not valid?
The whole point of having things like freedom of speech and having it go as far as it can is the
point that it's dangerous to have people say which is valid and which is not.
I also wanted to touch on something. I said before that adopting these technologies that are out
there and making content available is a good thing. And there was actually a story recently,
I don't know if we touched upon this, but maybe a month or two ago, the comedian Louis CK
filmed a comedy special and put it on the internet and basically, I mean, made it available for
download for, I think, $5 a thing and said, look, I'm not putting DRM on this. I've been told that
people will pirate it, but I'm not going to put DRM on it. If you think it's worth it, pay me $5.
And within a couple of weeks, he had gotten already over a million dollars for the thing.
He kept some of it. He gave some of it to charity and it worked. I mean, he put it in a way that
was easy for people to get, said, please pay me for it, and they did. And so, it's not just...
But Hollywood, on the other hand, they lock the things down, they make it hard to get,
and then people pirate it.
I have to echo that. Our experiments with 2600, putting our content digitally online,
has been phenomenally successful with Kindle, with PDFs, things like that.
I think if you price things low enough and you make it available and you try and take as much
DRM out of it as you're allowed to, and I say that because we're still battling Amazon on that
with certain copies of our content, you have a voice. Basically, when you have tens of thousands
of people joining you, then it starts to make a difference and you can actually affect change.
And I think it's important to go that route rather than treat the consumer as the enemy
or the threat. All right, let's take another phone call. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Speak up. Go ahead.
Hi. I wanted to share something I heard from another DAR listener. I think it was either
on Gary Noe's show or Esther Arman's show.
Make it quick.
But he said that the essence of protesting is not to go to their offices because they're not there
anyway, yet you should go to their homes where they live and do all the protesting there,
because then you'd affect them more on a personal level, as well as their neighbors.
It's like a shame campaign. But to go to their offices, and they can have several offices
depending on who they are, they're just not there. You might see a representative,
you might be a secretary.
But you know who is there? The media is there. Other members of the public are there. They're
more likely to see what you're doing in the middle of Times Square than somewhere in a
suburban town on a side street. I have very mixed feelings about that, because even if I disagree
with somebody, I don't believe in making their lives miserable and their family's lives miserable
as well, unless they're being convicted of war crimes or something like that.
But thanks for the opinion there.
Yeah. I think there's a difference between protesting and harassment. And I think when
you're going to someone's home, as opposed to their official headquarters or whatever it is,
that kind of treads onto harassment territory.
And it doesn't do your image much good in the eyes of people who aren't yet convinced.
All right. Let's take another one. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Please speak up.
Hey, how you doing?
Good. What's up?
Michael from Long Island.
How you doing?
I'm actually a content creator. I'm a recording artist. I am a recording engineer and visual
artist. And I do use these services to give content or give rough edits of content to
my customers and other people that I'm collaborating with. And by going someplace and seizing hard
drives or seizing my information and data at gunpoint, that is the definition of piracy.
Yes.
They have stolen my content, which was not for them to have. And I do not, and most recording
engineers, I do not, I know do not get any points on records anymore. We work, we get
paid and we walk away. A cameraman on a film gets paid for his hours and he walks away.
Any copies of films or anything like that, the people who are working on the films are
paid and they walk away. They're not the stars. They're not getting percentage.
And musicians too. People who write hit songs, they don't own the song anymore. The publisher,
the company, they own the song. You have absolutely no rights to it after it comes out.
Yeah, exactly. And I am drafting a letter. I'm going to write to the government. I'm saying,
I want my seized media back. You have illegally seized my property and I want it back. Here are
the uploads, but here were the addresses. Give me my data. And I want to see where that goes. I'm
sure it'll go right in a round file, but... Well, the important thing is to speak out and we thank
you for doing that tonight on this show. 212-209-2900. Let's see how many more we can get
in. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook. Yeah. Hello. How are you doing?
Hi, what's up? Turned down my radio. Hold on.
Yes. Please turn down your radio before you... Yeah, I have a technical question, actually.
Is there any way with a cell phone, like say for example, Metro PCS, that you can actually block
your number while you're calling someone? Yes, you can dial star 67 before you call
somebody on any phone and it'll block your number. Let's try and stay on topic for tonight.
Good evening. You're on Off The Hook. Yes. Hello.
Hi. Yeah, I'm Tom from the Bronx here.
And I'd like to say, do you think TV radio will ever make a comeback?
That's again, not really on topic. And I didn't know CB radio had left. But
Bernie, maybe you can address this for 10 seconds.
Maybe I'll give it five seconds. CB radio has been around for a long time and...
Time's up. It's not going to go away.
All right. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook. Speak up.
Hi. Yeah. I just wanted to touch on a couple of things. One thing is that actually there's
hidden benefits in, say, proliferation of your product. So if people say in China,
pirate your product and then use it a lot, then it becomes sort of a standard. And then so
it actually becomes more powerful of a product. Think about if you like pirate a movie and then
you watch it and then you tell everybody you know how cool of a movie was, then they go and see it.
And then so they get revenue that way. Theoretically, that's true. I don't know
how that holds up in practice. Okay. Thanks. Bye.
All right. Go ahead.
Just to comment on that, I actually had a similar experience this past weekend where
I wanted some software, I needed it to do something small, and I was able to download it and use it
legally. It was a trial and that really got me into the software and I'm considering purchasing
it. And so they made it easy for me to get a full working version. And in some ways, companies don't
do that. And then how am I going to try it? How am I going to actually...
I'm going to check with you every week to see if you actually purchase it.
Okay. That's expensive. So I don't know.
That's the other thing. You got to make it price-dry. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
I meant TV radio, television radio.
I don't even know what that is. But listen, one call per person. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Yes. Hi. Emmanuel?
Yes. Go ahead.
Hi. I just wanted to let you know that if you're not aware, perhaps,
that in Europe, there is a similar act for SOPA. It's kind of similar to SOPA.
Spain.
I'm sorry?
In Spain, I think it was.
Perhaps. But I know they're trying to adopt it in the whole European Union. There's quite a
bit of resentment to it. A couple of countries have... I think Switzerland and a couple of other
countries have fled out that they will not sign it.
Well, Switzerland's not in the EU in the first place, so they wouldn't have to sign it.
True, true. But there's a lot of pressure from other countries.
Right. The point is these things are worldwide. And just because we defeat it in one country
doesn't mean it's not going to appear somewhere else or appear again in this country.
The really insidious thing that they do a lot of the time is they come up with a rule in one
country, and then they convince all the other countries that they need to be harmonized with
that. And as they're harmonizing, they just make it slightly worse. So then they go back to the
original country and say, you have to harmonize with everyone else now. And it just keeps going
until we have no more rights.
Well, I know that. I'm from Poland. In Poland, there's a big fight about that right now.
There were actually demonstrations in Warsaw, to which a couple of thousands of people showed up
on the streets. There was also a lot of denial of service attacks against the prime minister's
webpage, the Ministry of Justice, and the Bureau of Information Technology, something like that.
So there's been quite a bit of resentment against that over there.
All right. Thanks for that update. Thanks for calling us and letting us know that
things are alive and well in Poland as far as opposing this kind of thing.
That's it for us. We're out of time, but you can write to us,
othat2600.com, with your thoughts and opinions and updates and things like that.
And don't forget, next week, we have the kickoff of our special fundraising saga for February,
the first of three shows, where we'll be talking about all kinds of issues like this.
And next week, yeah, it's going to be pretty impressive. We're going to be talking about
leaks and major leaks and scandals and things like that. So please tune in for that. Again,
othat2600.com. This is Emanuel for Off The Hook. Have a good night.
Hasn't anybody noticed what's been going on?
They shouldn't get away with it and somebody should say
I shouldn't have to pack up all my bags and move away.
The global war on culture started with a song.
Hold it, wait a minute, I ain't done nothing wrong.
Drew a line into the sand which you can't decide upon.
When you wake up in the morning, what side are you on?
With some surprise and deep regret, I have to say so long.
Hold it, wait a minute, I ain't done nothing wrong.
Where will they welcome us with open arms when we are on the run?
To some remote island where we can have some fun.
What they're trying to sell us is really just a con.
Hasn't anybody noticed what's been going on?
Don't feel appreciated in a place without a heart.
Where there's no appreciation of the finer points of modern art.
But I'm not going anywhere, so if you want to stop.
There's plenty people just like me who are glad to take my part.
All right, all right.
Hey, I'll tell you.
I went to see that movie, The Red Tails, and it was actually very, very, very good.
I've got to get a bit to George Lucas.
I encourage everybody to go out there.
He spent $93 million of his own money trying to make this film.
Hollywood wouldn't back him.
$93 million?
I don't know.
I don't think I got that either.