So if you have questions, this is your golden opportunity to let management knows your questions
and how you feel.
Once again, this is a report to the listener tonight at 10 PM from the WBAI's management
team.
Okay.
Stay tuned for off the hook coming up.
This is WBAI New York 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online.
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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
I couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
I hope that's understood.
One day we'll know.
And the Very Good Evening Program is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yes.
Come in.
Come in.
You got a loose connection there?
Yes.
Yes.
It sounds like you do have a loose connection.
You know what?
I'll work on that.
Yeah, work on that.
I want to introduce the people over in Skype land.
Sure.
We have Rob T. Firefly there.
Good evening.
You sound better than in person.
And we have Gila.
Good evening.
And we also have Alex.
Good evening.
And they're not all in the same room.
You'll have to figure out who's where, because we're not going to tell you.
We're here for an hour this week.
No overtime.
I'm sorry.
We have no overtime on YouTube.
We're scheduled for 8 o'clock like we usually do.
Reason being, we're going to be talking to a couple of people.
We're going to be talking to a couple of people.
We're going to be talking to a couple of people.
We're going to be talking to a couple of people.
We're going to be talking to a couple of people.
this week.
No overtime.
I'm sorry.
We have no overtime on YouTube.
We're scheduled for 8 o'clock like we usually do.
Reason being, Kyle and I specifically are going out of our brains with post-hope coordination.
Specifically trying to get the damn videos up online and available.
Boy, you know, audio editing is fun.
I like audio editing.
Video editing is the demon out of hell.
I mean, there's just no other word for it.
You basically convert from one file format to another file format.
That takes a day.
And then you try and save one hour.
That takes another day.
And that's the best software.
The worst software, they go and they change the colors.
Or maybe they get the audio completely out of sync.
Every single thing you could imagine has been hitting us.
And it's all because we made some bad decisions.
We should have had this in a format that was much easier to deal with.
We should not have depended on YouTube.
These are all things we know better.
But people make mistakes.
And this is one of the things.
At least we have it all.
And at least we will get it all out there.
It's just we're tearing our hair out.
Every talk might be in a different format.
No, no, no.
No, no.
They're all going to be perfect.
We're taking great care to make sure that there's consistent stuff.
But we weren't quite prepared.
And there's a lot of tools involved.
We have experts from every major corner helping.
Well, here's what happens.
When you're dealing with a large number of people, it doesn't matter that you got it
right the last time.
Because if you hand it off to somebody and they say, oh, I'm going to do it this way,
and you're not aware they're doing it that way until it's been done, yeah, then all kinds
of unpredictable things happen.
So we're basically getting old versions of programs to see if maybe this will work better
on that than something new that has all these features you don't need that slow things down.
It's one of a few hassles that happen after the conference.
But the thing is, it was fun.
It was great.
Everyone had a wonderful time.
And we will get this done soon.
Yes.
We hope.
We're doing.
We have all of the recordings.
We're doing intensive surgery on everything to get it published as quickly as we can make
it possible, but be assured that it's correct.
It looks good.
You know, from what we've been able to see so far, it looks really good.
We're noticing.
Yeah.
And informative and all rough spots.
You know, it was it was a frenzy getting going in a new space, but we were so glad to get
back to looking at it because we were quite busy, all volunteers and everybody with build
up.
So catching some of what was said and how it looks, it's it's pretty encouraging.
So by this time next week, hopefully we'll sound a lot happier.
I really hope so.
Look forward to it.
It's going to be some long nights.
I mean, it's only been a week, you know, so we're still recovering.
But yeah, we should be doing better.
We know that.
So if you have any suggestions out there on good software that works, that does what
you want and it's MP4s and does it properly, write to us, OTH at 2600 dot com.
We'd love to hear all kinds of differing opinions on that.
OK, let's let's talk about breaches.
There've been a bunch of breaches because that's what happens.
Justice Department is investigating a data breach of the federal court system, Alex.
This might interest you.
The federal court system has been breached.
Yeah.
According to the Justice Department, they basically this information was released on
on Thursday.
A House Judiciary Committee chair, Gerald Nadler, from right here in New York, told
fellow lawmakers that three hostile foreign actors attacked the U.S. court's document
filing system.
I hope there's nobody out there that thinks that we're talking about actual actors from
like England or something.
No, we're not.
We're talking about what that means is Alex, can you explain it better than I can?
It's not it's not people.
It's it's it's conscience and entities.
It could be people.
It could be people.
But it's probably nation states or something like that.
Yeah.
I mean, these are what are known as threat actors, right?
Or as we used to call them way back in the day, bad guys.
All right.
So the threat actors, also known as the bad guys.
That guy in Westworld, that guy in Westworld with the hat, that's he's a threat actor.
Yeah.
The Ed Harris character.
So you're talking about.
I think so.
I'm bad with names.
But yeah, he's he's he's mean.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The bad guys.
Those are those are the actors.
Nobody's putting on a show.
But these are are generally known as threat actors, which is, you know, a better way of
describing them and saying hackers.
Right.
Well, I mean, that's a word that is bandied about quite a bit and misused in many ways.
I'm sure we'll get to some of those tonight as well.
But this basically is a system security failure, in case you didn't already know that that
happened back in early 2020.
Now, these comments were at a committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department's National
Security Division, which is in danger of losing at least one of those names.
It was the first public disclosure of the hack.
Adler said the committee learned in March about the startling breadth and scope of the
breach, which was separate from the SolarWinds hack revealed in late 2020.
Remember that one?
SolarWinds involved Russian government backed hackers infiltrating the networks of over
a dozen U.S. federal agencies for much of 2020, including the federal court systems.
This is different.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olson testified to the committee that
NSD is working very closely with the judicial conference and judges around the country to
address this issue and committed to updating the committee on the investigation as it progressed.
A committee aide said that Nadler's questions came after the committee received a briefing
on the attack, noting that the sweeping impact it may have had on the operation of the Department
of Justice is staggering.
The aide was granted anonymity in order to discuss a private briefing.
Yeah, Representative Shirley, I'm sorry, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas pressed Olson for more
details on how many cases have been impacted by the breach.
I would expect your preparation and for us to be able to get that information as quickly
as possible in a setting that would be appropriate.
But this is a dangerous set of circumstances that has now been publicly announced and we
need to know how many were dismissed.
She said Nadler questioned Olson on whether the breach had in any way affected cases pursued
by the NSD and Olson testified he could not think of anything in particular.
And Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He wrote a letter on Thursday to the administrative office of the U.S. courts expressing serious
concerns that the federal judiciary has hidden the consequences of the data breach from Congress
and the public.
The federal judiciary has yet to publicly explain what happened and has refused multiple
requests to provide unclassified briefings to Congress.
Boy, I mean, you know, already there's there are all kinds of scandals with, you know,
missing text and things like that, but, you know, not being forthright, forthcoming with
details on this kind of a breach seems like serious.
You agree, Alex?
Yeah, yeah, I do.
I do think it's, you know, it can potentially be very serious because we but we don't know
what the implications of this are just yet.
On the other hand, it's got to be pretty serious.
I mean, the breach of the case management system may seem like, well, you know, all
these documents are part of the public record anyway.
So what's the big deal?
Right.
I mean, they're not going to be filed and, you know, out there and available, but that's
not necessarily the case.
There are a lot of documents that are filed under seal for various reasons to protect
the privacy of individuals, to protect personal information, to protect health related information.
There's also a lot of documents that may be filed under seal because they could potentially
contain damaging information, trade secrets, classified information.
So there's any number of reasons why sophisticated cyber adversaries, also known as threat actors,
also known as bad guys, sometimes erroneously called hackers, would go after this type of
information from the federal judiciary.
I mean, there's if you think about the federal courts, right, I mean, federal courts are
really just a publicly funded dispute resolution system.
And there's a lot of really important disputes that happen.
And not all those documents are public.
So yeah, this could be a very interesting breach to watch unravel in the public.
I find it somewhat troubling because the federal judiciary, as Senator Wyden noted, was not
particularly forthcoming about the details of this breach.
And if the federal judiciary is not forthcoming about the details of a breach, then to whom
can you complain to compel them?
I was going to ask you that.
Who did they answer to?
They're the people that you complain to.
Generally, yeah.
I mean, they're at the top of the food chain, so to speak, when it comes to legal persuasiveness.
So the federal judiciary, if you think about it, the independent federal district courts,
the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn
and Long Island, the federal trial level courts, they would answer to the circuit courts.
So those would all be part of the First Circuit, Massachusetts, other bits of New England would
be part of it.
I'm sorry, New York would be part of the Second Circuit, Massachusetts would be part of the
First Circuit, etc.
So they would answer to the circuit courts, the lower courts, that is.
The circuit courts would then answer to the Supreme Court.
And that's it.
That's really where the buck stops.
After that, I think, is God Almighty.
Yeah.
God is in there somewhere.
Yeah.
Of course.
Yeah.
It's got to be, you know, in God we trust, of course.
But I mean, it says it on the coins.
In any event, the federal judiciary, if we're talking about independent federal courts,
presumably the circuit courts or the Supreme Court could compel them to respond to Congress.
But if they're all...
The Supreme Court, Alex, really?
You think the Supreme Court gives a rat's ass about anything involving justice?
I'm sorry.
My cynicism is carrying me away.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I still believe in the Supreme Court as an institution.
And I think, you know, recent events notwithstanding, it's certainly taken a blow on account of,
you know, overturning of Roe v. Wade and completely disregarding the principle of stare decisis
among many, many other things that have come out in the recent term.
But yeah, I think the Supreme Court could compel a lower court to do the right thing.
And I think that they would.
But if they all act in one concerted manner to stop all Congress, well, then what are
they going to do?
Then what's Congress going to do?
I noticed, you know, the Congress people that were involved in this, Nadler and Jackson
Lee and Wyden, all Democrats.
So that right there tells me that something's going on, that Republicans aren't taking as
much of an interest in this for one reason or another.
Well, you know, maybe I would also say, too, you know, when it comes to anything that relates
to data, anything that relates to data breaches or the misuse or abuse of personal information
and data, Senator Ron Wyden is really second to none in Congress when it comes to hounding
the bad actors, making sure that there's some kind of accountability following up on this
when nobody else does.
I mean, he's always the one he's the tip of the spear of the Senate when it comes to policing
bad behaviors and data.
So it doesn't surprise me whatsoever that he's out in front there.
And it also bears mentioning, perhaps, that, you know, one of our former guests on the
show, Nancy Bass Wyden, the owner of the Strand Bookstore, is actually married to Senator
Ron Wyden.
So, you know, I do know him pretty well.
All right.
Well, speaking of bad actors or threat actors, there's a threat actor out there known as
Adrastia.
I think I'm pronouncing it right.
Forgive me if I'm not.
And also the other the other character in this little play is known as MBDA.
MBDA is a major European developer and manufacturer of missiles.
OK, our action begins with the group calling themselves Adrastia, saying that they took
60 gigabytes worth of files from MBDA, including secret information on the company's involvement
in, quote, closed military projects, unquote.
The threat actor Adrastia posted information about the breach on several hacker forums,
claiming they found a critical vulnerability in MBDA's network infrastructure that allowed
them to siphon the 60 gigabytes of data.
Currently, the volume of downloaded data is approximately 60 gigs.
The downloaded data contains confidential and closed information about the employees
of your company, which took part in the development of closed military projects of MBDA and about
the commercial activities of your company in the interest of the Ministry of Defense
of the European Union.
The four letters, by the way, in MBDA represent three French, Italian and British companies
that merged to become the MBDA, Matra, Bi Dynamics and Alinea.
Now, there is a response to this.
The European missile developer and manufacturer denies being hacked, but they admit that they
lost data.
So I don't know how confident that makes anybody.
They say that the hackers tried to blackmail the company with nonsensitive information
obtained from an external hard drive.
Following the company's refusal to yield to this blackmail threat and pay a ransom demand,
the criminal group has spread information on the Internet, making it accessible for
a payment.
That's according to an MBDA spokesman who told an outfit known as Cyber News.
MBDA has contacted Italian authorities to investigate the attack, and the company said
it will take legal action against what it sees as a criminal act of blackmail.
They request that the hackers identify themselves so that proceedings can move forward because
they have no idea who they are.
It would help if they tell them.
It's just, yeah, you know, it's a gentleman's game here.
So let us know who you are and we'll come after you.
Fair.
It sounds fair.
Yeah.
But, you know, this is an interesting one, too, because the threat actors or the bad
guys here trying to convince a company that it was breached when it wasn't breached by
showing them data that they obtained through acquisition of an external drive is pretty
new to me, at least, and, you know, they might have been trying to claim that they continue
to have some access and would extort the company in various ways there.
But I will tell you that the idea that an external drive only contains 60 gigabytes
of data is also kind of strange to me.
Maybe this was some kind of thumb drive.
It's not a lot of data to be on an external drive.
No, it sounds like a lot, but it's really not.
You know, a few years ago, that would have been an immense amount of 60 gigs.
That's nothing.
It really isn't all that much.
I mean, yeah, with the rate at which, you know, that's, you know, I'm being facetious
here, but, you know, at the rate at which things are going, it's like 10 word documents,
you know, and it's absolutely ridiculous.
But I mean, it is a lot of data, but if you think about it in the context of something
like the Panama Papers, which I think was 2.6 terabytes of data, that was a massive
amount of data.
And if you recall back in 2016 at Hope, and bring up Hope again, you know, I gave a talk
about the Panama Papers, and my theory on how the Panama Papers' data was exfiltrated
and stolen was not that somebody had breached the law firm of Mossack Fonseca, because 2.6
terabytes of data is a massive amount of data that would be really hard to exfiltrate, even
through a really fast network connection.
And let's say, you know, you had a 100 megabit connection, and you were using that at full
throttle.
Well, then people would probably notice because the network would degrade.
There'd be a lot of latency in the network.
Things would slow down.
So my theory that I presented at Hope was that, in all likelihood, somebody walked away
with an external drive.
Somebody either hooked up an external drive, perhaps a rogue IT person who wanted to become
a whistleblower.
And coincidentally, I think it was last week, as a matter of fact, the whistleblower, who
still has never been identified in the Panama Papers, spoke again, I think to Sudoich Zatong,
was talking about how he was amazed at the impact of the Panama Papers and how it's made
ripples around the world, and especially in the context of the ability to track Russian
assets and oligarchs in the context of the Ukraine war.
So you never know where this data is going to end up or be useful.
But to go back to the original point here, external drives are something companies really
have to keep a handle on.
That's true.
That's true.
Nothing to sneeze at, but it's not that much.
If you're looking to cripple an entire company, I'd expect to see more than that.
Unless they used a zip format, maybe they compressed it.
But again, not that impressive.
By the way, Alex's talk from that conference can be found online as well, and I believe
it's about two gigs in size.
So that gives you a sense, too.
Rob Dyla, did you have anything to add?
I haven't heard from you in a few minutes.
I do like the name of this outfit, Edrastia, which, for those unfamiliar, is the name of
a goddess from the Greek pantheon, the goddess of inevitable fate, oppressing necessity,
and the inescapability of punishment.
Whoa, that's a good one.
Not being punished, that's something that I think we all strive for.
You also hung around with Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution, and had some fun stories
associated with her.
Completely off the subject, but hey guys, we've been away for a while.
It's good to see you again.
Yes.
What have we missed?
You look similar.
To each other?
Have we been spending too much time together?
No, that's not what I meant, but I guess I could see it if I squint my eyes.
But no, it's been a while, you're right.
And I guess we just kind of lose track of all the things that have been going on around
us.
It's a whirlwind.
So, yes, welcome back, and hopefully our listeners have joined us as well.
It's neat.
It's good to be back.
It is good to be back.
We had a bout with the COVID, finally.
After two and a half years' streak of not getting it, we decided to break the streak,
and we were out of commission for a month or so.
A month?
Wow, that's classic COVID you got there.
We were stricken, and I said to someone, yes, we declared our independence from not getting
COVID.
I first tested positive on the 4th of July.
So it just kind of wrecked the rest of the month.
But we're back.
We're back.
And that rest of the month included all of hope, so that really sucks.
I'm so sorry.
We'll do another one just for you guys in a couple of years.
And on that note, we've been talking to a lot of people who did attend the conference,
and it looks like hope was not a super spreader, which is what we were shooting for.
People were wearing masks, and we made sure people were vaccinated.
There have been a couple of people who have gotten COVID since traveling to New York,
and that's inevitable.
When you travel, some people are going to catch something from people in various places,
and I'm crossing my fingers here and knocking on wood of all sorts, but I'm hoping that
the conference itself was not a source.
Of course, we'll keep monitoring, but it's been a couple of weeks now.
No, it's actually been about 10 days, right?
Yes.
I've lost track.
But the important thing is that it's still out there.
COVID is still out there.
We still have to take precautions, especially in large groups, and I just hope that we continue
to do that until it's truly behind us.
It is.
It is still a concern.
We were both, you know, vaxxed early on and boosted.
Vaxxed, boosted, careful, always masking.
It's there and it's real, and just be careful.
Had we not done so, it certainly would have been much worse on us, but, you know, we dealt
with it.
And yeah, don't act like it's over because it's not.
Yeah.
I think Biden expressed it well the first time he had COVID a week ago, as opposed to
the second time, which is now, saying that, you know, he's 80 years old, practically 80
years old, but it's relatively minor, the effects that it's having on him, as opposed
to his predecessor, who had to be airlifted out of the White House because the vaccine,
the vaccine exists now.
And that's why it's so important to stay up to date on that and just pay attention
to what's going on health-wise.
And you know, I was just so thrilled at the conference to see so many people who took
that seriously.
I mean, everybody did.
Everybody, you know, was really good as far as following the guidelines, and it didn't
affect anyone adversely.
You know, we all were able to have a great time and participate and hang out.
And of course, it would be better to not have to wear masks while doing that, and one
day we'll have that event.
But so much better not to be hearing about a lot of people getting sick, as has happened
at other conferences where masks were not required, prematurely thinking this was over.
Absolutely.
And it was just a small bit of guidelines and watching out for one another to make sure
that people were handling it as carefully as they could.
And that adherence, it really, really paid off, and I heard a lot of stories.
Things like, you know, people who hadn't been to large events in quite some time really
appreciated that we had helped people understand, you know, the importance of it and made sure
that people were taking precautions and we were checking some of that stuff.
So I hope, as you do, that it really pays off for what a wonderful event it was.
Hey, guess what's back?
Winamp is back.
I just saw this article on Gizmodo.
I'm going to read the opening paragraph.
Winamp died and then it came back, then it died again, and now it's back once again as
the first release candidate of the resurrected Winamp 5.9 has been made available for download
to a new generation who years ago transitioned away from MP3 files to streaming services.
You know, I didn't know Winamp was gone.
We use Winamp on the show.
That's how we play our music.
Winamp is great.
You know, it's how you play MP3s.
I'm shocked to find out that most people today apparently don't even have MP3s anymore.
I thought MP3s were what replaced CDs, but apparently now MP3s have been replaced by
streaming services.
That is a big mistake because if you replace your actual media that resides on your hard
drive with something in the cloud, it can go away at a moment's notice.
Somebody can snap their fingers and say, we no longer support this.
We no longer will allow this artist to be streamed on our platform.
And you out of luck then because you don't have the actual material on your device.
You're depending on a company to provide it for you.
You know, this is something that I've been concerned about from the get-go with regards
to TV shows and movies and records and books.
You know, you have to have physical possession of it.
If you buy something, you own it.
And this seems to be a recurring theme that we're seeing in everything from automobiles
to entertainment.
We don't seem to be learning a lesson because everyone is just streaming everything and
not saving anything and not having any control.
Yeah, recognizing the amount of work that you put into creating your music and curating
a collection that is yours is, I think it's getting lost in some of the hype around services
like music as a service, basically like an online jukebox.
And you know, we have space.
We have storage.
So why aren't people making files and taking care to have all of that stuff?
And I think controlling your files, the content that you're creating or that you have purchased
or you want to own and be able to move around on different devices and enjoy in perpetuity,
I think that's so crucial as well as some of the stuff we were talking about earlier.
The means of editing, whether it's imagery or audio.
If you're recording audio, you're a musician, the ability to use a digital workstation or
in video as well.
The means of production, how to edit and control your moviemaking ability.
I mean, it's so crucial and important for society like broadcast and television.
So now that the means of creating all of that is a lot more affordable and pervasive,
people should take hold of it.
Every one of our shows that we've ever done is available for download.
So you can have it.
So you can have it on your local device in case our site goes away or in case something
catastrophic happens.
There are copies that exist in other places.
That should be the norm.
And it doesn't take much effort.
I have vinyl and I have CDs of the vinyl and I have MP3s from the CDs that I ripped.
And I can also stream if I want to stream.
But that's, you know, it's redundancy.
It's a way of having access in case you lose access to something else and you're not dependent
on anyone.
Yes, Gila.
I mean, it's redundancy, but, you know, Rob and I find ourselves in a mixed marriage.
I have an iPhone.
Rob is an Android user.
Wow.
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
I did not know that.
Wow.
Wow.
Okay.
And one point of contention has been that as an iPhone user, I can't put music on my
phone unless I purchase it from one specific place and download it in one specific way.
So despite the fact that I have a teeny tiny SIM card, SIM card, it's not a SIM card.
It's a...
SD card.
Thank you.
An SD card.
An SD card that has gigs and gigs and gigs of music on it.
I can't put it on my phone.
So this quest that we've been on to simplify and streamline and have everything in one
place is simply not available to you.
If you were an iPhone user, I would have to repurchase all of that music that I have,
that I have been getting and saving for all these years, stuff that's out of print, stuff
that's unavailable.
And it is fascinating to me that there are systems that are trying to shift you to one
particular vendor and cut you off from your own purchases and your own data.
That's the thing I can't quite wrap my head around.
When you buy music, what format do you get it in?
I get MP3s.
If I get it from Amazon, if I get it from that Ukrainian site that I use, I always have
an MP3.
I can always copy it, listen to it on whatever device I want.
What happens with the Mac world?
There's the proprietary format through iTunes.
And now I don't think that, yeah, I don't even think that it is exclusively downloadable.
If you own, there was music I bought, I don't know, years ago and it's all in my Apple ID
and it lives on my phone, but I don't necessarily have local copies of it.
I've stopped listening to music on my phone because...
Rob, I'm sorry.
Do you still have the intervention chairs?
Because we might need to do something later.
We have to pull her out of the Mac world.
This is crazy.
What strikes me is that if you wanted to perform like a private party for your relatives or
something and DJ Gilo is in the house and you wanted to mix up some of your hard-earned
content with some music performance software or on another type of device to play out and
do your set, not to make any money off it, not for broadcast or anything, but just to
privately enjoy mixing up your own stuff, you wouldn't have it in a format that you
could manipulate it.
That's what really bothers me.
With a record, you could scratch it if you wanted.
You could play it backwards or really fast.
That tactile nature of even having the file now, it's bizarre that it's something people
will accept.
Okay, let's move on to some listener mail.
You can write to us, othat2600.com.
We read all email and sometimes we even read it on the air as we are about to do now.
Hey folks, just a little bit of info about the Google copyright policy for music versus
spoken word.
Emmanuel said, how can it violate you for your own voice?
Well, last week we had an interesting discussion on Overtime about that.
Well, it hits you if you play an instrument with your own hands too, but it's hit or miss.
Pink Floyd happens to usually be a hit.
I'm talking about very obscure songs like The Gunner's Dream and Fearless.
I got copyright claims on both of those songs, which I included in lesson videos.
Not the studio recordings, just myself playing the chords.
Even if I play it in the wrong key, at the wrong tempo, or sing the words incorrectly.
Of course, Roger Waters isn't sitting in his ivory tower saying, haha, Google is doing
my bidding.
He probably doesn't have any say in the matter, but some artists' songs get consistently caught
in the algorithm way more than others, like Queen, The Eagles, Floyd, especially The Beatles.
They're well-known blockers.
This is probably a deliberate corporate decision.
The only video that I've had actually taken down, as opposed to simply tagged with a copyright
claim, is Motley Crue.
In fact, I've even had copyright claims on my own compositions.
Oh my God, what a nightmare.
I am too small-scale to get monetized in the first place, so it just doesn't make sense
to challenge the claims, as the corporate people obviously wouldn't help anyway.
Yeah, but someone else is getting monetized on your work, apparently.
Anyway, keep putting pressure on these parasitic monopolies.
The people behind these things need to be made as uncomfortable and as embarrassed as
possible.
They know what they're doing is wrong.
Thanks, Ian.
Thank you, Ian, for that amazing letter.
And yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head.
It's insane what goes on, not only in YouTube, but just in the whole Google-ified intranet,
where people live in fear of upsetting the corporate giants with their copyright claims,
whistling a tune or humming something, or having a snippet of a song from a car radio
as you walk by, play on something that you're recording.
It's not normal.
This is not normal.
What's normal is sharing music, sharing thoughts, and not living in perpetual fear of the algorithm
finding you.
Yes, Rob?
Yep.
Just this week, I was communicating with someone who was an artist that I followed years and
years ago.
They made mashups.
They made bootleg mixes.
They made creative remixes, reuses of existing audio-video material, and I was trying to
get hold of a piece they had made, which was no longer on the internet anymore, and so
I got in touch with them.
They said back to me that basically they got out of the hobby of making such work because
the instant they would put any of it up anywhere, it would immediately get copyright claimed,
content ID'd, and it just wasn't worth the hassle anymore.
I think that's a shame, because remixes are a thing.
Remixes are a valid form of artwork.
I do creative remixing myself of things.
I love the art forms that come of that sort of thing, and here's someone who was basically
drummed out of ... There wasn't even money in play.
They were just drummed out of the hobby by the robots that work for the music companies,
and I think that's really sad.
I think something of value has been lost with that person and every case like that.
When you're putting up a video of, say, a Hope Talk, and there's a small snippet of
music in there that trips some alarm somewhere, and suddenly the entire talk as a work is
taken down or muted or otherwise affected, there's a lot of collateral damage in this
war on copyrighted material that's out there.
It's regretful.
There's one thing, though.
If you're doing something like this as a hobby, and it's not a source of income, there's no
reason you can't continue to do it.
You just can't post it on those particular hostile sites, like YouTube, because they'll
immediately take it down.
But there's no reason to curtail your artistic freedom, even if you're doing it just for
yourself or your friends or you're distributing it in some other way.
The answer should never be to stop being creative.
That's my opinion on it.
Alex, go ahead.
I tend to agree mostly with Rob on this.
I also think that this is something that Voltaire brought up a bit last week when he was on
as part of our Hope Reunion show, where he mentioned that there were these, I think mostly
in the European Union, concepts or rather ideas that all of these platforms over a certain
size should have to have some kind of filtering algorithm or system that detects copyright
infringement.
We had talked about this, I think, even a couple of years ago on the show.
The problem I have with all of this is that it's not the detection or the algorithm itself,
but it's the presumptions made based on the detection.
Hope is a perfect case in point here, or frankly, almost anything.
Let's say you detect a Metallica song or Bob Dylan or whatever, you take a snippet of it,
it detects the song and it automatically presumes that it's copyright infringement.
Instead of presuming some kind of innocent use, like fair use, where you can take a snippet
of something and use it in a non-commercial way, which most of what these videos are doing
on YouTube are non-commercial.
They might be generating some kind of ad revenue, unless that ad revenue is going back towards
the platform or Google, whatever it is.
I think just the presumption that a user is infringing a copyright is what's wrong.
That's what should be turned on its head.
There should be a presumption of there being an instance of fair use and then maybe a notification
that would go over to the copyright holder.
The copyright holder then could take some kind of affirmative action and say,
hey, I reviewed that video and it is infringing because it uses the entirety of my song.
But let's say you have a 10-second snippet of Enter Sandman by Metallica in a video.
There should be a presumption that that's fair use because it's a non-commercial video
and it's a tiny snippet and then the burden should be on the copyright holder, I think,
after a notification to come out and say otherwise.
Part of the problem is that when you say copyright holder, oftentimes it's not the person who
wrote the song.
Oftentimes it's a company, a faceless organization who couldn't care less.
It's just computers answering computers.
But I always wonder about these particular issues.
What is the concern?
What is the worry?
If I had to ask the people on the other side, okay, so this person has your song in the
background of their video where they're skateboarding.
What are you worried about specifically that somebody is going to copy that song with all
the other sound effects in the background and not buy the CD or the streaming service
that you offer because that will be good enough for them to just have it in the background
with all kinds of street noise?
Is that what you're worried about?
What is it that you're trying to prevent?
Maybe if we speak about this as human beings instead of just accepting this bizarre scenario
where if three notes of a song are heard, all of a sudden you're committing copyright
infringement.
I just want to understand the thinking.
Is there any thinking?
It really is a crazy situation we find ourselves in.
It really feels like it's all or nothing because they can't expend the resource or it's not
financially feasible for their model to expend the resource to police a case by case use
to prevent the abuse of allowing it.
If you allow it because you're like, yeah, people need to be creative and then it's abused
wholesale, not that it won't be.
How do you define abuse?
What is abuse?
I mean, to me, abuse is if somebody puts out a commercial song and starts selling it and
saying it's theirs.
That's abuse.
Someone monetizes Beyonce's album on a YouTube channel right now and has the whole thing
up there on their channel and they're claiming, I don't know, that they have a right to host
it and monetize it.
I don't know if that's a good example because there's probably 10,000 people doing that
right now anyway.
I tried carefully.
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
All right.
So that's a bad scenario.
But if somebody's content is ... If somebody's just got an account where all they do is put
still images and albums and they're somehow monetizing it and taking the views and they're
good rips or whatever kind of file that they're uploading, YouTube will consider that abuse
because they're monetizing a channel with copyrighted content and ... They can't let
them do that because the musicians and other entities will come down hard on them.
If they're just using the music and someone else's photography and making money off that,
I can see that.
I don't see shutting it down completely because it is a derivative expression of creativity
but they shouldn't be profiting solely from somebody else's creativity.
Yes, Rob?
Funny you should mention Beyonce.
There was a big to-do on social media this week because Beyonce's new song came out and
someone noticed that there were 24 writers credited.
It wasn't that someone noticed it.
It was Diane Warren, which is also terribly relevant in that context because Diane Warren
is a celebrated songwriter who then ... Okay, carry on with your story but this will become
relevant.
Okay.
The issue behind this was that how can one song have 24 different authors?
What happens is it's the creative sampling issue because she used bits and pieces from
other songs, from existing material and sampled them in her song, which is great but she is
able to do this because she is Beyonce.
She is the massive media franchise machine with the power of the entire music industry
behind her.
This then becomes something that's very scary to people like me, which is this is an art
form that exists that's accepted as valid by that art form but it's only accessible
to people with the wealth to do all this finagling and get all this legal guff together.
I am not allowed to do that kind of thing.
She is because there's money to throw at it but tell me about Diane Warren.
First of all, you used to be able to do that.
Back in the days of Public Enemy, there weren't these kinds of restrictions that limited it
to only the rich and powerful.
Go ahead, Gail.
That was part of the thing because Diane Warren is a reasonably well-known Oscar-winning,
Grammy-winning songwriter.
You may not like her stuff but she is a songwriter and she basically does it herself.
She went on social media after the album came out and said, how were there 24 accredited
songwriters?
It actually turned into a question of culture, race, about sample culture.
How is it that Beyonce credited the guys from Right Said Fred because she used a snippet
of I'm Too Sexy, ergo, the guys from Right Said Fred are accredited writers on whatever
track it was.
There were also people who were sampled on the album who were not having any, thank you.
Khalees was upset that she sampled Milkshake, I think.
I think that sample's now been removed.
What that does auditorially, in terms of the audio, that word was not happening.
What it means, on a side note, I looked at my YouTube channel.
There are 18 videos on my YouTube channel.
Six of them have been copyright claimed, which I found fascinating.
With regards to the 24 writers though, was Beyonce just being generous or was she required
to credit all 24 of those because that does seem a little unusual.
That's a question I don't know the answer to but when you think about also the way that
the music business is built now and when you have people who, if you think about the Brill
Building and the way that the songwriting business was built in the 1950s and the 1960s
where you had buildings full of people in their cubicles cranking out entire songs, right?
But now you have people who just write hooks.
If you're writing a 10 note, 30 second piece of music but you take 10 of those and put
them together and that's a song, yeah, there's 20 people who wrote a song as opposed to two
people.
But if you're writing hooks instead of, that's the thing, I think, the pieces of songs that
you're writing and then putting them together, that adds up to a lot of people really, really quickly.
It does and then you start crediting the people who invented the instruments.
It really can add up or we can just say this is derivative work.
Everything is based on something else and that's evolution.
Yes, Alex, go ahead.
I'll be the final word, I think.
Sure.
I want to go back to this issue of why the platforms do this because I think the more
rights holders there are, the more complicated this gets, the more there's potential infringement
and it all goes back to a law, Emanuel, with which you have some intimate familiarity,
the DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The DMCA states that any kind of platform or provider is going to be liable for the
dissemination of copyrighted materials, but there's something called safe harbor.
So long as a platform removes access or takes down infringing materials after a copyright
holder has given some notice that there is infringing material on their site, then they're
not liable for that infringing content.
So the inverse of this or the converse of this, I always get them confused, is that
if platforms don't remove infringing content, then they can be liable because there would
be no safe harbor that would be protecting them.
Now the issue then is, okay, well, why don't they just wait for a copyright holder to raise
their hand and say, hey, that's my copyrighted work that's playing in the background over
there.
And the reason is they're too big in the volume and the velocity of the videos and music that
are on their platforms is immense, so that it's too unwieldy for these platforms to
rely on actual human beings to report, to investigate, and then remove content.
So they have to rely on algorithms to find what could be infringement, presume it's infringement,
and preempt before there's anybody, before anybody has investigated it.
So it's about shielding them from liability and maintaining safe harbor under the DMCA.
You know, the good bumper sticker would be, keep your lawyer away from my art.
A bit wordy, but I'm sure we can refine it.
And that's mine, by the way.
I've already copyrighted it, so don't try using that.
Okay, so we are out of time.
But, Rob, I know you have something to say about the special events coming up this Friday.
Yes, indeed.
This Friday, 2600 meetings are happening in all sorts of places.
Go to 2600.com slash meetings to see the ones that have been restarted since the lockdown
days and get more information on possibly restarting one near you if it doesn't exist
already.
Now, here in New York City, we are back at the Citigroup building.
It used to be called the City Court building.
And I understand they've rebuilt the food court there, and people are showing up on
the first Friday of every month between 5 and 8, right?
Yes, indeed.
In the food court, which is now called The Hue.
I think it's probably named after Hugh Grant or someone like that.
But it is really nicely done up.
There's lots of good food and drink options for all palates and dietary requirements.
Come on down.
First Friday of every month, including this Friday.
And if you are in a particular part of the world where you would like to start a 2600
meeting, they generally take place the first Friday of every month in late afternoon, early
evening.
But we do have exceptions if the case is compelling enough.
Simply go to 2600.com slash meetings or write to us.
Meetings at 2600.com.
Generally, we like to have meetings in a publicly available place like a food court,
something that people aren't restricted as far as getting into.
Nothing in someone's home or private property or anything like that.
The idea is to meet people, meet new people and show the world what hackers are really
all about.
We've been doing it since 1987 and took quite a hit during the pandemic.
But we're coming back.
We're coming back.
And every month we get more meetings that are either starting fresh or that are resuming
after a couple of years.
So hope to see a bunch of you at one of the meetings this Friday.
And we'll be back again, I believe, next week at this time, hopefully with overtime next
week.
We don't have overtime this week because we're too damn busy making the videos.
And again, write to us.
OTH at 2600.com.
And we're off the hook.
It's Emanuel Goldstein.
Have yourselves a good night.
Bye.
Good night.
Did you see the old man outside the seaman's mission?
Memories of fighting with the medals he wears.
And did you see the old man outside the seaman's mission?
He's just another hero from a land that doesn't care.
So how can you tell me you're lonely?
And don't you say to me, your sun don't shine
And have you seen the old girl, who walks the streets of London
She ain't got no money, and she's all dressed in red
And have you seen the old girl, who walks the streets of London
She carries her old knicker into Parliament Bay
So how dare you tell me you're lonely
And don't you say to me, your sun don't shine
Well, let me take you by the hand
And lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something you'll never understand
Well, let me take you by the hand
And drag you through the streets of London
I'll show you something that'll make you really sing
.
Well, let me take you by the hand
And lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something you'll never understand
Well, let me take you by the hand
And drag you through the streets of London
I'll show you something that'll make you really sing
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah