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[00:30.480 --> 00:31.980]  It's 7 o'clock.
[00:33.060 --> 00:34.660]  And this is WBAI New York.
[00:35.100 --> 00:37.760]  It's time, once again, for Off the Hook.
[02:18.760 --> 02:19.780]  And good evening to everybody.
[02:19.880 --> 02:21.100]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:21.360 --> 02:23.320]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[02:23.480 --> 02:25.060]  Joined tonight by Mike.
[02:25.440 --> 02:25.900]  Good evening.
[02:26.140 --> 02:26.520]  Red Hack.
[02:26.720 --> 02:26.920]  Hello.
[02:27.240 --> 02:28.040]  Rob P. Firefly.
[02:28.240 --> 02:28.620]  Good evening.
[02:28.900 --> 02:29.160]  Jim.
[02:29.420 --> 02:29.680]  Hello.
[02:30.260 --> 02:31.520]  And falsetto today, hey?
[02:31.840 --> 02:34.140]  And down in Philadelphia, Bernie S.
[02:34.560 --> 02:35.780]  Greetings from Pennsylvania.
[02:36.060 --> 02:37.960]  And, okay, thanks for the deep voice there, Bernie.
[02:38.480 --> 02:39.660]  Everybody in a good mood today?
[02:39.720 --> 02:40.400]  Everyone feeling okay?
[02:41.060 --> 02:41.220]  Yeah?
[02:41.760 --> 02:41.920]  Nice?
[02:42.000 --> 02:43.580]  Better yesterday when the weather was better.
[02:43.580 --> 02:44.380]  Ah, the weather.
[02:44.520 --> 02:45.140]  It's immaterial.
[02:45.420 --> 02:45.840]  It doesn't matter.
[02:46.060 --> 02:47.860]  It doesn't matter to anybody on the radio.
[02:48.540 --> 02:49.340]  I'm in a good mood.
[02:49.440 --> 02:50.620]  I want to say why I'm in a good mood.
[02:50.880 --> 03:00.880]  I'm in a good mood because today, for the first time, I saw something progressive, something positive, something enlightened from a bank.
[03:01.300 --> 03:05.040]  I want to read you the statement that was on the Bank of America website.
[03:05.440 --> 03:11.820]  Today, it's time to acknowledge that our bank isn't working anymore, not just for the market, but for people, our real customers.
[03:12.260 --> 03:18.240]  We've paid $8.58 billion in relief to borrowers and $3.24 billion in fines.
[03:18.400 --> 03:23.060]  We faced lawsuits and claims from citizens, companies, and state and local governments.
[03:23.260 --> 03:28.280]  There was even a petition with the Federal Reserve to break up our bank, adding yet more uncertainty to our position.
[03:28.560 --> 03:39.920]  Finally, we've found ourselves front and center in the national foreclosure crisis and deepened unpopular investments like coal at a time when climate change is a growing societal concern.
[03:40.280 --> 03:47.860]  As a result, our company's shares have fallen precipitously and now trade at one-fifth their 2008 price.
[03:48.020 --> 03:50.680]  Our bank may, in fact, soon need help keeping afloat.
[03:50.880 --> 03:58.820]  And as much as in 2008, much as in 2008, you, the American taxpayer, will be asked to provide that assistance.
[03:59.280 --> 04:10.000]  The institution you rescued in 2008, the plural institutions you have rescued, have continued much as they always were, engaging in the same practices that brought our economy so close to collapse.
[04:10.080 --> 04:21.840]  To make sure that this time around, things turn out differently, we at Bank of America are launching a forum in which you, the American taxpayer, can prepare for the time that you own us.
[04:22.520 --> 04:30.160]  By sharing ideas and reading and rating the ideas of others, you can begin charting a course for this bank, your course.
[04:30.280 --> 04:37.680]  And when the day comes that you, the American taxpayer, own this bank, you will be ready to make it a bank for America.
[04:38.160 --> 04:45.000]  One that brings benefits, not to the privileged only, but to all of our customers and to all of our stakeholders too.
[04:45.820 --> 04:47.420]  Welcome to your Bank of America.
[04:47.560 --> 04:51.800]  Signed, Brian Moynihan, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bank of America.
[04:51.900 --> 04:52.760]  I saw this this morning.
[04:53.020 --> 04:54.980]  I got a press release emailed to me.
[04:55.060 --> 05:02.160]  I went to the website, which is yourbofa.com, BOFA, Bank of America, obviously.
[05:02.700 --> 05:06.960]  And I was just in such a happy mood all day long because of this.
[05:07.240 --> 05:10.600]  You know, Emmanuel, I don't want to ruin your good mood.
[05:10.700 --> 05:11.860]  But you always do, don't you?
[05:12.080 --> 05:14.200]  It's sort of my role on this program.
[05:14.200 --> 05:21.940]  But I got an email at 11 this morning from Bank of America as well, denouncing what they say is a hoax.
[05:22.880 --> 05:23.420]  I see.
[05:23.420 --> 05:30.500]  They say they will not need the bailout and they warn the public not to be confused by the yourbofa.com fraud.
[05:31.480 --> 05:33.060]  Well, who did that email come from?
[05:33.360 --> 05:35.500]  It came from Bank of America Corporation.
[05:35.500 --> 05:37.080]  I don't understand what the question is.
[05:37.160 --> 05:40.940]  You see, Mike, I got the same email except mine came from bankofyou.com.
[05:41.220 --> 05:43.100]  Obviously, obviously fraudulent.
[05:43.640 --> 05:53.760]  And yeah, what they said, listen to this, the malicious website, yourbofa.com, that is fraudulently representing itself as a Bank of America rebranding effort is misleading the public.
[05:53.980 --> 05:57.120]  Those behind it will be prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.
[05:57.380 --> 05:58.180]  Yeah, okay.
[05:58.500 --> 05:59.580]  I'm so scared.
[06:00.100 --> 06:09.640]  A website launched today at the domain yourboa.com is a fraud and does not represent the views of Bank of America, its affiliates, or subsidiaries.
[06:09.820 --> 06:15.900]  Bank of America is not making plans to enter into federal receivership and will not need the public's help to become a better bank, in quotes.
[06:16.220 --> 06:25.880]  This kind of massive fraud and deception serves to confuse and demoralize a public that is already confused and demoralized by the marketplace, said Matthew Swain, Bank of America spokesperson.
[06:26.120 --> 06:28.680]  Doesn't that sound a little bit over the top there?
[06:29.100 --> 06:32.800]  He also noted that Bank of America has no plans to rebrand itself.
[06:33.220 --> 06:41.220]  Your Bank of America, which is what the original, the legitimate press release said, they don't plan on doing that.
[06:41.300 --> 06:45.860]  This person says, does not intend to solicit or use input from the public to determine future business practices.
[06:46.220 --> 06:52.860]  Suggesting that Americans can rebuild a bank any way they please is not only dangerous, it's reprehensible in that it gives people false hope, said Swain.
[06:53.380 --> 06:58.940]  Banking is too complicated for ordinary people to understand, said Jeff Walburn, Risk Management Bank of America.
[06:59.060 --> 07:02.300]  That's not to say people are stupid, just that a bank has a lot of moving parts.
[07:02.580 --> 07:04.860]  There's a reason there are bankers, and we see this every day.
[07:05.880 --> 07:07.240]  You still believe this is real, Mike?
[07:07.460 --> 07:20.320]  Bank of America reiterates that it got a clean bill of health in the recent Federal Reserve stress test, and despite troublesome debt and litigation, and even criminal charges, the company is poised to take advantage of its size to continue its amazing story of unprecedented growth.
[07:20.480 --> 07:23.180]  You see, they'd never mention that there were criminal charges filed against them.
[07:23.380 --> 07:24.520]  That shows you right there.
[07:24.540 --> 07:25.960]  This is the fraudulent one.
[07:26.240 --> 07:30.460]  Just like in the non-financial sector, there are always going to be winners and losers, said Walburn.
[07:30.540 --> 07:33.620]  There are a lot of sour grapes out there, and we can't do anything about that.
[07:34.060 --> 07:38.360]  Yeah, you know, upon reading this, that's obviously fake.
[07:38.440 --> 07:39.280]  That's obviously fake.
[07:39.280 --> 07:42.100]  I agree that that does seem fake.
[07:42.240 --> 07:46.080]  It's difficult to know what to believe when faced with these competing narratives.
[07:46.120 --> 07:46.900]  Well, I do know this.
[07:47.000 --> 07:52.500]  If somebody says something that's fake, whatever it is that they say is fake, ipso facto, is true.
[07:52.640 --> 07:53.080]  Right, Bernie?
[07:53.460 --> 07:55.000]  I would tend to agree.
[07:55.280 --> 08:03.100]  It's like, this is the best part of this, is for the Bank of America to denounce an email campaign as a massive fraud.
[08:03.540 --> 08:19.680]  We're talking about a corporation that has effectively defrauded the United States and its citizens out of countless billions of dollars with their shady business practices, and they're saying that this email going around is the massive fraud.
[08:19.880 --> 08:21.420]  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
[08:21.580 --> 08:22.040]  It's unbelievable.
[08:23.240 --> 08:24.660]  It is unbelievable.
[08:25.000 --> 08:25.580]  Go ahead.
[08:25.700 --> 08:31.360]  You know, I originally saw this email, and I thought it was real as well, but I have to say, Emmanuel has convinced me, and you've convinced me.
[08:31.420 --> 08:34.400]  I don't think this email could possibly have come from the Bank of America.
[08:34.920 --> 08:38.580]  I really don't know what to believe, but it's very tricky.
[08:38.820 --> 08:41.020]  Well, here's what's really going on.
[08:41.120 --> 08:45.380]  It's our friends at the Yes Men, yet again, up to their old tricks.
[08:46.140 --> 08:56.240]  And yes, I knew as soon as I saw the original release, yourbankofwhatever.com, that that was them.
[08:56.260 --> 09:04.720]  And of course, they took it one step further by issuing a condemnation of their own prank, and making it seem as if the people they were pranking were condemning them.
[09:04.900 --> 09:08.460]  You know, they probably want to condemn them, but they can't figure out how to do it and be believed.
[09:08.680 --> 09:16.860]  The easy way, by the way, to tell is that I don't believe you, and certainly not I, are not normally on the Bank of America press release distribution list.
[09:17.800 --> 09:20.660]  Well, yeah, except that they have to say something to the public.
[09:20.820 --> 09:24.080]  I'm sure this is in the news someplace, legitimate news.
[09:24.240 --> 09:28.660]  I'm sure there are stories about this, and some Bank of America spokesperson somewhere has to say something.
[09:29.760 --> 09:31.180]  Well, there's an email link.
[09:31.380 --> 09:34.880]  We can call the Bank of America and ask them, you know, you guys know anything about this?
[09:35.040 --> 09:37.800]  You know, somebody will say something, and I'm sure that'll be the Bank of America speaking.
[09:37.980 --> 09:42.120]  There's a link in the email to what appears to be the real Bank of America's press releases.
[09:42.120 --> 09:43.640]  You can tell because they're very boring.
[09:43.780 --> 09:46.680]  And if you click on them, you'll get a list of press releases, but this is not one of them.
[09:46.820 --> 09:49.760]  But it'll seem like it's legitimate because you see all the other press releases.
[09:49.920 --> 09:52.480]  So yeah, you know, if you're going to do a prank, you got to do it right.
[09:52.640 --> 09:55.840]  And the Yes Men, they do it right, time and time again.
[09:56.700 --> 10:00.320]  And again, they will be appearing as our keynote speakers at Hope No.
[10:00.400 --> 10:02.160]  9, July 13th, 14th, and 15th.
[10:02.240 --> 10:03.680]  The Bank of America is going to be our keynote?
[10:03.700 --> 10:05.400]  Not the Bank of America, the Yes Men.
[10:05.500 --> 10:07.260]  Although maybe they'll appear as the Bank of America.
[10:07.400 --> 10:07.720]  Who knows?
[10:07.780 --> 10:09.240]  The Bank of America is right across the street.
[10:10.600 --> 10:12.080]  So it could be a confrontation.
[10:12.080 --> 10:12.740]  Who knows?
[10:13.120 --> 10:18.520]  But probably everybody else they've offended and pranked over the years is across the street as well.
[10:18.580 --> 10:19.520]  It's a very busy part of town.
[10:20.020 --> 10:22.660]  So yeah, it's going to be fun and interesting.
[10:23.160 --> 10:23.940]  It's just good to know.
[10:24.160 --> 10:25.200]  It's a good thing to wake up to.
[10:25.200 --> 10:26.920]  So I'm still in a good mood, even though it's all fake.
[10:27.060 --> 10:33.080]  So just to clarify, the nice email and the negative email were both sent by the same party.
[10:33.360 --> 10:35.040]  Yeah, I can write this down if it gets confusing.
[10:35.160 --> 10:38.760]  But yeah, basically Bank of America didn't do anything today.
[10:39.040 --> 10:40.360]  They didn't say anything as far as I know.
[10:40.540 --> 10:41.740]  They just did what they usually do.
[10:41.760 --> 10:43.720]  They said two things, both of which are very boring.
[10:44.800 --> 10:45.980]  Wait, what did they actually say?
[10:46.120 --> 10:52.100]  They said BFA Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey finds fresh EU concerns prompt move to risk off.
[10:52.220 --> 10:52.980]  Okay, that's irrelevant.
[10:53.200 --> 10:53.900]  I don't know what that means.
[10:53.900 --> 10:54.560]  Nobody cares.
[10:54.560 --> 10:55.840]  It's got nothing to do with anything.
[10:55.980 --> 10:57.600]  Did they say anything about what's in the news?
[10:58.000 --> 10:58.580]  Not to me.
[10:58.720 --> 10:58.960]  No.
[11:00.160 --> 11:01.500]  They're remarkably silent on that.
[11:01.580 --> 11:03.640]  I just think it's important to know that they're still talking.
[11:05.640 --> 11:06.460]  They'll never shut up.
[11:07.020 --> 11:08.340]  Okay, what else is in the news?
[11:08.360 --> 11:13.060]  Well, our friend Julian Assange has a new TV program, which will be premiering, I believe, tomorrow.
[11:13.380 --> 11:14.140]  It did premiere.
[11:14.860 --> 11:15.460]  Oh, you're right.
[11:15.500 --> 11:16.220]  It was on Tuesday.
[11:16.380 --> 11:17.040]  Oh, it was yesterday.
[11:17.180 --> 11:18.320]  It's called The World Tomorrow.
[11:18.600 --> 11:19.480]  But actually, it was yesterday.
[11:19.480 --> 11:32.320]  Yeah, he basically has a bunch of episodes, 12 episodes, actually, of interviews with all kinds of, I guess, world figures of various sorts.
[11:32.320 --> 11:36.400]  And it appears on the channel Russia Today.
[11:36.880 --> 11:40.740]  Now, if you don't get Russia Today, well, it's easy to find it.
[11:40.740 --> 11:44.700]  You can go to rt.com, and I'm sure the program is on there, on their website.
[11:44.900 --> 11:49.600]  But if you're in Manhattan, yes, you can get Russia Today on channel 135 on Time Warner Cable.
[11:50.000 --> 11:53.840]  And if you have satellite on the Dish Network, on channel 280.
[11:54.820 --> 12:03.220]  And, Bernie, if you live in Philadelphia, the television station WYBE has it on their fourth channel, which is 35.4.
[12:03.220 --> 12:05.520]  Yes, you would need a digital television receiver.
[12:06.040 --> 12:12.340]  That's not carried by Comcast, the incumbent cable monopoly in Philadelphia.
[12:12.640 --> 12:15.700]  That WYBE channel is not covered by Comcast.
[12:15.860 --> 12:19.360]  But if you have an over-the-air antenna, you can tune in WYBE.
[12:19.700 --> 12:20.000]  Right.
[12:20.100 --> 12:21.340]  You don't need a digital television.
[12:21.480 --> 12:23.400]  You need that, or you need a converter, right?
[12:23.400 --> 12:24.040]  Converter box, right.
[12:24.120 --> 12:24.200]  Yeah.
[12:24.260 --> 12:26.540]  Digital converter receiver, you know, one of them.
[12:26.960 --> 12:29.640]  Which, to be clear, you need to receive any broadcast television.
[12:30.120 --> 12:30.520]  Exactly.
[12:30.840 --> 12:31.080]  Yeah.
[12:32.860 --> 12:36.360]  And it's interesting, WYBE, do you know anything about that particular station, Bernie?
[12:36.380 --> 12:39.260]  It's a non-commercial TV station, but it's not PBS, I believe.
[12:39.480 --> 12:40.000]  That's correct.
[12:40.300 --> 12:41.240]  It's kind of unique.
[12:41.860 --> 12:44.700]  Well, I'm sure there's other stations around the country like that, but not many.
[12:45.880 --> 12:53.360]  And they have a very left, sort of, kind of a broadcast philosophy, somewhat similar to WBAI.
[12:53.760 --> 13:00.060]  They air, literally air, a lot of progressive and left-wing kind of programming.
[13:00.060 --> 13:00.960]  So it's kind of refreshing.
[13:01.200 --> 13:02.040]  Are we on there?
[13:02.900 --> 13:11.400]  No, but what I mean is that, you know, similar to WBAI, WYBE broadcasts a lot of progressive and left-leaning programming.
[13:11.600 --> 13:12.520]  But we could be on there.
[13:12.580 --> 13:14.040]  We could do off-the-hook TV.
[13:14.540 --> 13:16.920]  You know, that's a possibility we can talk about.
[13:17.020 --> 13:20.600]  I don't know if anyone would want to see our mugs on a TV screen.
[13:20.600 --> 13:24.460]  No, no, but, you know, we could use that to our advantage, too.
[13:24.660 --> 13:32.020]  And during fundraising, I assume they have fundraising, we threaten to turn on the camera if, I don't know, we'll be saying that.
[13:32.140 --> 13:33.860]  I just had to figure out how to get to Philadelphia every week.
[13:34.280 --> 13:34.600]  Okay.
[13:34.900 --> 13:35.620]  You can do a feed.
[13:35.820 --> 13:36.080]  Yeah.
[13:37.160 --> 13:42.420]  Okay, so let's talk about things going on with phones.
[13:42.600 --> 13:44.140]  Apparently, this is interesting.
[13:44.440 --> 14:02.800]  In Ottawa, which is in Canada, those of you who are following the NHL series probably have learned that this week, the move to raise the price of a local payphone call from 50 cents to a dollar, yeah, had Alan Neal at CBC Ottawa's All in a Day wondering if payphones were soon to be an endangered species.
[14:02.980 --> 14:04.560]  It's kind of slow, isn't it?
[14:04.560 --> 14:14.220]  Yeah, they are an endangered species already, and especially if you make payphones a dollar a call, who in their right mind is going to go to a payphone to make a phone call and put a dollar in it?
[14:14.360 --> 14:16.720]  For our American listeners, that's a one U.S.
[14:16.820 --> 14:17.020]  dollar.
[14:17.740 --> 14:19.240]  Well, no, it's a Canadian dollar in Ottawa.
[14:19.460 --> 14:20.100]  Yeah, but they're worth the same.
[14:20.580 --> 14:21.580]  Well, then it doesn't matter.
[14:21.700 --> 14:22.680]  Yeah, well, I just want to...
[14:22.680 --> 14:22.860]  All right.
[14:22.860 --> 14:26.060]  I just don't want people to think that this is some, like, cheapo dollar here.
[14:26.180 --> 14:26.820]  No, no.
[14:26.920 --> 14:27.220]  It's a dollar.
[14:27.380 --> 14:28.780]  Yeah, it's probably worth more than our dollar.
[14:29.980 --> 14:34.460]  That led to an idea, get listeners to take photos of payphones around the city.
[14:35.060 --> 14:40.640]  Yeah, what a unique idea that is, which led to an even more ambitious plan, map out all those telephones.
[14:41.140 --> 14:45.780]  And they have a little map printed out here on the CBC website.
[14:46.680 --> 14:51.680]  Ottawans have spied payphones at gas stations, strip malls, corner stores, and tucked away in odd places.
[14:52.380 --> 14:59.260]  So if you're in Ottawa, email paul.j, that's P-A-U-L dot J-A-Y at CBC dot C-A.
[14:59.780 --> 15:03.420]  If you know a payphone in your neighborhood that's not on their map yet.
[15:03.840 --> 15:06.080]  And, you know, we tried to do this many years ago.
[15:06.340 --> 15:09.600]  But the information, according to the phone company, was confidential.
[15:09.840 --> 15:11.740]  They couldn't tell us where payphones were.
[15:11.820 --> 15:13.740]  I don't know what the reasoning behind that was.
[15:14.000 --> 15:15.440]  Wouldn't you want to know where the payphones are?
[15:15.520 --> 15:16.280]  Wouldn't you want to tell people?
[15:16.680 --> 15:23.300]  But it's a good idea to know where payphones are on, say, GPS programming or just to have a list yourself.
[15:23.300 --> 15:25.640]  They said they've been found in odd places.
[15:25.760 --> 15:26.820]  What are some of the odd places?
[15:26.960 --> 15:36.160]  Yeah, well, you know, sometimes, and we've done this, you're in a restaurant, you go downstairs to the basement where the bathroom is, and you see a 9X payphone that has not been touched in years.
[15:36.420 --> 15:40.220]  Sometimes you even find a rotary payphone that really hasn't been touched in years.
[15:40.340 --> 15:44.460]  So they wind up in strange places, and people forget about them.
[15:45.480 --> 15:49.200]  Bernie, do you know any maybe Bella, Pennsylvania payphones lying around?
[15:49.200 --> 15:50.280]  Not Bella, Pennsylvania.
[15:52.640 --> 16:00.720]  There's a couple of Bella, Pennsylvania signs still down in the SEPTA subway system in Philadelphia.
[16:01.380 --> 16:11.240]  And I think there's still a couple of the successor, Bella Atlantic payphones with a little information card in the top part of the payphone where the coin slot is.
[16:11.240 --> 16:20.600]  But most of them have, you know, migrated to the new, well, not so new now, Verizon brand.
[16:21.020 --> 16:23.240]  But yeah, I like looking for the old ones.
[16:23.420 --> 16:23.620]  They're fun.
[16:23.680 --> 16:27.600]  I understand we're going to have some payphones to give away at the Hope No.
[16:27.660 --> 16:33.660]  9 conference that have been decommissioned and that we've taken possession of, which sounds really cool.
[16:33.660 --> 16:49.880]  Yeah, and if people out there somehow have access to a whole garage full of these things that have no use anymore, and they wish to donate them to an organization that would appreciate them, send us an email, OTH at 2600.com, because people always love to have...
[16:49.880 --> 16:51.160]  Redhack, you have a payphone, right?
[16:51.320 --> 16:52.000]  I have a payphone.
[16:52.140 --> 16:56.620]  And the nice thing about payphones, you might be wondering, well, why would I want a phone that I can't make phone calls with?
[16:56.620 --> 17:03.300]  Actually, with the payphones, the line itself was the kind of control mechanism, not the phone itself.
[17:03.300 --> 17:07.120]  So you can actually connect the payphone to a normal telephone line and make phone calls.
[17:07.280 --> 17:13.280]  It depends on the phone, because the more recent ones, the intelligence is in the actual instrument, and it might demand money from you.
[17:13.360 --> 17:13.740]  It's possible.
[17:13.880 --> 17:28.720]  But the old ones, yes, that's how hackers were able to turn people's phone lines into payphones, because the central office would send a signal down saying, okay, you got to deposit a quarter, which is very hard to do if you were inside your house using your home phone.
[17:29.300 --> 17:32.620]  But that's where all the intelligence was in the central office, not in the instrument.
[17:32.660 --> 17:39.760]  And that's also how people would make free phone calls, because, you know, with some of the payphones anyway, when you put a coin in, it made a tone.
[17:39.880 --> 17:46.420]  And if, you know, if you played the same tone into the mouthpiece and the mouthpiece wasn't muted, it would think that you'd put a coin in.
[17:47.220 --> 17:48.720]  Yeah, good fun there.
[17:49.460 --> 17:50.660]  History of payphones.
[17:50.820 --> 17:53.720]  And I think, you know, payphones are still important.
[17:53.720 --> 17:59.400]  I know they're planning on replacing all the ones in the city here with internet terminals of various kinds.
[18:00.060 --> 18:03.260]  And yeah, there's something to be said for the good old-fashioned payphone.
[18:03.420 --> 18:04.580]  And actually, there's an interesting...
[18:04.580 --> 18:05.840]  I believe it's on Adafruit.
[18:05.980 --> 18:09.880]  There's a tutorial where they go through and they build a circuit to actually make the...
[18:10.400 --> 18:18.100]  take an old payphone that didn't have the logic in the payphone itself and actually make it so that it takes coins and you need coins to call from it.
[18:18.200 --> 18:23.840]  So if you do get a payphone, it might be worth looking that up if you're interested in kind of hacking it.
[18:24.260 --> 18:24.960]  Definitely, definitely.
[18:25.560 --> 18:27.900]  Well, okay, now we move over to Los Angeles.
[18:28.080 --> 18:38.280]  Police in downtown Los Angeles have seen cell phone thefts soar as smartphones like the iPhone become easily turned into pay-as-you-go phones.
[18:38.500 --> 18:47.820]  For the first quarter of this year, thefts of cell phones have increased 32% in the downtown area in the one-mile-square area of Skid Row.
[18:48.080 --> 18:53.340]  The increase is even more pronounced, said Los Angeles Police Lieutenant Paul Vernon.
[18:53.740 --> 18:57.240]  So I guess just avoid that area and your cell phone will be safe.
[18:57.300 --> 18:57.880]  Is that what they're saying?
[18:58.160 --> 19:07.500]  Individuals reported 54 cell phones taken in crimes from within Skid Row in the first three months of 2012 compared to 115 during all of 2011.
[19:07.500 --> 19:16.880]  Now, if that trend continues, we'd see an increase in of 144% by the end of 2012, Vernon said, consulting a calculator.
[19:17.640 --> 19:20.520]  And it made us ask, what's going on?
[19:20.760 --> 19:22.180]  Which is basically...
[19:22.180 --> 19:23.620]  That's written on all their police cars.
[19:23.660 --> 19:25.380]  54 payphones in three months?
[19:25.520 --> 19:26.360]  Not payphones, cell phones.
[19:26.440 --> 19:26.780]  Cell phones.
[19:26.900 --> 19:26.960]  Yeah.
[19:26.960 --> 19:28.440]  54 cell phones in three months?
[19:28.760 --> 19:30.460]  That's not a crime wave.
[19:30.760 --> 19:32.700]  In one square mile area, though.
[19:33.500 --> 19:35.400]  What's going on is very easy to explain.
[19:35.400 --> 19:39.460]  People have something in their pocket that's worth a few hundred bucks and other people want to steal it.
[19:39.880 --> 19:40.640]  Well, yes.
[19:40.640 --> 19:51.020]  In the words of the police, a crook can snatch an iPhone, replace the SIM card with one from a pay-as-you-go phone, and have a brand new, latest generation phone for himself.
[19:52.000 --> 19:57.700]  Now, in past generations of phones, once stolen, the service could be turned off, and the phone for the most part was useless.
[19:58.000 --> 20:05.160]  On newer phones, if a pay-as-you-go SIM card is put into the phone, there is no record of the user with a service provider.
[20:05.400 --> 20:06.080]  I don't know.
[20:06.340 --> 20:07.060]  Brian, is that true?
[20:08.000 --> 20:09.060]  Yes, it is true.
[20:09.060 --> 20:10.240]  And I think there's a reason.
[20:10.460 --> 20:17.300]  I think there's some financial incentives for mobile phone carriers to not block.
[20:17.300 --> 20:22.100]  There used to be a blacklist of stolen mobile phones, and they all shared that.
[20:22.100 --> 20:26.000]  But they don't anymore because there's a profit motive here.
[20:26.140 --> 20:30.460]  The mobile carriers, they really profit handsomely from stolen phones.
[20:30.460 --> 20:42.060]  The first, the victim has to buy another phone from that carrier, ostensibly, and agree to sign an expensive new contract, which the mobile carrier profits from.
[20:42.200 --> 20:48.260]  And then the user of the stolen phone, they're going to start a new line of service, either with that or another carrier.
[20:48.680 --> 20:50.260]  It could be prepaid or otherwise.
[20:50.260 --> 20:52.180]  So they make more money that way.
[20:52.180 --> 20:54.880]  But I think there's a more sinister thing going on here.
[20:54.900 --> 21:07.020]  In addition, law enforcement agencies, they make extensive use of mobile phone network providers to do electronic surveillance on their targets who are likely to use stolen smartphones.
[21:07.420 --> 21:17.320]  So if stolen smartphones could no longer be used if the serial numbers were blocked, it would really hinder law enforcement agencies' electronic surveillance methods.
[21:17.320 --> 21:26.260]  And the mobile carriers, they profit very handsomely from providing these electronic service, electronic surveillance services to law enforcement agencies.
[21:26.420 --> 21:30.660]  I mean, just like $1,000 just to wiretap a phone for a day or two.
[21:30.860 --> 21:32.020]  It's a lot of money.
[21:32.140 --> 21:43.140]  So my guess is that both the mobile carriers and law enforcement agencies, they're quietly lobbying behind the scenes to prevent any new laws that would force mobile carriers to stop providing service to stolen phones.
[21:44.240 --> 21:45.740]  That's my conspiracy theory.
[21:45.740 --> 21:51.620]  But weren't we just discussing last week that the mobile carriers were saying that they were going to put the blacklist system back into effect?
[21:51.860 --> 21:52.920]  Well, I haven't seen it yet.
[21:53.780 --> 21:55.180]  Well, they said it would take a few months.
[21:55.440 --> 21:56.580]  Yeah, well, we'll see.
[21:56.760 --> 21:58.280]  I think there's going to be all kinds of exceptions.
[21:58.300 --> 22:04.640]  And I would be surprised if it happened because there's just too much of a financial incentive for them to do it.
[22:04.760 --> 22:06.860]  And law enforcement agencies definitely don't want this.
[22:06.940 --> 22:08.680]  Yeah, now you're going on about this, Bernie.
[22:08.820 --> 22:13.780]  You said that law enforcement actually doesn't want cell phones disabled if they're stolen.
[22:13.780 --> 22:14.860]  Why would they not want that?
[22:14.860 --> 22:19.760]  Well, because criminals are going to want to use stolen phones for a variety of reasons.
[22:19.880 --> 22:23.820]  One, because they're free and easier to obtain with less money.
[22:24.320 --> 22:27.800]  And they're less traceable because they can just pop a prepaid SIM card in them.
[22:29.100 --> 22:31.020]  And law enforcement knows this.
[22:31.020 --> 22:38.400]  So they're going to target those phones, and they can find them using electronic equipment sold by companies like Harris Corporation.
[22:38.540 --> 22:43.920]  If they have visual surveillance on a target, they can tell what mobile phone that person is using.
[22:44.120 --> 22:53.360]  If it was a stolen phone, they would make it much harder for the law enforcement agencies to do electronic surveillance on the phone calls of their targets.
[22:53.360 --> 22:55.100]  So I don't think it's going to happen.
[22:55.440 --> 22:56.160]  It's incredible.
[22:56.280 --> 23:01.920]  Next, they'll be handing out guns to drug runners so that they can track them down in crimes in the future.
[23:02.140 --> 23:02.880]  It actually happened before.
[23:03.180 --> 23:03.700]  Yes, I know.
[23:04.160 --> 23:04.820]  Well, okay.
[23:04.880 --> 23:07.160]  Here's something that's happening now as well.
[23:07.160 --> 23:10.940]  People are speaking out against various threats to the Internet.
[23:11.360 --> 23:14.200]  One of them is a multi-billionaire.
[23:14.640 --> 23:23.860]  The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the Internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
[23:24.020 --> 23:32.580]  In an interview with The Guardian, Brin warned that there are very powerful forces that have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world.
[23:32.720 --> 23:34.840]  I am more worried than I have been in the past.
[23:34.840 --> 23:35.740]  It's scary.
[23:35.740 --> 23:41.700]  And when Sergey Brin says that, I think it's worth taking note because he does know of what he speaks.
[23:41.880 --> 23:58.660]  The threat to the freedom of the Internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of restrictive walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple,
[23:58.680 --> 24:02.640]  which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.
[24:02.640 --> 24:09.020]  Yeah, it seems like kind of a shot against the competitors a little bit, but I think there's a bit of truth there.
[24:09.160 --> 24:22.280]  The 38-year-old billionaire whose family fled anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union was widely regarded as having been the driving force behind Google's partial pullout from China back in the year 2010 over concerns about censorship and cyber attacks.
[24:22.280 --> 24:30.120]  He said five years ago, he did not believe China or any country could effectively restrict the Internet for long, but now says he has been proven wrong.
[24:30.280 --> 24:36.420]  I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle.
[24:36.420 --> 24:47.300]  And he said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran to censor and restrict use of the Internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple...
[24:47.300 --> 25:00.720]  Yes, you have Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Facebook, and Apple, the axis of evil there, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risk stifling innovation and balkanizing the web.
[25:01.160 --> 25:02.220]  Balkanizing the web.
[25:02.380 --> 25:03.760]  There's a lot to be lost, he said.
[25:03.760 --> 25:09.120]  For example, all the information in apps, that data is not crawlable by web crawlers.
[25:09.320 --> 25:10.400]  You can't search it.
[25:11.160 --> 25:20.200]  His criticism of Facebook is likely to be controversial, with the social network approaching, oh, an estimated, what, $100 billion flotation, whatever that is.
[25:20.380 --> 25:24.280]  It means they're going to make an initial public stock offering.
[25:24.400 --> 25:24.780]  Oh, boy.
[25:25.420 --> 25:27.720]  Google's upstart rival has seen explosive growth.
[25:27.860 --> 25:29.180]  It has signed up half of Americans.
[25:29.480 --> 25:32.400]  Yes, half of us have signed up for this.
[25:32.400 --> 25:36.220]  With computer access and more than 800 million members worldwide.
[25:37.120 --> 25:43.360]  He said that he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook.
[25:43.600 --> 25:46.880]  You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive, he said.
[25:47.040 --> 25:52.700]  The kind of environment that we develop Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open.
[25:53.000 --> 25:55.900]  Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.
[25:56.480 --> 25:58.000]  So that's something to think about.
[25:58.180 --> 26:04.280]  I mean, yeah, this is attacking the competition a bit, but there's definitely truth in that.
[26:04.660 --> 26:05.940]  There's open versus closed.
[26:06.040 --> 26:08.540]  And I think we can tell the difference when something is restrictive.
[26:09.020 --> 26:14.280]  And there are a lot of rules when something is open, and you can create things in it.
[26:14.380 --> 26:18.800]  He's making me want to defend Facebook, which I really don't enjoy doing.
[26:18.800 --> 26:19.120]  Try it.
[26:19.260 --> 26:19.840]  It's fun.
[26:19.980 --> 26:20.680]  It's a good exercise.
[26:21.000 --> 26:22.040]  Say something good about Facebook.
[26:23.260 --> 26:24.320]  Their website's blue?
[26:25.260 --> 26:26.180]  No, that's not good.
[26:26.260 --> 26:26.720]  That's awful.
[26:26.800 --> 26:27.580]  What do you have against blue?
[26:28.320 --> 26:29.720]  Because it's the wrong kind of blue.
[26:29.820 --> 26:31.400]  A darker blue would be nice, but no.
[26:31.700 --> 26:32.920]  Their website is slow.
[26:33.000 --> 26:33.480]  It's kludgy.
[26:33.700 --> 26:35.140]  It's laid out all wrong.
[26:35.660 --> 26:35.980]  Sorry.
[26:37.680 --> 26:38.760]  They have a cool name.
[26:38.860 --> 26:39.440]  How about that?
[26:39.600 --> 26:40.980]  Although I would put the in front of it.
[26:41.000 --> 26:41.940]  I think that makes more sense.
[26:42.180 --> 26:43.240]  It was originally.
[26:43.800 --> 26:44.180]  Really?
[26:44.400 --> 26:44.580]  Yeah.
[26:44.860 --> 26:45.140]  Wow.
[26:45.240 --> 26:46.100]  I'm learning so much tonight.
[26:46.820 --> 26:50.260]  Now, okay, there's another dirty word that we have to say tonight.
[26:52.060 --> 26:53.160]  We talked about SOPA.
[26:53.240 --> 26:54.060]  We talked about PIPA.
[26:54.160 --> 26:55.680]  We have not talked about CISPA.
[26:56.320 --> 26:57.700]  Well, we must start.
[26:57.980 --> 26:59.800]  Okay, well, Tim Berners-Lee.
[27:00.100 --> 27:00.600]  Do you know that name?
[27:00.720 --> 27:04.360]  Tim Berners-Lee has way more credibility than anyone else that we've talked about.
[27:04.360 --> 27:04.840]  I was going to get to that.
[27:04.960 --> 27:07.340]  He invented the internet three decades ago, according to Forbes.
[27:07.860 --> 27:08.640]  Since then...
[27:08.640 --> 27:09.780]  He invented the web.
[27:10.820 --> 27:12.020]  You can take it up with Forbes.
[27:12.140 --> 27:12.460]  I will.
[27:12.520 --> 27:13.600]  Forbes claims he invented the internet...
[27:13.600 --> 27:14.400]  I'm going to write a letter.
[27:14.560 --> 27:15.220]  ...three decades ago.
[27:15.220 --> 27:16.360]  Didn't Al Gorin run the internet?
[27:17.240 --> 27:19.100]  I'm sure he has already written his letter.
[27:19.660 --> 27:30.120]  Since then, he's been an outspoken proponent of freedom and openness on the World Wide Web and chimed in during the fight over SOPA and PIPA to condemn what he saw as an attack on the founding principles of the internet.
[27:30.660 --> 27:37.540]  Now, in an interview with The Guardian, Berners-Lee is once again adding his voice to the debate over a controversial bill concerning security and the internet.
[27:37.540 --> 27:38.420]  And we told you.
[27:38.480 --> 27:40.100]  We told you something else was going to come down.
[27:40.100 --> 27:51.860]  And as soon as the SOPA and PIPA thing was over, they would try something else, albeit in a different manner, different subject, but basically the same theme of government control.
[27:52.380 --> 27:56.560]  This is CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
[27:57.100 --> 28:05.500]  Now, he says, It is threatening the rights of people in America and effectively rights everywhere because what happens in America tends to affect people all over the world.
[28:05.500 --> 28:11.340]  Even though the SOPA and PIPA Acts were stopped by huge public outcry, it's staggering how quickly the U.S.
[28:11.440 --> 28:14.680]  government has come back with a new, different threat to the rights of its citizens.
[28:14.940 --> 28:24.620]  Now, CISPA is mostly concerned with cooperation between private and government organizations in the sharing of information related to cybercrime and security.
[28:24.780 --> 28:33.680]  For supporters, CISPA is necessary legislation that will allow government agencies to adapt their services to the interconnected world of the 21st century.
[28:33.680 --> 28:41.320]  Now, protesters are worried about overstep, and they say that broad legislation could easily be used to bring draconian control to cyberspace.
[28:42.500 --> 28:48.160]  Now, there's all kinds of information about this, and we suggest looking on the internet to learn more about this.
[28:48.520 --> 28:49.480]  Here are the basics.
[28:49.580 --> 28:51.180]  This is according to PC World.
[28:51.740 --> 28:53.200]  CISPA would allow the U.S.
[28:53.300 --> 28:57.520]  government and private companies to communicate more freely about cybersecurity threat information.
[28:57.520 --> 29:06.180]  The intelligence community would be allowed to share threat details with private companies, and companies would be encouraged to share their own knowledge, though doing so would not be mandatory.
[29:06.460 --> 29:15.100]  Private companies would only be allowed to use information to protect themselves and their customers, not to gain a competitive advantage, and in doing so, would be protected from lawsuits.
[29:15.300 --> 29:18.760]  The information shared would be exempted from public disclosure.
[29:18.760 --> 29:23.420]  Translation, it would be secret, and they're immune from being prosecuted or sued for this.
[29:23.860 --> 29:29.280]  Now, groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union argue that CISPA is too broad.
[29:29.480 --> 29:37.400]  By using vague language, the EFF argues that companies could use the bill to filter content, monitor emails, and block access to websites.
[29:37.640 --> 29:48.440]  And although the bill has little to do with SOPA and PIPA, it does define intellectual property theft as a type of cyberattack, raising concerns that content owners could use the bill to censor websites.
[29:48.660 --> 29:52.340]  Critics also worry that the bill doesn't limit the type of information that can be shared.
[29:52.520 --> 30:04.740]  We just want people to know that Congress is on the verge of giving the government incredible new authorities to collect sensitive and personal internet information and emails, said a legislative counsel for the ACLU.
[30:04.860 --> 30:11.680]  The Sunlight Foundation notes that shared data between the government and businesses would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
[30:11.680 --> 30:17.620]  The FOIA is, in many ways, the fundamental safeguard for public oversight of government's activities.
[30:18.200 --> 30:23.540]  CISPA dismisses it entirely for the core activities of the newly proposed powers under the bill.
[30:24.580 --> 30:27.240]  So, yeah, it's something to be really concerned about.
[30:27.500 --> 30:31.260]  There's a page on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website.
[30:32.040 --> 30:38.160]  It's got a cyberspying.eff.org, and you'll see a whole big thing about CISPA there.
[30:38.160 --> 30:44.900]  A week of action against CISPA, in fact, because it's supposed to come up for a vote sometime next week in the House.
[30:45.300 --> 30:47.940]  And there are all kinds of things to worry about.
[30:48.100 --> 30:50.220]  So visit them and learn more about this.
[30:50.340 --> 31:00.860]  There's a fun tool on that website where you can send a Twitter message to your representative, if they're on Twitter, explaining what you don't want the government to be able to spy on you about.
[31:00.860 --> 31:06.620]  And EFF, on their Twitter feed, has been retweeting a lot of the best of these, and you should go read them.
[31:06.880 --> 31:10.320]  Do Congress people read Twitter messages to them?
[31:11.080 --> 31:12.480]  I know they can barely send them.
[31:12.640 --> 31:16.460]  I read the messages when they're interesting to Congress people.
[31:16.660 --> 31:19.480]  Right, but does Congress... well, go on the floor of Congress.
[31:19.680 --> 31:22.460]  I mean, it just seems really silly that this is how we're communicating.
[31:22.660 --> 31:23.920]  Do they read it when I write a letter?
[31:24.020 --> 31:24.860]  I don't think so either.
[31:25.060 --> 31:28.720]  At least there's a record of a letter being sent, like an actual letter being sent through the mail.
[31:28.720 --> 31:30.900]  Well, I just worry about the history.
[31:31.020 --> 31:33.400]  What post office do you use that keeps records?
[31:33.900 --> 31:36.320]  No, I'm saying when you send them a letter, they keep the letter.
[31:36.600 --> 31:37.460]  It's somewhere.
[31:38.120 --> 31:39.800]  I don't think they're keeping all your tweets.
[31:40.060 --> 31:40.820]  Do they keep the letter?
[31:41.060 --> 31:42.480]  Well, I would hope they do.
[31:42.780 --> 31:43.660]  I keep all my letters.
[31:44.040 --> 31:46.280]  Don't they just have some lackey read it and then they throw it out?
[31:46.500 --> 31:47.380]  Do they throw it out?
[31:47.540 --> 31:48.300]  Do they really throw it out?
[31:48.420 --> 31:49.900]  I know I never get a reply.
[31:50.460 --> 31:52.640]  Well, yeah, that's assumed.
[31:52.980 --> 31:56.360]  I know my representatives are always sending me letters and I throw them out.
[31:56.700 --> 31:57.720]  That's different, yeah.
[31:57.940 --> 31:58.520]  Bernie, go ahead.
[31:58.720 --> 32:04.580]  I'm always circumspect when I read the creative names of these bills that are proposed laws.
[32:04.780 --> 32:08.300]  In this case, CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
[32:08.520 --> 32:09.920]  You have to kind of read between the lines.
[32:10.380 --> 32:13.020]  Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
[32:13.860 --> 32:18.040]  The information they're sharing is all of our private information.
[32:18.040 --> 32:25.400]  They want to share it with law enforcement, ABCs and corporations without any kind of oversight.
[32:25.400 --> 32:32.140]  And protection is to protect corporate interests at the expense of all of us.
[32:32.140 --> 32:35.520]  So that's what the sharing and protection parts are about.
[32:35.780 --> 32:36.980]  What kind of information are we talking about?
[32:37.080 --> 32:39.900]  Give us an example of something that they might take an interest in.
[32:41.180 --> 32:43.980]  Any of the information that any of the...
[32:44.500 --> 32:48.740]  Your web search history, for instance, if they could get that information from Google.
[32:49.480 --> 32:52.480]  It could be the headers of your email.
[32:52.480 --> 32:58.400]  Email, who knows, even the contents of your email, depending on how they structure this.
[32:58.560 --> 33:01.640]  And what could prompt them to take this interest in the first place?
[33:01.740 --> 33:03.640]  What excuse could they use to say, we want this?
[33:03.720 --> 33:06.140]  Apparently, it does not even require probable cause.
[33:06.320 --> 33:11.540]  There's already laws in place for them to get electronic surveillance warrants.
[33:11.700 --> 33:13.100]  It's even though very weak.
[33:13.620 --> 33:18.520]  You know, electronic surveillance warrants are pretty easily obtained by law enforcement agencies.
[33:18.520 --> 33:24.860]  But in this case, with CISPA, there seems to be even less oversight and less judicial oversight, I should say.
[33:24.980 --> 33:28.700]  And they don't ever have to tell you they did it, and if you ask them, they don't have to even answer.
[33:28.780 --> 33:33.000]  Right, and you can't even file a FOIA request on these agencies saying, what exactly are you doing with this information?
[33:33.000 --> 33:33.640]  It's exempt.
[33:34.120 --> 33:41.720]  This is scarier than SOPA, and really, we should contact our legislators in the hope of...
[33:41.720 --> 33:47.360]  I don't know if we're going to get quite the bandwagon that we got with SOPA a few months ago.
[33:47.360 --> 33:49.160]  What, was that two months ago, was that?
[33:49.160 --> 33:55.960]  Yeah, but we were talking about this last year, saying that people don't know about this, and then a month later, everybody knew about this.
[33:55.960 --> 33:57.120]  So it's quite possible.
[33:57.380 --> 34:01.320]  The other thing, though, is that there is no Senate equivalent to CISPA, not yet anyway.
[34:01.480 --> 34:06.760]  This is a House bill, and there's nothing yet in the Senate, but that doesn't mean something won't happen in the Senate.
[34:06.760 --> 34:07.720]  I'm sure it will.
[34:08.000 --> 34:09.540]  And that's going to keep trying to do this.
[34:09.620 --> 34:10.140]  They always do.
[34:17.360 --> 34:25.180]  The next time around to do it in a more low-key manner, stop that sort of resentment from fomenting, and see if they could sneak it past all of us.
[34:25.280 --> 34:26.500]  Yeah, evil never sleeps.
[34:26.800 --> 34:27.340]  Not at all.
[34:27.440 --> 34:31.500]  They just regroup a little bit, and they'll be back when we don't expect it.
[34:31.720 --> 34:42.720]  Yeah, I mean, the unfortunate thing with the Internet is the fact that all of your data is traveling through various networks and at rest on various systems, and that's just the nature of things.
[34:43.640 --> 34:51.220]  But you kind of have to trust the companies that have the information and that pass it around that they're not going to do anything bad with it.
[34:51.300 --> 35:00.980]  But laws like this also kind of, even if the companies want to do the right thing, it may not be within their power to do so because the law dictates that they have to give it up.
[35:01.160 --> 35:08.920]  It's not the case that we have to trust the companies if we had a regulatory framework for privacy, which exists in some countries, but not the United States.
[35:09.880 --> 35:10.440]  All right.
[35:10.500 --> 35:14.100]  Well, this will be felt worldwide, as it always is.
[35:14.160 --> 35:14.500]  Go ahead, Bernie.
[35:14.840 --> 35:17.560]  I was just echoing what Mike said.
[35:17.600 --> 35:18.040]  It's true.
[35:18.160 --> 35:35.660]  We have very little in the way of a privacy infrastructure here that's mandated by law as opposed to some more progressive Western European countries and Scandinavian countries where there are actually laws in place, a lot of laws in place, to protect our...
[35:35.680 --> 35:38.040]  our privacy online and elsewhere.
[35:38.080 --> 35:41.500]  In the U.S., it seems to be sold to the highest bidder.
[35:42.740 --> 35:44.500]  But even in the case of...
[35:44.500 --> 35:54.080]  I'm saying that even in the case of companies that want to protect people's privacy, oftentimes it's not really their choice if the government comes in knocking with a warrant and says, give us this information.
[35:54.300 --> 36:01.720]  The most they can do, like in the case of Twitter last year, is to say, well, they came or we're going to try to fight this publicly.
[36:01.960 --> 36:06.300]  But in the end, they may not have a choice, even if they want to protect the privacy of their users.
[36:06.460 --> 36:09.200]  But at least speaking up, that gets the word out.
[36:09.300 --> 36:15.140]  When you keep things quiet and you're part of the conspiracy then, and nobody knows what's actually going on.
[36:15.380 --> 36:23.460]  And it's a good thing that Twitter did speak up that time for saying that certain demands are being made of them that they didn't really feel comfortable fulfilling.
[36:24.500 --> 36:28.620]  All right, well, this is going to continue, obviously, and keep checking the EFF website.
[36:28.760 --> 36:35.560]  Oh, and by the way, if you want to support EFF and get a ticket to the Hope Conference at the same time, April is the month to do that.
[36:35.860 --> 36:40.180]  Go to www.hope.net for every ticket sale this month.
[36:40.520 --> 36:43.680]  We are donating 10% to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[36:43.680 --> 36:48.940]  So you'll get a ticket to an amazing conference in July, and you'll be supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[36:49.120 --> 36:50.900]  So be sure to check that out.
[36:50.960 --> 36:52.420]  We're getting a number of people interested.
[36:52.420 --> 36:55.000]  And we're announcing new talks every day.
[36:55.420 --> 37:03.640]  Check the speaker section, and you'll see a list of, I think, some of the 25 to 30 talks that have been verified so far.
[37:03.740 --> 37:06.140]  We're going to have about 100 when all is said and done.
[37:06.640 --> 37:09.220]  And some of them are really amazing, right, Bernie?
[37:09.740 --> 37:10.840]  Not just some of them.
[37:10.940 --> 37:12.180]  I think they're all amazing.
[37:12.420 --> 37:13.160]  You're right, they are.
[37:13.340 --> 37:13.900]  They really are.
[37:14.220 --> 37:16.100]  I mean, Hope is so exciting.
[37:16.300 --> 37:21.220]  There is so much fascinating information being shared and disseminated at this conference.
[37:21.220 --> 37:23.300]  We can only do it every two years because it's so much work.
[37:23.440 --> 37:34.060]  But it's really worth checking out hope.net or following our tweets because there's some really excellent, lots of excellent talks coming down the pike.
[37:34.200 --> 37:39.640]  And we've got a, you know, we're only maybe a third or the fourth of the way through before we get all 100 or so.
[37:39.640 --> 37:49.300]  It's great to see the wide range of people that are submitting ideas for panels or lectures or just conversations with the audience.
[37:49.320 --> 38:03.460]  They're coming from all over the world and all over academia and social networking and corporations and governments, people from everywhere have something to say to the hacker world.
[38:04.200 --> 38:05.460]  And, you know, it's not too late.
[38:05.520 --> 38:10.120]  I think we, the call for papers is going to be open for, I think, at least another month.
[38:10.540 --> 38:12.900]  Probably not much more than that because it really is filling up.
[38:13.040 --> 38:15.460]  The address, speakers at hope.net.
[38:15.980 --> 38:17.200]  And that will...
[38:17.200 --> 38:23.280]  And the website for information, if you're interested in doing a talk and you want to get some guidelines, that would be...
[38:24.560 --> 38:26.380]  Oh, I didn't know that was a test.
[38:26.500 --> 38:28.780]  Okay, it's www.hope.net.
[38:29.160 --> 38:29.640]  Oh, yeah.
[38:29.700 --> 38:31.020]  And then you can click on speakers.
[38:31.340 --> 38:32.100]  You can do that.
[38:32.280 --> 38:33.280]  And then you can read all about that.
[38:33.360 --> 38:44.640]  And there's another link on that page with a lot of tips on how to craft your proposal for maximum chances of getting accepted because there's a few things you have to pay attention to, like any kind of contest.
[38:44.940 --> 38:49.040]  If you follow the rules the right way, you're much more likely to get in.
[38:49.160 --> 38:53.380]  And if you have any ideas about talks, send them to speakers at hope.net.
[38:53.520 --> 38:53.860]  Absolutely.
[38:54.100 --> 39:01.720]  And we will maybe, you know, if we know someone who was really up on that topic or somebody you recommend, let us know.
[39:01.920 --> 39:03.920]  Because, you know, we can't come up with all these ideas.
[39:04.060 --> 39:08.540]  And just because we do a call for papers doesn't mean that every good idea gets proposed to us.
[39:08.900 --> 39:12.820]  We want to reach out and find the best speakers on the most interesting topics.
[39:12.840 --> 39:15.940]  Yeah, we had Adam Savage a couple of conferences ago.
[39:16.020 --> 39:21.460]  And that came from a friend of ours in Australia who just said, hey, you know what, I can ask this guy to speak at your conference.
[39:21.820 --> 39:22.520]  And he did.
[39:22.520 --> 39:23.320]  And it happened.
[39:23.880 --> 39:24.680]  It wasn't us.
[39:24.760 --> 39:28.080]  It was somebody on the other side of the world that made that happen.
[39:28.080 --> 39:29.740]  So, yes, you can make something happen, too.
[39:29.960 --> 39:31.080]  Maybe you have a connection.
[39:31.240 --> 39:32.820]  Maybe you have an idea that we haven't thought of.
[39:32.960 --> 39:35.600]  We still have another keynote speaker to announce.
[39:35.900 --> 39:36.940]  That has not happened yet.
[39:36.940 --> 39:37.600]  We have the Yes Men.
[39:37.800 --> 39:39.460]  But there's going to be at least one more.
[39:39.480 --> 39:41.340]  And that's probably going to be announced sometime next month.
[39:41.640 --> 39:43.380]  So we're still open to ideas on that.
[39:43.500 --> 39:44.520]  It has not yet been finalized.
[39:44.660 --> 39:50.120]  And in addition to speakers, we have all kinds of projects that people can launch and be part of.
[39:50.860 --> 39:51.220]  Workshops.
[39:51.220 --> 39:51.560]  Yeah.
[39:51.840 --> 39:58.800]  Unlike most conferences, we're very much open to new things, ideas, and for you to take charge and run part of it yourself.
[39:59.160 --> 40:05.400]  So www.hope.net, the Hackers on Planet Earth website, with all kinds of information on Hope No.
[40:05.480 --> 40:06.280]  9 coming up.
[40:06.620 --> 40:06.940]  Okay.
[40:07.000 --> 40:08.160]  We're going to take phone calls in just a little bit.
[40:08.220 --> 40:09.440]  But let's get the debate started first.
[40:09.440 --> 40:11.380]  Because, yes, we always have to have a debate on this show.
[40:12.160 --> 40:12.720]  We don't.
[40:13.140 --> 40:13.920]  Yes, we do.
[40:14.140 --> 40:15.040]  We talked about this.
[40:16.260 --> 40:17.740]  We had some listener email.
[40:17.920 --> 40:19.420]  And I think that's a good way to start it off.
[40:19.580 --> 40:26.720]  And it's sort of a continuation of some of the things we were talking about last week concerning my problems listening to music.
[40:26.820 --> 40:27.460]  Well, not listening to music.
[40:27.580 --> 40:28.560]  I can do that easily.
[40:28.660 --> 40:31.380]  But getting it sometimes is a real pain in the ass.
[40:31.520 --> 40:34.600]  I was trying to download music legitimately.
[40:35.120 --> 40:36.780]  And I was told I wasn't allowed to.
[40:37.020 --> 40:38.140]  I was told it wasn't available.
[40:38.440 --> 40:39.420]  I had to buy the CD.
[40:39.600 --> 40:40.460]  I couldn't download it.
[40:40.560 --> 40:42.220]  I could download it if I was in a different country.
[40:42.220 --> 40:44.360]  But since I wasn't in that country, I wasn't allowed to download it.
[40:45.240 --> 40:46.540]  I tried to go through Apple.
[40:46.760 --> 40:48.860]  But Apple was trying to get me to join their cult.
[40:48.960 --> 40:50.020]  And I didn't feel like doing that.
[40:50.080 --> 40:52.080]  And it took a half hour just to get an email back from them.
[40:52.520 --> 40:55.080]  I just wanted to pay for music and listen to it.
[40:55.100 --> 40:57.680]  And I finally found a site where I could do that.
[40:58.240 --> 41:00.620]  Problem was, the site was in a different part of the world.
[41:00.780 --> 41:03.660]  And many of us are very suspicious of that site.
[41:03.720 --> 41:04.640]  I'm not suspicious of it.
[41:04.660 --> 41:05.480]  I'll say that right now.
[41:05.740 --> 41:07.400]  I just think the rules might be a little bit different.
[41:07.480 --> 41:09.800]  But here's what one of our readers or listeners said.
[41:09.800 --> 41:19.820]  After listening to last week's show regarding the website that I found called mp3million.com, I thought I would look for music from my favorite steampunk band, Abney Park.
[41:20.300 --> 41:22.300]  Sure enough, mp3million had their music.
[41:22.320 --> 41:23.500]  So I contacted the artist.
[41:24.240 --> 41:28.800]  And the response I got, well, here's what he said, first of all.
[41:29.440 --> 41:37.820]  He was writing to Captain Robert, just wondering if you would somehow eventually get royalties from this website's sales.
[41:37.920 --> 41:39.780]  And gave the link from mp3million.com.
[41:39.960 --> 41:41.440]  I can't figure out if it was legit.
[41:41.600 --> 41:42.380]  It certainly is cheap.
[41:42.500 --> 41:43.200]  Too cheap, perhaps.
[41:44.140 --> 41:47.720]  And then he got, well, it looks like a tweet back from Captain Robert.
[41:47.860 --> 41:51.280]  Captain was spelled wrong, but I guess that's because there's another Captain Robert who probably took that name.
[41:51.600 --> 41:54.860]  And he said, no, I don't.
[41:57.560 --> 41:59.120]  That was the answer.
[41:59.500 --> 42:04.580]  No, I guess the answer is, no, I don't get royalties from this website.
[42:05.400 --> 42:09.780]  And then this listener wrote to us saying, needless to say, I won't be buying my music from mp3million.
[42:09.780 --> 42:19.920]  You know, I asked for evidence, but one guy, Captain spelled wrong, Robert, saying, no, I don't get royalties.
[42:20.140 --> 42:22.800]  It's not really airtight evidence, you know?
[42:23.060 --> 42:31.640]  I mean, does every artist see every website that has their music and get a record of what kind of royalties they get?
[42:31.780 --> 42:33.400]  I did some research on this.
[42:33.620 --> 42:34.180]  Did some research.
[42:34.360 --> 42:39.280]  First, I went to mp3million.com, looked at their statement in one of their FAQs.
[42:39.780 --> 42:40.800]  A question there.
[42:41.160 --> 42:42.000]  Very good question.
[42:42.060 --> 42:42.860]  One we're asking right now.
[42:43.000 --> 42:44.020]  Is your website legal?
[42:44.400 --> 42:44.960]  Answer.
[42:45.080 --> 42:45.280]  Yes.
[42:45.380 --> 42:59.680]  The activity of mp3million.com is carried out according to the legislation of the license agreement number IT-02-1-11 of the Ukrainian public organization Avtor, issued for a Fridando limited service.
[43:00.740 --> 43:08.040]  mp3million.com pays full-scale authors' royalties to owners of pieces of music, trademarks, names, slogans, and other copyright objects used on the site.
[43:08.320 --> 43:11.860]  Any further distribution, resale, or broadcasting is prohibited.
[43:12.140 --> 43:12.860]  Next question.
[43:12.940 --> 43:15.420]  If your website is legal, why are your prices so low?
[43:15.660 --> 43:18.080]  Our company is registered outside the U.S.
[43:18.100 --> 43:19.640]  area to minimize the taxation.
[43:19.840 --> 43:22.740]  Also, we can offer such low prices due to guaranteed bulk purchases.
[43:23.120 --> 43:25.060]  Minimum deposit on our website is $15.
[43:26.080 --> 43:27.720]  Now, let me ask the folks in the studio.
[43:27.940 --> 43:30.300]  Is that enough to call your suspicions?
[43:30.680 --> 43:35.400]  I think that it's as legitimate as a tweet from a random person with captain spelled wrong.
[43:35.420 --> 43:40.060]  Now, what makes you so suspicious of this particular site?
[43:40.180 --> 43:41.640]  Is it because the prices are so low?
[43:41.700 --> 43:42.760]  Is it because it's in the Ukraine?
[43:42.900 --> 43:43.640]  What is it exactly?
[43:43.880 --> 43:46.060]  It all seems fishy to me.
[43:46.120 --> 43:47.100]  It just seems like a gray area.
[43:47.200 --> 43:51.600]  But I'm just saying that just because a website says that what it's doing is illegal doesn't make it true.
[43:51.600 --> 43:56.300]  True, but give me an example of a website you do think is legitimate.
[43:57.220 --> 43:57.900]  I'm just curious.
[43:57.900 --> 43:59.620]  Have you read the Pirate Bay is legal section?
[43:59.760 --> 44:02.040]  Because they claim to be operating under the law as well.
[44:02.180 --> 44:07.020]  And I have no problem with the Pirate Bay, but a lot of players in the U.S.
[44:07.160 --> 44:07.920]  media industry do.
[44:08.160 --> 44:09.420]  Well, law is open to interpretation.
[44:09.600 --> 44:13.460]  And the big players aren't the ones that get to say what the law is.
[44:13.480 --> 44:14.660]  It's the people in the end.
[44:14.840 --> 44:17.280]  I don't understand why you just didn't pirate this music.
[44:17.620 --> 44:19.300]  Because that's obviously piracy.
[44:19.360 --> 44:20.260]  I'm trying to pay for it.
[44:20.260 --> 44:21.360]  And I did pay for it.
[44:21.520 --> 44:23.460]  Now, I did some research on...
[44:23.460 --> 44:28.140]  And this comes from a website called informationisbeautiful.net, which is well worth looking at.
[44:28.200 --> 44:38.460]  What they do is they basically put into visualizations bits of data that are released to the public.
[44:38.460 --> 44:42.080]  And this is something that's really, really kind of complicated.
[44:43.100 --> 44:46.240]  Getting royalty information is a royal pain.
[44:46.520 --> 44:47.640]  It really is.
[44:47.800 --> 44:49.680]  That's probably why it's called royalties in the first place.
[44:51.320 --> 44:58.400]  It's basically, according to the site, it was incredibly difficult to research industry figures that are so hard to get a hold of.
[44:58.540 --> 44:59.880]  Some are even secret.
[45:01.200 --> 45:04.640]  Last.fm, for instance, their royalty and payment system is beyond comprehension.
[45:05.300 --> 45:09.860]  And if you can explain it to the person who runs informationisbeautiful.net, please send him an email because he definitely wants to know.
[45:10.060 --> 45:15.180]  But basically, there's a listing of various ways that music can be released.
[45:15.180 --> 45:18.240]  Now, you can press your own CDs, all right?
[45:18.340 --> 45:21.020]  And that basically... and you sell it for $9.99.
[45:21.620 --> 45:25.920]  And if you are the artist, you make back $8 because you're making it yourself.
[45:26.080 --> 45:29.160]  You just pay for, I guess, this CD and whatever distribution.
[45:30.900 --> 45:38.640]  If you have a retail album, a retail album sold in a store, then...
[45:38.640 --> 45:41.000]  And you have a good deal with your record company.
[45:41.420 --> 45:43.260]  That sells for $9.99 in the store.
[45:43.260 --> 45:45.820]  However, the label gets $1 and you get $1.
[45:46.600 --> 45:48.840]  That's what you get from a $9.99 price there.
[45:49.200 --> 45:50.240]  Where do the other $8 go?
[45:50.360 --> 45:51.120]  That's a good question.
[45:51.420 --> 45:52.500]  Distribution, stores.
[45:53.260 --> 46:01.900]  But if you have a bad deal, though, if you have a bad deal and you sell that for $9.99, the record company gets $1.70 and you get $0.30.
[46:03.260 --> 46:03.700]  Yeah.
[46:03.880 --> 46:04.140]  Now, okay.
[46:04.280 --> 46:05.060]  Now, downloading.
[46:05.420 --> 46:05.860]  Downloading.
[46:06.540 --> 46:07.360]  What would you think?
[46:07.440 --> 46:09.220]  $9.99 to download an album.
[46:10.420 --> 46:12.560]  The record label makes $5.35.
[46:12.560 --> 46:13.680]  You make $0.94.
[46:14.200 --> 46:15.240]  In other words, you make less.
[46:15.240 --> 46:22.320]  You make less from something that's downloaded and the record company makes much, much more and there's no record to produce or make.
[46:22.460 --> 46:23.620]  It's all online.
[46:24.400 --> 46:25.440]  MP3 download.
[46:26.220 --> 46:27.680]  Let's look at Amazon.
[46:28.100 --> 46:28.700]  $0.99.
[46:29.060 --> 46:31.000]  That's what we're expected to pay per song.
[46:31.300 --> 46:34.540]  Of that $0.99, the record company gets $0.53.
[46:34.540 --> 46:36.400]  $0.99, the artist gets $0.99.
[46:37.540 --> 46:39.600]  So it's about, I mean, it's the same percentages.
[46:39.900 --> 46:40.040]  Yeah.
[46:40.120 --> 46:44.560]  And what I wound up paying to this Ukrainian site was something like $0.14 per song.
[46:45.420 --> 46:46.300]  So, you know...
[46:46.300 --> 46:47.200]  So you're saying the artist got...
[46:47.200 --> 46:51.580]  I don't know what the artist got, but it sure doesn't seem like the artist is getting much no matter what.
[46:51.780 --> 46:55.880]  Now, we would consider a site like Spotify to be legitimate, correct?
[46:56.220 --> 46:56.940]  I wouldn't.
[46:57.120 --> 46:57.480]  You wouldn't?
[46:57.540 --> 46:57.720]  Okay.
[46:57.720 --> 46:59.260]  No, because of what you're about to say.
[46:59.440 --> 46:59.660]  Yes.
[46:59.660 --> 47:09.440]  What I'm about to say is that the artist per track makes 0.00029 cents, or I guess that's dollars.
[47:10.100 --> 47:10.220]  Yeah.
[47:10.440 --> 47:10.900]  Per play.
[47:11.020 --> 47:12.180]  2,000th of a cent.
[47:13.080 --> 47:13.440]  Yeah.
[47:13.720 --> 47:14.960]  2.9,000th of a cent.
[47:15.040 --> 47:15.640]  Let's not exaggerate.
[47:15.760 --> 47:16.160]  Oh, 2,000th of a cent.
[47:16.260 --> 47:16.400]  Yeah.
[47:16.640 --> 47:21.080]  Probably not per track, though, per play, I would assume, because Spotify is a streaming user.
[47:21.180 --> 47:23.600]  It's a subscription service, so you don't actually get the song.
[47:23.600 --> 47:23.740]  Right.
[47:23.740 --> 47:32.760]  Yeah, but to get up to those 10 cents from however many thousandth of a cent, you have to play a song far more than I ever play any music I've ever bought.
[47:32.760 --> 47:37.100]  You have to put it on repeat and keep playing it somehow just to rank up the...
[47:37.100 --> 47:43.420]  The nasty part about this, too, though, is that the deal that Spotify has with the labels is also equally bad for Spotify.
[47:43.680 --> 47:44.060]  They don't...
[47:44.060 --> 47:52.440]  I mean, the way that they have to pay it is it's usually something like there's some minimum amount, or it's based on the number of plays, or...
[47:53.060 --> 47:53.460]  Yeah.
[47:53.760 --> 47:55.500]  They don't get much out of it, either.
[47:55.720 --> 47:57.940]  My point is, the artist is getting screwed no matter what.
[47:58.160 --> 48:06.380]  So to say that they're not getting anything from a site that's on a different part of the planet and costs less than what these people are charging, I don't know.
[48:06.440 --> 48:07.500]  I don't know how real it is.
[48:07.620 --> 48:09.880]  I'm looking for information, actual evidence.
[48:10.020 --> 48:10.700]  I have not seen it.
[48:10.980 --> 48:13.820]  All I've seen is suspicion, and I think we can be suspicious of everybody.
[48:14.100 --> 48:14.640]  Check this out.
[48:14.860 --> 48:15.880]  Amazon.com.
[48:15.880 --> 48:18.140]  I looked up the Nirvana album in utero.
[48:18.560 --> 48:22.440]  To buy the CD costs $4.99 to buy the CD.
[48:22.680 --> 48:25.160]  To download the CD, $9.49.
[48:25.660 --> 48:26.480]  Almost double.
[48:26.800 --> 48:33.960]  How is it possible that it costs double to get inferior quality, because the MP3 is certainly not as good as the CD, and you don't even get the CD?
[48:34.540 --> 48:37.200]  And do you think the artist gets that extra money?
[48:37.260 --> 48:37.680]  No, they don't.
[48:37.720 --> 48:40.660]  No, I do not think Kurt Cobain gets any money when you buy that CD.
[48:41.360 --> 48:46.420]  Yes, you know Kurt Cobain, even if he was alive, would not be considered the owner anyway.
[48:46.540 --> 48:57.660]  I think the difference, though, is that with that, the price of the MP3 album is fixed to a certain amount, whereas the price of the CD is probably based on supply and demand, right?
[48:58.040 --> 48:59.120]  Yeah, but here's the thing.
[48:59.120 --> 49:03.460]  I could buy the CD, I could rip the CD, then I could resell it as a used CD.
[49:03.540 --> 49:07.380]  Is that legal for me to sell a used CD, because the artist isn't making any money then?
[49:08.220 --> 49:11.160]  Isn't there a service we discussed where you could sell used MP3s, too?
[49:11.320 --> 49:12.500]  Used MP3s.
[49:12.660 --> 49:13.380]  Wow, that's something.
[49:13.580 --> 49:14.640]  Here's another example of this.
[49:14.780 --> 49:27.600]  Jello Biafra, his CD set, Become the Media, which has excerpts from one of the HOPE conferences, you can buy that for $18.73, or you can download it for $19.98.
[49:28.720 --> 49:32.400]  I'm sure we can get Jello on, and he can tell us how much he makes from all that.
[49:32.560 --> 49:33.960]  What if you buy it from his website?
[49:33.960 --> 49:36.520]  I don't know, I just went to Amazon.
[49:37.100 --> 49:40.220]  And you can also buy the CD used for as little as $0.98.
[49:41.060 --> 49:48.840]  So it's just incredible to me that something that is online sells for so much more, is not the same quality, and the artist makes less.
[49:49.040 --> 49:50.220]  I have a question, though.
[49:50.300 --> 49:59.800]  If you're legitimately trying to research this MP3 site, did you try to find out more about that license that they claim to have, and about the organization that they got it from?
[49:59.800 --> 50:02.460]  I try, but it's hard to look up Ukrainian laws.
[50:02.780 --> 50:05.180]  So if people are in the Ukraine, please...
[50:05.740 --> 50:10.080]  What I basically have thought throughout all this, this site has been up for years.
[50:10.460 --> 50:14.060]  The United States is very good at shutting down sites that they say are doing illegal things.
[50:14.480 --> 50:19.900]  How is a site able to survive so blatantly unless they did find a loophole?
[50:19.960 --> 50:23.480]  Maybe you should contact someone at the RIAA and ask them if the site's legal.
[50:23.480 --> 50:28.240]  Yeah, maybe ask them to shut it down then, because I'll rat them out.
[50:28.300 --> 50:30.420]  If it's legitimate, then you shouldn't have any concern.
[50:30.820 --> 50:31.060]  Mm-hmm.
[50:31.480 --> 50:37.280]  Well, I just, you know, like I said last week, it's really not up to me to be the cop here, but...
[50:37.280 --> 50:38.420]  I didn't say you should be the cop.
[50:38.520 --> 50:42.020]  I said you should contact them and ask if it's legal or not.
[50:42.260 --> 50:43.260]  I think it is legal.
[50:43.560 --> 50:43.800]  I think it...
[50:43.800 --> 50:46.040]  But if you suspect something, give them a call.
[50:46.200 --> 50:47.020]  I'm not...
[50:47.020 --> 50:51.100]  Yeah, far be it for me to question Captain Robert, because, you know, I'm just a regular Robert without rank, but...
[50:51.100 --> 50:54.440]  I just give the phone number, 212-209-2900, where you have a few minutes for phone calls.
[50:54.580 --> 51:00.960]  But the right situations with artists and their music online are just so incredibly convoluted and weird.
[51:01.080 --> 51:10.500]  I mean, one of my favorite bands, I saw them get onto YouTube a few years ago and put up some of their own classic music videos and then get takedown notices from their record company for putting up their videos.
[51:10.680 --> 51:10.980]  Exactly, yes.
[51:11.800 --> 51:12.160]  And...
[51:12.160 --> 51:23.160]  The best way to do it is what Radiohead did, where they basically put their own album up and asked people to pay whatever they could afford or what they thought it was worth, and they made millions of dollars, because that's what happens.
[51:23.160 --> 51:25.300]  When people support you, they actually do support you.
[51:25.300 --> 51:30.140]  When they know the money is going to you and not to all these executives that had nothing to do with anything.
[51:30.880 --> 51:35.560]  So I think that's really the future of that business, of publishing, of film, just about everything.
[51:35.560 --> 51:36.700]  It's in the hands of people.
[51:36.840 --> 51:38.980]  Okay, let's take some phone calls in the few minutes we have left.
[51:39.340 --> 51:39.840]  And good evening.
[51:39.960 --> 51:40.820]  You're on Off the Hook.
[51:40.820 --> 51:52.960]  I want to thank you guys for raising this discussion, because I'm an independent artist, and we've really been undermined, despite all the freedoms that are available to us through the internet.
[51:53.060 --> 52:02.900]  What you have now is a lot of people who are, you know, very well-developed in terms of their online profile and actually appear to be doing a lot better than they are.
[52:03.260 --> 52:09.700]  They have, you know, multiple webpages and multiple places where you can buy the album.
[52:09.700 --> 52:12.000]  But again, they're not making any money.
[52:12.160 --> 52:16.360]  And I think there needs to be a culture of support that's generated.
[52:16.620 --> 52:29.080]  The same way we support institutions like BAI, we need to understand that independent artists need some basic support to create the work that, you know, we all need to hear to keep us inspired.
[52:29.360 --> 52:32.180]  So thank you guys for raising this discussion.
[52:32.600 --> 52:33.140]  Yeah, absolutely.
[52:33.400 --> 52:45.520]  And of course, as an independent artist, I'm sure you're aware, too, that it's very much in the interest of the big record companies to try and keep things like that down, to try and keep the independent artists down as much as they can, because they still want to be the ones in control.
[52:45.720 --> 52:49.900]  They still want to be the ones who get to decide who has albums out, who's an artist, who's not.
[52:50.180 --> 52:56.960]  Who gets played on the radio, who gets billing in the concert venues that are owned by the same people.
[52:57.200 --> 52:57.500]  Right.
[52:57.600 --> 53:00.880]  And that whole business model does not apply anymore in today's technological reality.
[53:01.080 --> 53:02.040]  And that frightens them.
[53:02.140 --> 53:02.720]  It really does.
[53:02.720 --> 53:04.380]  It's, everything's been turned on its head.
[53:04.760 --> 53:08.340]  And I think we'll never have a better chance to take control of these things.
[53:08.760 --> 53:09.360]  Let's take another phone call.
[53:09.440 --> 53:09.700]  Good evening.
[53:09.820 --> 53:10.560]  You're on Off the Hook.
[53:12.660 --> 53:13.060]  Hello?
[53:13.380 --> 53:13.860]  Yes, speak up.
[53:14.260 --> 53:16.260]  Yeah, I have Tom from the Bronx here.
[53:16.540 --> 53:26.740]  And I want to say that the television station you mentioned earlier, that's just like WBAI radio, a bit, or very much.
[53:26.840 --> 53:27.600]  In Philadelphia, yes.
[53:27.700 --> 53:32.640]  Yeah, well, maybe WBAI radio should try to connect with them some way.
[53:33.140 --> 53:35.920]  It's, if we can figure out how to do that, it's a possibility.
[53:36.080 --> 53:36.360]  Why not?
[53:36.600 --> 53:36.780]  Yeah.
[53:37.500 --> 53:40.500]  Bernie, does that station have Democracy Now!
[53:40.560 --> 53:41.200]  on it, by any chance?
[53:41.340 --> 53:41.980]  W-I-B-E?
[53:42.180 --> 53:42.380]  Yeah.
[53:42.600 --> 53:43.360]  They used to.
[53:43.500 --> 53:49.460]  You know, I don't, I haven't actually watched television for several years in my home since it went digital.
[53:49.460 --> 53:50.400]  It's my form of protest.
[53:51.280 --> 53:53.360]  But I believe they did have it at one time.
[53:53.480 --> 53:57.080]  Wait, your form of protest is just to not turn on a TV at all because it went digital.
[53:57.300 --> 53:57.780]  That's right.
[53:57.940 --> 54:00.460]  I know it sounds crazy, but I just, I got out of the habit.
[54:00.580 --> 54:00.820]  You know what?
[54:00.820 --> 54:01.500]  I just turned it off.
[54:01.640 --> 54:02.240]  You know what it was?
[54:02.380 --> 54:09.080]  I turned off my TV when it went digital to see what all the people were going through who didn't, who couldn't afford a digital converter.
[54:09.360 --> 54:09.920]  Wait, let me guess.
[54:09.920 --> 54:15.240]  You heard birds chirping and you saw the fields in front of you and you just sort of pranced outside and you never went back in.
[54:15.240 --> 54:21.340]  I got so used to having all this wonderful extra spare time in the day that I just stopped watching it because it was wonderful.
[54:21.900 --> 54:22.940]  He lives in Philadelphia.
[54:22.940 --> 54:23.780]  Those weren't birds.
[54:24.740 --> 54:26.000]  No, there are birds in Philly.
[54:26.220 --> 54:26.840]  Lots of birds.
[54:26.940 --> 54:29.180]  You know, people in Philadelphia can send emails just like everybody else.
[54:29.580 --> 54:29.900]  There's red-wing blackbirds.
[54:29.900 --> 54:30.900]  Yeah, they're going to do that.
[54:31.020 --> 54:32.360]  OTH at 2600.com.
[54:32.560 --> 54:33.160]  Let's take another phone call.
[54:33.220 --> 54:33.480]  Good evening.
[54:33.600 --> 54:34.260]  You're on Off the Hook.
[54:35.560 --> 54:36.120]  Speak up.
[54:37.040 --> 54:37.400]  Yeah.
[54:37.740 --> 54:38.420]  Hi, what's on your mind?
[54:39.540 --> 54:40.500]  That's RTTV.
[54:40.780 --> 54:43.740]  It's the same TV station Alex Jones is on.
[54:44.280 --> 54:44.680]  Okay.
[54:44.980 --> 54:45.280]  All right.
[54:45.340 --> 54:46.860]  Well, you sound like you've discovered something there.
[54:47.000 --> 54:47.720]  I don't know.
[54:47.840 --> 54:51.020]  I've never seen Alex Jones on Russia Today, but I wouldn't doubt it.
[54:51.060 --> 54:52.080]  They have all kinds of interesting things.
[54:52.360 --> 54:55.760]  That channel, by the way, it is run by the Russian government.
[54:56.400 --> 54:57.800]  Let's not kid ourselves.
[54:58.460 --> 55:03.400]  So you are seeing flagrantly anti-American propaganda all the time.
[55:03.580 --> 55:04.500]  But you know what?
[55:05.180 --> 55:08.340]  We're seeing flagrantly pro-American propaganda all the other time.
[55:08.420 --> 55:11.220]  So balance it out and make your own mind up.
[55:11.480 --> 55:14.820]  The New York Times coverage of protest movement in Russia is very good.
[55:14.960 --> 55:18.840]  And Russia Today's coverage of Occupy Wall Street is very good.
[55:19.040 --> 55:19.180]  Exactly, yes.
[55:19.180 --> 55:20.660]  I just think they should really switch.
[55:20.660 --> 55:21.960]  It would make a lot more sense.
[55:22.120 --> 55:32.600]  Well, maybe one of those pirate broadcasters can switch the two lines where Russia Today all of a sudden comes out over CBS or something and people see a whole different perspective and vice versa.
[55:33.000 --> 55:33.920]  We're learning that way.
[55:34.040 --> 55:38.540]  Well, maybe it would be nicer if neither had a bias and just reported the news as it was.
[55:38.720 --> 55:40.300]  Yeah, you think that's ever possible.
[55:40.700 --> 55:41.760]  I'm just saying...
[55:41.760 --> 55:42.860]  Give me an example of somebody who...
[55:42.860 --> 55:45.080]  Better than them just switching, you know...
[55:45.080 --> 55:46.260]  Even the BBC is biased.
[55:46.540 --> 55:47.500]  The Associated Press is biased.
[55:47.600 --> 55:48.340]  Everyone's got a bias.
[55:48.380 --> 55:49.040]  Everyone's biased.
[55:49.480 --> 55:53.040]  It might as well be a flagrant bias so that we can at least recognize what it is.
[55:53.240 --> 55:53.780]  And avoid it.
[55:54.040 --> 55:54.440]  Good evening.
[55:54.540 --> 55:55.080]  You're on Off the Hook.
[55:56.480 --> 55:57.000]  Speak up.
[55:57.000 --> 55:57.360]  Go ahead.
[56:08.300 --> 56:09.220]  Tunes takes $0.50.
[56:09.780 --> 56:12.200]  It's $0.99 per tune.
[56:12.520 --> 56:12.880]  Okay.
[56:13.180 --> 56:14.280]  iTunes takes $0.50.
[56:15.380 --> 56:18.120]  CD Baby takes $0.09 and I get $0.41.
[56:18.740 --> 56:20.180]  Yeah, I have CD Baby on here.
[56:20.360 --> 56:21.340]  Well, it's close.
[56:21.560 --> 56:29.200]  According to MP3 Download via iTunes, you'll get back $0.57 and without iTunes, you'll go back $0.74.
[56:29.960 --> 56:32.040]  So, yeah, I guess it's something like that.
[56:32.120 --> 56:34.020]  But again, you're going directly to them.
[56:34.100 --> 56:35.900]  If you were going through a record company, it would be very different.
[56:35.900 --> 56:36.540]  That's right.
[56:36.740 --> 56:44.960]  It's the artists that are actually signed to bigger contracts, have a lot more issues in terms of getting paid for their recorded music.
[56:45.320 --> 56:51.620]  And the way that artists are making money now is live gigs, basically.
[56:51.620 --> 56:52.700]  Yes, that's true.
[56:52.720 --> 56:55.680]  And if you're able to perform live, I guess that's a good thing.
[56:55.700 --> 56:57.280]  If you're not, then I don't know.
[56:57.420 --> 57:00.180]  You have to find some other way to generate income.
[57:00.200 --> 57:05.740]  But I think in most cases, getting the music out there is important.
[57:05.900 --> 57:10.060]  And if people are listening to it, then more people are probably going to buy it at some point.
[57:10.220 --> 57:11.760]  So getting it out there is the first step.
[57:11.940 --> 57:15.400]  I'd love to talk about this more, but we're out of time yet again.
[57:15.620 --> 57:17.300]  It's amazing how quickly these hours go.
[57:17.960 --> 57:20.200]  Anything we have to announce for this week coming up?
[57:21.040 --> 57:21.440]  No?
[57:21.680 --> 57:21.940]  Okay.
[57:22.440 --> 57:23.040]  Well, we'll be back.
[57:23.160 --> 57:23.820]  Bernie hung up.
[57:23.900 --> 57:28.920]  Okay, we'll be back next week at the same time with all kinds of other fun things.
[57:29.120 --> 57:31.140]  Write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[57:31.200 --> 57:31.280]  Rob?
[57:31.480 --> 57:33.040]  Tomorrow is National High Five Day.
[57:33.580 --> 57:34.060]  All right.
[57:34.200 --> 57:35.680]  Well, give a high five to somebody you know.
[57:35.840 --> 57:36.900]  We'll see you next time.
[57:37.560 --> 57:37.820]  Good night.
[01:00:40.490 --> 01:00:40.810]  Yeah!
[01:00:41.850 --> 01:00:43.890]  It's WBAI New York 99.5 FM.