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The time is 8 o'clock.
Time once again for another exciting edition of Off The Hook.
And a very good evening to everybody, the program is Off The Hook, Emmanuel Goldstein
here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
And Alex.
Good evening.
Wait a minute, hold on.
Try that again, Alex.
That's better.
Yeah, we missed you last week.
I missed you guys.
I think we all missed each other.
But we're back now, and we have a full hour to talk about the news of the week and technological
developments and things like that, good news, bad news, whatever we have.
And let's start with something that's a bit disturbing, and that is something concerning
Amazon.
No, not that story.
The story of them kicking all unauthorized Apple refurbishers off of Amazon Marketplace.
Rob, I know you've been bringing this story to our attention.
What does this mean?
Well, for those unfamiliar, Amazon Marketplace is basically an open marketplace where people
who have stuff can list that stuff for sale and then ship it either directly to the purchaser
or to Amazon or whatever.
Anyway, you can sell stuff on Amazon.com from your little shop.
But Apple has an agreement with Amazon now that's going to prevent people from being
able to sell refurbished Apple products.
Now, in this country, we have something called the first sale doctrine, which I'm sure Alex
can tell us more about.
But the long and the short of it is that if you have a thing, you're able to resell that
thing.
You're able to-
You have a thing.
I like that.
Okay.
If you have a thing, you're able to resell that thing.
You're able to sell it on in whatever fashion you manage to.
But Amazon, because of its power in the marketplace, is basically going beyond that, preventing
you from doing that legal thing with their site.
They have a deal with five, I think, companies that are probably large amounts of money or
changing hands.
But only those five companies are going to be able to refurbish Apple products for use
on the site.
Okay.
Let me just ask a question.
Actually, both of you.
It's not illegal for people to go and fix Apple products on their own, is it?
Not necessarily.
No.
But it could void warranties of newer Apple products, though.
But beyond that, there's a software kill switch in newer Apple products, which prevents people,
most hobbyists, from being able to repair something because you need to then authorize
it through Apple's proprietary servers.
And if that's not done, the device will be a brick.
Wow.
Why do people still buy Apple?
I don't understand this.
It's such a hostile way of treating the people who are loyal to you to do this kind of thing
to them.
I don't get it.
Well, I think that's part of the problem here, is that the newer Apple models of laptops,
et cetera, that have come out are missing a lot of things that we would ordinarily consider
to be necessary for interoperability.
Things like USB ports, right?
I mean, HDMI ports, the things that you want on a laptop so that you can use it to give
a presentation, for connecting to the larger monitors.
It's just the way in which they have systematically eliminated a lot of functions that are ordinarily
associated with laptops, I think has become a big problem for Apple for their current
line, the current models.
So for people like me, I recently bought a brand, well, not a brand new, it was a refurbished
from Amazon laptop by Apple.
Keep the receipt.
It'll be worth something someday.
Seriously.
Tell me about it.
But I purchased a 2015 model.
And actually, after laborious research with Voltaire, by the way, about which model we
should get based on the needs of our firm, we decided to go with a refurbished 2015 laptop
from Amazon.
And it came perfectly, there's a tiny little nick on it, but it's a beast of a machine.
It works.
I can put everything I want on it.
I would never get one of these newer lines.
And I think that this is Apple's push now, you know, because I think a lot of consumers
are opting for the older lines and not buying the newer stuff that they want to try to eliminate
the ability for these sellers, these smaller refurbishment sellers to actually have a marketplace
to sell their goods.
You're saying this is a result of Apple's ineptitude in marketing new products that
Amazon is helping them by basically banning people from trying to refurbish their older
products, which people prefer.
Yes.
That's what you're saying.
Yeah.
Apple.
I'm sorry.
Amazon agreed to this deal.
It was a foreseeable and intentional consequence, I think, of the particular deal that they
struck.
You know, when you said Apple and then Amazon, I just had a vision that Apple and Amazon
are going to be the same at some point.
Oh, God.
They're going to merge.
One's going to buy the other.
I could see it happening.
You never know.
Wow.
The thing with this, too, is that now that Apple has this deal in place with Amazon,
maybe we'll freak out about it now, but I'm sure the grumbling will eventually die down
and they'll just go ahead with it without a problem as these things do.
And then who is Apple going to next want that agreement with?
Will it be eBay?
Will it be whatever other behemoth they can get hold of and decide, bang goes the law,
we want you to enforce our rules instead.
And repairability, or reparability, depending on how you want to say it, has always been
a very strong element of computers since home computers started being a thing.
I'm using a smartphone right now that I've replaced the motherboard in and gone through
like three different batteries.
Hey, my first computer was the HeathKids Z100, which I built myself.
Exactly.
And that's something that people who have hobbies like ours or people who just want
to save a little money depend on to get maybe older generation stuff at a better deal or
be able to keep using a thing if it breaks.
And I think this is very dangerous because it really takes a lot of our options away.
It's like the John Deere tractor thing where you can't fix it yourself now without John
Deere's own software.
You know, you're not buying a thing anymore.
You're buying the right to hold on to a thing until the people who own the thing tell you
you can't anymore.
Well, now, people who have been selling these product services on Amazon have gotten an
email that basically says, or actually says, as part of a new agreement with Apple, we
are working with a select group of authorized resellers to offer an expanded selection of
Apple and Beats products, including new releases in Amazon stores.
You notice how they always make it sound like they're actually expanding and doing more
things.
You are receiving this message because you are currently selling or have previously sold
Apple or Beats products.
Your existing offers for those products will soon be removed from Amazon's online store
in the United States.
Please contact Apple if you would like to apply to become an authorized reseller on
Amazon.
It's interesting, the line, in the United States, does that mean it's not happening
in Canada?
I'm curious what people in Canada have gotten.
Well, the expression of one thing is usually to the exclusion of others.
It's a canon of statutory interpretation.
Now, what's involved in becoming an authorized reseller?
Are they fairly permissive as far as giving out licenses or whatever to become an official
authorized reseller, or is that something that's pretty much exclusive?
My understanding of this is that it's actually extremely difficult to become an authorized
reseller.
If you think about just New York as a marketplace, there are very few authorized Apple resellers
in the city of New York.
One of which actually just closed down, I think about a year and a half ago, TechServe
on 23rd Street was a huge Apple reseller and they did repairs and they were pretty
much known throughout the five boroughs as the place to go if you wanted your Apple laptop
repaired or you wanted to buy something that was refurbished.
But they're gone.
They were gigantic.
They were authorized or unauthorized?
They were authorized.
They were an authorized reseller.
But I think there was Mike's TechShop, maybe the only other one in the city perhaps.
But there's very, very few.
The point I'm trying to make is it's very difficult and there's very few.
And this is going to severely limit customer choice when it comes to purchasing Apple products.
That's a big problem.
And to go back to what you were saying earlier too, when we power on these laptops these
days, the kids that buy them, the college kids, high school kids that have them, like
you said, I can remember the model of the first computer.
You had the Heathkid?
Heathkid, yeah.
Heathkit.
Oh, Heathkit.
I hear that back too.
I hear that.
I hear Heathkit products again.
I'm not surprised.
So that's good news.
But yes, it's a magical machine.
My first computer was an XT that ran at 4 megahertz, 640K conventional memory with a
30 megabyte hard drive.
And I spent the entire summer taking that thing apart.
Dual processors.
8085 and 8088.
There we go.
All right.
It ran MS-DOS 1.0.
Wow.
Beat that, if you will.
Wow.
Yeah.
I was on MS-DOS 3.1 when I started.
Monochrome screen, all in one, and a keyboard that you would dream of, you know, that typewriter
keyboard with, you know, indented.
Clickety-clack?
Yeah, clickety-clack.
Oh, it's great.
That sounds amazing.
It's built in.
I had CGA, so, you know, that was light years after you.
But in any event, the point I'm making here is that you should be able to rip these things
apart because you don't want to look at technology as magic.
You want to understand what's going on underneath the hood.
People doing this and then systematically removing all the refurbished sellers is really
doing, I think, a number on our ability to actually understand technology.
I mean, they want to hire programmers.
They're constantly hiring people.
But how are we going to teach the next generation if we can't rip these things apart?
If the kids can't, like I did, spend the entire summer indoors breaking things, putting it
back together?
It just doesn't exist anymore.
I notice you're not carrying a rotary phone around with you.
You're carrying around a smartphone that you can't take that apart either.
I have a rotary in my briefcase.
All right.
All right.
And a candlestick.
That's a fair point.
Go ahead, Rob.
You were asking about how you become one of these preferred retailers who's still allowed
to do it.
And there's no public information on that.
But the article in Vice Motherboard that I was reading on this has, cites its own Amazon
certified refurbisher program called Amazon Renewed, which is separate from this whole
thing.
But it's possibly comparable.
And the requirements to sell Apple products under that program are known.
You have to prove to Amazon that you spend at least $2.5 million every 90 days.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Hold on a second.
Why in God's name is that a requirement?
$2.5 million in what period of time?
Every 90 days, buying Apple products directly from a national wireless carrier or retailer
with over $5 billion in annual sales.
I get the feeling they're trying to weed out the people interested in this.
Yeah, I don't think many small businesses can get in on this action.
They wouldn't be small businesses if they met that criteria.
Exactly.
And we can only imagine that the requirements to be one of the preferred retailers or repairers
who's allowed to keep doing this, you know, it's got to be somewhere comfortable.
OK, so that's Amazon's requirements, right?
Now, what's to stop somebody from simply having an online site where they continue to offer
these services?
Literally nothing.
And I think that's a really, really good point.
OK, so let's register a domain right now and start it.
OK.
What do you mean, no internet?
No, I don't know.
What's going on here?
Why don't we have internet?
Did we not pay the bill?
OK, well, after the show, we're going to go to a coffee shop and we're going to register
a domain.
OK, let's do it.
And then, you know, we'll start something and we'll show Amazon and Apple that the power
of the people cannot be trifled with.
Well, there would be nothing stopping anybody, even us, from doing something like that.
And I think that's what is exactly what's going to happen is people will migrate away
from Amazon.
I mean, the whole argument we've been having is premised on the assumption that Amazon
is the only marketplace that matters.
Perhaps that is the case for some of these small businesses that have come to rely on
it, which brings up another issue, though.
I wonder how many of these small businesses that sell or resold Apple products there are
that are going to be affected by this.
I'd love to see some transparency there or to see all of these people, all of these companies
raise their hand, because I think there is a really good argument that there's insufficient
notice for them.
I mean, they're basically given a month and a half and their entire business model may
have been premised on selling these things or rather reselling them on Amazon.
And because they relied on the fact that the marketplace was there and Amazon was giving
them this marketplace, they possibly stocked their wares substantially and now they can't
get rid of them and a lot of them might go out of business, frankly.
So I think there could be a legal argument for detrimental reliance on Amazon's promises
to keep that marketplace open, or at least that it would continue to exist.
On the other hand, if they were to extend this notice period for six months or 12 months,
I think that would be another story entirely because another marketplace could crop up.
But having a month and a half to find a completely new marketplace for all of these wares is
going to be really, really difficult.
And I think a lot of them aren't going to survive.
That's the sad thing.
Well, it sounds like they're timing this so that they can get like one more holiday season
out of it and then be done and pushing it six months down the road.
That might work if there is some kind of a comparable outlet to Amazon out there.
Yeah.
Well, here's an idea.
Put them together, file a class action lawsuit with an injunction against Amazon, have the
judge prevent them from shutting down this marketplace until the rest of the case proceeds.
Another possible way of dealing with this, how does Amazon know?
How do they know that you're doing this?
What is it that alerts them?
They don't comb through every single listing, do they?
What happens when you sell stuff like this on Amazon is Amazon already has listings for
things and you have to tell them which of their listings describes the thing you're
selling and what condition it's in.
So if you can't select the listing for Apple product or whatever that you want to sell,
then you won't be able to list it on Amazon.
So what if we simply start referring to them as bananas instead of apples?
And we know what we're talking about, but Amazon doesn't, a little secret code language
there.
I like that, but it won't work that way because it's not a field that you just fill in whatever
you like.
It's you're selecting from basically a dropdown menu type of thing.
This is the thing that I'm selling.
And if you select bananas from that, I think you're going to have to mail bananas.
Well, no, I mean, you know, I'm going to have a computer called a banana computer.
You're saying I can't, I'm not allowed to do that.
I'm not allowed to create my own computer called a banana and start selling that on
Amazon.
See, now that's an interesting.
Well, okay.
We're giving you ideas, folks.
So, you know, it's up to you to come up with the ideas to make them work and let us know
how you're doing.
We'll open up the phone lines in about 15 minutes if you're affected by this in some
way.
So call us at 1-800-347-335-0818.
Don't call now, but we'll be taking phone calls in a little bit on this and other subjects
tonight.
Also, the obvious other direction you can take right now if you're one of these businesses
who do this is, you know, the next biggest thing is eBay.
I guess you could go and start listing your things on there.
But you know, if Apple can strong arm and or wheel and deal their way to Amazon, you
know, the 900 pound gorilla of online shopping, you know, eBay can't be far behind, I don't
think.
Amazon is the home of the 900 pound gorilla that is coming to our neighborhood soon.
Amazon's coming to our neighborhood soon.
Wow.
Long Island City is going to be the home of HQ2, I believe they call it, or HQ2.5.
Apparently they tricked everybody.
They said they were going to open up another headquarters, but actually they're opening
up two headquarters, half the size of what they said they were going to have in one.
And one is going to be in, I think, Crystal City, Virginia, the other in Long Island City.
What do you guys think of that?
Speaking as someone who's currently working at a day job in Long Island City, I, you know,
I can only groan and roll my eyes so hard before they leave my skull.
Good luck getting a city bike.
Exactly.
I mean, there's, you know, they've been building the area up and trying to attract more people
there.
You know, there's tons of empty apartments and things like that going on.
But, you know, above and beyond what they're saying they might add to the area or bring
to the city, you know, okay, they'll have a bunch of jobs in this new facility, but
I think they're going to bring people in to fill those jobs.
I don't think they're going to go to the surrounding population.
Well, you know, I heard from various reports, and there are definitely various reports,
there are going to be 25,000 jobs and people are going to be making $150,000 at these jobs.
And I was listening to Democracy Now! today, and I was hearing reports from England of
people who make something like $20,000 and are in basically squalor, slave conditions
where they're afraid to go to the bathroom without being disciplined.
And if you get six sick days, you're fired.
Things like that.
So I don't know.
Who do I believe?
Is everybody going to have a $150,000 job?
Or is it going to be, you know, a modern day sweatshop over there?
I think I might just bring a pushcart to the area and start selling pee bottles to the
employees because, you know, that might be the hot new business model.
That's smart.
That's using your head.
Alex, what do you think?
I mean, I think there is a lot of uncertainty about this.
There's a lot of the unknowns here.
But I think a lot of the arguments, particular arguments from Ocasio-Cortez, our newly elected
congresswoman who's yet to be sworn in.
It's coming.
It's coming very soon.
It will come very soon.
You'll have to wait.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
I mean, she's been priming in on this, you know, from the outset.
And frankly, you know, the concerns that she has are valid concerns.
You know, primarily she's talking about, well, you know, we're giving this gigantic tax cut
and this tax break for them to come in here for.
But we haven't talked about things like, you know, are these employees going to be given
adequate health care?
What are the wages going to be like?
This is what you just mentioned, you know.
And what about rent?
You know, we need affordable rent in Long Island City and whatnot.
Yeah, she's totally right.
Those are valid concerns.
And Amazon has a bad record as to how they treat their employees.
They do.
They certainly do.
But given the promises they've made in order to get the concessions from the city for these
major tax breaks, which is, by the way, how this works all over the country, it's not
like New York City was the only city in the United States that gives tax breaks to businesses.
This is just how businesses are attracted to certain geographical locations.
But isn't the whole point of having a big business like this the fact that they pay
taxes?
Yes.
But, you know, unfortunately, the businesses get the tax breaks and the employees are the
ones that get taxed from their wages.
Well, that's what I'm questioning.
Absolutely.
But, you know, we wouldn't have the spurt in the economy if it wasn't for these particular
businesses.
So they're given these tax breaks, whether it's fair or not.
You know, that's a totally different situation.
But you know, I think everything that Ocasio-Cortez has been saying, it's not necessarily – those
concerns are not necessarily mutually exclusive with Amazon's plans.
I mean, we can still have employees with adequate health care given adequate wages and affordable
rent.
And if employees are really concerned about that, it's actually very easy now to start
a union.
I would love to see a union crop up of Amazon employees in Long Island City if there are
issues with hours, wages, and conditions.
Why not?
Well, I'd like to see how it's easy to start a union.
People have been having a lot of trouble with that.
All you have to do is organize.
Okay.
It only takes a few.
I don't think it's quite that simple.
I mean, yeah, that's the first step.
Sure.
But you're met with all kinds of opposition.
Just ask the people in Walmart.
Well, under federal law, it's easier now to start your own union.
Are current federal?
As far as I know.
I mean, I haven't checked it, you know, today, but, you know, it actually has become easier
over the last several years in order for workforces to organize.
You know, like you might get fired from Amazon for doing so, and then we'd have a legitimate
gripe and then maybe we'd want to, you know, yank the tax break from them.
But I think the focusing on the tax break is really a red herring to the argument here.
I think the concerns that she has are valid, but I don't think that giving Amazon a huge
tax break to come to New York and develop this, I mean, there's going to be a lot of
taxes that are generated from the city, both corporate taxes and taxes on things like wages.
And then there's going to be a massive amount of development.
There's going to be revitalization of Long Island City, as Mr. Firefly here had mentioned.
There's plenty of empty apartments.
Developers have been trying to fill those apartments.
It's going to really revitalize Long Island City, and I think there will be a spillover
effect to lots of areas of Queens, which it frankly needs.
And gentrification out of control.
I mean, how do we fight that?
You know, that's something that always seems to happen as a result of...
I'm not a fan of gentrification, but I am a fan of giving New Yorkers jobs.
Rob?
The thing I'm wondering about is, I would really like to hear from any listeners we
may have who are from Seattle or were in Seattle, maybe pre and post Amazon, and how that whole
thing worked out.
You know, did it help your city?
Did it actually deliver on the promises that were there?
Because, you know, this seems like basically a repeat of what they did there.
I mean, above and beyond the whole, like, the way they shopped themselves around to
cities as like, hey, you know, guess what we can do for you?
But which really ended up being, hey, what can you give up from us in order to attract
us there?
But, you know, I'd like to see the reactions from people who have been through this.
I wish Kyle was here this week, because he's from Seattle, and I've heard him say many
times how apartments have gotten out of the reach of people who grew up in the area.
A lot of people are coming in from all parts of the world to work in these high tech sector
jobs.
And I'm worried about what this will do, not only to Queens, but to the entire surrounding
area, including Manhattan and Brooklyn.
You know, New York has always been a city where almost anything is possible.
But when you have this amount of development happening in one location, and fairly suddenly,
it's possible the whole landscape could be changed in many ways.
I don't disagree with that, you know, whatsoever.
I think there are a lot of valid concerns here.
But on the other hand, I do really think that there could be gigantic economic benefits
to the city here.
And we need it.
We need to bring in more jobs.
We need more people employed.
I think we need this revitalization as well.
What bothers me about this whole debate, though, is that as soon as the announcement happened,
you know, we saw people like Ocasio-Cortez.
Why are you picking on her?
She's not the only one.
She's the most vocal critic of it.
She's the one that's in the New York Post and in the Daily News.
Maybe because she's one of the few critics in politics, because I know de Blasio and
Cuomo, this is the one thing they seem to be able to agree on, that this is a good thing.
Well, they were trying to attract them, just like every other city in the United States
that was under consideration.
Which is another thing.
You know, a lot of cities really embarrass themselves.
I think one city was going to rename itself Amazon.
Didn't Cuomo say he was going to call himself, what did Cuomo say?
Yeah, he was going to change his name to Amazon Cuomo.
You know, things like that.
Yeah, they're funny.
But, you know, beneath the dignity of the office and of the city, I think, you know,
what I think happened, I think Amazon basically manipulated a lot of these places to fight
each other to give the best deal to Amazon, when actually it's Amazon that needs the cities
more than the cities need Amazon.
They need to be able to be close to high population centers so they can get things
out in one hour or before you even know to order it or whatever, so they can have their
drones flying everywhere.
You know, they really need the cooperation of centers like Washington, D.C. and New York.
And look where the two headquarters wound up being.
I agree with that.
I mean, my primary problem, though, is that I think this is a debate that is lacking in
information and lacking in foundation in what we saw from people like Ocasio-Cortez
and these other, I think, out there liberals.
And I'm an out there liberal, okay?
Wait, you're an out there liberal criticizing an out there liberal?
Absolutely, because I think out there liberals have an obligation to do things on the basis
of rational thought and evidence and make arguments on that basis.
Okay, but here's the thing.
What we saw-
When did you learn about this?
A couple of days ago.
This week, right?
Yeah.
We all learned about this week.
So why weren't we talking about this before the offers were made?
Well, because it wasn't transparent.
But my point about learning about it and then all of a sudden making a huge stink about
it is that this is typical snatching of headlines using some kind of outrage politics.
And that doesn't benefit anybody.
Well, how would you do it then?
I don't understand how you can criticize this without being accused of that.
I would get more information and base my arguments on the information that's given.
But that's what's happening now.
We're getting the information now.
We're only finding out about it now, so people are reacting rather than just blindly accepting
and saying, oh, this is great for the economy, for the people.
How about asking the people that live here right now what they think about it?
In fact, let's do that.
Let's ask the people who live here.
Sure.
You can call 347-335-0818 in five minutes, not now, and tell us what you think, how it
affects you.
Yes.
So to answer your question that I didn't have an opportunity to answer because you kept
going over there, was what would I do?
I think the real issue is what I wouldn't do.
I wouldn't go on to Twitter and start criticizing this on the basis of my moral outrage over
a tax break, which is just the way of doing business.
To me, that undercuts her entire legitimacy as a politician who should be representing
the interests of the people because this is how business is done.
You're naive to think otherwise.
It's silly.
Yeah, but just because it's how business is done doesn't mean it's right.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
I mean, I get that.
I've heard the same argument given for Olympics and why they should be in certain cities when
they wind up bankrupting a lot of businesses and thinking about bankrupting, how many establishments
would go out of business as a result of all this happening, all this ... The brick and
mortar stores, like Sears, for instance, going out of business, they can't compete with places
like Amazon.
We see what Amazon is doing now with Apple, and what choices do we have?
We're hard-pressed to find out ourselves how people can actually refurbish Apple computers
because Amazon has decided to clamp down.
They have a lot of power.
They have a huge amount of power, and we're talking about expansion to make them at least
double as expansive as they are right now.
I think it's worthy of analysis, debate, and scrutiny.
Yeah, but that's a totally different argument than the argument about whether they should
be given a tax break and whether they're going to treat New Yorkers well and the gentrification
issue.
I mean, whether Amazon is-
It's related.
It's all related.
Perhaps, but I do actually think that they're related, but I think they're separate issues
that need to be debated.
I mean, I completely agree with the points you made that Amazon is too powerful.
It's become unwieldy.
It's had deleterious effects on brick and mortar stores, but we're all complicit in
that because we give them $110 a year for becoming a member of their service.
I mean, if you think about when Amazon Prime went from $99 to, I think, $109, they had
100 million subscribers at that time, and each one paid an additional $10 to stay part
of Amazon.
You've got an issue with the additional $10.
What about the billions of dollars they're getting in tax rebates?
Think about this, though.
Almost everybody paid that extra $10.
Imagine one day of them increasing their prices.
This is a company that made a billion dollars.
Well, they had a pretty good day this week, too, in two cities, and I think they're versions
of the same thing, what we're discussing here.
That's true.
Yeah.
Perhaps.
Perhaps.
Yeah.
In any event, I don't like the outrage politics component of it.
I think we need more facts about it.
I'm skeptical as well.
I welcome the discussion.
I mean, even if I was 100% behind this, and I haven't made up my mind yet, I want to hear
a discussion.
I don't want someone to say, this is what's going to happen, and you can't do anything
about it.
I think it's very healthy to be asking questions and raising points.
Yeah.
And to be honest with you, I mean, I find myself not really agreeing with de Blasio,
so I'm skeptical of my own agreement at the moment because de Blasio and Cuomo support
it.
Wait.
It's your position, too.
I know.
You're not agreeing with de Blasio.
You're saying you're not agreeing with yourself.
No.
I'm saying I'm in agreement with de Blasio, which is unusual, so that causes me to be
skeptical of my own agreement.
Are you in agreement with Cuomo?
They're both in agreement.
I know.
That's what's so weird.
Yes.
I know.
Yeah.
It's an odd situation.
Hey, we have a phone call.
Let's see what our listeners have to say here.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Yeah.
Hello.
Hi.
Can I make a comment about Amazon?
Yes.
Go ahead.
I think in the long run, Amazon is going to turn into like a Bill Gates Foundation type
of situation where he's going to destroy competition, create moats, monopolize, destroy retail.
Whole Foods will be just a site for shipping.
I think it's going to destroy the retail market.
It's going to increase rents all over.
I think it's going to have a ripple effect.
But in 20 years, when he makes all that money, he's going to have to give some back by foundations
that are really just tax avoidance, tax reduction schemes.
And then after 20 years, we'll all benefit because it's going to destroy New York City
as we know it.
Are you someone who lives in New York City?
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's going on, we see with the Dwayne Reeds and the Starbucks and the banks and the lack
of atmosphere, the lack of cultural and also places that people can get together, can afford
to get together.
There really isn't anything that as far as meeting grounds besides the Barnes and Noble,
which might not be there very long.
You know, this idea of everyone is a book called, by Shirley Terkel, called Everyone
Alone, something like that.
Alone together.
You know, we're going to be alone.
And we're going to have the Amazon Prime viewerships and all these Netflixes and all these shows
and all these instant replenishments and all so forth.
And you know, Amazon is an octopus.
It suffocates.
It's, you know, whether it's batteries, where you're directed to buy their batteries.
They co-opt businesses that they track and they find that they could, you know, move
in on it.
And it's going to be like Walmart, where Walmart was a low, you know, you could buy things
very cheap.
Once they knocked out all the competition, the prices were raised.
You know?
Yeah.
I think you raise a very good point when bringing up Barnes and Noble.
As a publisher, this is something that strikes very close to me.
They used to be, back in the day of many zines, there used to be independent bookstores everywhere,
all over New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, you name it, there were bookstores.
And then the chains moved in.
You had your Borders, you had your B. Dalton, you had your Barnes and Noble.
And they made all of those stores pretty much closed down because they couldn't compete.
And then they found that having a nationwide chain of bookstores wasn't profitable.
So they began to shut down.
And now we have one major chain left and it's in danger.
And what happens to us when that's gone?
Can I say one last thing?
Go ahead.
It's, uh, people don't realize Barnes and Noble is beholden to publishers, which have
a monopoly.
We have about four or five major publishers in the country, in the world, actually.
And they all have a monopoly, mafia type of situation where they have these small publishing
companies which are, you know, which are all owned by these four companies.
So Harper & Collins and Penguin, they have these small so-called publishers.
You don't know it.
And last thing is when you purchase an e-book, you don't own it and you can't transfer it.
And when you die, it's not yours to give to anyone.
That's a very good point.
I didn't even think about passing on e-books to your next of kin.
But that's a fascinating concept.
Thank you so much for that call.
A very interesting point you brought up.
Our phone number, 347-335-0818.
We're discussing Amazon and they're moving into New York City and kicking Apple refurbishers
off of their platform.
I think it's going to be a topic that many of us are discussing.
Yeah.
And, you know, to echo the caller's point, I think he's absolutely right about his description
of what Amazon will cause.
However, you know, he used the future tense.
I think this is really already happening with Amazon.
I mean, we see this constantly.
And what he described is occurring throughout Manhattan, which is, you know, this brilliant
juxtaposition of having a Duane Reade next to a Bank of America, next to a Pinkberry,
next to a Helen Hardy, next to a Chipotle.
I mean, you see it happening all throughout the city.
All the mom and pop stores are going out of business.
Not in the East Village.
We have to save the East Village because there is a movement to keep that from happening
there.
You know, if you combine that with the fact that most of the landlords that are putting
these places out of business by upping the rents after these extended leases are up,
you combine that with the Amazon issue, you've got a real problem here when it comes to culture
and urban environments.
I completely agree with that.
But the other thing we have to realize is that we can't keep Amazon out.
This is already happening.
I don't think it has anything to do with the construction of the new Amazon HQ.
They can come into any city they want.
They can get office space.
Of course.
They can just do it without the tax.
But the rules don't have to be changed for them to do that.
They need the cities.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
They need to be in places like this.
I don't think we need to sell out completely so that they'll come to us.
I think they're coming to us regardless.
Whether we gave them too many concessions is a valid point, but the benefits remain
to be seen.
We will see if we struck a good bargain.
Unfortunately, it's going to take time for us to determine whether it was a good deal.
All right.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Oh, hi.
Great program as ever.
So many things to say.
I barely know where to start, and I understand that there may be other callers, so I'll try
to be concise.
Okay.
Last thing first, the publishing world.
The caller brought up some very valid points, but it's an open fight that has been going
on for a number of years, and I happen to know a lot about it.
Penguin Random, which you mentioned, has a CEO, Marco Tole, who basically brought Amazon
to bear a few years back when Amazon was trying to muscle all the remaining publishing houses.
He just said, no way, we're not going with this, and Amazon had to back down.
You can check this.
If you do a search about Penguin Random, Amazon, and the fight, you will see this.
So I don't want to spend too much time on that.
But the morale of this is that basically everybody in this environment tries to use the power
that they have.
So whether it's the small publishing houses, which are disappearing fast and furiously,
or the bigger publishers who also have to fight for survival, and the octopus that
Amazon is, that is trying to strangle everything because it feels it's in a position of doing
this.
And that brings me to the other bigger fight, you know, for the soul and the life of our
city.
It's, you know, this has been going on, basically, I remember when Koch was in power, and he
opened the city up to bigger scale development when it came to stores.
Because if you remember, there was a limit on how big a store could be.
And those limits were taken down back then.
And then it's been, you know, it's been trickling down faster and faster in terms of the disruption
that that brought to the people like me who live here, and our lifestyle.
Because, you know, I mean, you can worry about attracting new business, as your lawyer
friend whose name I don't remember, and I know he's a good guy.
But he talks a little too much like a politician tonight, meaning Ocasio is not the problem.
He said himself that there is no clarity, there was no information.
And the people who struck this wicked deal are the ones who did it in secret.
So that's where the problem starts.
It's not Ocasio complaining of how things have gone.
It's the people who are speaking for us, supposedly, who are not telling us what they're doing.
And that, I think, is a major problem.
That also speaks to your general philosophy, and the philosophy of who listens to this
program.
We have to question power.
And Ocasio, not because I particularly like her, but she's the one who's asking questions,
and people should ask more questions.
And then one last thing I would like to say is about where—congratulations on the merger
between Apple and Amazon.
I love the idea.
And my personal bet would be that Amazon is going to buy Apple, because they will become
just another specialty that they offer.
And you know, it's up to us.
I do it in my daily life, not just only as a political choice, but as a life choice of
questioning all this by working on our own technology.
It's not that difficult, as you guys know very well.
It's, you know, babies do this.
So people should learn more that they have the power with their hands and their mind
to influence where life is going.
Apple has got a terrible business model that is very similar to the one of the networks,
the social networks, that is keeping people stupid and dependent.
I mean, if you can't even change a battery on an iPhone, why would you even consider
buying one?
I never did, never will.
I am done with all Apple products, and I don't even want to hear the name anymore.
And I think that people should do that, and they are doing it, because I see what's happening
to the stock price.
So that's all I have to say.
I have a lot more.
Thank you so much.
No, thank you so much for articulating that so well.
And I agree with most everything you say, but I'm going to let Alex chime in as well.
But thanks for calling and opening up the phone lines for one more, or a couple more,
347-335-0818.
I can't even eat apples anymore.
That's the effect it's had on me.
And you know, I don't know.
Apple is what, a $1 trillion business now?
So Amazon's going to buy them?
It's too big, you know?
Who can keep up with all this?
It's something.
I never really liked apples, eating them.
I do use them now.
I think the caller makes a fair point.
I agree with his premise that questioning authority and questioning power is our job
and the job of politicians.
Are you running for office?
You sound like a politician now.
You're not saying no.
Maybe one day.
Maybe one day.
Maybe one day you'll run for school commissioner or something like that.
Rob, remember this moment.
This is the moment that-
This is it?
This is it?
Yeah, I think the idea got planted in his head.
Hey, I would never rule it out.
But I do think that we should question on the right basis, right?
Outrage for the sake of outrage, outrage on the wrong basis, you know, for instance, solely
on the basis of a tax break or on these hypothetical concerns of healthcare and wages and whatnot,
if they're not well-founded, if these questions and this outrage is not well-founded, it's
ultimately going to undermine her credibility and the efficacy of our ability to continue
to question authority later on.
But I've heard two callers so far, and they were very articulate in their concerns about
this.
And I imagine, you know, the people questioning it on all levels are pointing to some actual
facts.
Our callers are always articulate and wonderful, and I, you know, I don't necessarily always
agree with them.
I think that the immediate outrage here actually did more to undermine her credibility in the
long term.
Just the tax break issue just doesn't resonate with me.
I mean, that speaks to me of a naivete when it comes to economic development.
And this is somebody who's a 29-year-old congresswoman-elect.
We expect her to understand how these things work, how they operate.
This is how businesses are attracted to New York.
This is how businesses are attracted everywhere in the country.
This is why Walmart is located in Bentonville, Arkansas.
I mean, I'm not an expert either, but I imagine it's how businesses are attracted to places
that they wouldn't ordinarily go, you know, in the middle of some field someplace in some
underdeveloped part of the nation.
This is New York City.
People want to come here.
Businesses want to come here.
And again, I think the deal could have been so much better.
I think there should have been more discussion, some discussion.
And I think that's what the reaction you're seeing right now is.
But you know, to the caller's point, he's right.
A lot of these discussions happened behind closed doors.
It wasn't really a transparent process.
We don't know necessarily what the government was offering to Amazon.
That's a big problem.
You know, that's a problem that we should be addressing with de Blasio and with Cuomo,
frankly, because we don't know about those negotiations.
And I'm sure that there are FOIL requests being drafted right now, if they haven't been
submitted already, about what these negotiations were.
Those communications, those negotiations belong to the people.
We should get at them.
We should figure this out and then have a proper debate.
All right.
Thank you for your phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Yes.
Hi, guys.
I know your show's almost done.
It's going to keep it short and sweet.
Go ahead.
I don't know.
I don't know.
After seeing the fall of Toys R Us, I slowly kind of like blamed it on Walmart and Amazon.
Because if you can get something online and get it delivered within a week, that explains
it right there.
Plus, I noticed that Amazon, they have a lot of the merchandises from China.
That kind of plays a kind of a shady role in this, too.
Apple, it's a great product.
They make very robust stuff, but their marketing is very bad.
You know, the way they come out with phones, they go in numerical order, and when they
get to the 8-ball, they skip to X, which means 10 in Roman numerals.
They don't have a 9 edition, and they come out with a phone.
Six months from now, they come out with a larger phone, and people are going to want
the larger phones.
The fact that they want that phone so bad, you know, that's why when Steve Jobs was alive,
he was like the brains behind Apple.
He knew exactly what the customer wanted, but their whole marketing is like terrible
now.
After seeing the fall of Toys R Us, how do you take out something like Toys R Us that's
been around before all of us were born?
Toys R Us came out like in the 20s or 30s, and they just expanded over the years.
I'm not sure what the connection is with Toys R Us.
No, I'm just saying, Toys R Us, they closed down because they were losing sales because
you have Walmart and Amazon.
The thing about Toys R Us is that it's a very different story.
The narrative was a lot of, oh, because of Amazon, now they can't make money, but really,
if you look into Toys R Us' particular story, it was actually brought down by shady investors
who knew full well what they were doing.
They were offloading a ton of debt onto a struggling company and then letting it sink.
There are articles written about it.
It's worth doing some web searches to look more deeply into it, but that really didn't
have as much to do with the whole Amazon thing as a lot of people think.
Wow, Rob, I didn't know you knew so much about Toys R Us.
Yeah, I worked there in a past life.
Oh, you did?
Wow, okay.
Interesting.
Good night, guys.
All right, thanks for your call.
733-508-18.
Learning so much tonight.
This is good.
I like taking calls earlier on in the show.
I think we should continue this practice.
Well, when you take up a controversial position, as you have, and credit to you for doing so,
you get a lot of calls from a lot of people.
But I welcome the dialogue, and I just wish we had more of a dialogue before things were
signed.
That's the thing.
Have things been signed?
Can things be changed?
Is it too late?
I don't know.
Should we debate Alex Jones now?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
You don't want to go back to that?
Don't go down that road.
No, I'm just...
With this Amazon thing going to Long Island City, can the deal be improved?
I think if it's possible, let's talk about it.
I would like to think that's a question worth asking.
I happen to...
I think most questions are worth asking.
All right.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Hi.
I was wondering, you mentioned earlier about not being able to bequeath one's books if
one has e-books.
Mm-hmm.
So I have been wondering for a long time, how aware is Amazon if somebody dies, and
what do they do?
Do they make their Kindle library vanish if the Kindle Wi-Fi is turned off?
Can the Kindle be handed to somebody with the Wi-Fi off for a limited lifespan?
Yeah.
These are great questions.
And I don't know the answer because it's different than something tangible.
They can turn it off.
You don't really own it.
And we're just seeing that more and more, whether it's a computer, an operating system,
even a car.
You have less and less control over it.
Yeah.
I know multiple...
send in any experiences they've had with someone dying and what became of their Kindle and
their Kindle library.
Yeah.
We would love to hear that.
oth at 2600.com is our email address.
Rob?
Yeah.
It's a very interesting question because I know I have a library on Kindle with some
stuff that I bought, and I know my wife and I are in the same household.
So both of our Amazon accounts can access the same pool of stuff that I'd bought.
But I don't know what happens to that if I pass.
When I pass, eventually.
Do you have an eWill?
Maybe I should...
Is that a thing?
I mean, I don't even know.
Maybe I should do one.
I mean, there are dealers...
Well, they say quite distinctly that you don't own it and you can't pass it on.
I was just wondering whether there were dodges to be used if they're not fully aware or if
your Kindle's Wi-Fi is off, they can't make the books disappear.
That question I'm not entirely sure about, about holding on to your digital copies.
But I will say, though, that this has, over the last few years, become a sort of niche
area of the law, the credentials management for the deceased.
Because when somebody passes away, they may be the only person who has access to their
banking records, to their bank accounts, to their insurance policies, to DMV records,
to access to media and things like that.
And it actually becomes a real issue for probate courts to address and for lawyers to have
to navigate to try to fight these particular companies to get access for the next of kin
to all these various records.
And it's a complete disaster.
It is actually a really, really difficult thing to do.
They don't make it easy for you to hand over your account to a second person.
And not just that.
Think about old records of communications through email.
Think about cryptocurrency.
Exactly.
Access to all of these things that might only be in the head of one person who's no longer
with us.
And then two-factor authentication layered on top of that makes this really, really difficult.
Wow.
Thanks for bringing that up, Cole.
We've got a lot to worry about now.
You're welcome.
All right.
Take care.
I think we have time for one more call.
347-335-0818.
Rob?
Yeah.
It's certainly a concern because, I mean, I know I've seen as a computer guy that a
lot of people know.
I've been approached many times by friends and family, you know, can you get into such
and such's computer because they're no longer with us?
And you know, some people leave means for that to be done as part of their arrangements
and some people don't.
You get those emails.
I get the ones that say, yeah, I think my girlfriend's cheating on me.
Can you hack her Facebook or something like that?
Oh, I get those too.
They're hilarious.
Yeah.
Well, and then if you do do it, however, if you access this computer, even of a deceased
person, let's say without authorization, you could be violating the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act and doing that and trying to just help the family.
And then perhaps, you know, a next of kin could bring a civil lawsuit against you for
violating the CFAA or, you know, there's no civil right of action under the New York State
computer trespass laws, as far as I'm aware.
But yeah, it could open up a world of liability if you actually did, in fact, do that without
authorization.
You know, no matter how digital we get, lawyers are never going to have a problem finding
work.
That is certainly true.
There's always going to be something for them to sue about or to defend somebody against.
There's always an argument.
Okay.
You're on the hook.
Go ahead.
Hey, how are you?
Good.
How are you?
Good.
You know, it's funny.
I work in the court system and I've been doing it over 30 years.
It's funny the way this is timed out.
I will tell you there aren't resources available to prosecute any of this stuff for every single
alleged violation of any type of federal or state law, unless it involves lots of money
or little children or lots of heroin, nobody gives a flying goddamn in law enforcement.
And so when they threaten people with all the stuff about piracy and you're doing this,
let me tell you something.
In an average day in court, we see none of it.
In 29 years working in various federal and state courts, I think the only cases we ever
see, like I said, unless you're moving large quantities of currency or large quantities
of drugs or stuff dealing with little babies, nobody cares.
So it's all purely theoretical.
There's no mechanism in place in terms of a budget or manpower to enforce any of it.
And the other thing is always give someone you trust your password.
That's about it.
Okay.
Well-
Unless you do that.
Yeah.
I guess we all have to find somebody we can trust.
Thanks for your call.
Yeah.
To his point, you know, the caller is absolutely right when it comes to law enforcement prosecution
of these particular actions.
For FBI to investigate certain claims or certain computer fraud and abuse act claims, there
is generally a really high threshold.
You either have to be targeting a lot of critical sectors of the economy, something like infrastructure.
And along some reports, the threshold is really about $2 million worth of loss.
I mean, in fact, Steve Rambam and I have investigated lots of financial frauds together.
And what the fraudsters do is they'll target people for sums of money, like around $200,000,
$300,000, steal that from 10 or 20 people because they know that law enforcement is
not going to spend the resources to prosecute them when they've only stolen $200,000.
Now, on the other hand, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, what we do see quite
regularly, in fact, that's why I wasn't here last week because I had to take a deposition
in a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act case the next day, but there is a private right of
action under that, meaning that private parties can actually sue for a violation of the Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act.
Those cases are being brought with much higher frequency in the federal courts because it's
private resources, not government resources bringing them.
Okay.
Let's see if we can squeeze in one more call.
Go ahead.
You're on the air.
Hello.
My name is Ray.
I live in Queensbridge Houses, a gunshot away from their proposed Amazon location.
Oh, boy.
Well, the New York Times did a story saying no one was shot at Queensbridge Houses last
year.
There was four or five shootings are listed with addresses on the Queensbridge website
at www.queensbridge.us.
Now, regarding all the jobs that are supposed to be coming, the high-paying jobs, I suspect
those jobs have already been taken by people who'll be moving to New York with those jobs.
The only jobs available will be the low-paying service jobs.
Those will be obtained through contractors who bid the lowest price for their contract.
The contractor gets the contract because of low bidding, and they hire people at low wages
because that's all they can pay because that's what they bid for.
I think this is largely ... Well, I think that Cuomo and de Blasio are country bumpkins
who got taken in by Amazon.
Well, I couldn't have said it better, and that's going to have to be the last word for
now.
I'm sure the conversation will continue, and hopefully the discussion on what exactly we
do now will continue as well.
You can write to us, oth at 2600.com.
That's our email address with your thoughts and opinions on Amazon moving into New York,
on Amazon kicking out Apple refurbishers, on anything else really having to do with
technology, hacking, things like that.
You can tweet at us at Hacker Radio Show.
You can find us on Mastodon.social as Hacker Radio Show as well.
I have to go over there and see what that's like, so ...
Check it out.
Yeah.
We'll be back again next week with another exciting show.
Tune in and listen now for The Personal Committer Show coming up on WBAI for Off The Hook.
This is Emanuel.
Have a good night.
This is Phil Donahue, and you're listening to WBAI-New York 99.5.