[00:00.000 --> 00:01.940]  And the closure of all U.S.
[00:02.000 --> 00:12.480]  and NATO bases throughout the world, it's calling upon the Congressional Black Caucus to oppose AFRICOM and hold hearings on its impact on African people.
[00:12.880 --> 00:23.240]  The Black Alliance for Peace is asking WBAI listeners to go to our website and sign the online petition to shut down AFRICOM.
[00:23.240 --> 00:27.560]  Find out more at BlackAllianceForPeace.com.
[00:27.840 --> 00:31.200]  That's BlackAllianceForPeace.com.
[00:32.500 --> 00:35.840]  And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
[00:35.920 --> 00:36.820]  The time is 7 o'clock.
[00:37.260 --> 00:38.720]  Time for Off the Hook.
[02:18.350 --> 02:19.990]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:20.070 --> 02:21.530]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:21.650 --> 02:22.630]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you.
[02:22.670 --> 02:24.170]  Joined tonight by Rob T.
[02:24.410 --> 02:24.850]  Firefly.
[02:25.110 --> 02:25.590]  Good evening.
[02:25.970 --> 02:26.350]  Alex.
[02:26.670 --> 02:27.390]  Good evening, everyone.
[02:27.610 --> 02:29.970]  And Kyle, who's still in the bathroom.
[02:30.150 --> 02:30.330]  Hello.
[02:30.530 --> 02:31.030]  He'll be here.
[02:31.130 --> 02:33.130]  No, he doesn't sound like that.
[02:34.350 --> 02:37.370]  Alex, I understand there's an update regarding The Strand.
[02:37.650 --> 02:38.190]  Is that correct?
[02:38.210 --> 02:39.370]  There was something in The New York Times?
[02:39.630 --> 02:40.590]  Oh, yeah, actually.
[02:40.590 --> 02:44.190]  I'm surprised you read such a failing magazine.
[02:44.390 --> 02:46.590]  No, I read your email that said there was an article in The New York Times.
[02:47.190 --> 02:48.310]  I have not read it.
[02:48.750 --> 02:50.430]  This is news to me, whatever you say.
[02:50.630 --> 02:51.450]  So tell us what's going on.
[02:51.490 --> 02:51.690]  Yeah.
[02:52.210 --> 02:54.290]  And, of course, I was joking about The Times.
[02:54.450 --> 02:55.630]  It's also not a magazine.
[02:55.650 --> 02:56.370]  It's a newspaper.
[02:56.770 --> 02:57.810]  Well, The Times Magazine.
[02:58.110 --> 02:59.190]  There is a Times Magazine.
[02:59.190 --> 02:59.530]  You're right.
[02:59.530 --> 03:03.870]  You can probably tell people who are wondering, The Strand is a bookstore.
[03:04.770 --> 03:08.950]  And we did a story on it about a month or so ago.
[03:09.130 --> 03:09.550]  That's right.
[03:09.630 --> 03:11.110]  Right before our first public hearing.
[03:11.310 --> 03:15.490]  So The Strand is a 91-year-old bookstore in New York.
[03:15.590 --> 03:20.810]  The longest continuously operating bookstore in Manhattan.
[03:21.390 --> 03:23.030]  18 miles of books.
[03:23.210 --> 03:25.090]  It's located at 12th and Broadway.
[03:25.090 --> 03:27.610]  It's a fantastic New York institution.
[03:28.130 --> 03:33.590]  People from all over the world come to New York and go and visit The Strand because it's such an iconic bookstore.
[03:34.050 --> 03:36.590]  It's a place where dialogue occurs.
[03:37.070 --> 03:37.850]  There's meetings.
[03:38.070 --> 03:42.970]  It's sort of become a public meeting space in the city as well.
[03:42.990 --> 03:44.310]  I understand Trump has never been in it.
[03:44.690 --> 03:45.930]  That's another selling point.
[03:45.990 --> 03:46.430]  Not surprised.
[03:46.590 --> 03:51.330]  He might just go poof if he goes in to be surrounded by that many books.
[03:51.950 --> 03:54.610]  Because, God forbid, he ever goes near the Library of Congress.
[03:55.270 --> 04:03.990]  But, so yeah, today, The New York Times, the architectural critic for The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman, wrote a really, I think, engaging...
[04:03.990 --> 04:06.530]  I love that The New York Times has an architectural critic.
[04:07.070 --> 04:07.990]  Of course they do.
[04:08.030 --> 04:08.970]  That, in itself, is awesome.
[04:09.150 --> 04:09.670]  Yes, it's true.
[04:09.750 --> 04:12.490]  And he's a fantastic writer, I have to say.
[04:12.490 --> 04:19.750]  Because he wrote a really thought-provoking and, I think, very considered, philosophical, yet practical piece on The Strand.
[04:20.210 --> 04:23.030]  And my law firm, Blackstone Law Group, represents The Strand.
[04:23.210 --> 04:28.830]  We're fighting the city of New York, opposing the landmark designation of the building.
[04:28.830 --> 04:36.730]  It's a very unique situation because The Strand is both, you know, a very, very old and fragile business.
[04:36.730 --> 04:38.030]  I mean, it's a bookseller.
[04:38.150 --> 04:42.850]  The economics of selling books these days are crushing, especially in the Amazon era.
[04:43.350 --> 04:51.810]  And Nancy Wyden, who is the owner of The Strand, her father purchased this building several decades ago to ensure the survival of the bookstore.
[04:52.190 --> 04:56.810]  Without that building, the bookstore probably would not have been able to survive in the era of Amazon.
[04:57.310 --> 05:02.970]  Now, New York City wants to landmark the bookstore, ostensibly, because it's a cultural icon.
[05:02.970 --> 05:05.650]  It's a cultural institution in New York.
[05:05.650 --> 05:06.810]  And that sounds like a good thing.
[05:06.930 --> 05:08.290]  Sounds like a great thing, right?
[05:08.390 --> 05:10.050]  Sounds like something that would be welcoming.
[05:10.210 --> 05:21.170]  However, landmark status in New York comes with a gigantic mess of burdens and affirmative duties in terms of what you can do with the building and the bureaucracy that you have to deal with.
[05:21.270 --> 05:23.450]  Just adds layers and layers of cost.
[05:23.550 --> 05:24.390]  You have to hire experts.
[05:24.490 --> 05:26.390]  You have to hire goddamn lawyers.
[05:26.590 --> 05:31.510]  You have to deal with expediters that deal with the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
[05:31.870 --> 05:33.930]  And let me tell you something interesting, too.
[05:35.170 --> 05:48.850]  We've been dealing with a lot of architects that work with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and so many of them are so reluctant to go on the record to say what they actually think about landmarks because they're afraid of retaliation.
[05:49.030 --> 05:50.830]  And just like you mentioned...
[05:50.830 --> 05:53.630]  What can the Landmarks Commission do in retaliation?
[05:53.770 --> 05:54.290]  Oh, my God.
[05:54.390 --> 05:56.870]  They have tremendous power with almost no oversight.
[05:56.890 --> 06:08.870]  So if they have an ongoing project with landmarks and you go and speak out against landmarks, they could gum up the works for that project for years and drive up the costs of their project for their particular clients.
[06:08.870 --> 06:14.190]  Their clients then move over to another architectural firm, which Landmarks does not hate.
[06:14.990 --> 06:17.210]  And then their entire business could collapse.
[06:17.390 --> 06:18.470]  It's actually really scary.
[06:18.810 --> 06:22.470]  When we were first describing this, you made a really prescient comment about...
[06:22.470 --> 06:25.090]  It was, I think, the week before a public hearing in December.
[06:25.830 --> 06:31.110]  And you would describe this as sort of organized crime sounding, you know, the way Landmarks operates.
[06:31.110 --> 06:35.310]  So many people have actually used the word mafia-like when we've been talking about them.
[06:36.130 --> 06:42.930]  So, in any event, the New York Times ran this really great story today, and they talk about the cultural significance of the building.
[06:43.370 --> 06:53.890]  And this is a point we've been trying to get across to many people is that if you really want to protect a cultural institution in New York, architectural landmarking may not be the way to do it.
[06:53.950 --> 06:56.130]  And this is what the article really gets at.
[06:56.130 --> 07:07.750]  But if you think about cultural landmarks, like the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan, which is historically significant because it was the situs of the Stonewall riots that led to...
[07:07.750 --> 07:10.830]  You know, that was the origin of the gay rights movement around the world.
[07:11.050 --> 07:12.110]  Really historical building.
[07:12.270 --> 07:15.350]  It's a dingy little pub, you know, right off 7th Avenue.
[07:15.350 --> 07:19.730]  It's not a great-looking building, but it's culturally significant because of what happened there in the past.
[07:20.010 --> 07:25.350]  The Strand, on the other hand, is culturally significant because it continues to exist.
[07:25.990 --> 07:28.150]  That's what's really unique about the Strand.
[07:28.490 --> 07:41.170]  So, architecturally landmarking the building may have the ironic effect of actually destroying the Strand because it's going to cut into the really, really thin margins that a bookstore already operates on in this era of Amazon.
[07:42.430 --> 08:00.830]  And what the city should be doing, and this is what the article says and what I mentioned, and they quote me, actually, my comments at our public hearing to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is people should come together and we should work together here to try to figure out ways to ensure the continued survival of the Strand.
[08:01.230 --> 08:06.190]  You know, we don't want to put a regulatory stranglehold on businesses that we're trying to preserve.
[08:06.910 --> 08:13.310]  Cultural landmarking of live cultural icons means doing what you can to keep them alive.
[08:14.450 --> 08:18.810]  That's, I think, a great point that was made in this New York Times piece today.
[08:18.930 --> 08:25.570]  So, I would encourage our listeners that like bookstores, that like books, that like the Strand, that are just curious about this, to go and check it out.
[08:25.570 --> 08:33.210]  I believe that Hacker Radio Show tweeted out a link to it, so you can find a link to that New York Times article on our Twitter page.
[08:33.310 --> 08:34.670]  That's us, by the way, Hacker Radio Show.
[08:34.750 --> 08:35.070]  That's true.
[08:35.110 --> 08:35.730]  That's our Twitter account.
[08:36.090 --> 08:38.390]  So, what's the next thing that happens?
[08:38.570 --> 08:43.430]  Next thing that happens is February 19th, 9 a.m., one center street.
[08:43.510 --> 08:45.070]  God's sake, why at 9 a.m.?
[08:45.070 --> 08:46.230]  I know, I know.
[08:46.290 --> 08:48.350]  Who goes to hearings at 9 in the morning?
[08:48.850 --> 08:49.430]  I do.
[08:49.650 --> 08:51.570]  And hopefully, a lot of other people.
[08:51.670 --> 08:54.150]  We had a great deal of WBAI listeners there last time.
[08:54.210 --> 08:55.770]  We want to get double the amount this time.
[08:55.830 --> 09:02.630]  We are expecting a flood of support at the February 19th hearing, 9 a.m., one center street.
[09:02.950 --> 09:07.730]  And we have negotiated with landmarks so that we are number one on the agenda.
[09:07.930 --> 09:11.450]  There will be no waiting around while other buildings get considered.
[09:11.810 --> 09:15.350]  Last time, it took about an hour and a half or so until we were up at bat.
[09:15.830 --> 09:17.530]  We will be number one on the agenda.
[09:17.770 --> 09:18.710]  Show up at 9 a.m.
[09:19.490 --> 09:20.790]  We would love to see you there.
[09:20.910 --> 09:21.710]  We want your support.
[09:21.790 --> 09:22.550]  We want your support.
[09:22.750 --> 09:24.770]  We want to give you our t-shirts, our buttons.
[09:24.930 --> 09:34.490]  We want to protect and preserve what we believe to be one of the most significant cultural icons that New York still has as a living, breathing bookseller.
[09:34.710 --> 09:34.930]  All right.
[09:34.970 --> 09:37.830]  We'll be keeping people up to date on that here on Off the Hook.
[09:39.050 --> 09:40.130]  And best of luck.
[09:40.330 --> 09:41.110]  Hope it works out.
[09:41.330 --> 09:41.790]  Thank you, sir.
[09:42.610 --> 09:43.570]  Another update.
[09:43.810 --> 09:50.850]  Last week, as you recall, we talked about the mysterious signal at the end of that episode of Black Mirror, Bandersnatch.
[09:51.630 --> 09:53.950]  And, you know, I've been corrected.
[09:54.250 --> 09:57.450]  To me, it sounded just like flex pager traffic.
[09:57.550 --> 09:59.310]  But apparently, it's not.
[09:59.490 --> 10:02.310]  Apparently, there's something that sounds similar to that.
[10:02.390 --> 10:06.230]  You can play the both, you know, together and tell me if you think they sound similar.
[10:07.490 --> 10:11.870]  One, we have many writers from the UK send us email here.
[10:12.950 --> 10:18.090]  Dave from Manchester says, every guy in the UK aged around 40 knows this sound.
[10:18.350 --> 10:22.550]  It's the sound of a ZX Spectrum program as recorded on tape.
[10:22.810 --> 10:24.150]  The lead-in is the giveaway.
[10:24.550 --> 10:30.850]  I also heard others mention this around the office, but I don't have Netflix, so this is the first time I heard it.
[10:31.570 --> 10:38.850]  Spectrum was made by Sinclair Research in Cambridge and possibly sold by Timex in the United States.
[10:39.350 --> 10:40.430]  Thanks for that, Dave.
[10:40.610 --> 10:44.630]  And CW writes, I've been listening to...
[10:45.490 --> 10:47.830]  Actually, this is a totally different subject.
[10:49.750 --> 10:50.150]  Yes.
[10:51.070 --> 10:54.550]  We'll get to that letter in a second, but I want to stick with this one subject first.
[10:54.730 --> 10:55.650]  CW, stand by.
[10:55.730 --> 10:56.150]  We'll get to you.
[10:58.730 --> 10:59.310]  Hold on.
[10:59.310 --> 11:00.850]  That's another different subject here.
[11:01.030 --> 11:01.350]  Here we go.
[11:01.650 --> 11:03.590]  The sound you played wasn't flex.
[11:03.790 --> 11:04.670]  It was computer data.
[11:04.830 --> 11:06.790]  That particular sound is the ZX Spectrum.
[11:06.870 --> 11:09.590]  You should be able to put it into a ZX Spectrum emulator.
[11:09.810 --> 11:11.710]  That's Mark from North Wales.
[11:11.870 --> 11:14.150]  Thank you for that information.
[11:15.010 --> 11:23.510]  Then Jason wrote in to say, I was listening to the latest Off the Hook when you asked for people to look into a strange signal that you found in an episode of Black Mirror.
[11:23.610 --> 11:25.050]  And by the way, it's not easy to find that.
[11:25.210 --> 11:26.890]  You have to go through certain scenarios.
[11:27.090 --> 11:28.110]  It's an interactive episode.
[11:28.110 --> 11:29.830]  You have to select all kinds of things.
[11:29.950 --> 11:38.610]  And I only saw that ending once, where he's basically riding on a bus, listening on headphones to a Walkman, and that signal is played.
[11:39.030 --> 11:45.410]  Anyway, the moment you played the signal, I was transported to my youth, loading programs onto my ZX Spectrum from cassette tape.
[11:45.570 --> 11:49.870]  The only question was, could I manage to get it loaded into an emulator to see if I was correct?
[11:50.070 --> 12:03.390]  My first port of call was to pull the show's MP3 into Audacity and cut out just the signal itself, which I then exported as 8-bit Wave, which I could feed into Wave to Tap Converter, the intention being to create a tap file that I could load into the Spectrum emulator.
[12:04.010 --> 12:05.090]  Needless to say, it failed.
[12:05.470 --> 12:10.510]  I tried a few more times, adjusting the volume of the Wave file each time, but they all failed at this point.
[12:10.750 --> 12:18.130]  I believe that the loss and compression of the MP3 format was the root of the problem, so I started searching for an original copy of the sample.
[12:18.150 --> 12:21.530]  Could also be us holding the microphone up to the speaker recording it originally.
[12:21.770 --> 12:23.830]  I'm not sure how well that recorded.
[12:24.490 --> 12:25.630]  We made a Wave file.
[12:25.850 --> 12:26.490]  Right, Kyle?
[12:26.690 --> 12:32.210]  Yeah, our original recording was a Wave, and it was the show that was encoded as an MP3.
[12:32.290 --> 12:36.530]  So had you been listening over FM Airwaves, it probably would have worked.
[12:38.790 --> 12:41.870]  After the fact, it was compressed and probably had a bit of loss.
[12:42.050 --> 12:47.810]  Yeah, considering it's probably in the United Kingdom, that's a bit much to expect people in advance to come over here and listen to the radio.
[12:48.310 --> 12:48.870]  Indeed, yeah.
[12:49.010 --> 12:51.330]  But we did post a Wave file somewhere, didn't we?
[12:51.530 --> 12:53.270]  Yeah, I think we had a link.
[12:53.410 --> 12:54.870]  You had a link to it.
[12:55.230 --> 13:00.310]  Well, we were very close to having shared it, but we didn't really have a landing page for that.
[13:00.310 --> 13:05.550]  I guess as a supplemental, we could add it to the show's link on our website.
[13:05.550 --> 13:08.250]  But I think other people had posted a copy of that Wave.
[13:08.390 --> 13:09.430]  Yeah, apparently this is a thing.
[13:09.650 --> 13:19.330]  So a kind person had made a copy available using a lossless format of Wave and linked to it from Reddit, because Reddit is where you find the answers to everything, even more so than BAI listeners.
[13:20.010 --> 13:28.630]  Converting this lossless sample to an 8-bit Wave and running it through Wave 2 tap converter worked and produced a tap file that I could load in the emulator.
[13:28.910 --> 13:31.030]  All right, so somebody got to that stage.
[13:31.030 --> 13:33.330]  The program then...
[13:33.330 --> 13:37.510]  I'm going to give it away now because we have an answer and we haven't had time to do this ourselves.
[13:37.810 --> 13:43.230]  The program produces a QR code on the screen, which takes you to a Tuckersoft website.
[13:43.670 --> 13:45.610]  I don't know what a Tuckersoft website is.
[13:45.890 --> 13:49.750]  Tuckersoft was the company in the show that the software publisher...
[13:49.750 --> 13:51.350]  But there was no website, right?
[13:51.390 --> 13:52.950]  Because it was in the 1980s.
[13:53.370 --> 13:53.850]  Theoretically.
[13:54.030 --> 13:54.270]  All right.
[13:54.510 --> 13:58.190]  Unless what we're doing here breaches some sort of barrier between fiction and reality.
[13:58.430 --> 14:02.710]  Well, the tap file is attached, but I have not had time to do anything with it.
[14:03.130 --> 14:08.450]  So we can run it ourselves in any ZX Spectrum emulator that supports tap files.
[14:08.910 --> 14:13.130]  Well, that phrase right there is enough to make me think it's going to be a challenge.
[14:13.390 --> 14:14.530]  Just a very small...
[14:14.530 --> 14:27.670]  Not quite a correction, though, but the Spectrum was basically a hit computer in the UK in the 1980s home computer era, but it didn't get much track over here in the United States, so it's commonly known as the ZX Spectrum in the King's English.
[14:27.690 --> 14:28.570]  Oh, okay.
[14:29.130 --> 14:29.610]  Wow.
[14:30.010 --> 14:31.690]  So nobody says ZX Spectrum.
[14:31.870 --> 14:32.810]  Nobody says ZX Spectrum.
[14:33.070 --> 14:33.330]  Interesting.
[14:33.790 --> 14:37.950]  Did the user provide the domain name for the Tuckersoft website?
[14:38.270 --> 14:38.690]  Did not.
[14:38.930 --> 14:40.190]  Not in the email, anyway.
[14:40.530 --> 14:41.370]  Oh, okay.
[14:41.590 --> 14:44.750]  Maybe that's another little puzzle we can try and solve.
[14:44.830 --> 14:46.190]  Sure, there's something there.
[14:46.350 --> 14:56.370]  But I love that it's tape technology from the 80s and a computer or an emulation thereof from the 80s to show a QR code, which is something that definitely did not exist in the 80s.
[14:56.630 --> 14:58.090]  On a website, which probably didn't exist either.
[14:58.090 --> 15:05.070]  Well, there was this notion of time travel and messages from the future in the actual episode as well, right?
[15:05.070 --> 15:10.390]  When you chose Netflix and then he was speaking with somebody from Netflix and that was in the future.
[15:10.690 --> 15:17.390]  So, you know, there could be a route to the storyline through the QR code and the domain and the website.
[15:17.590 --> 15:21.950]  I'd just like to know if there's a way that you can finish the episode without killing his dad, you know?
[15:21.950 --> 15:26.910]  I tried to save him so many times and every time I just kept getting pulled back into it.
[15:27.050 --> 15:29.070]  And there's one point in the episode where they...
[15:29.070 --> 15:35.950]  Basically, the guy who's writing the program says that I give people the illusion that they're making a choice but I'm actually making the decision for them.
[15:36.050 --> 15:37.690]  It's brilliant because that's exactly what's happening.
[15:37.850 --> 15:41.330]  You think you're making a choice but you always wind up doing the same things.
[15:41.490 --> 15:42.410]  You get different endings.
[15:42.590 --> 15:42.910]  You get...
[15:42.910 --> 15:50.610]  You know, sometimes you kill two people instead of one person but, you know, if you want to go a particular route where you don't kill anybody, that doesn't seem to be possible.
[15:50.610 --> 16:02.190]  I think the reference or the takeaway really for me is that a lot of people when they started the show on this platform were thinking, oh, great!
[16:02.310 --> 16:03.310]  A choose-your-own-adventure!
[16:03.390 --> 16:04.790]  Oh, this is going to be so cool!
[16:05.050 --> 16:05.970]  I'll have all the control!
[16:06.110 --> 16:06.870]  I'll get to do all this stuff!
[16:06.930 --> 16:07.190]  No.
[16:07.550 --> 16:08.190]  No, you don't.
[16:08.290 --> 16:08.870]  It's a system.
[16:08.890 --> 16:11.610]  The system's controlling you a lot more than you think.
[16:11.730 --> 16:12.170]  That's right.
[16:12.510 --> 16:12.910]  Yes.
[16:13.170 --> 16:21.530]  It's like I remember when DVDs came out as a new format and there's that little I think it's a stripped-down Java-y sort of thing that you make the menus in.
[16:22.410 --> 16:23.910]  And somebody had...
[16:23.910 --> 16:37.050]  I think a couple of entities had gotten hold of that technology and made interactive DVDs where you could choose your way around things or play little games, little trivia games, whatever, with the menu tools that were just intended, like Netflix, like the Netflix interface,
[16:37.430 --> 16:41.950]  just intended to be a way to navigate around the software, but they end up making a game for that.
[16:42.270 --> 16:44.730]  And that's a bit of hacker spirit there.
[16:44.770 --> 16:45.390]  I really like that.
[16:45.390 --> 16:51.370]  Well, on Freedom Downtime when we put out our DVDs, we tried to do as much as possible with the programming and make as many features.
[16:51.630 --> 16:55.630]  And I don't know if that's been equaled because you can do a lot with DVDs.
[16:55.690 --> 17:03.830]  I remember when they first came out how they were heralded as, well, now you can see a film, but now you can choose different angles of scenes.
[17:03.830 --> 17:05.350]  You can see different shots.
[17:05.590 --> 17:07.030]  I've never actually seen that.
[17:07.150 --> 17:08.830]  That's always what they were saying at the beginning.
[17:09.010 --> 17:12.150]  They're saying that you could be the director of the film, you could decide how to see it.
[17:12.770 --> 17:15.030]  I've never really seen a film do that.
[17:15.190 --> 17:17.470]  I think that was also touted with Laserdisc.
[17:17.630 --> 17:20.010]  And I've not seen that either.
[17:20.190 --> 17:22.110]  Camera angles or other camera shots.
[17:22.270 --> 17:23.450]  But it is true.
[17:23.550 --> 17:25.530]  I guess it would also affect the length.
[17:25.670 --> 17:29.590]  It would not be as much of a feature length film if you were showing...
[17:29.590 --> 17:30.990]  if you had multiple tracks encoded.
[17:31.190 --> 17:33.650]  In other words, several tracks of video.
[17:33.910 --> 17:37.110]  I did see that on one or two educational Laserdiscs back in the 80s.
[17:37.410 --> 17:48.090]  But it was because the format's limitations, it was a lot of clicking and then waiting for something to load and then clicking and then waiting a long time for something else to load rather than the almost immediate effect you get in the Netflix.
[17:48.170 --> 17:49.490]  Never had a Laserdisc.
[17:49.870 --> 17:52.610]  I know a few people who have, but I don't know if people kept them.
[17:52.790 --> 17:55.430]  Do they still come out with any kind of content?
[17:55.670 --> 17:57.350]  I think it was an analog format.
[17:57.350 --> 18:02.610]  So I think DVD surpassed it quality-wise, at least fidelity-wise.
[18:02.870 --> 18:09.750]  And yeah, it was always kind of a janky format, I think, that was slow and clunky but really impressive compared to what else you had at the time.
[18:09.750 --> 18:15.810]  Yeah, I think audio was perhaps more astounding on that format than the actual video itself.
[18:16.010 --> 18:19.890]  But as you said, yeah, it's like analog and you can still get players.
[18:19.890 --> 18:25.710]  I think on online auction sites and other places, it's kind of a novelty at this point though.
[18:25.810 --> 18:38.110]  There was actually recently, it was posted to somewhere on Reddit that I follow, was an old commercial with Ray Charles, singer Ray Charles, who very famously is a blind person, doing a commercial for Pioneer Laserdiscs.
[18:38.170 --> 18:41.190]  And he's talking about it because of the audio fidelity of the format.
[18:41.370 --> 18:42.770]  And he's like, yeah, I could listen to everything.
[18:42.990 --> 18:48.910]  And so that's how you get a person who cannot see to do a commercial for your video format.
[18:49.110 --> 18:56.090]  But the other interesting thing is you don't see as much clever stuff going on with Blu-ray authoring as far as navigating and stuff.
[18:56.150 --> 19:05.130]  Of course, that has a much higher capacity, I think, on the order of like four gigabytes, maybe up to 25 or more.
[19:05.130 --> 19:07.450]  Yeah, if you're going to use technology, be creative with it.
[19:07.510 --> 19:09.930]  Do things that no one has thought to do yet.
[19:10.050 --> 19:19.410]  Now, of course, a lot of that is taken up by the resolution of the video, but it seems like there's ample room to play with a double layer, dual layer, all these different disk technologies.
[19:19.930 --> 19:39.370]  So, excuse me, I did a little bit of research while you all were talking and it turns out, I believe, that the domain name was tuckersoft.net, just SSHed into the office and figured out that domain name was actually registered on the 21st of September,
[19:39.510 --> 19:39.870]  2018.
[19:40.310 --> 19:43.710]  So, they've been planning this for, you know, at least four months.
[19:43.730 --> 19:44.970]  Since they finished filming the episode.
[19:45.130 --> 19:45.330]  Yeah.
[19:45.470 --> 19:46.050]  Well, that makes sense.
[19:46.450 --> 19:55.150]  Yeah, I guess so, but, you know, it doesn't seem like it was planned really all that far in advance, you know, if the domain name was registered only a few months ago.
[19:55.290 --> 19:56.430]  We're being buzzed by an airplane.
[19:56.730 --> 19:57.570]  It's a helicopter.
[19:57.810 --> 19:58.410]  Oh, it's a helicopter.
[19:58.550 --> 19:58.730]  Okay.
[19:58.850 --> 20:01.950]  You know, we're still working on the soundproof studio down the hall.
[20:02.590 --> 20:08.790]  I'll miss these days where you hear fire engines and airplanes and helicopters and even people walking down the street sometimes.
[20:09.870 --> 20:15.710]  Also, the ZX Spectrum Wikipedia article has some spoilers.
[20:15.810 --> 20:25.090]  I'm sorry, I don't genuflect for kings, but this is, pretty rich article on that computer and it also has spoilers.
[20:25.390 --> 20:30.310]  So, I basically ruined this whole thing myself by looking up the computer once people wrote in about the computer.
[20:30.450 --> 20:31.490]  So, do you have more to add?
[20:31.710 --> 20:32.790]  I played the game.
[20:32.970 --> 20:33.950]  I was not able to...
[20:33.990 --> 20:34.430]  There's a game.
[20:35.270 --> 20:35.670]  Oh.
[20:36.970 --> 20:38.110]  Now, I ruined it.
[20:38.210 --> 20:39.230]  Well, no, it's a QR code.
[20:39.330 --> 20:40.390]  Okay, what does the QR code do then?
[20:40.390 --> 20:53.090]  The QR then sends you to the Tuggersoft site and then there is a file there that you can download for the game itself and then that can be run in the emulator as the game itself.
[20:53.390 --> 20:54.250]  And what's the game?
[20:55.430 --> 20:55.950]  Nosedive.
[20:56.290 --> 20:57.950]  The other games are fake there.
[20:58.270 --> 20:59.150]  is Nosedive a game?
[20:59.350 --> 21:02.330]  Yeah, it's the game in the episode that the...
[21:02.330 --> 21:03.130]  What's the guy's name?
[21:03.310 --> 21:04.030]  Is it Colin?
[21:04.310 --> 21:05.030]  Colin, yes.
[21:05.250 --> 21:06.690]  He's like the elite programmer.
[21:06.890 --> 21:10.710]  But yeah, he was working on that game and he says, you know, yeah, it took some doing.
[21:10.890 --> 21:17.250]  He's like sitting there while the new hire comes in, our protagonist in the episode.
[21:17.730 --> 21:18.950]  Wow, so we can play the game.
[21:19.070 --> 21:29.250]  I also love that they made this as a tie-in because that means they actually got someone who's programming for a 30-some-odd-year-old computer to make a new commercial product to tie in with their show.
[21:29.490 --> 21:33.370]  And I looked into the Spectrum a bit myself too and it's a very cool computer.
[21:33.550 --> 21:35.550]  I kind of always wanted one since I found out about it.
[21:35.670 --> 21:39.430]  But it's also got a very, very active scene of people still programming things for it.
[21:39.490 --> 21:40.610]  A lot of homebrew stuff going on.
[21:40.970 --> 21:42.870]  Yeah, and it's featured in the episode a lot.
[21:42.990 --> 21:47.610]  When you see the tiny, tiny keyboard, that is the Spectrum itself.
[21:47.750 --> 21:53.910]  They are using a very small keyboard and very small CRTs and in fact, it's not just the keyboard.
[21:54.010 --> 21:54.870]  It's the entire thing.
[21:54.990 --> 21:59.790]  It's just one board with the chiclet keys on top.
[21:59.910 --> 22:07.210]  It's amazing they're doing a better job documenting technology from the 1980s than they did in the 1980s when it was current.
[22:07.630 --> 22:11.750]  So Nosedive on the Tuckersoft site actually says this.
[22:11.870 --> 22:13.570]  It seems like a very interesting game.
[22:14.190 --> 22:16.490]  It says, you're falling fast through the sky.
[22:16.710 --> 22:19.470]  Collect eyeballs and avoid buildings and other hazards.
[22:19.770 --> 22:20.650]  Perfection is key.
[22:20.890 --> 22:23.890]  This was truly a five-star game by none other than Colin Rittman.
[22:24.090 --> 22:24.990]  And then there's a disclaimer.
[22:25.370 --> 22:25.790]  But that's the character.
[22:25.790 --> 22:27.170]  Yes, exactly.
[22:27.490 --> 22:32.490]  And then there's a disclaimer at the bottom of the page which you would think would be a usual disclaimer.
[22:32.650 --> 22:37.630]  And it says, the people, places, and actions depicted in this game are based on true events.
[22:38.290 --> 22:39.950]  Wow, that's usually not what they say.
[22:40.370 --> 22:40.690]  No.
[22:42.050 --> 22:46.090]  Okay, well, we've devoted enough time to that particular TV show.
[22:46.170 --> 22:47.170]  It was really well done, though.
[22:47.430 --> 22:50.990]  And we do appreciate things when they're done well and accurately.
[22:51.610 --> 22:55.330]  I'm sure people in the UK can say more about that because they're familiar with the actual hardware.
[22:55.830 --> 23:03.310]  But to get to CW's letter, which I accidentally started to read, I've been listening to the Off the Hook and Off the Wall show for roughly six months now.
[23:03.310 --> 23:06.010]  In case you don't know, we do another show called Off the Wall on Tuesday nights.
[23:06.190 --> 23:08.070]  You can find it on 2600.com.
[23:08.930 --> 23:14.410]  When I first started listening, I was hoping to hear about exploits, zero days, and other exciting things in the security sector.
[23:15.190 --> 23:23.850]  After my time listening to you, it seems like this show is simply a political commentary with a hacker pseudonym, which is all fine and well, but why not change the name to Politico with Goldstein?
[23:24.230 --> 23:27.230]  Or better yet, how about Gonzo with Goldstein?
[23:27.370 --> 23:29.210]  This would at least alleviate some confusion.
[23:29.470 --> 23:33.050]  Is there a chance you'll be going in the direction of security and vulnerabilities anytime soon?
[23:33.070 --> 23:34.950]  If not, I understand and wish you well.
[23:35.130 --> 23:42.230]  Well, CW, it's not really our thing to just talk about zero days and security holes and things like that.
[23:42.310 --> 23:48.830]  We do mention them, but we also put forth our opinions, commentaries, observations.
[23:49.010 --> 23:50.550]  We've been doing this from the beginning.
[23:50.550 --> 23:56.010]  If you listen to the early shows, either off the hook or off the wall, you'll see this has always been the case.
[23:56.150 --> 23:57.150]  There's nothing wrong with that.
[23:57.290 --> 24:01.790]  There's nothing wrong with having opinions on things and expressing them and allowing listeners to call in and do the same thing.
[24:02.790 --> 24:04.990]  That is what makes us unique.
[24:05.190 --> 24:15.290]  There are plenty of opportunities, plenty of ways to get the security holes and zero days and whatever else you're looking for in so many different places.
[24:15.290 --> 24:18.570]  What we try to do is something a bit unique.
[24:18.870 --> 24:25.190]  Yeah, I mean, on the occasions when I'm talking with people about this show I'm involved with and like, what do you do on this show?
[24:25.310 --> 24:38.410]  And one of the ways I've always broken it down is, well, a bunch of us from the hacker community are breaking down things that are going on not just in the tech world but in the world in general and tackling it from our hacker perspectives, our various perspectives as,
[24:38.510 --> 24:44.610]  you know, people with the hacker interests we have and basically going into discussions from that mindset.
[24:44.930 --> 24:58.090]  So, yeah, there's a place to talk about vulnerabilities and leaks and, you know, things of that sort but there's also a place to use the bit of the hacker point of view that sees how things are around us and report on them thusly.
[24:58.250 --> 25:01.490]  Yeah, like coming up later we'll be talking about the FaceTime exploit.
[25:01.910 --> 25:03.610]  I can't wait for that.
[25:03.970 --> 25:12.930]  You know, but look, I think CW makes a fair point and, you know, we should give him credence for that and he wrote in and expressed his opinion and that's what we want people to do.
[25:14.230 --> 25:23.590]  And, you know, sometimes I think the show should be more technically focused too but then I really at the end of every show I always say, you know, oh, that was a good show or that was a mediocre show but I think...
[25:23.590 --> 25:25.210]  Wait, when have you ever said this was a mediocre show?
[25:25.330 --> 25:26.310]  I say it in my mind.
[25:26.410 --> 25:26.750]  Oh.
[25:27.150 --> 25:27.330]  Yeah.
[25:27.510 --> 25:28.770]  I don't express it verbally.
[25:28.930 --> 25:29.390]  It's very smart.
[25:29.550 --> 25:30.530]  I know, I know.
[25:30.730 --> 25:31.210]  And safe.
[25:31.610 --> 25:32.150]  Yeah, safe, yeah.
[25:32.190 --> 25:34.910]  You don't want to piss off the dear leader here, right?
[25:34.970 --> 25:35.070]  No.
[25:35.470 --> 25:46.650]  And, but I think that our best shows are very often shows that meld the technical, the legal, the political, the societal ramifications of these privacy and information security issues.
[25:46.710 --> 25:51.270]  If we just focused on the technical side I think it would actually be kind of boring.
[25:51.470 --> 25:52.390]  Those would be the mediocre shows.
[25:52.630 --> 25:55.110]  And in 20 years you wouldn't want to listen to it, you know?
[25:55.370 --> 26:03.950]  People tell us they listen to the show from the 1990s and it's still interesting because they're, you know, we're talking about technology, we're demonstrating technology, we're talking about
[26:10.610 --> 26:12.050]  nothing is safe from us.
[26:12.250 --> 26:15.570]  So if you want a time capsule that's kind of what we wind up with.
[26:15.890 --> 26:25.250]  Yeah, I mean at the end of the day we could just sit here and read bug track posts into these microphones but that wouldn't be very interesting to listen to and also there are better ways to get your bug track posts.
[26:25.570 --> 26:33.570]  Yeah, and I would tend to lean more towards the last point that you made, Alex, that this show would be quite boring.
[26:33.570 --> 26:57.970]  I mean, I've amused thinking about this particularly when this person wrote in thinking, okay, yeah, well we could just list off sploits and O-days for like the first half hour and then, you know, reserve calls and opinions for the last part of the show but it would be a very dry format and not a discussion and in my opinion really what we've seen in the last decade,
[26:58.370 --> 27:06.710]  maybe two decades is the emergence and the democratization of the technology that hackers originally were trying to get access to.
[27:06.850 --> 27:12.510]  That is, multi-user systems, ubiquitous wireless or uplink connectivity, that kind of thing.
[27:12.590 --> 27:15.270]  Very high speed, very cheap international calling.
[27:15.530 --> 27:32.330]  Those things have changed and I would argue that the ability for the affordability of technology and the ability for people to take advantage of that technology has been something that is quite equal.
[27:32.330 --> 27:43.690]  In fact, we all have benefited in a lot of ways but unfortunately, people that are interested in controlling citizens and disempowering people also have access to those tools.
[27:44.330 --> 28:06.570]  And I think it's important for people at a station like WBAI and from the so-called underground to stay connected and close to the groups of people that are at the effect of others exploiting and using technology in those ways generally the powerful.
[28:06.830 --> 28:20.730]  And I think it's really important for us to continue to watch how then new forms of technology are imposed or become ubiquitous and then are modified in ways that then control the people using them.
[28:20.730 --> 28:33.070]  because, yeah, we had free and open and now we have walled gardens and other sorts of closed OSs and things that make it less free and less empowering and that's bad.
[28:33.230 --> 28:53.590]  That's something we need to ride and absolutely not lose sight of the sadistic sort of negative aspects of what these revolutions and technological paradigms have done in society and that's the big important thing is society.
[28:53.890 --> 28:59.850]  How is hacking characterized and how are citizens able to use it?
[29:00.010 --> 29:11.650]  You raise a great point and I think tying it into society and our listenership is so vital and I think what it also speaks to is the difference between a podcast and a radio show.
[29:11.770 --> 29:12.910]  We are a radio show.
[29:13.070 --> 29:14.170]  We want a radio station.
[29:14.350 --> 29:23.010]  We want somebody listening randomly on their car who has no technical background whatsoever to be interested in what we're talking about to have the technology be accessible.
[29:23.270 --> 29:37.910]  If we're just out there talking about the latest security vulnerabilities in the latest Ubuntu release or something okay it's going to be interesting to a set number of people but it's not going to be interesting to random people turning on the radio.
[29:38.070 --> 29:44.990]  They won't see how it applies to them whereas if you seek something out on the internet and say this is what I'm interested in hearing then you will find that.
[29:44.990 --> 29:48.690]  You will find that That particular technological issue that you are interested in.
[29:48.870 --> 29:55.150]  We try to cover that, but we try to cover so many other things as well, so that people see how it's relevant, how it's interesting.
[29:55.650 --> 30:00.430]  And, you know, they might be inspired to pursue that more afterwards.
[30:01.010 --> 30:01.090]  Yeah.
[30:01.190 --> 30:14.230]  And talking of our listenership, one thing that I think would be really cool to do, and we can invite anyone among our listenership to whom this applies, but if you yourself are maybe in the field of computer security and or you have an exploit or a zero day,
[30:14.350 --> 30:27.050]  something you discovered, or something you're really interested in, or something you broke down and found yourself, then that's something that we could talk about, because, like, we could talk about what that exploit means to you, to the user, to the publisher,
[30:27.830 --> 30:35.410]  you know, maybe how you found it, what steps you took, like, stuff like that we're interested in, I think, and that could really lead to some interesting discussions around here.
[30:35.410 --> 30:51.830]  The last point I wanted to make, just in your comments, is this community itself has emerged into an industry, and there are plenty, plenty of resources, a lot.
[30:51.970 --> 30:53.150]  I mean, it is incredible.
[30:53.150 --> 31:12.030]  The private security auditing companies, the large antivirus, and the entire scheme of departments in every single industry, you name it, banking, to healthcare, to heavy industries, to defense, all of it.
[31:12.030 --> 31:26.410]  They have woken up, they understand security, they've hired, they have armed themselves with technological, people that grew up with this stuff, technologically savvy individuals, such as ourselves or others.
[31:26.410 --> 31:52.570]  And, you know, it's not, we wouldn't be adding a little bit to an enormous industry and an ongoing discussion of security vulnerabilities and all that stuff, and it is itself a huge, and it has grown so much that I think it's less important, and I think less important for us to talk about the very specific things,
[31:52.570 --> 31:55.410]  although we do in the context of news and stuff.
[31:55.410 --> 32:05.870]  But the societal impacts are incredibly valuable to discuss, and in relation to that, I would just say that we want to be able to kind of provoke a little discussion.
[32:06.070 --> 32:23.250]  So, if we sound maybe like we wear our opinions or our beliefs or, you know, the concerns very openly, it's because we would like to, I would say, dare I say, goad people into writing, into calling, into have that dialogue.
[32:23.250 --> 32:25.030]  We want people to disagree, okay?
[32:25.250 --> 32:35.990]  And when I say something you disagree with, that's fine, you can shut it off, you can change the station, you can write us a letter, you can call in, but we're here to provoke that a little bit.
[32:35.990 --> 32:46.250]  And so, when we read something that's wrong, we read a characterization of hacking that's wrong, or that we think is, you know, cliched and boring and played out, you know, we're gonna say that.
[32:46.250 --> 32:57.730]  And we want to be challenged, but we understand that we are working in the background of security, community, and something that has matured quite a bit.
[32:57.730 --> 33:09.810]  A lot of what you say is reflected in our conferences as well, in HOPE conferences, people are talking all kinds of different opinions and backgrounds, and it's social issues, political issues, as well as technological issues.
[33:10.330 --> 33:16.050]  And I think that is something that we should be encouraging, not discouraging, not telling people, okay, keep politics out of it.
[33:16.210 --> 33:17.410]  Politics is a part of everything.
[33:17.750 --> 33:18.950]  It's not a dirty word.
[33:19.070 --> 33:24.030]  It's something that if more people were involved in, we'd be living in, I think, a better world.
[33:24.830 --> 33:33.590]  And also, you know, I've noticed this, that when people say that we're too political, almost invariably, their politics are different, they're not the same.
[33:33.770 --> 33:36.950]  So, what you're saying, basically, is that you don't agree with our conclusions.
[33:37.030 --> 33:38.910]  As Kyle said, you know, we want to hear from you.
[33:38.970 --> 33:39.730]  We want to provoke that.
[33:39.790 --> 33:42.250]  We want to provoke that reaction and have a discussion about that.
[33:42.330 --> 33:48.370]  In fact, we're reading listener email next week, as we mentioned, as the beginning of the winter fundraiser.
[33:48.970 --> 33:52.370]  So, tonight is really our last chance to have phone calls from listeners.
[33:52.550 --> 33:55.230]  So, the phone number is 212-209-2877.
[33:55.510 --> 34:00.650]  Feel free to call in with any issues that you want to talk about, and we'll try to take as many calls as possible in the time remaining.
[34:00.870 --> 34:02.510]  I do want to read one more letter, though.
[34:03.470 --> 34:09.070]  On your radio show, for the last couple of weeks, you've been celebrating the unfreezing of the U.S.
[34:09.170 --> 34:10.490]  public domain copyright law.
[34:10.570 --> 34:11.930]  Actually, Rob, you've been doing this a lot.
[34:12.070 --> 34:12.590]  I have.
[34:12.710 --> 34:13.310]  Yeah, we've been away.
[34:13.750 --> 34:17.010]  Everything published in 1923 is now in the public domain.
[34:17.170 --> 34:17.490]  Hooray!
[34:17.630 --> 34:22.810]  But you've been playing a musical recording from 1923 and telling people they can do whatever they want with it.
[34:23.170 --> 34:24.410]  That's not exactly true.
[34:24.570 --> 34:32.850]  People can record, yes, we have no bananas, without having to pay the songwriting royalties, but the actual performances of the song on the record you are playing is not in the public domain.
[34:33.090 --> 34:42.530]  The federal government did not copyright musical recordings before 1972, and because of this, recordings are covered by individual state laws, and the state laws are all over the place.
[34:42.530 --> 34:43.530]  The U.S.
[34:43.590 --> 34:45.410]  has passed copyright law to fix this problem.
[34:45.470 --> 34:51.730]  However, all recordings before 1972 will not be in the public domain until February 15, 2067.
[34:52.270 --> 34:59.370]  And then, each year after that, sound recordings from 1972 forward will enter into the public domain year by year.
[34:59.490 --> 35:04.710]  So, you should be careful about telling people to reproduce sound recordings from 1923 and before.
[35:04.910 --> 35:06.890]  They are still covered by performance royalties.
[35:06.890 --> 35:09.990]  You cannot use them in something like a video, for example, without permission.
[35:09.990 --> 35:10.950]  Love your show.
[35:11.050 --> 35:12.330]  Been listening for at least two decades.
[35:12.810 --> 35:14.370]  Signed, Dan from Westwood, Massachusetts.
[35:15.310 --> 35:18.910]  Well, Rob, what do you have to say now about the freedom of copyright?
[35:19.170 --> 35:21.230]  I've got a bit of a copyrighted crow to eat.
[35:21.610 --> 35:32.090]  I was looking at the whole issue and following it and celebrating it from the perspective of someone who works in multiple media, like I do, images, sounds, videos, all these sorts of things.
[35:32.430 --> 35:37.010]  And, yeah, I'm glad this listener wrote to correct me on that.
[35:37.410 --> 35:40.790]  And, yeah, I might have to start covering those 1923 songs.
[35:41.410 --> 35:46.430]  Maybe getting some studio bands together or something and doing our own covers of them or something.
[35:46.570 --> 35:47.410]  I think that would be cool.
[35:47.410 --> 36:06.390]  In your defense, though, if it is a non-commercial purpose, if it is re-adjusted, remixed in other ways, or if you're a student creating a documentary of sorts, I think you would have a little bit more leeway than someone who's repackaging and selling something a la a soundtrack for their...
[36:06.390 --> 36:09.530]  I'm curious who's going to come after you for a song from 1923.
[36:09.530 --> 36:10.890]  That's what I'm really curious about.
[36:10.890 --> 36:13.650]  Yeah, I think Eddie Cantor has actually been dead for a long time.
[36:13.770 --> 36:17.650]  But, I mean, obviously, performance royalties are a thing.
[36:17.670 --> 36:18.970]  And we are a radio station.
[36:19.090 --> 36:23.470]  Part of the expense of having this radio station is we pay the performance royalties in a blanket sort of manner.
[36:23.650 --> 36:24.590]  So we're covered.
[36:24.710 --> 36:25.510]  So we're covered.
[36:25.550 --> 36:26.590]  But the average person...
[36:26.590 --> 36:33.150]  It's just, you know, I think copyright law is so crazy, antiquated, and counterintuitive.
[36:33.590 --> 36:34.270]  We need...
[36:34.270 --> 36:37.010]  You know, I think hackers are really well suited to do this.
[36:37.010 --> 36:50.170]  We need to come together and write a constitution of copyright, something that makes it a lot more fair, something that says, you know, a work of art is meant to be heard, to be shared, to be distributed.
[36:50.530 --> 36:54.830]  And obviously, the person who creates something is entitled to compensation, within reason.
[36:55.370 --> 37:05.790]  You know, you can't 50 years from now say, oh, you're not allowed to hum this tune in a film because this person has to get their fair share, even though they had nothing to do with the song in the first place, et cetera, et cetera.
[37:05.790 --> 37:10.810]  It has to be something that makes a degree of sense and doesn't stifle creativity.
[37:11.030 --> 37:13.550]  Because art is meant to encourage creativity.
[37:13.810 --> 37:20.330]  And derivative artwork and songs and all kinds of things like that, that is what moves us forward.
[37:20.330 --> 37:22.170]  It always has, always will.
[37:22.390 --> 37:26.290]  And I just think with all the legal nonsense...
[37:26.290 --> 37:30.630]  You know, we've been trying to put up the Hope Talks from the last conference.
[37:30.630 --> 37:39.590]  And we're stuck on YouTube because somebody played an old Dirty Bastard song in the background for about five seconds.
[37:39.770 --> 37:42.250]  And that blocked the video worldwide.
[37:42.250 --> 37:43.590]  It wasn't even being featured.
[37:43.690 --> 37:44.630]  It was just in the background.
[37:44.970 --> 37:48.970]  And we're trying to erase it and it just won't take on YouTube.
[37:48.970 --> 37:51.710]  Silly things like that are stupid.
[37:51.830 --> 37:56.150]  They, they, they, they slow us down and they don't benefit anybody.
[37:56.770 --> 38:00.130]  So we need to update these, these rules, these laws.
[38:00.310 --> 38:00.930]  Alex, you're a lawyer.
[38:01.010 --> 38:01.590]  Why don't you do that?
[38:01.930 --> 38:02.070]  Yeah.
[38:02.270 --> 38:05.950]  I know about the quote unquote legal nonsense that you referenced.
[38:05.990 --> 38:06.550]  I get it.
[38:06.670 --> 38:06.790]  Yeah.
[38:07.610 --> 38:10.630]  You know, two points bouncing off you and Kyle.
[38:10.850 --> 38:14.070]  You know, number one, I think that Kyle's absolutely right.
[38:14.070 --> 38:19.170]  You know, if this is used in a non-commercial purpose, there's very likely a fair use defense to these types of recordings.
[38:19.350 --> 38:22.850]  And then to your point, Emmanuel, again, also really, really low risk.
[38:22.870 --> 38:26.610]  If I was advising a client on this, you know, depending upon the nature of the particular song.
[38:26.810 --> 38:27.590]  So, you know what?
[38:28.190 --> 38:31.690]  Probably very, very low risk that you're going to be come after.
[38:31.810 --> 38:37.590]  That being said, intellectual property rights can be passed on to an estate or a foundation.
[38:38.030 --> 38:41.170]  And then you may have some aggressive enforcement happening later on.
[38:41.650 --> 38:42.510]  But again...
[38:42.510 --> 38:44.350]  That, to me, is completely nonsensical.
[38:44.550 --> 38:45.570]  I agree with that.
[38:45.690 --> 38:47.130]  You know, especially when...
[38:47.130 --> 38:50.630]  Well, you also may have a defense called latches.
[38:50.770 --> 38:52.350]  L-A-C-H-E-S.
[38:52.490 --> 38:59.790]  Meaning that if you sit on your rights for too long and then try to assert them against somebody, you've lost your right to enforce those rights.
[39:00.050 --> 39:02.190]  So that may be a defense as well.
[39:02.450 --> 39:06.130]  But the evolution of this, I do think we see this happening, though.
[39:06.130 --> 39:12.990]  And at the point of creation, creators can specify that they do want this to be shared, not subject to usual copyright restrictions.
[39:13.110 --> 39:18.450]  And you see pioneers, people like our good friend Bruce Sterling, who released the Hacker Crackdown.
[39:18.570 --> 39:18.650]  Right.
[39:18.890 --> 39:22.890]  You know, completely free, free of copyrights, free of digital rights management.
[39:23.070 --> 39:28.610]  You can go into the Gutenberg Press site and download it for free as a PDF onto your Kindle.
[39:28.610 --> 39:40.430]  So I think we do see this and we see the real notion of... or the real idea behind the creation of content coming back to life without copyright.
[39:40.710 --> 39:46.930]  And ideas, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out many, many years ago, were meant to be spread like candles, right?
[39:46.990 --> 39:51.990]  Where my candle, you can light your candle from my candle without diminishing the flame of my candle.
[39:51.990 --> 39:59.890]  And so he had, I think, kind of quite pointed notions of the limits of intellectual property that we see coming back today.
[40:00.070 --> 40:11.190]  Yeah, I just think when it reaches the point where you don't say something, you don't spread an idea because of fear, that's when it starts turning into something negative.
[40:11.190 --> 40:17.450]  And if you're not allowed to hear music in a particular place...
[40:17.450 --> 40:24.830]  Or for instance, you know, there are films and movies that are locked up in archives because nobody has paid for the rights to show them someplace.
[40:24.950 --> 40:30.690]  That is art that has been created, that is being kept from everybody due to greed.
[40:30.690 --> 40:32.490]  There is no other way to explain it.
[40:32.490 --> 40:36.650]  It's being kept and God forbid, you know, something burns down and it's lost forever.
[40:37.050 --> 40:39.030]  You know, the purpose of art is to be shared.
[40:39.190 --> 40:44.150]  And if it's not being shared, then I think the copyright should just expire right then and there.
[40:44.270 --> 40:48.790]  If you're keeping something from people, then you don't have the rights anymore.
[40:49.070 --> 40:51.470]  You would never get a job at the National Enquirer.
[40:51.870 --> 40:52.470]  Probably not.
[40:52.550 --> 40:53.050]  Probably not.
[40:53.190 --> 40:55.210]  And that's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said.
[40:55.290 --> 40:55.510]  Yes, Rob.
[40:55.590 --> 40:55.710]  Yeah.
[40:55.770 --> 40:57.990]  And talking of film, it's especially older film.
[40:57.990 --> 40:59.030]  It's a volatile format.
[40:59.270 --> 41:06.950]  And there are there are films that we would love to have, but that have actually been lost because the the only remaining films containing them have degraded, have decayed.
[41:07.150 --> 41:16.970]  There are films which we will never see again, but no one could take them and restore them because at the time someone would have had to pay some kind of license fee or someone couldn't track down who they would have had to pay.
[41:17.130 --> 41:19.050]  And so we're crap out of luck.
[41:20.630 --> 41:28.190]  We are irretrievably losing bits of our culture because it was not saved at the time and it can't be saved without getting somebody in trouble.
[41:28.370 --> 41:29.030]  And that's a tragedy.
[41:29.170 --> 41:31.990]  One of my favorite TV shows of all time, WKRP in Cincinnati.
[41:32.210 --> 41:32.410]  Yes.
[41:32.650 --> 41:33.210]  Great show.
[41:33.430 --> 41:35.890]  And they had lots of music because it was a radio station.
[41:36.030 --> 41:36.770]  It was about a radio station.
[41:36.870 --> 41:44.610]  They played music and they had the rights to play the music, but they didn't have the rights to play the music on future technology such as DVD.
[41:44.610 --> 41:51.790]  So when DVDs were invented, they had to change a lot of the music and turn it into ridiculous music that made absolutely no sense to the plot.
[41:52.410 --> 41:58.070]  Situations like that are crazy and should be prevented at all costs.
[41:58.190 --> 42:00.830]  When you produce a work of art, it should be a work of art.
[42:00.950 --> 42:02.010]  It should always stay a work of art.
[42:02.090 --> 42:05.050]  It shouldn't have to be changed because technology changes in the future.
[42:05.230 --> 42:10.850]  It should be reproduced and shared as the artist originally intended.
[42:10.850 --> 42:22.310]  And when you go beyond that, when you say, yes, but we have to compensate the people from decades ago through this new technology, and since we can't, we're just going to kill the whole thing, that is when you are doing a disservice.
[42:22.330 --> 42:30.850]  And the fact that we don't seem to recognize that as a whole and we accept this as natural, as normal, that's the problem.
[42:30.850 --> 42:32.590]  That's the problem in a nutshell.
[42:32.590 --> 42:39.590]  Yeah, fans of Quantum Leap, the time travel show, also know this pain because that show used a lot of pop music from different eras to set the scene.
[42:39.730 --> 42:55.370]  But there has been a movement over the past couple of decades, the free content movement, the creative commons movement, things like that, where people who are creative, such as myself, I like to think I'm creative, put work out there with implicit instructions that it can be shared,
[42:55.470 --> 42:57.170]  that it can be copied, that it can be backed up.
[42:57.170 --> 43:01.130]  In some cases that it can be remixed and mutated into new things by other creative people.
[43:01.490 --> 43:04.810]  And that's something that's very worth supporting.
[43:05.130 --> 43:13.490]  Like, I'm not worried about some distant descendant of mine trying to make a few pennies off of any artwork that I do, but I like selling the originals, I like doing artwork on commission, I like eating.
[43:14.150 --> 43:19.390]  But I also like putting my stuff out there because I create things because I want people to have them and enjoy them.
[43:19.850 --> 43:29.290]  Yeah, they're good in parallel and sort of alongside, but they're not actually replacing those arcane copyright laws, I think is something that you've mentioned before, Rob.
[43:29.470 --> 43:47.790]  And to your point, E, I think the greed and it being out of your control, like the example on YouTube, yeah, perhaps ODB or Wu-Tang would not care at all that this was incidentally in the background, but it's out of our control such that even humans aren't even in control.
[43:47.790 --> 43:56.690]  It's an algorithm that is set to obey specific arcane or otherwise specious copyright laws in context.
[43:56.690 --> 44:00.890]  So, it's being applied to automation and it's otherwise out of control.
[44:01.070 --> 44:07.910]  Now, that says nothing about ODB's publishers coming after you for greedy reasons or wanting money.
[44:07.910 --> 44:23.650]  I'm not trying to mess with Wu-Tang's bread, but seriously, if they even gave us permission, how would we interface with Google such that we could allow our art and our content to be shared like a candle and all of that beautiful stuff?
[44:24.030 --> 44:25.150]  That's the prevention.
[44:25.150 --> 44:26.270]  That's the problem.
[44:26.810 --> 44:37.030]  And yeah, greed may be an incidental reason, but the effect is awful and diminishes consciousness and our ability to learn and evolve.
[44:37.030 --> 44:39.150]  This is not at all a defense of piracy.
[44:39.430 --> 44:43.410]  We abhor piracy where artists are not compensated.
[44:43.530 --> 44:47.810]  Their work is stolen from them, resold by other people, misrepresented.
[44:48.210 --> 44:49.730]  This is about preserving.
[44:49.950 --> 44:50.850]  This is about sharing.
[44:51.010 --> 44:53.950]  This is about being able to freely express yourself.
[44:54.270 --> 45:02.710]  I mean, we see documentary films or filmmakers who are afraid that because somebody was whistling a particular song while walking down the street, that it's going to be flagged.
[45:02.790 --> 45:05.750]  They'll have to pay a copyright fee to somebody and they can't use the scene.
[45:05.750 --> 45:11.970]  They have to digitize out any logos because they might have to pay the company to show their logo on a film.
[45:11.970 --> 45:12.950]  It's ridiculous.
[45:12.950 --> 45:18.910]  It's interfering with creativity and it's not what copyright should be about in the first place.
[45:18.910 --> 45:25.070]  I just want to comment, but what an interesting discussion we're having on the societal ramifications of a technical fault.
[45:25.630 --> 45:26.070]  Hmm.
[45:26.490 --> 45:27.270]  Yes, interesting.
[45:27.590 --> 45:27.870]  Yes.
[45:28.170 --> 45:29.510]  See, that's how it works.
[45:29.630 --> 45:32.050]  This whole thing was a demonstration to that letter writer.
[45:32.130 --> 45:33.150]  Proving our own points.
[45:33.550 --> 45:36.250]  Now, again, our phone number, 212-209-2877.
[45:36.650 --> 45:38.570]  I noticed a few calls came in and we were talking.
[45:38.870 --> 45:39.610]  My desk went away.
[45:40.030 --> 45:45.250]  And if you're still ringing, you're probably ringing in the general manager's office so you can hang up and call back.
[45:46.430 --> 45:48.930]  Let's talk about that FaceTime bug because we said we were going to.
[45:51.270 --> 45:58.210]  Basically, a bug has been discovered in Apple's FaceTime video calling application, which I've never used, but I understand it's pretty cool.
[45:58.390 --> 46:02.110]  It allows you to hear audio from a person you're calling before they accept the call.
[46:02.850 --> 46:08.570]  So you call somebody and you hear them talking, saying, boy, I don't want to pick up this call, but I guess I have to.
[46:08.850 --> 46:10.510]  And you hear that before they actually pick up.
[46:10.630 --> 46:13.850]  I remember something like this in the past, actually, on cell phones.
[46:14.090 --> 46:21.490]  I was able to hear... I called somebody on one of my old, I think, Omnipoint phones, and I could hear them talking before they picked up the phone.
[46:22.290 --> 46:23.130]  That's all I remember.
[46:23.130 --> 46:27.370]  I wish I had more details, but I do remember this being something in the past, many years ago.
[46:27.810 --> 46:28.950]  But this, wow.
[46:29.170 --> 46:32.110]  First of all, how did it take so long for people to figure this out that this was happening?
[46:32.310 --> 46:33.290]  Does anybody use FaceTime?
[46:33.830 --> 46:34.970]  I do a bit.
[46:35.170 --> 46:38.670]  I mean, it's a sort of weird thing to replicate this.
[46:38.670 --> 46:44.610]  You call somebody, and as their line is ringing, you would swipe up from the bottom of your screen.
[46:44.910 --> 46:52.930]  And this was sort of a new innovation with FaceTime, too, where you could have multiple parties on a single FaceTime call.
[46:52.930 --> 47:01.490]  So you would call this person before they picked up, swipe up from the bottom of the phone, and then add another party to the call, except you would add your own telephone number.
[47:01.850 --> 47:03.610]  And so you were adding yourself.
[47:03.650 --> 47:10.010]  It then activated the general FaceTime chat, I guess.
[47:10.150 --> 47:17.130]  But you were really chatting with yourself, and it would activate the microphone of the third party whom you had originally called.
[47:17.610 --> 47:26.610]  So I think that... I can't recall specifically when the FaceTime multiple parties chat thing came into being, but it wasn't too long ago.
[47:27.670 --> 47:30.330]  So perhaps it didn't take that long for somebody to figure it out.
[47:30.490 --> 47:40.310]  Well, after a caller completes the steps, they'll be able to hear the recipient's audio, but the recipient will be able to hear the caller's audio, too, which is easily solved if you just don't make any audio.
[47:40.310 --> 47:46.590]  It doesn't really work for eavesdropping for that reason, but you could potentially catch somebody by surprise.
[47:47.170 --> 47:53.810]  And after the steps that you mentioned have been followed, the caller's end shows that the recipient is part of a FaceTime call.
[47:53.970 --> 47:58.030]  But as far as the recipient can tell, the recipient has not yet answered.
[47:58.950 --> 48:06.770]  So Apple, I believe, has disabled FaceTime until they actually get around to issuing a patch, which may have happened already.
[48:07.950 --> 48:09.370]  Okay, let's take a phone call.
[48:09.470 --> 48:09.770]  Good evening.
[48:09.930 --> 48:10.810]  You're on and off the hook.
[48:11.370 --> 48:11.590]  Hey.
[48:12.410 --> 48:12.990]  How you doing?
[48:13.690 --> 48:15.850]  I want to be slightly off topic.
[48:16.290 --> 48:18.430]  Okay, got a really distant connection there.
[48:18.790 --> 48:20.310]  Oh, can you hear me better now?
[48:20.510 --> 48:21.690]  Yeah, where are you calling from?
[48:23.010 --> 48:26.130]  I'm from Manhattan on the North Upper wireline.
[48:26.270 --> 48:28.450]  Okay, well, it suddenly got better, so...
[48:28.450 --> 48:31.690]  No, I'm tapping my hand over the receiver, that's why.
[48:31.810 --> 48:33.190]  That's why, yes, don't do that.
[48:33.310 --> 48:35.350]  Okay, so a call from distant Manhattan.
[48:35.350 --> 48:48.550]  I heard a name from a distant past, which I recall from when the government was going undiscriminately after the hacking community, and specifically the fiber optic media fiasco.
[48:49.010 --> 48:49.750]  Douglas Rushkoff.
[48:50.030 --> 48:52.150]  Sorry, Douglas Rushkoff.
[48:52.910 --> 49:03.310]  If I don't remember in a fuzzy way, he wasn't really doing right by reporting the way he was in the New York Times.
[49:03.530 --> 49:04.230]  Am I correct?
[49:06.310 --> 49:09.030]  You know, it was a little bit difficult to hear you.
[49:09.110 --> 49:11.890]  You mentioned Blashkoff or...
[49:11.890 --> 49:13.490]  Douglas Rushkoff?
[49:13.790 --> 49:15.050]  Douglas Rushkoff.
[49:15.310 --> 49:15.870]  Douglas Rushkoff.
[49:15.890 --> 49:16.230]  No, it was an R.
[49:17.070 --> 49:17.770]  Rush, yeah.
[49:18.050 --> 49:20.670]  But how is that related to what we're talking about?
[49:20.670 --> 49:29.770]  Well, I recently heard him on another program, on this radio station, in other news, and it was making a lot of sense.
[49:29.870 --> 49:38.630]  And I wanted to know if he has, so to say, been rehabilitated by you, or you still think he's a dubious character?
[49:38.630 --> 49:43.050]  Well, first of all, I don't recall ever saying anything about them.
[49:43.990 --> 49:44.470]  And...
[49:44.470 --> 49:54.810]  Yeah, it would be helpful to know the context of when in the past we had discussed or interfaced stories that he was involved with, or writing, or investigating, whatever he's doing.
[49:54.850 --> 49:59.530]  But no, we did not invite him back or give him blessings of any kind.
[49:59.750 --> 50:01.110]  That's not really our place anyway.
[50:01.510 --> 50:01.630]  Yeah.
[50:02.350 --> 50:05.490]  No, no, but that's, you know, I just wanted to know.
[50:05.710 --> 50:07.450]  That's all I wanted to...
[50:07.450 --> 50:08.210]  We're unaware.
[50:08.550 --> 50:08.650]  Yeah.
[50:09.010 --> 50:09.750]  Thank you so much.
[50:10.010 --> 50:11.190]  I'll listen to the rest of the show.
[50:11.210 --> 50:12.370]  Yes, thanks for your call.
[50:12.450 --> 50:15.790]  Again, our phone number is 212-209-2877.
[50:16.750 --> 50:17.910]  Let's take another phone call.
[50:18.310 --> 50:27.730]  And this is probably the last time for a few weeks that we'll be able to take phone calls since the next few weeks will be fundraising additions, where we call on you to help support the radio station.
[50:27.870 --> 50:28.490]  It's going to be fun.
[50:28.570 --> 50:29.090]  It's going to be good.
[50:29.310 --> 50:29.790]  Good evening.
[50:29.910 --> 50:30.570]  You're on Off The Hook.
[50:30.670 --> 50:30.910]  Go ahead.
[50:31.710 --> 50:32.030]  Hi.
[50:32.510 --> 50:33.310]  Good evening, gentlemen.
[50:34.190 --> 50:40.350]  I'm calling from an AT&T copper wire phone.
[50:40.490 --> 50:41.230]  Sounds great.
[50:41.510 --> 50:42.390]  Yeah, it sounds awesome.
[50:42.390 --> 50:51.270]  Well, it does on your part, but on my part, it's really, really, really, really staticky, which is what I wanted to share with you.
[50:51.370 --> 50:53.090]  Perhaps you could give me some help here.
[50:53.090 --> 50:55.010]  I do hear some of the static, but it's distant static.
[50:55.170 --> 50:56.290]  For you, it's probably up close to that.
[50:56.390 --> 50:57.070]  Yeah, it's probably up front.
[50:57.370 --> 50:57.510]  Uh-huh.
[50:58.310 --> 51:02.830]  AT&T, as you have reported, is reluctant.
[51:03.890 --> 51:05.110]  I take that back.
[51:06.250 --> 51:08.510]  Refuses to service this line anymore.
[51:08.690 --> 51:08.950]  Uh-huh.
[51:09.370 --> 51:18.230]  And they are saying, look, we'll give you a, you know, if your service is not up to par, you know, maybe for a month or two, but...
[51:18.230 --> 51:20.270]  When you say AT&T, do you mean Verizon?
[51:20.270 --> 51:20.810]  I'm sorry.
[51:21.030 --> 51:21.270]  Yeah.
[51:21.570 --> 51:21.830]  Okay.
[51:22.070 --> 51:23.370]  I'm showing my age now, right?
[51:24.350 --> 51:25.830]  The good old days, yes.
[51:26.130 --> 51:26.410]  Yeah.
[51:26.730 --> 51:29.950]  Verizon is not servicing the line.
[51:30.210 --> 51:33.410]  And I know you guys have touched on this in the past.
[51:33.410 --> 51:35.930]  I mean, have I got any options here?
[51:35.990 --> 51:37.450]  Because they're saying, look, they're not gonna...
[51:37.450 --> 51:41.870]  You're just gonna have to live with this or go for fiber.
[51:42.090 --> 51:48.770]  I would suggest looking into smaller ISPs and smaller telephone companies, if that's possible.
[51:48.770 --> 52:03.310]  There's still maybe a couple, another thing I've suggested, and a couple smaller telephone companies that basically have commercial arrangements with Verizon to sell you a line or two, if that's even a thing anymore.
[52:03.430 --> 52:05.450]  I mean, they would be able to... he'd be able to use the same copper line?
[52:05.530 --> 52:05.850]  Right.
[52:05.970 --> 52:14.810]  I mean, we've done it in the past with some of our, you know, DSL and other types of connections, and these smaller ISPs and smaller telephone companies are able to do that.
[52:14.810 --> 52:15.690]  Another thing is...
[52:15.690 --> 52:21.090]  That's actually a good idea, because there are companies where you pay that company, but they still use the Verizon copper.
[52:21.390 --> 52:21.810]  Absolutely.
[52:22.030 --> 52:27.570]  And they might be able to have the leverage to get them to fix something, whereas an individual customer might not.
[52:27.770 --> 52:28.130]  It's...
[52:28.130 --> 52:31.610]  So how would I go about finding such a company?
[52:32.070 --> 52:33.030]  Uh, gosh.
[52:33.610 --> 52:34.910]  What are some of the companies?
[52:35.030 --> 52:36.510]  I think Matrix is one of them.
[52:36.610 --> 52:37.450]  Look for listings.
[52:37.450 --> 52:40.490]  Look for listings specifically with smaller ISPs.
[52:40.710 --> 52:54.830]  I had a story about a small ISP, but essentially, these larger telephone companies have been doing a really, really brisk business, particularly with coax and mobile phones.
[52:55.190 --> 53:00.530]  And a lot of times, that's bundled with other media companies they've taken over.
[53:00.590 --> 53:02.590]  In the case of AT&T, it's Satellite.
[53:02.590 --> 53:05.850]  They've taken over, I think, DISH or one of those satellite providers.
[53:06.010 --> 53:06.650]  So they're bundling.
[53:06.790 --> 53:08.690]  They're doing all these things with mixed media packages.
[53:09.570 --> 53:15.730]  And specifically, cell phones have given landline ISPs a run for their money.
[53:15.770 --> 53:18.890]  And that kind of combines data and telephony.
[53:19.050 --> 53:25.130]  So that sort of took away from the landline telephone service, as well as other broadband rollouts.
[53:25.270 --> 53:29.130]  So what you have is, you know, this option for fiber.
[53:29.130 --> 53:41.670]  But it, in and of itself, is not as cheap and easy as the mobile phones, which with 5G and other technologies, suck up those businesses of voice and data.
[53:41.950 --> 53:52.550]  And so you get less options for small telephone companies that could compete with the wireline service, because the mobile phone companies are there, or even small ISPs.
[53:52.550 --> 53:53.830]  I could go on and on.
[53:53.950 --> 53:55.450]  But the other thing is your building.
[53:55.610 --> 53:56.550]  Talk to people in your building.
[53:56.650 --> 53:59.090]  See if you can kind of cobble together a solution.
[53:59.290 --> 54:04.110]  We'll try to look up companies that offer that service and read them out over the air.
[54:04.190 --> 54:13.570]  But if you just look up landline services, landline companies, other than Verizon, very often, they're not going to run copper to your house, obviously.
[54:13.570 --> 54:16.170]  But they might use the copper that already exists.
[54:16.450 --> 54:21.010]  And as we said, you know, if that requires maintenance, because we've done this ourselves.
[54:21.010 --> 54:22.230]  We've used other companies.
[54:22.790 --> 54:27.470]  We can't talk to Verizon Repair ourselves, but they contact them.
[54:27.590 --> 54:29.610]  Somebody comes out and things do get fixed.
[54:29.910 --> 54:36.850]  And I'd like to throw it back out to our listeners, too, because I know we've heard from many people over the years who also stubbornly cling to their copper wires.
[54:36.850 --> 54:41.570]  So we want to hear what you did to either keep hold of them or what you ended up doing instead of that.
[54:41.890 --> 54:42.090]  All right.
[54:42.090 --> 54:42.630]  Get in touch with us.
[54:42.770 --> 54:46.510]  OTH at 2600.com or Hacker Radio Show on Twitter or Mastodon.social.
[54:46.590 --> 54:47.490]  I hope that helps.
[54:47.690 --> 54:48.190]  Good enough.
[54:48.310 --> 54:48.670]  Thanks a lot.
[54:48.770 --> 54:48.950]  All right.
[54:49.070 --> 54:49.370]  Good luck.
[54:49.650 --> 54:50.490]  I have a question.
[54:50.710 --> 54:51.930]  Now I'm like, I'm forgetting.
[54:52.150 --> 54:55.550]  Is a competitive local exchange carrier, is that just for payphones?
[54:55.570 --> 55:03.190]  Or is that the agreement that telephone companies would have with anybody who wanted to be a business using their infrastructure?
[55:03.570 --> 55:19.290]  I think competitive local exchange carrier, or one of those acronyms, I'm not sure if it was just payphones, but I think this was part of some of the federal rulings that may have been taken away in the past couple of years.
[55:19.430 --> 55:21.230]  It's been a while since we've looked at this.
[55:21.390 --> 55:26.170]  But suffice to say, it used to be that those utilities were required to allow other companies to do business.
[55:26.310 --> 55:27.030]  Let's take one last call.
[55:27.130 --> 55:27.450]  Good evening.
[55:27.570 --> 55:28.150]  You're on Off The Hook.
[55:28.610 --> 55:29.810]  Hey, good evening, guys.
[55:29.810 --> 55:35.010]  I'm the guy that Verizon took off the hook, remember, with the copper line?
[55:35.110 --> 55:36.450]  I come home from work and it was gone?
[55:36.590 --> 55:36.950]  Yeah, yeah.
[55:37.530 --> 55:41.790]  Hey, I tried everything to try to get that thing done.
[55:41.930 --> 55:42.270]  Uh-huh.
[55:42.630 --> 55:48.090]  And now every time I see the guys doing the fiber optic, you know, I know a lot of them, right?
[55:48.250 --> 55:48.530]  Uh-huh.
[55:48.530 --> 55:52.170]  They're in their suits and they're running that bios through the manholes, right?
[55:52.350 --> 55:52.650]  Uh-huh.
[55:52.970 --> 55:55.390]  And they usually have a traffic officer with them, right?
[55:55.810 --> 56:00.250]  So I'll always pull up and say, hey, guys, you got to get the copper back.
[56:00.650 --> 56:03.110]  So right away, the cops are thinking, what's he talking about?
[56:03.150 --> 56:05.010]  Because they're so young, they don't even know, you know?
[56:05.190 --> 56:05.470]  Wow.
[56:05.850 --> 56:11.670]  But anyway, I don't know what he could do, but I couldn't do nothing to get my copper line back.
[56:11.670 --> 56:19.470]  Well, I think Kyle's idea might actually be the best idea right now where you just go through a different company while the copper still exists.
[56:19.710 --> 56:20.870]  It's worth trying.
[56:21.110 --> 56:25.910]  Or somebody should just, you know, get some fiber and start a local telephone company, you know?
[56:25.990 --> 56:26.990]  I was thinking that too.
[56:27.170 --> 56:36.830]  See if you can wrestle the copper away at one of the exchange points somehow in the city or in your neighborhood and back it up with some fiber and start completing calls for people.
[56:36.890 --> 56:37.490]  Look, we're hackers.
[56:37.490 --> 56:38.790]  We can figure it out somehow.
[56:38.950 --> 56:39.550]  Thanks for your call.
[56:39.670 --> 56:40.530]  Thanks, everybody, for listening.
[56:40.530 --> 56:46.410]  Please write to us OTH at 2600.com with your feedback, opinions, comments.
[56:47.070 --> 56:49.030]  And Rob, I believe you have an announcement for us.
[56:49.310 --> 56:49.550]  I do.
[56:49.830 --> 56:52.350]  2600 meetings are happening all over the world this Friday.
[56:52.870 --> 56:56.390]  Go to 2600.com slash meetings to find yours or start yours.
[56:56.650 --> 56:57.090]  Sounds good.
[56:57.490 --> 57:01.150]  We'll be back next week with the aforementioned fundraising edition of Off the Hook.
[57:01.730 --> 57:02.870]  Stay tuned for exploration.
[57:03.250 --> 57:04.490]  This is WBAI New York.
[57:04.570 --> 57:04.750]  Good night.
[57:45.970 --> 57:47.660]  All right.
[57:49.460 --> 57:50.640]  See you guys.
[57:50.660 --> 57:51.080]  Bye.