Thank you.
Good evening. You are listening to WBAI 99.5 FM New York, and the time is just about 7.01pm. Time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
Now I can't make a call. We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would. Bundilly Bum for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bundilly Bum!
We'll be right back.
And a very good evening to you. The program is Off the Hook.
Rob T. Firefly here with you, and I am joined in the studio by Gila.
Good evening.
And what have we got going on out in Skypeland? We have Alex.
Good evening.
Good evening.
And in parts unknown, we have Kyle and Emmanuel. Are you guys with us?
Yes, we are, but we're two people.
So, Kyle, let you speak for yourself.
Oh, yeah. I'm an individual, and my name is Kyle.
Yes, I'm an individual. My name is Emmanuel.
We are both in the same vehicle, though, and we're far away.
We're actually, what is this, Los Angeles, that area.
We just got here, actually, so we're a little confused.
We took land routes to get here.
We took a couple of trains, as is our way, and it's incredible.
It's always incredible to take a train across the country.
And the people you meet, the things you see are things that you just take with you and share with so many others.
And this time, we did something very different we've never done before, and that is ship cargo.
We're going to a hacker convention.
You might have heard of it in Las Vegas, and we wanted to bring a bunch of things with us.
And Amtrak allows you to take up to 100 pounds of luggage that you checked per person without a cost.
You can take more.
It'll start costing you at that point.
Not as much as airlines, but it'll still start to add up.
But you can take two boxes, each one 50 pounds per person.
Again, as we mentioned, individual people.
So, two times two means four 50-pound boxes we can take.
So, we had quite a time figuring out how to go to the Moynihan train station in Manhattan with four 50-pound boxes.
I'll leave out the details because they just would go on for too long.
But we managed to figure it out, and we got it into Moynihan and managed to get them checked the day before and then boarded our train.
And we even managed to peek into the baggage car, and we saw our boxes there accompanying us on the ride.
And in Chicago, there's several hours where you get to walk around the city and switch to another train that goes to Los Angeles.
We assumed that the boxes switched on to that train with us, but we couldn't verify that for sure.
When we arrived in Los Angeles just a little while ago, we went to baggage claim, and three of our four boxes joined us.
One box did not.
So, that was a bit of basically a snag in our plans.
It turns out that, for some reason, the fourth box stayed behind in Chicago and is currently on a train on its way to Los Angeles.
It doesn't help us very much because we're going to be in Las Vegas by the time that box arrives in Los Angeles.
But Amtrak has been very good to us.
They said they're going to FedEx it to us and make sure that we get it.
So, it's just, you know, that is a slight indication of how much less stressful things can be.
Yeah, it takes a long time.
It takes four days to get to the West Coast.
But you wind up being a lot more relaxed than being crammed into a sardine can, having to go through TSA, all the restrictions, all the things you can't do.
You get three meals a day.
You get a room you can sleep in.
So, it's, we've arrived in Los Angeles and I think we're in a decent frame of mind, except for the driving, which we can get into.
Oh, well, one of the other things you didn't mention about that trip that I would say is a huge benefit is your interaction with the staff on the Forum of Transportation, on Amtrak, but also all the individual and interesting people.
We had a lot of conversations with people from the Mennonite community.
Yeah, this was actually...
Which we always wanted to do, but this is the first time we really interacted.
The first time I think we actually had conversations with people from the Mennonite community, or communities, I should say, because there are so many of them.
And they are so interested in what we do as well.
So, it's very cool to open up those gateways and see a part of America that we weren't that familiar with, which you would not see on airplanes at all.
And just a myriad of other individuals and characters taking the trip, sharing their knowledge, talking about all kinds of things.
When you go into the observation car, people are playing cards.
There's all kinds of, well, I don't know, different families kind of collaborating on child care.
We even saw a woman teach another family's child the rabbit ear loop, how to tie your shoelaces, because they were having kind of a lot of outbursts and stuff like that, and the shoes were untied.
And it was just really cool to see this cross-cultural sharing with that common thing of parenting and, you know, keeping kids' attention or maybe distracting them from their outbursts.
But there was a lot of really cool stuff like that on the ride that you just wouldn't get on a plane.
It's just so impersonal.
Nobody wants to talk to anybody on a plane.
And I don't know.
We feel much, we feel like it's a launching pad for our way of enjoying moving around.
And we always get to know just about everybody who's working on the train as well, because they work so hard, and they are always trying to make sure that all the passengers are taken care of.
So we get to know pretty much all of them by the end of the trip.
So I do recommend it.
You know, it can be expensive, but if you factor in what it would cost you to have three meals a day and a place to stay, it turns out not to be that expensive.
And if you get it on credit card points, it's not expensive at all.
It could even not cost you anything.
So that's what we've been up to.
What we're planning on doing on our way to Vegas, we have a rental car that we're using, is checking out the future route of the high-speed train line that will be built and operational by 2028 called Brightline West,
which is an extension of what they're doing in Florida with a private rail company.
They're going to run this one from, I think, just around San Bernardino area, where it connects with Los Angeles, with Metrolink, I believe.
And it's going to run down the I-15 corridor to Las Vegas at speeds, I think, that are even higher than Estella.
So that is something that is going to be built fairly quickly.
And if that actually becomes successful, I think it could really open the door for a revolution in rail transport in the United States.
This is all very exciting stuff, and certainly it's a shame you can't take advantage of it this particular trip.
But I don't know, maybe if you want to wait around and see it open up.
But no, we can always go back.
So you're headed to a hacker convention out there.
And when's the last time you guys went to a hacker convention, apart from the ones that we help with?
Well, we've been to a bunch, but it's hard to say when the last one that we actually traveled to was.
Actually, ThoughtCon.
ThoughtCon, yeah.
There are so many hacker conventions, it's ridiculous.
But domestically, this would be the first one in a while, other than ones we're more familiar with.
I've never been to this one in this part of the country, either.
Yeah, DEFCON is huge, and it can be kind of intimidating sometimes.
You know, it's about 25,000 people show up to this thing.
And there are other conferences that sort of circle around it as well.
Sometimes it's just fun to go to these things and just see a lot of people we haven't seen in years.
This one, I was invited to be on a particular panel.
We were also invited to have some exhibitor space.
So, you know, why not?
Why not just take a little bit of time and experience this that we haven't experienced in a while
and see this part of the country, which, you know, we don't do very often.
Sounds like fun.
Well, apart from your guys' journey, there is a lot going on in the world.
A lot has happened over the past week.
A lot is going on today.
One thing that I thought was very interesting that not enough people, I think, are talking about
is that today is the 50th anniversary of a fun event that happened here in the city.
And I'm wondering if anyone here knows what it is.
Well, I do, because I can see what you're looking at.
So I disqualify myself because I'm cheating.
If you can see what he's reading, obviously you shouldn't guess.
I can't see what Rob is reading.
Alex, can you see what Rob is reading?
I cannot.
Okay.
It would have to be something in the 70s, 1970s.
Well, 50 years ago would be 1974.
Correct.
Right?
This would be when Nixon resigned on the 14th.
I already know what it is.
You know what it is?
How do you know what it is?
Because I saw a bunch of stories about it.
Okay.
Well, this would be August 7th, 1974, right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
In good old New York, New York.
Well, Nixon was about to resign.
He was thinking about it.
Maybe he was.
But, Kyle, what do you think it is?
I think it's the high-wire artist that walked between the World Trade Center.
Oh, yeah.
Philippe Petit.
It is.
Philippe Petit, a high-wire artist who did all kinds of high-wire stunts all over the world,
walked between the Twin Towers eight times on a wire on the morning of 7th of August.
Did he do it eight times?
Wait a minute.
Why eight?
I thought he did it once.
He did it eight times?
He went back and forth across that wire eight times and did some dances.
He kneeled on the wire.
He lay down on the wire.
And he was having a good time up there.
And the event, yeah, it happened 50 years ago today.
It happened not too far from where I'm sitting.
And it was, I'm sure he got in a little trouble afterward, but it was very probably worth it for that particular dude.
And it's one of the reasons why, when they rebuilt the World Trade Center, they didn't build two of them,
because some joker's going to come along and do that again.
He was ready to.
When the towers came down, among the emotional responses was one from him.
And he offered to, when they rebuilt it, do another walk all those decades later from when he did.
And maybe just because of that, they built a single tower with some other stuff around it,
which doesn't lend itself to that sort of tomfoolery.
I guarantee you that was a topic in the meeting that they had about that.
It must have been.
It must have been.
So, yeah, other stuff going on.
Google is having a bit of a time of it.
Google is a big company.
For those unfamiliar, no, you're not.
And that's part of the problem, as Google was ruled by a judge to be a monopoly.
After reviewing reams of evidence that included testimony from top executives at Google,
Microsoft and Apple, during last year's 10-week trial,
Judge Amit Mehta has ruled it a monopoly.
Hang on.
Yes.
Okay, Rob.
Yes?
This is a serious radio program, okay?
You know, we might not always get it right, but we try and stay serious, okay?
Now, what you were reading here sounded like a good story at first, but then, you know, by throwing,
okay, so Google has been taken down by Judge Meta.
Judge Meta.
So, the owner of Facebook, this is what it's going to be all about, maybe a course stenographer
of Microsoft is going to say something about this as well.
Come on, let's use a little more imagination in reporting these so-called stories.
All right, so what happened to the big, bad Google?
The big, bad, well, what happens to them remains to be seen, but the judge said after having
carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches
the following conclusion, Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.
Judge Meta wrote that in his 277-page ruling.
He said Google's dominance in the search market is evidence of its monopoly.
This is from an Associated Press story, and, you know, we don't know what's going to happen
as a result of this, but I don't know, what do you folks think is the likely fallout from
this, Alex?
Well, there's a number of things I think that could happen, and it will be sometime after
the summer, sometime in September, I think, when Judge Meta is going to consider what remedy
to fashion to try to combat the anti-competitive activities that this court found Google had
engaged in after this 10-week trial, and I have to say, a 10-week trial is a really long trial.
That is grueling.
Being on trial for 10 weeks is something I, you know, it takes a lot of effort.
Those are long days, every single day, for the court, for the attorneys, for the litigants,
everybody.
So it's, you know, this is a massive fact-finding event.
So I guarantee you the record is replete with agreements, testimony.
It's probably massive with a 10-week trial.
So he's going to be looking at all of that information, looking at that evidence, and trying
to figure out what the best remedy to fashion is, and it could take a number of different
routes, some of them more likely than others, though, I think.
So this all has to deal with, this particular anti-competitive suit has to deal with Google
striking agreements with wireless carriers and mobile phone manufacturers to make Google
the default search engine, you know, for all of these browsers that are included within
the OS, the operating system, as default.
So one thing that Judge Mehta may say is, well, instead of simply allowing Google to strike
some kind of agreement with these mobile phone carriers or the manufacturers, well, just let
consumers set their own default search engines.
That's one option here.
The problem with that, though, is that it doesn't necessarily penalize Google in any
way.
I mean, this would actually take money away, if you think about it, from the device manufacturers
and the wireless companies, the people that used to be the recipients of literally billions
of dollars from Google to make Google the default search engine on their devices.
So if they do that, and I apologize if anybody heard my beagle in the background there.
It's additional commentary.
Yes, exactly.
But being about monopolistic activities, as usual, as all beagles do.
But so if this is if that's the remedy that's fashioned, it doesn't have a lot of teeth,
right?
Because people may just naturally gravitate towards Google as their search engine anyway.
Apologies.
And that could end up actually saving Google billions of dollars in payments.
So that's one option, but I don't think it's a great option.
Another option is that the court could actually prevent Google from competing for default search
engine status on these devices or inhibiting Google in some way from trying to strike those
deals with the mobile phone manufacturers or the wireless companies.
But this in and of itself would probably be seen by the judge to be somewhat anti-competitive
in and of itself, just preventing Google from competing or tying one hand behind its back.
That's an option, but I don't think it's likely another option.
And this would be really interesting, especially in the age of ingesting massive amounts of data
through large language models and whatnot.
But the judge could say, well, Google has this massive edge on competition, and if we simply
allow consumers to set their default search engines, they're likely to go and pick Google
anyway.
So maybe we erode Google's competitive nature and its advantage by forcing Google to make its
search data public in some way, by forcing Google to reveal some data that would level
the playing field, so to speak, for its competitors.
There's problems with that, too, though, because there aren't really laws on the books in the
United States about how one would handle that data, how a company was supposed to handle
that data.
We don't know what kind of fields and information are contained within those data sets or who would
use them or if they could be used for ill purposes as well.
So that's a possibility, but I also think it's unlikely.
And the other one that a lot of people seem to be talking about is that there may be some
kind of divestiture type of situation like we saw with AT&T.
There may be some way of breaking up Google here to divest certain business users.
Liquid aid.
Yeah, go ahead, Kyle.
Oh, you do not know, you do not want to know what I think about this, but I'm going to
tell you anyway, like the most of it is not something that can be on air, but I am so tired
of these companies and the kid gloves that we handle them with.
We sit around and we treat them like they've just begun.
And there's some sort of we have no idea and have no track record.
Let's be plain about this.
Google is evil.
That's literally, that is the wording of Google is a monopolist.
That was the judge's determination.
And I have, I have, I know it is, it is unlikely as, as Alex put so, um, uh, so succinctly,
it's unlikely, but boy, I hope, and it's, it's a good thing we or I am not a part of making
whatever restitution this is, but I absolutely hope that this is the most harsh, scathing
kind of punishment or, or, or like you suggested, even some kind of breaking up of search and
these, these, these, um, uh, businesses that they've absorbed and acquired over time and
keep telling us that are, are a part of their core business model.
It's so disgusting how wealthy and the largest that they've used in our lobbying system and
how they've had politicians just basically giving them free range, blank checks to do whatever they
want in the name of profit.
And then those same politicians come back wringing their hands about how, Oh, the
children and gosh, privacy and G consumers.
Well, you are the ones that were able to make the decision.
Stop telling us that you're so darn concerned.
You're not, you're not, you're bending to the will of gigantic money interests who are
not, would we miss Google?
If Google was gone, would we miss it?
There are, in spite of their monopolistic activities, a plethora of alternatives, and I'm sorry, I'm
getting so upset about this, but I swear to you, we would not miss them if they were liquidated
to dust tomorrow.
Oh, is that clear?
It is clear.
And, and Kyle, I think your, your point strikes or, or rather is consistent with the first potential
remedy that, that I had addressed, which was that consumers, if given the choice, could
set their own default search engines.
And I, and I think you're right about this.
I think in this age where we have become so accustomed, and we've talked about this quite
frequently on particular show too, that we, we've become so accustomed to Google search
results being essentially poisoned by sponsored results at the top that you, we know to scroll
down through all this nonsense and dreck essentially, right?
That, that we just have to wade through all of these advertisements in order to actually
get to the substantive search results that, that matter to us.
And, and so maybe people, if given the opportunity, would not choose Google to be their default search
engine.
Maybe they would want to choose something instead that gives them a narrative answer that is based
off of some kind of aggregation of data, like a large language model would, would create.
Maybe people would choose something like chat GPT or perplexity in order to run their searches
through that, that type of query.
So, you know, maybe there is something to be said for that, but to go back to the point about some kind
of divestiture, breaking up Google, spinning off Android might, might be a possibility, maybe
breaking off an advertising unit, making sure that there are walls of separation.
Between advertising, between publishing and between, between those on, on one hand, advertising
on one hand, publishing on the other hand, on the other hand, search perhaps.
So there are a number of ways of doing this, but again, like this is a really weird situation.
If you think back to divestiture with, with judge green and the, the mob bell system, what
we were dealing with then was a monopolistic company that had a lot of physical assets.
Google has a lot of physical locations, but its assets are largely intellectual property
and they're largely intertwined throughout various business units.
So it would be really difficult to see how a divestiture situation would work in Google's
situation.
Now, what, what is clear though?
Well, and I think that this really goes to what, that goes to the heart of what you were
speaking about, Kyle, and what might have irked you is that, I think it's very unlikely
though, that Judge Mehta or any judge that's going to be reviewing this, because this will
no doubt be appealed and it will probably wind its way through the legal system through the
next five to ten years, maybe even longer.
But I think it's unlikely that, that any judge is going to strike at the heart of the evil
here.
And, and that evil is the way and the manner by which Google has made its money through
surveillance capitalism.
I think that we're going to see a judge take the approach and the legal system take the
approach of leveling the playing field when it comes to profiting from the form of advertising
that we have come to know so well, especially on this program as surveillance capitalism.
So, nothing is going to strike that down.
I think it's, it's possible, it's quite, but I think it's extraordinarily unlikely.
I think we're going to see the judge simply say that advertising of this particular type
of nature, whereby you can gain some kind of advantage through being a default and then
collecting data on massive amounts of users, needs to be open to more, not just the few companies
that can afford to strike these deals with massive companies.
So, I think while we may laud this as some kind of victory, perhaps, depending upon your,
your, your viewpoint on this, I think it's far from the crushing defeat that, that many
see for Google.
But Alex, I had a question about this.
You were mentioning a 10-week trial.
So, I thought this was a ruling, which usually comes after a trial.
So, how could there be a trial coming after this ruling?
No, there wasn't, there's no, there was a 10-week trial that preceded the ruling.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
Because I didn't really hear much coverage of that when it was going on.
Yeah.
It was probably really boring and not worth covering, to be honest.
I mean, it's hard, I think it would be hard to make news out of that testimony.
Also, while it was going on, this was a case that has been ongoing for quite some time.
It wasn't exactly front and center of the national conversation, because it was just another
step in a really long process that had been going on for ages.
That's, hey, hey guys, that, that, everyone, pals, that is the problem, that all of this
stuff is slow walk, dragged out, stretched and dilated, appealed and appealed and appealed
and, and, and, and papered over with good intentions and legal, you know, chargeable, billable
hours, all of that.
And that's all we ever really get.
And then we'll get some paltry, you know, token action that does not actually affect
anything.
And, and I swear, you know, they'll, without those remedies that in fact, Alex outlined,
I think those are fantastic examples, the compartmentalizing, the separation of those
businesses that are unlike one another.
Those, those will be met with these like, kind of these claims of like, well, we're so important
that, you know, no one will be able to learn or like the, the, the military won't be able
to know like maps or something.
I don't know.
They'll, they'll make themselves so vital to every inch of everything that it'll be hard
that, that to, so that they're just basically banking on sympathy and, you know, at the same
time making all their, um, you know, lifeline calls in here in California and wherever else
they have a sympathetic, sympathetic ear in politics that they're, um, golden goose or
whatever they're, they're, um, their signature business in Silicon Valley isn't what they say
it is.
It's not as good.
And it is in fact, uh, uh, much more, um, uh, running afoul of, of the people they claim
to serve in the name of their own profits, like, and, and I think what we're seeing is
what is happening with others of these technology companies, these startups, these things that
are moving very quickly.
Yeah.
This took like 20 years, 30 years.
I don't know.
Since the, the, the Stanford twins or Stanford guys built their little rack, like how much
different is their business?
They've come, they've gone, they built their mansions, whatever, had their, their families,
all that.
They don't care about whatever this is.
It's not their little baby anymore.
It is this, this Hydra.
They have zero control over.
It's a board and a whole lot of shareholders and all they want is money.
They don't care about any of us.
They don't care about the product.
They don't even care about the employees.
They'll, they'll just keep turning over new engineers with their bright eyes and bushy tails.
Coming in to do the same dumb work for an even worse product, you know, on into the future.
And we'll keep trying to, to hold them to account as they develop more and more of these
like pervasive and invasive models and algorithms and, and quote products that we all can't live
without.
I mean, even, um, I think some of the speculation, I think there's an Ars Technica article about
this talking about Apple bot and how Apple may, in fact, like a lot of this may have been
trying to keep Apple from going into the search, uh, uh, sector.
But, uh, and in fact now with a lot of the large language models, they're, um, they're trying
to create products out of those that access search engines or access, uh, um, uh, you
know, the vast amounts of knowledge or data that have been collected and, and, and made,
you know, readable machine readable over the years.
So like, you know, Apple itself could just turn on some product that they built with proprietary
models and algorithms that are using search like features, but are a much more personable
Siri, you know, and, and that is trained on your voice and very custom.
But, uh, that probably is why like those kinds of products didn't see the light because Apple
is kind of getting paid off.
So it was, it was kind of stifling innovation and I think that's, those are some of the
ironies, right?
Like that a lot of the dumping of permission and just allowing them to grow and grow and
grow and do whatever the heck they want was because, oh, we don't want to stifle innovation.
Well, their very existence has from one of the other enormous players in technology.
Yeah.
That's such a great point, Kyle.
And the payouts that Google was making to companies like Apple made it economically idiotic
to do anything but allow Google to have dominance as the default search engine on their particular
devices because I think there were certain statistics that came out during the trial that
I had seen, I think, in a Financial Times article earlier today that indicated that even if
Apple's, even if Apple created its own search engine and it was successful, they would still
lose billions of dollars.
Because they were getting, yeah, if they weren't taking the money from Google.
So Google has been making so much money from all of this that it could essentially just pay
for market dominance from all of these players and hoover up all of our personal information
and continue to profit from it there.
You know, I have a question, though, for Emanuel, though, because, you know, there's been a lot of talk
about breaking up Google and a lot of comparison to the Rbox or the regional Bell operating
companies and the original Bell system.
And that happened, if I recall correctly, in the early 80s.
I think it was 1982.
I was alive.
I was kind of present but not voting at that moment.
I think I was pretty young.
But, I mean, do you see any parallels here, Emanuel?
What do you think?
I mean, and what was it like?
I mean, that predated the birth of 2600, but you were still hacking.
You were still phone freaking.
I mean, what are your thoughts on this from a historical perspective?
Well, I mean, it pretty much was the main topic when we did start publishing in 1984,
40 years ago, the breakup of the Bell system.
Well, I mean, a telephone and a telephone call were things that were controlled by basically
one entity.
You know, you couldn't own your own phone.
The phone company owned your phone.
The phone company owned the line to the central office.
They owned the central office.
They owned the line to the long-distance office.
They owned the long-distance transmission equipment.
It was really, you know, something that was, the thought of competition pretty much didn't
exist.
I think, you know, we're at a stage now where we're aware of what a monopolist is.
And we're aware of the fact that we do need competition and there should be competition.
What we don't seem to be aware of is exactly how to do that.
And so we let giants like Google flourish and get ever more control over us.
The amount of control they get is infinitely more than anything the phone company would
have gotten in the past because this is basically everything you're searching for, everything
you're thinking about, everywhere you're going, even interacting with artificial intelligence.
We're starting to have that now.
So there's this pervasive control and knowledge of almost every aspect of your life, of vocal
thinking, what your future potential is.
So there are very, very strong similarities, but also major differences here.
So it's a bit scarier now because of the amount of control and what technology has made possible.
But it's definitely a good thing to, you know, bring these giants down a few pegs because
having them have this much control and power over our lives, there's no way that ends well.
There's no way that ends well for us as individuals.
And it's not just Google.
They're also saying that companies like Apple, Amazon, and Meta, not Judge Meta, the one that
owns Facebook, they've been violating antitrust laws and they've been taking advantage of all
sorts of things.
And there will be other cases as well.
In fact, there's even a second lawsuit against Google over ad technology, and that's set to
go on trial next month.
So it's going to get more and more interesting as the months and years go on.
But I think, you know, like with everyone and everything that gets ever powerful, there's
kind of this desire in all of us to tear it down.
And I think Google's day has come.
Quite so.
And it's funny because the breakup of Bell is the only thing we really have to compare this
to at all.
Something like this just has not happened in the field of technology company lawsuits in
any of our lifetimes.
But that wasn't an instant thing either.
The divestiture was initiated in 1974 when United States versus AT&T was filed.
The case didn't end until 1982.
And that's when things were officially breaking up.
And at the time, you know, Bell was ubiquitous.
Everyone had a phone in their home.
Everyone was using the services, paying for the services and what have you.
But we weren't all carrying around a little piece of Bell in our pocket.
We weren't running our personally identifying information, our commercial activities, our
personal activities, our contact with the people around us beyond just the odd, you know,
phone call that we weren't running all that through Bell.
Google is at the helm of so much more of our daily lives.
Whether or not you have, you know, their brand of phone, whether or not you use their brand
of search engine, they've got a big chunk of you.
And the idea that there might be some light at the end of the tunnel for people who have
been concerned about this is very interesting.
And it's something that we'll certainly keep an eye on.
Yes, Alex?
Speaking of Google, I'm wondering, actually, because I was just thinking along parallel lines of
what Emanuel is saying, how Ma Bell owned the telephone, owned the lines, owned the machinery
at the central office, owned, you know, pretty much all of the infrastructure.
And if you think about Google, it's not just the search data.
It's the email addresses that are associated with our personal data.
It's our viewing habits when it comes to videos.
It's our searching habits.
It's our purchasing habits.
It's our clicking habits.
So it's all it's this ecosystem of data that they own, a big part of which is YouTube.
So I'm wondering, are we going to be on YouTube tonight?
I think we should probably make some kind of announcement about whether we're doing overtime.
We are not doing overtime tonight due to all of us being scattered around to the four winds
more than usual.
Overtime will return.
We have not abandoned the idea.
It will just require our facilities and such to be lined up in a particular manner.
So, yeah.
Oh, come on, Rob.
Tell them the truth.
We're afraid of YouTube.
We're afraid of Google.
What they're going to do to us after we lambaste them like this over the airwaves.
I'm leaving town, man.
I'm driving as fast as I can in this thing.
You know, we joke around about this sort of thing, but I should mention that we are on
the air at WBAI.
And if you enjoy this sort of thing, if you care about this sort of thing, if you'd like
to keep us doing this sort of thing, go to give to WBAI.org and help us do what we
do and help us keep doing what we do and show your support for our program, for our
station, for our place in the broadcast world.
Alex, you had something.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, WBAI is not collecting any data on you whatsoever, especially when you're listening
to this show live on the air, on the radio, and that you're part of a community when you
do.
We're all listening to this together.
That's something that's, I think, extraordinarily special here.
So I think that this is, to go back to Google, I think this is going to wind its way very,
very slowly and methodically through the appeals process.
It may very well go to the Supreme Court.
The next stop is to appeal the judge's ruling to the D.C. Circuit.
That would be a three-judge panel that would, I think it was very likely that given the record,
the testimony, and the methodical nature by which Judge Mehta approached this, I think
it's likely that any appeal would probably be upheld.
I might have to reconsider that after we review the appellate briefs.
But then the next stop after that would be to petition the D.C. Circuit to hear the case
en banc.
That means as an entire circuit itself of judges, not just a three-judge panel.
So you'd have the entire circuit.
Or they could short-circuit that and go directly to the Supreme Court where they would petition
for certiori, the Supreme Court being who they are and what they are lately, would likely
take this case because it's so highly charged, political, and has such enormous implications
to how this country operates and the manners by which certain companies continue to do business.
And so I think it is quite likely that, let's say, within four or five years, we might see
this breach all the way to the Supreme Court.
And then maybe at that point it will be kicked back down to Judge Mehta for further fact-finding
on particular issues.
And it could go on for 12 years, just like the divestiture case in Montbell went on.
But Alex, can I ask you something here?
Unlike the Bell breakup, Google is something that isn't tied down to a physical location.
So if it becomes unpalatable for Google to maintain its monopolistic desires as a U.S.-based
firm, could it not simply move its operations to someplace that's more receptive to that and
still exist online, still do the same things, just be in a different place?
Wow.
I hadn't thought about that.
That is, that's a potential possibility, I would guess.
But it would be, it would be a really drastic measure for Google to take in response to this
particular type of ruling.
I think it would be a hell of a lot easier for them to fight the ruling on appeal over the
next decade or so and try to chip away at it and chisel away at the holding and the ruling
by both legal means and political means rather than uproot its headquarters from the United
States and place it somewhere else.
But it is, I think, theoretically possible.
I think you're absolutely right.
They could do that, Emanuel.
They'd be very unwelcome, I think.
Honestly, they've already done it with the money.
Like, it's like Google Ireland, I mean, that's where all the money is anyway.
Like, they don't really care where the headquarters are.
Like, they've handled their extraterritorial structures for where it counts, e.g. the bank.
But their headquarters, yeah, I agree.
I think they're going to want to just loiter in this country and skate as best they can
through those legal means you described, diluting and recharacterizing and just dragging it out
as long as they can.
And I just hope we have really, like, sober minds on this collectively.
And as upset as I sound, I just, I really do think the point of all of this is they ought
not to be too big to care, to not care, or to care.
Like, they are, we were literally saying that, that these companies are too big to care about
any of us.
And that was, like, a common understanding of their largesse.
And I think that, you know, maybe we should appeal to people's sense of, you know, wanting
to do business with private entities and look at companies that get this big.
And what other large entity loves big, top-down command structures?
Kind of sounds a lot like the government to me.
And it just, it's super funny how the shareholders and the practices of this kind of winner-take-all
economic structure that lauds everybody and builds them all up in the markets and everything.
It makes them these really big companies that are really perfect for the government to be
involved with.
Like, if they had to accidentally take over or if they just needed a whole bunch of stuff
and needed to give a bunch of warrants to one entity, it's one-stop shopping for them.
Like, so anyway, my point is, it's, like, it's in our interest they not become too big
to care about our rights or our privacy or that their business models are predatory even
though they make money.
Like, just that they make money is not the rubric we should be measuring the success of
these firms.
And, like, I don't know.
It just, we're using the wrong measurement.
And I think that that is a moral thing or something that we need to be guided by that
is outside of the economic structure.
Because that is going to win.
It's already set up to win, right, for them, fines or not.
You know, whatever we levy at them, however they're punished, quote, punished, or whatever
damages are sought or paid out, it isn't necessarily the only way to seek this out.
We need to have a much better attitude about our expectations of these firms, like how big
they will become or what they will be when they get that big.
Like, or what fail-safes, what switches will we have to, like, not succumb to having to
fight them in, like, to eternity or, like, beg Europe to bring them to their knees because
we can't.
Because our politicians are bought.
You know, like, that's sad that we have to go around the world basically searching, pun
intended, for jurisdictions that have a backbone.
Like, we should be able to muster that here, in California, in our country.
And anyway, I'll leave it at that.
Well, you've said a mouthful there, but it's an important mouthful, and it's a reason that
we're all going to be keeping an eye on this.
Of course, Google is the 900-pound gorilla it is, and should that have been allowed to
happen?
Probably not.
But it is the case of things, and we will see if there is a way out of it.
Alex, I believe you had something that you'd like to go into.
Yeah, sure.
I just want to also thank you guys for what you said last week at the end of the show.
I don't listen to most of the shows that we do because I hate the sound of my own voice,
but I do listen to the shows when I'm not on them.
And I want to thank you in particular, Emmanuel, for what you said about me and my mother last
week.
As many people know, my mother passed away a week ago today, so I'm still pretty shattered
by it.
You know, I ask that wherever you are, raise a glass tonight for my mother, Diane.
She would love that, and she was such a pivotal force in my life.
But I also want to bring up the fact that, you know, while we're on the subject, I think
it was, and the reason why I'm not over at DEFCON this particular summer, and I really
wanted to see your panel, Emmanuel, is because my mother passed away.
But I do remember last year being at DEFCON, and first off, I think I remember trying
to, maybe it was that year or the year before, trying to get, trying to do the show from the
plane on the way to DEFCON.
That was a total disaster.
That was kind of funny if people want to go into our archives and listen to that.
But I think it was last year, almost to the day, when I was in a hotel room at DEFCON,
and we were mourning the loss of Cheshire Catalyst.
I think it was literally almost to the day.
So, you know, just wanted to thank you guys for what you said and to bring up both the
spirit of my mother and the spirit of Cheshire.
And, you know, also, it's going to be hard for us in Vegas because we'll be remembering
Kevin Midnick, who passed away just over a year ago.
He, of course, had lived in Vegas, his grandmother lived in Vegas, and, you know, driving across
the country, filming a documentary about the imprisonment of Kevin Midnick was, you know,
a big part of our lives in the late 1990s.
There are so many reminders.
Just today, we were exiting the train station and Union Station, and we saw the MDC across
the street where he had been held, you know, in solitary confinement.
There's just so many memories of those days and just the senseless loss that we so often
are confronted with.
So, Alex, of course, we are all hoping that you're getting through this.
It's a difficult time, I know, but the happiness in the end outweighs the sadness, and that's
what keeps us going.
No doubt.
No doubt.
You're absolutely right about that, and thank you all for that.
But, you know, with that, I'll take the last minute or so here and give everybody an update
on, you know, one of our latest tragedies, right?
It was the Virgil Griffith case.
As we know, a couple of weeks ago, we had won a motion to have Virgil resentenced.
We took, and that resulted in about a little more than 10% of his sentence coming off, which
was a wonderful thing.
We are right now in the process of waiting to see when he will be released.
His order came into effect on August 2nd.
His release date has been moved up by five or six months now.
It's unclear how they perform those types of calculations within the Bureau of Prisons,
but what we're waiting for now, since Virgil is within a year of his actual release date,
and that seems to be all that matters, he's eligible to go to a halfway house.
And we can find out any day.
We could find out in the next five minutes that the Bureau of Prisons has found him a
spot, and he can finally be released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Milan,
Michigan, and go into a halfway house.
So it's likely that he will go to a halfway house in Baltimore, because that will be near
his family, and it's where he has a few different job offers as well.
So keep your fingers crossed that the BOP does its work, and the bureaucrats cross their
T's and dot their I's and get the paperwork moving, because Virgil could be coming home
to us next week, could be a couple of months, but we hope in our heart of hearts that it's
sooner rather than later.
It would be good to have him back.
Absolutely.
And we'll have to leave it there.
Do send us an email, OTH at 2600.com.
For all those dealing with a certain tropical storm this week and this weekend, we'll play
us out with a little bit of this.
For Off the Hook, this has been Rob T. Firefly.
Have a good week.
We'll see you soon.