This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers, to the hackers and the crackers.
I see in binary, I speak source code, step on my toes, I'll post a million game pegs
of you in a fag bone, in your digital stance, getting firewalled ho, cause I'm riding the
net in my six foe, I was a dick with my 56, now with my cable I'm able to get that stable,
on the out, my name is Ace and I'm a Leo, on the digital highway, my name is Neo and
I'm a hero, in a flash, I'll screw you on burning dreamcast, you need some ISO, let me through
my hard drive rifle, our exchange you could never stifle, in a digital hug, you just caught
the love bug, I bootlegged your CD, I caused a fight between Un and Jay-Z, your CG, it's
all gonna be free, whether we take it by force or we take it nicely, you feel that rattling
your bones, when I tell you we just hacked Al Jones, and NASDAQ leaves you flat on your
back, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the crackers, serial codes, source codes, ISOs, RAN, SIF,
SIS, this is dedicated to the hackers and the crackers.
Hello everybody and welcome to Binary Revolution Radio episode number 152, coming to you on
6-13-2006, see I always have a problem when I see a numeric date, 6-13, I have to actually
count in my head, this is how messed up I am, I have to think January, February, March,
April, May, June, June 13th, 2006, I am StankDog, back with you again this week, and we have
a new first time co-host on the show this week.
Hey guys.
That people might know, yeah people will know the name from the forums of SEAL, but you
also actually have, I know a lot of people don't realize this, but some of us have real
names.
Are we using a real name on the show, are we going to stick with just SEAL, or what did
we decide on that?
I think it was SEAL aka Julian, so whichever one we go by works by me.
And of course, Julian aka SEAL of the new piracy documentary, On Piracy, actually what
is the full official title?
The title is On Piracy, On Piracy Radio and Walmarts, with a purposefully put, that's
after Walmarts so I wouldn't be sued by Walmarts.
Oh, interesting touch there, I don't know, hopefully that works.
Probably not, you know, but just hopefully this stays under the radar.
Right, right, and actually we're going to talk about that piracy documentary as today's
main topic, but just for some of you who may have been away for a while and are coming
back and just listening to 152, it's the first episode you've heard in a while, you might
not realize that we have been doing a little bit of format change to the show.
So the last few episodes we've been moving into a new format, like I said, where we're
going straight into the main topic because we want to make sure that we get plenty of time
to talk about the main topic, we don't want to get a cut off early, we want
to make sure it gives it all the attention that it deserves, topic or topics, and today's
main topic is, as I just said, the piracy documentary by our co-host Seal.
So we're going to move right into that main topic, and as you just heard, there's the name
of the documentary on piracy, which can be found at piracydocumentary.com, right?
That's exactly right.
Why .com?
Why not .org or .net or whatever?
Why did you choose .com, just out of curiosity?
Oh, you know what?
Just, you know, .com sounds all professional, and people think that, you know, if you're
.net, then somehow your website is less professional somehow.
It's all this psychological warfare thing I'm trying to do.
Yeah, and you know, I find this question, see, we're already branching off onto another
topic.
I always have these tangents.
One of the hardest things, I know it sounds silly, is choosing a good name.
It's like, I'll sit there sometimes and think, what should we call this site?
Should it be a .org or a .net?
You know?
Yeah, I know.
How do you decide?
Well, you know what?
Here's an easy way.
Go by the price.
.coms are like $8 now.
Can't go wrong.
Ah, sorry, I was taking a little sip of iced tea there.
And while I, you know, as long as I'm on the off-topic subject, I went to get my iced
tea out of the refrigerator, and it's frozen.
I guess my refrigerator's too cold, and it's a frozen block, so I have to kind of wait for
it to melt while the show goes on.
I guess I can set it on top of the monitor, it'll melt quicker.
Of course, that's kind of dangerous.
All that.
If you hear a loud explosion, it's because my tea spilled into the monitor and blew it
up.
Anyway, all right, so let's stick to on-topic.
First of all, this is not the first time that you've done some film work, is that correct?
Yeah, that's right.
I did, throughout high school, some videos, and then I did something which was called
The Ento Show last year, which was a sort of computer basics educational film.
You might, I think you said you saw a few clips of it?
Oh, yeah.
I remember you put it in the forum a while back, and I like, is this the one where you
did it, where you had the split screen, where you were talking to yourself, and you're
like, hi, Julian, hi, Julian, how are you?
You're a handsome man, or whatever you were doing.
Yeah, I was the laughing stock of my family for about three, four months after that.
Yeah, but it was funny.
It was funny.
That was good stuff.
Thanks.
Yeah.
So, like, are you into, so because of these two things together, I guess this is a natural
question, is this a hobby, or are you actually studying film in school, or is this something
that you're just doing for the fun of it?
I'm actually a physical geography student here at the University of Ottawa, so I have
no educational backdrop in film whatsoever, but it is becoming a hobby, and I foresee
that as soon as I finish this movie here, because it's not done quite yet, that I'll
do another movie on God knows what else.
But, yeah, I think this is going to be a hobby for me from now on.
So, when you say your next topic, do you have something in mind you're not telling us,
or you haven't decided yet?
I have, like, four movies on the back burner.
I can never say this word right, back burner.
But, yeah, you know, I really don't like thinking about a next project before one's done, or
else I'll never get the one I'm working on done at all.
But, sort of like hacking fiction movie, that would be fun.
That'd be nice.
I haven't seen one of those yet.
Yeah, that would be, you know, we actually kind of talked about that, too, but, man,
people don't realize how much work is involved in putting this stuff together, not just the
filming, but especially a fiction.
You've actually got to write a story, you've got to write dialogue, at least somewhat of
a shell of dialogue or plot, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Well, you do Hack TV and Hack TV Underground, so you know all about that, too.
Oh, my gosh, you don't even, and I totally understand what you're saying about biting off
too many projects at once, too, which is why we're trying to rein stuff in right now.
But, that's neither here nor there.
So, yeah, the video editing itself, I know, takes a long time, and there's a, and I think
I've said this on the show before, there's a skill to it that I don't have.
I'm not good at it.
Oh, come on.
No, I'm not, no, I mean, I'm just being honest, I'm not.
That's why, you know, the first one was done by my friend Saito, who taught me what
little bit I do know about it, and then Dr. Zygman, that's actually how he and I met,
is that he knew a lot of the video editing, and he helped out on the other episodes of
Hack TV, which is why they ended up so good.
If I do them, I mean, I could get them done, but they really wouldn't be close to the quality
that what we ended up putting out.
I mean, he does a fantastic job mixing it together.
We work together on the, you know, how it's going to flow and what we're going to include
and not include the editing process, but he actually does the actually cutting, editing,
producing of the thing, which is what I'm not, I'm not good at that.
I'm not good at art.
I swear to you, this is not a joke.
I can't use Photoshop.
I'm too dumb.
I really can't.
There's so many buttons and layers and all these different, it's too complex for my small
American brain to handle.
I really can't handle that.
I think it was invented by Canadians.
Oh, oh, he snuck in a Canadian joke.
Look at that.
Oh, no.
No, I really am bad at graphics.
I'm just, just a fact of life I have to deal with.
I can't do design and graphic work.
So, hey, what are you going to do?
But, that's why I was curious if this was something that you were pursuing, because you
do seem to have a skill at it.
You were doing some clever video tricks.
They were, you know, even the, I don't know if the proper word's cinematography.
Talk about a hard word to say.
The cinematography, some of the ways you were, you know, just silly things like where you set
the cameras up in some of those interviews and shots like that.
It really makes a difference whether the camera's across the room, whether it's at an angle.
If you film somebody looking from above, looking down on them, versus looking up at them or
from the side, it makes a different feel to the video.
It really does.
Yeah, you're right.
And, yeah, I was going to say something and it totally escaped my mind, so I'll let you
continue on there.
Well, no, it's, I mean, it's just, there's a lot of little things like that that you can
just set the camera up and film stuff, but it's an extra, you can see those extra touches
and the decisions that you made in this particular documentary that actually make it good.
And there's other, there's other shows and movies out there that aren't good and we won't
go there, but I think you did a really good job on this one.
So I'm actually looking forward to what you do next.
But you know what?
I'm going to kind of jump to another question here because when we say, you're saying jump
to the next one and this one not being finished, did I see that this is technically the one
that you do have on the website is version 0.8?
I mean, is this not complete?
That's exactly right.
Um, the movie that I have right there is, uh, still under scrutiny and editing.
Um, there's a last interview that I'm doing with a company that rhymes with, uh, oh, Microsoft.
Oh.
And, uh, yeah, so I'm trying to get them on there and to get the sort of pro DRM standpoint.
So there's that interview I need to get in there and I also need to, uh, do lots of editing
and cutting it down.
Uh, there's a scene in there, I don't know if you remember, but that part where, uh, uh,
the magnitude guy, uh, John Buckman is talking.
Right.
And what you see there is photos of him, photos after photos, because I really had no other
footage.
Well, one of my friends commented that that looks like I was doing like a sort of a homosexual
homage to John Buckman.
Okay.
So, which was a very valid argument, but it does, you know, mean to say that there is
some parts I really do have to work on.
All right.
So, so the one that's out there right now is not necessarily the final version.
Um, obviously you'll keep us updated and we'll mention it on the show and I'm sure you'll
let us know in the forums when you do get a final one out.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, uh, maybe in a month from now, I just wanted to get something out.
I, I was really strapped for cash and so I released 0.5 on Digg and that got me the donations
I needed to sort of buy the music I needed to get on there.
Well, actually that leads to another good question.
You say that you needed money to get the music on there.
I mean, did you actually have to buy rights or did you use, ironically, I mean, you mentioned
Creative Commons.
I was wondering about what, what, will you just tell me what, how did you handle music in
the, in the, in the documentary?
Well, here's the way I, I looked online at Creative Commons and, uh, one of the best
resources for Creative Commons where you have direct access to the musicians, which is what
I needed, is Magnatune.
And initially I thought, okay, you know, it costs more if you want to use it for a movie.
And initially it was like a hundred bucks and I'm like, okay, that's a shitload of money.
I'm sort of, you know, my bank is going to send collectors after me in two months if I
don't pay them back.
So that was, you know, sort of expensive and whatever.
And then I check up when towards the end of the production and they arise, the price is
to about 500 bucks.
Woo.
So, yeah.
Nice.
So Creative Commons is not free.
Um, because like as soon as you submit your movie to a festival, it is, that is considered,
uh, commercial use.
So there's all these things.
So what I did is I went to royaltyfreemusic.com, which did remain at, you know, at the $100
price level and bought a few of their CDs.
And, you know, that was thanks to donations from very generous people.
Hmm.
All right.
That's very interesting.
I had no idea.
It's, now this is because you submitted it to a film festival, you said, or?
Well, because I wanted to keep my options open and I did not want to have to change the
whole soundtrack on the pure virtue of me submitting to a film, you know, film festival.
I didn't want to, that be a deterrent.
So I just decided to go with that.
And I also had public domain music, but, uh, that turned out interesting.
Some of it wasn't actually under the public domain as I thought it was.
And, uh, that led to interesting situations.
Well, can I, are you, can you go into any detail about that or is that an off?
Sure, no.
I can't.
Because I, I did notice that, that you mentioned that the closing song during the closing credits,
is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
And, uh, the song was, uh, Ain't Misbehavin' by Louis Armstrong.
And it was, uh, that recording came from 1929.
And the guy who did it is dead and has been dead for 50 years.
So the song itself is under, uh, is under public domain.
But, um, the recording that was done because Louis Armstrong himself died 30 years ago is
still not in the public domain yet.
So there's 20 years to go.
So I got a call one day when I was at work from, uh, the head of one of the agencies in
Canada that's responsible for, uh, collecting, copy, or collecting fees off this.
And he's basically like, yeah, I don't want to be the bad guy here, but, uh, your last song,
yeah, it violates copyright.
So after about, you know, walking in circles for, you know, 30 minutes and being super scared,
you know, all those legal troubles that scare the living shit out of you, there's your R-rated
warranted right there.
And, um, yeah, so I, you know, got, took it all down and changed the music.
And, and I'm sure that was a, that, that kind of phone call would freak me out a little
bit.
So, and ironically, yeah, ironically, the, um, the topic of the, the documentary, you know,
mentioning the music and all that kind of stuff, it's like, yeah.
So did he, did he stumble across it by accident or, I mean, how did he actually find out that
one of his clients or, or whoever that he represented, how did they find out that you
used their music?
Like, how did they get back to him?
Do you know?
Yeah.
Well, um, what I suspect happened because he had my phone number as well.
My phone number is not exactly published all that well.
Um, what I suspect is that I had given copies to all the people that were involved, all the
interviewees.
And one of the people I interviewed was a child organization, which works under this guy
here.
And I suspect that the president of that organization noticed that and, uh, gave the heads up and
my contact information to this guy.
Oh, man.
This is one of these cases, this is a case where I'm biting my tongue right now.
I want you to know this.
Let me, let me say, let me say it.
It's better to have that resolved now than find out later when, you know, there is commercial,
possible commercial interest involved and better now than later.
Yeah, but I'm just, well, I'm going to word this in a, I'm going to do a little social
engineering trick and word this in such a way that it's not negative.
I'm going to just say that it would have been cool if they would have said, hey, we know
who you are.
We know your documentary.
We're giving you permission to use the song.
That would have been cool if that would have happened.
That's all I'm saying.
Oh, absolutely.
Instead of the threat.
How ironic is it to send the copyright threat after you just interviewed somebody about copyright?
Right, I mean.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, help a brother out.
Jeez.
All right.
Anyway, I won't go there because I don't want you to get any more phone calls from them.
So, we will move on.
Now, actually, we kind of went in this direction earlier about what your next films or, you know,
what you decide.
How did you actually decide to do this film?
I mean, what about this topic made you decide to do it?
I always wanted to do two films.
One of them was I always wanted to do this film from the get-go last year.
And so, even when I was doing ENTO, I knew that, you know, I was going to do this one
after.
So, I began this one, actually, in May of last year.
And it's taken a year to complete.
And the whole interview thing is actually because of Strom Carlson, who sort of really helped me
sort of point me in the right direction for that.
And little does he know, but he did.
How so?
Well, basically, I had worked for two months doing research on this.
Or actually, four months, but two months writing the script.
And the script was somewhat, I think how Strom put it was that it felt like he was bludgeoned
on the head repeatedly, which was a very accurate depiction of the script.
Because, trust me, it was pretty bad.
And from that point on, I decided to do it, you know, 100% interview-based.
It's worked out for the best.
And I'm really grateful for Strom for having said that.
Well, when you say script, now let's kind of clarify, because that's a little confusing.
It's a documentary.
Why is there a script?
Or what is scripted?
Because originally, the movie was going to be sort of an hour-long rant, as opposed to
a fair and balanced documentary.
That's why.
All right.
Gotcha.
But there's still a script.
I mean, you know, you have to have a basic idea of how to put these interviews together.
And you have to have, you know, once you've collected, you know, all the footage, you have
to have a rough idea of how to, you know, put it again together afterwards as well.
So, there is still a script for this movie.
Well, and you know what?
I mean, it's very similar to the show novels that I'm so famous for, which you have.
You know, you've actually, it's not necessarily a script, but yeah, you put together a list
of topics or specific questions or something like that that you want to touch on or stuff
you don't want to forget.
So, it's not like it's scripted.
So, let's not give anybody the impression that your documentary is scripted, but I'm sure
you had a list of, a bullet point of, I want to ask this question.
I want his opinion on that question.
Or, how do you respond to this common allegation?
Because that's another good thing is what you did is you did these, I'll refer to them
as street interviews, for lack of a better word.
And then you'll cut over and like the street interview with somebody will say, oh yeah,
well, CDs cost too much and they only have one good song on and it's not worth it.
And then we'll go over to the record exec trying to justify that question.
But to be honest, like that, that was, thank God for Graham Henderson, who's the president
of the CREA because he actually went out of, he's the one who sort of suggested some of
these answers or these questions.
And had he not done that, because I didn't even think about those street people interviews
back then, had he not done that, I would have had nothing on him.
So, you know, and he was a really cool guy, by the way.
He's a, he's a really nice guy.
I know everyone's going to grunt when they say this, when they hear me say this, but he's
a really cool guy.
Interesting, very interesting.
I guess that's cool to hear, but I guess, well, people need to watch the documentary
and then remember that you just said that, because that takes some, yeah, we'll leave
it at that.
So, what about now, another one of our good friends of the show, Jason Scott, also did
a documentary not too long ago, about a year within the past year, his BBS documentary,
which was also fantastic, and we, you know, supported and pimped it out.
Did that have any effect, or had you already begun the process, or did that motivate you
or have any effect to make you say, wow, he did one on BBS, I've always wanted to do
one on piracy.
Did it go like that, or did you already have the idea, or?
Sort of, both of the above.
Jason Scott did, you know, his BBS documentary is absolutely incredible, and I've watched it,
you know, three times since I've bought it.
And it certainly had an impact, I sort of mirrored my website on, you know, the format
he did his, and I, the whole Creative Commons thing is pretty much an influence of his, the
way he used interviews like that is an influence of his, so yeah, he's had a big impact, but
had he not been there, I think I would have still done this movie nonetheless, and released
it for free nonetheless.
Yeah, and you know, again, the Creative Commons, we've used that from day one for everything
that we do in DDP, the whole, all of Binary Revolution Radio, this episode, all the way
back to episode one, Hack TV, everything else that we put out in digital format, our articles,
whatever, is all released under Creative Commons.
Now, actually, this, I'm glad, this is a good thing, I don't think we've gone into Creative
Commons, we went into it a little bit on past shows, but people hear Creative Commons, and
sometimes they hear, and this is not valid, but there's a lot of people simply hear,
Creative Commons, oh, so it's free and public domain.
That's not exactly what Creative Commons is.
I could explain it a little bit, but why don't you go into it a little bit more?
Sure, well, what Creative Commons is, is basically writing out the contract of the copyright license
out so that people can understand it, and know what their rights are with copyrights.
So, for example, if you release media, by default, it's under copyright, and by default, copyright
means all rights reserved, which means that if someone else wants to make use of that work,
let's say they want to make a remix of a CD, and they've got that CD, by default, they're
not allowed to use that content and publish it publicly.
Absolutely. What Creative Commons does is that it identifies what the person can do or say.
So, it's not public domain. It can be, because you can say, you know, oh, I want my stuff released
entirely for free, but what it really is, is just saying what exactly you can do with the
product. So, it can be really restrictive as well. It doesn't have to be completely open,
but it's just making it clear to people for people to understand, and I find that's fantastic.
Yes, I agree completely, and I do know that people have that misconception, so that was a great
explanation. Now, our particular one, again, that we use for the show and Hack TV and such,
is one that says you can do whatever you want with this as long as you don't, A, sell it and make
money off of it, because we don't, you know, so we don't want anybody else doing it, and secondly,
that they simply don't strip the names and credits off, but they're freely, can distribute it, they
can put it on their own website, they can burn it to CD and hand it out, all that kind of good
stuff. So, basically, defines, instead of saying, I reserve all rights, I get the decision of every
single thing that somebody wants to do, I have the control, and it breaks it down and says, I'm going
to go ahead and tell you up front that I'm giving you these controls back. That's what our Creative
Commons says. You can do this with our stuff. We only reserve a little bit of
control that says, don't sell it and make money off it. That's really the biggest part
of it for us. But there are others that will further break it down that says that, no,
you cannot, or I'm sorry, that you can, in fact, sell it and make money. There are some
that say that you can alter and transfer and build upon this work, which is, I think, more
along the lines of what Jason Scott did. I don't want to talk for him or put his Creative
Commons out there, but I'm pretty sure what he's done is he put up all the individual
interviews as well. And again, I'll correct myself next week, Jason Scott, if you email
me if I say something wrong here, but I think by putting up all those individual things,
sure, he made a documentary with all of them, putting them together in his format, but let's
say, well, let's use yours for an example. You could have, if you wanted to, if there was
an interview from his that was useful, you could have used that and put it into your documentary.
Actually, I might have to check up on that. The reason I say that, and I don't mean to
like go counter to what you just said, but Creative Commons, if he chose a share alike
license, because my license is actually quite restrictive, I'm not allowing people to take
footage of mine and edit it for a pure reason that I'm afraid of being sued by as someone who's
pissed off of seeing his interview footage and big smiley face on it. Right. And so if
it's share alike, then I'd have to have the same license as him. Right. Oh, okay. No,
I understand. So it is true that he may make it, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can
use, you can't change it from what he had to do. If you use his, you have to maintain his
license. But nonetheless, I mean, like, yeah, what he did on archive.org by releasing those
interviews is fantastic. Right. That's just, that's insane. Right. No, I understand completely.
I mean, our reason for saying not to alter is simply because we know damn good and well
people will strip off the names and put their name on it and put it out there somewhere.
So there's lots of reasons to make your decision of which Creative Commons license you use, and
they're all perfectly valid. But that's the great thing about it is that you do have that
control. And it's all free, and there's great people out there to help you out of shit.
If you need help on forums and so forth. Yeah. And I think that was one of the, at least
in my opinion, that was one of my favorite interviews from the documentary was with the
Creative Commons guy. I hate to say, I should be more professional. If this was a real radio
show, I'd actually say his name, but I'm sure you'll tell us.
Yeah. Marcus Bornford. There you go. So see, that's where, that's for having a good co-host
on here because he knows what he's talking about. And I just limped my way through the show.
So, but that was one of my favorite interviews on there. Seriously, that was one of the best
ones, I thought. And it was, he gave a good, clear explanation.
Yeah. He's a fantastic guy. I had, there was a huge conference in Ottawa on the subject of
internet piracy last year. And that's where I got his contact info and I had a discussion
with him. And he's, yeah, he's a very bright individual. He knows what he's saying. But
it sometimes can be a little long saying it, so there's actually lots of heavy editing for
his interview. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's, goes back to the time, editing time necessary.
So, um, now did I, I don't want to throw this out there. I guess we can edit this out if
need be, but did I hear you mention something about presenting somewhere with Jason Scott?
That's right. I'll get, uh, the Hackers on Planet Earth conference in July, this coming
July. And we're doing a talk on, uh, oh, I forgot what the title of the talk is now. We
had set a decent one out, but it's on how to make documentaries pretty much. And how to
get, you know, these contacts, these big people or people you think that are big and getting
them to be filmed. And there's lots of social engineering involved in some cases. There's
lots of honesty in other cases, but that's basically what we'd be talking about.
Well, not to steal any thunder from that, but I was kind of wondering, how did you get
these people to participate? You know, I mean, they're taking time out of their schedule
for some, no insult, but some schmuck kid that they don't know. It's like, why should
they get, you know, how did you, how did you get their time?
Social engineering all the way. Um, here's the deal, right? I am in Ottawa, 500 kilometers
away from 90% of these people. So they don't know what I look like yet. If they saw what I
looked like, you know, punk-ass 20-year-old, I bet you I wouldn't have, you know, they wouldn't
have even considered it. But yeah, I've got the advantage of the phone. And so I can make
myself sound bigger than I am. And with emails, you can, if you word them correctly, and if
you're, um, if you write intelligently, you know, you don't use any tech speak or you don't
use UR and with a U and an R instead of your, um, you can give a very good impression. You know,
it, it becomes interesting once they finally do see you. And then they're like, where's the rest
of your crew? Or they give you, you know, the, uh, oh, it's, um, you. So it, yeah, but you know,
I got all the interviews nonetheless. And, uh, some people, uh, wanted to stay in chat and, um,
it, it was a good experience. It was a really, really good experience. And these people, Karen,
they all treated me with respect when I, once I got there, it was fantastic.
Well, did you, were there any people that did not or refused interviews or gave you any trouble or,
or revoked their interviews or anything like that happen?
Oh yeah. Tons. Um, there's about 24 interviews and I've had about, I've tried contacting maybe 70
people. Wow. Um, yeah, it's, uh, Apple turned it down, but, uh, they were nice about it. I think
the least, the people that were sort of the least pleasant to deal with were, uh, the CN Tower and
I'll make sure not to, uh, to word this properly. So you're not sued for LaBelle, but, uh, basically what
happened was I was in Toronto and I wanted some stock photography to sort of spice the, uh, footage
in the documentary. So I decided to get the skyline of, uh, Toronto. And so I went up into the CN Tower
and because I'm in a private residence, I have to get forms and I filled all those out and I dealt
with the VP of communications there. And, uh, so I got the footage and that was that. About a week
later, I got a really nasty email from them, uh, basically saying, you know, oh, we helped you so
graciously and full of, um, anyways, not a very nice email, but basically turning down, sorry, refusing
me or denying me the ability to use the footage I had shot a week before, which I found was really
not cool. Yeah, that kind of sucks. Yeah, it does. It's bureaucracy. And, you know, I suppose it's not
their fault ultimately, but it was, you know, that was a downer. Well, luckily, I guess if we
want to look on the bright side, luckily they told you early enough, early on enough. It's not like
they, if they were telling you now that would really suck because you've already done so much
editing and stuff. Yeah. So I guess if you want to look. A lot of people were fantastic too. I mean,
I contacted all the major labels and, uh, so they're the ones that ultimately got me the interview with
Korea and, uh, I contacted likewise movie studios and they're the ones that got me the, uh, MPAAs
arm in Canada. And I even contacted the RAAA and, uh, you know, got in contact with the people there.
So, uh, although some, you know, there was one or two not so nice experience overall, you know,
all these people were incredibly, uh, nice to deal with. And especially so where was people like
Marcus Bornford and Michael Geist. They were really just fantastic, uh, interviewees and
people to organize interviews with. Well, and my favorite on there, I have to say, and maybe it's
just because I've always liked Sim, was Samarian from Rant Radio. There's a very good section with
him. He's, first of all, he's always been the nicest guy and what limited interaction I've had
with him on Rant Radio. Because for those who don't remember, I mean, first of all, a lot of
people are listening to us on Rant Radio right now. But a lot of people don't remember, we've
been on Rant Radio from day one of BinRev Radio. And even back into the old RFA, Radio Freak
America was on there as well. So we've been, we've known Sim for a long, long time. And
he's a really great guy. He's a really smart guy. And he's one of those people that, you
know, somebody you can tell when somebody is, I guess, passionate for lack of a better word
about something. They believe, they really believe in what they're saying. And he is
that guy. And your interview with that, he, he has, you know, he, he really gets the point
across and he makes some very valid points. And he does it in such a way where it's not
condescending. It's not talking down. It's not insulting. It's not ranting, ironically,
for Rant Radio, for Rant Media. And we remember when it was Rant Radio. And that's Rant Media,
which is cooler. So he's always been consistently like that. And I've always liked that about
him. So kind of a mid-show shout outs to Samarian from me there. He was really, really good on
there. It's probably my favorite part of it as well. So...
And I'd like to... Oh, sorry, go ahead.
No, I was done.
I was going to say, I'd like to give him a shout out to him as well. He did something really
nice for me. Because he lives in Vancouver. So he lives about 2,000, you know, gazillion
miles away from me. And what he offered to do is, when I contacted him, he offered to
shoot all the footage by himself and mail the DVD tape over to me so that I could include
it in the documentary. And he did this, you know, all pretty much free of charge. So that
was absolutely fantastic on his part. And I'd like to, you know, give a shout out for him.
I know I keep saying how everyone's cool and all that, but it's true. And big shout out
to him.
Yeah, he... I mean, that just shows how sincere of a person he is that he'd be willing to
do that. That's really, really cool of him. Absolutely cool. So... And actually, let's
talk about his segment specifically, if we can. I mean, what he talked about, which hit
very close to home for me, for obvious reasons, with DDP Hack Radio, was discussion on how some
of these laws affect non-profit or hobby radio stations, which is exactly what we fall into,
what Rant Media falls into. You know, stations that are just playing... You know, he explained
that he just wanted to play music that he liked and couldn't find on normal radio. And that's
really how they got started. You know, and Rant Radio has great industrial music and stuff
like that. That's one of the things he started it on. And then the talk radio that came out
of it was also fantastic, obviously. But it was just a hobby. There's no money. It was
no profit. It was just because it was a hole. It was something that was missing, a gap of
something that was missing out there that he decided to fill. And he went into some detail
about how, with these new laws that are being passed, it takes away that ability because they
want so much money. You know, not even on a per license, there's a minimum. And maybe you
can... I don't want to, like, repeat his whole segment or anything like that on here, but
he basically talked about how difficult it was.
Yeah. And it's really unfortunate. I mean, in the United States, where you are, when there
was a sort of similar law that was passed on royalties, which was insanely expensive.
Right.
And they say that basically, as soon as that sort of law passed, or act passed, pretty much
99% of internet radio stations were pretty much wiped out. And only the ones that were
heavy on commercials, the big sort of corporate ones that had lots of backing, like Live 365,
were the ones that really remained legal and on top. And it's unfortunate.
And, of course, the bootleg ones that are operating illegally, which is always going to happen.
So that's the other funny thing. You know, now, it's funny that back in the days, it was
pirate radio. You know, people that are trying to escape and fight the FCC. Now, here we are.
We thought we'd kind of set that free with the internet, that I can come out here and I can
say what I want. I can say, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck, and get away with it and say what
I want, about what I want, about who I want on here. And now here we are finding ourselves
in a position where they're stopping us from even doing that or trying to, which is why it's
such an important point. And it's such an important thing to get out there and let people
know. They're trying to silence us by strong-arming us financially. And it's the same thing.
And it's really sad because, I mean, there's all these great, you know, music tracks out
there. And if you listen to real radio, and that's one of the big reasons I wanted to do
this doc was because of how upset I was with commercial radio. If you listen to commercial
radio, it's absolutely mind-numbing how small their playlist is. And really, internet radio
is the only way because satellite radio, you know, okay, let's say Sirius or XM, they have
100 channels, which ain't half bad, although a lot of it is pretty much mainstream. But internet
radio is really the only place to go if you want to listen to fresh, new, creative music.
And by having, you know, such high C's like that, it's really going to kill legitimate
ways of listening to new music, which we really need. Music is such a, you know, an integral
part to our culture. So, yeah, that's my rant for the day.
Yeah, well, it can't be a rant unless you throw a fuck in there somewhere.
Okay. Fuck, fuck, fuck. There you go.
There you go. Oh, I'm such a foul-mouthed person. Yeah. Well, you know what? And that
kind of, that's something else that I noticed in the documentary quite a bit was I heard
the phrase indie music quite a bit, which is exactly what you're talking about. It's
not, the reason they call these states, they have such a limited playlist, the industry term
is top 40 station because they play the same 40 freaking tracks over and over again. That's
what they do. That is their playlist. We are a top 40 station. We say, play the same
shit 40 times over every day.
I know. It's, yeah, it's, I used to work at Staples. I used to put this music on. I literally
drove nuts. It turned out I had to hijack the sound system at one point to play my own music
just because I was going, I was literally, this, you know, millimeters close to killing
an innocent customer. Bad music, man. It's really, it's insane.
Yet, yet, yet, you and I were talking before the show and you'd go home from work every
night and watch Canadian Idol on television. So, what's up with that?
All right, I lied. I made, I completely made that up.
Just for the record, I completely made that up. I didn't, I put Seal on the spot there.
He doesn't listen. I don't know if you watch Canadian Idol. Everybody knows my American Idol
obsession. But I just like it because I like seeing the people sing. It's not so much the
music. It's just more like, I don't know. I'm just a sucker for anything that's positive
on television these days because there's so little of it. So, anything that people are
enjoying and getting ahead and, you know, somebody's winning and you go, I guess I like that kind
of stuff on TV as opposed to, oh, I don't know, the fucking news! I hate watching news.
You have a system of honor there. You watch it for the best. The only reason I watch Canadian
Idol whenever I do or the dance shows they have is to watch the worst because I enjoy,
I know I'm terrible, I'm worse than anyone there, but I enjoy making fun of the poor
bastards that just suck ass.
That is definitely the best part of it. No doubt that is the best part. Especially,
I've been watching this dancing one lately, which, oh man, dude went flat down on his
face and like knocked a couple teeth out or some shit like that. But anyway, I digress.
Actually, Decoder and I have always said that we were going to go try out for American Idol
just to get on like the worst ones just to purposely mess with them, but yeah, never going
to happen.
Hey, it'd be hacking American Idol.
Hey, social engineer my way out there? Sure, I can make it happen. I've got to make sure
I wear a BinRev shirt when I do it, though, get some publicity. Now, do you think there's
any difference in the U.S. versus Canada? Because that's obviously a, what's the word?
There's actually, it's very Canada-centric, if that's such a word, for obvious reasons.
But did you notice many, in the film there are references to U.S. laws, but most of it does
refer to, I don't know what the terms are, like different tariffs and different Canadian
laws and stuff like that. Did you find a lot of differences between the two?
To be honest, Canada is basically what the U.S. was 10 years ago. And so that's how, we're
very similar to the U.S. And like, but, you know, the way that politicians think is pretty
much the same. So there's lots of similarities. There's some, there are some differences,
though. Downloading music in Canada is legal, thanks to a loophole, or what I consider to
be a loophole in the, in, oh, I forget now, but basically the part of the Copyright Act
in Canada that dictates terrorists, which isn't the case in the United States. But downloading
movies and software in Canada is nonetheless illegal. We don't have the DMCA yet. You
know, we haven't ratified the WIPO treaties. The WIPO treaties is, by the way, what the
DMCA is to some extent. And, but we're basically where the United States was 10 years ago. And
that's the reason I made this movie is because I do not want to see a law, like, there are
some good ideas in the WIPO treaties, but I don't want to see basically, you know, it being
illegal for someone, for me to watch a DVD on my Linux box, you know, or this whole reverse
engineering being illegal when it's for a good purpose is for legitimate purposes, you
know, driver supported Linux. You can't do that without reverse engineering. So it's, it's
basically, there are differences and I'm completely marring the point and I'm just talking on and
on, so I'll stop here, but yeah, there's some small differences here and there.
Well, do you find, do you find, and I, this isn't, we're not, this isn't political.
Well, this is a curiosity question. Do you find that Canadian policy is driven much by
American policy? If we may, if, for example, us pushing the DMCA, do you think that also
puts more pressure that you guys now have to follow suit?
Yeah. It's been said in the U.S. by, I forgot what politicians, that basically Canada was a
sort of cesspool for piracy. And, yeah. And, but I mean, there is pressure. The United States
is applying, is sort of holding back relationships with other countries until they ratify themselves.
The WIPO treaties are an implementation that's there. And there is pressure from the United
States. Fortunately, though, Canada is somewhat of, and I don't mean to, you know, shat the
United States in any way, but Canadian politicians tend to be more moderate on to the issue of
piracy. And they, they tend to be less influenced by the $300,000 that are donated to them by
the, you know, big four entertainment companies. Um, like, um, here's one fact, like when I did
my initial research, for example, um, in Canada, right, the most that a politician can be given
by a citizen is a thousand bucks for, uh, for his campaign. By a corporation, it used
to be a thousand bucks, but now it's been, uh, I've, last I've heard, it's been reduced
to zero. Corporates aren't allowed to donate. In the United States, uh, before they passed
amendments to that, in the 2000 elections, Warren Hash, who's the guy in charge of copyright
reform, so the guy who's dictating what the law is going to look like, he was paid $300,000
by the big four entertainment companies in the United States and members of the RIAA and MPAA.
And these just influence your judgment, you know, no matter where you stand, there's no way that
300 grants cannot influence your decision-making. So in Canada, we're fortunate that we don't have
that. And, you know, future elections in the US should be easier because that was torn down a lot.
I think it's been reduced to a thousand bucks there, but yeah. Well, but then there's the under
the table stuff that goes on as well. And, you know, and, and again, you know, that is
the biggest corruption, the biggest problem with our government. I'm not afraid to say
that. Our country is, I'm very proud of the United States in a lot of things, but we have
come so corrupt in Congress with these big interests, special interest groups and these
big companies throwing money either in our faces like we're stupid or under the table
also like we're stupid, like we don't know that's happening. And the, the, the other,
the other part of that that's really, people might not realize is a lot of people know that
and unfortunately say, yeah, well, that's just, you know, they ever heard the phrase
politics as usual, you know, they just kind of like, yeah, well, that's the way the system
is. Well, I'm not so happy to just smile and let that go. I don't mind coming out and
saying it. And now I think it's even getting further because, all right, fine. The big four,
we'll use them for an example. I'll make up that example just to go with it. They give
so-and-so so much money to try to push their agenda into United States law and into, you
know, making new laws and into our new, oh crap, what's the word? Well, into our new
laws for, I can't think of the word, which is one thing, which is fine. It's corrupt here.
It causes us problems. It ends up giving, you know, I've said this before on the show.
We are no longer a government of the people, by the people, for the people. We're a government
of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporations. And that's a problem. And
it's now getting amplified because the United States, as a world leader, now we're going
to strong arm other countries, including Canada or whatever else, that we're not going to do
business with you or we're not going to cooperate until you also do this. So now these bribes
that are going through are forcing world policy? Hello? What the fuck? Am I, what? All right.
I'm going to back off because we're going political and we don't still, that's one thing I don't
want to change about the show. I like to stay off of that if we can. So I'm going to back
away, take a deep breath and switch gears real quick. You actually kind of said a minute
ago you were, when you were doing your research, did you, I think it'd be naive to say you didn't
have a predisposition, an idea in your mind and opinions before you started filming this.
Did you find any, did you change very much? Did you have your eyes opened or realize any
things that you were surprised at yourself for?
Yes, I certainly did. Before the documentary, I was very sort of on a neutral standpoint towards
the issue. And actually, no, that's wrong. I was more of a pro user sort of guy. And my
belief before I made this documentary was that most of the piracy that was going on was being
done by people who had, who were interested in buying the music. If it was good, you know,
it was a sort of taste testing thing.
Right.
When I started interviewing people and okay, again, your users or your listeners are going
to grunt at this. When I started interviewing people, what I found out was actually most
people didn't care about the artist. Some did, you know, a lot, you know, actually some,
a lot of people did, but a lot of more people didn't. And that was sort of an eye opener for
me. And that really, that almost made me want to stop the movie right now because I was really
discouraged because originally when I decided to do this movie is sort of to highlight this
opinion of sort of the Linux kind of guy who's informed and who this flash dot sort of
mentality of the informed guy who does things ethically and who might download music, but
ultimately pays a lot to the artist and, you know, with due funds. And that wasn't what
I saw. So that's one way my opinion changed. Another way is sort of, I became, I realized
how sort of, I keep saying sort of, but I realized how more complex this issue is. I used to have
a very black and white perspective. I used to think it was the industries versus the
people. And I used to think that CDs at a store were a ripoff directly because of the
recording labels. And what I realized now is that, yes, CDs are still expensive as hell,
but it isn't, you know, this RIAA's fault, for instance. It's the whole group of sort of
events converging together that end up in being what is a very expensive price tag and people
demanding lots of royalties, other people demanding royalties and all this mixing up
for these high price points. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that my, I think I'm more
even now. I think that my perspective highlights more of the corporate interests, which I was
lacking before. And I'm not paid by the corporations or anything like that. It's just, it was something
that I lacked. I suppose when you're a teenager, you're sort of not too much, you're sort of
anti-establishmentarian or whatever that word is. And it's opened my eyes.
Well, and there, there is an age factor in there for sure. A lot of younger people are
certainly downloading it because it's free and they don't have to pay for it. We, I mean,
no one's denying that. That'd be naive to not say that's happening.
Yeah. And it's, it's sad though. I mean, like, anyways.
Well, you know what, and you kind of alluded to this, but I mean, the, the, the simplified
version is the system is flawed. The way the system delivers music has been, see, where
the, there's too many middlemen. People in the middle, they see a good thing and they're
like, wow, that guy makes good music or those people make good music and these people have
money and want to pay for it. And they'll stick their hands out in the middle and they'll
try to weasel their way in and get some of that money. And that's happened so much over
the years. And so many people have weaseled their way in and got their hands out that that's
why like the, a lot of the artists, they don't have a problem necessarily with, I'm sure
they don't all want their music downloaded for free, you know, but they're, a lot of them
realize and understand that they could make as much, if not probably more, if they went
with a different distribution method. But unfortunately they have to sign labels if
they really want to hit the quote unquote big time, they're not going to get on those
top 40 stations because the system will not let them get there unless they go through
the system. And now we've got resources like this radio station and this radio show and
others like it, Rant Radio and all these other stations out there and that's why it's
important. We're giving them that other platform to release their music and another way to get
it out there. And I, for one, I've said on the show many times, iTunes is a good start
and things like that where you can pay for one individual track or whatever. I don't
like the overabundance of DRM in it and the limitations of it. And I still happen to believe
that a dollar is too much for one song.
Me too. I would pay, I did some research on that.
I would pay 50 cents. That's my limit. I would rather pay a quarter, obviously. I'd be willing
to pay 50 cents for a song that I like where I could use it as much as I want, copy it to
20 different, like I want to put it on like maybe my PDA phone, put it on an iPod, put
it on another MP3 player. I've got five or six computers in this room. You know, I don't
want this limiting. I can only put it on five computers ever over the life of the damn thing.
That's ridiculous.
But yeah, and like for the dollar song, like, and it goes back to your middleman thing. Like
I tried contacting Apple's and everyone pretty much, I was doing research into that, why it
was so expensive. Because a dollar is actually a shitload for just a download that, you know,
costs maybe half a cent in bandwidth.
If that, yeah.
Yeah, probably a half of a trillionth of a cent. And what it turns out to be, yeah, it's
middleman. And not just middleman so much as that, you know, all these people want
royalties. And they're still stuck in the old way of thinking. And so they demand, you
know, well, five cents here, five cents here, five cents here. And they have a right to it
for sure. You know, you know, these people deserve their money. The music publishers deserve
their money.
I don't know. To a certain extent.
It all adds up. And, you know, when it adds up, it adds up to a lot. Apple makes only something
like, what was it, 10 cents per sale on their per dollar download?
Only 10 cents? Dude, only 10 cents for how many millions and billions of downloads? That
adds up.
But still, I mean, you know, if it was four to 50 cents and they made 10 cents off that,
it'd be a lot more decent.
Yeah, for sure. But I don't know. We could go into another long debate on whether or not
the labels have such a right to make their money. Or the cop, or the licensors, I should
say, because they are middlemen to me. I think if, in an ideal world, which is not
going to freaking happen, let's admit it. But let's pretend, let's do, let's go to
Stank World here.
Okay.
The artist...
I'm waving my fingers here to go into Stank World.
The artist... Hey, that was a quote from another famous Canadian, Mike Myers. See? Ooh.
Yeah.
See, I'm up on my Canadian trivia. You guys up there in Canadia.
Oh, yes.
We, um... If we lived in a perfect world, the artist could put their music on iTunes
and they could set the amount of money that they want to make on it. And, even more ideally,
let's set a cap on... This is the most you can charge. Let's say they want 25 cents out
of it, but they'll allow iTunes to sell it for up to 50. That way, they make a quarter
and the other quarter goes to the artist and it's that fucking simple. Why can't that happen?
Why is that so difficult? Because there's... Technically, you're a band. Hey, I'm going
to upload it to iTunes. And guess what? If it sucks, it's not going to sell. Sink or swim
on its own merit. You know? It's going to be there. People can have access to it easily.
And I'm, of course, making iTunes as one example. I could be referring to anything, any company,
whatever. You know what I'm getting at there. It should and could be that simple, but everybody's
got their hand out.
You know, I think it is going to end up like that. You know, magnitude... I keep saying magnitude
and I don't want to give them bonus because, to me, they're just, you know, a company.
But, you know, where they give, you know, 50 to the artists, 50% of themselves. Something
like that, I think it's going to get bigger over time. And I think that as more artists
move away from the labels, and right now, I mean, let's not kid ourselves. Although we
hear lots of news of this happening, it's really only a small, small, small fraction of a percent
that do that. But as more of them move away from the labels, there'll be more momentum
towards this new way of doing things, this new free market. And I say that in 20 years
from now, okay, maybe not 20 years because that's too far and just depressing, maybe 10
years from now, I say that there'll be artists, like half the artists we know today, on something
where we have the system of stank world.
You missed a phone call. And you missed a phone call just then.
I hope it wasn't too late.
Ah, they'll deal with it. Screw the listeners! We don't care about them on this show.
But we could have had a social engineering thing with a telemarketer.
Ah, screw the listeners, they'll deal with it.
Oh, wait a minute, you know what? Remind me to edit that screw the listeners out.
Okay.
No, I'm going to leave that in there. It'll be funnier that way.
Anyway, I'm sorry, you were saying?
No, I wasn't saying anything, actually.
Well, you know what? And actually, we've gone well over time. But just one other thing
I did quickly want to say was, we've been talking mostly, at least on this show, about
the music aspect. But you also touched on movies in there as well. Did you find a big
difference? Were there a lot of similarities? I know you said legally music was different
than movies and software. But other than that, were there any differences or similarities
between the, let's again use the word, the system? Were they similar in the way that
they both feel about piracy?
Yeah. I mean, I interviewed the chief of operations for the NTAAA's Canadian branch. And what he
gave is pretty much what the music industry gave. And movies is basically where the music
industry was three years ago. You know, in terms of downloading now, that bandwidth and
high speed is very prominent in Canada and the United States and all Western nations.
I mean, there's still that barrier with some people, but it's a big issue now, much in
the same way. And the laws are the same. The issues are the same. So yeah, I'd say, you
know what, the threats are the same. Only now the NTAAA is putting on, you know, lots of
efforts and to shutting down these where's groups and whatnot. But yeah.
Well, you know, the whole suing 12 year old girls and grandmothers and all that, that's
been well documented with all of these people trying to enforce their own. Anyway, well, you
know, let me give you Stank's quick opinion on movies, my rant on movies. First of all,
I can't stand watching a movie on my computer. It's just a personal thing. I don't like it.
I just, I don't like it. You know, I'd rather go on my big screen and watch it or go in a
movie theater or whatever. I don't like watching it on a little screen like that. Unless when
I'm traveling for work on an airplane, it's great for that. I can handle that. But I don't
like watching those camera ones with the little fucking Z that floats around on the screen
and shit like that. Can't stand that kind of stuff. So I don't like watching them on
the computer anyway. Secondly, here's, and here's, I know they view it as a threat. I look
at it as, I think they should look at this as an opportunity. Because this is where music,
the RAA and them screwed up a few years back. When this was starting to happen, Napster,
let's go back that far. They had an opportunity there that way they could have changed their
modeling and their pricing structure and actually used this new medium. And right now, because
they're like, to use your phrase, three years behind, I think they're in the same situation
where they could take advantage of this and use this, or they could shoot themselves in
the foot. And I'm waiting, I'm curious, I'm going to wait and see what happens. Because
right now, you can go buy a DVD when it's released, sometimes as low as $10, $10 to $15,
$20 usually suggested retail. That's fair to me. $10 to $15 for a good movie, or what
I consider good, and of course everybody has their own whatever, of what they think is
good. I'm willing to pay $10 to have that that I can watch multiple times. You know,
I do not like the region restrictions. That's a whole other topic. I wish it were completely
region free. I wish I didn't have a lot of region crap. But, I'm willing to pay $10
to own a movie that I can watch as much as I want, when I want, and have high quality
audio, high quality video, and extra features and stuff like that on it. Personally, I'm
okay with that. I know a lot of people probably will disagree. I'm not, you know, I think
$10 to go to a movie theater is also a little steep, but if you go infrequently, it's okay.
You know, they can charge that. It's a market economy, and I can't fault them for that. I
personally think it's a little high, but what are you going to do? But, if they start raising
the prices on DVDs, and continue increasing the prices on movies, they're going to shoot
themselves in the foot, and I'm going to be on this show, or some show, or maybe I'll be
nowhere, and everybody will have forgotten about me, which is fine too, but I'll be bitching
at one of my friends, and I'll say, I told you fuckers a couple years ago, that you had
a chance, and you're going to blow it. If they end up increasing the stuff where, you
know what, there's going to get to a point where I'm going to say, it's not worth it
to buy a DVD anymore. I'm not paying that much to go to a movie theater. And when that
happens, you know what they're going to do? They're going to cry and go, oh, it's piracy
that killed us. No, you fucktards. It's greed that killed you.
Well, I agree with you. And, you know, okay, let's put this in, you know, different
circumstances. Let's say it was 20 years ago, right? And you were in a shop, and you
saw, and CDs weren't out yet, right? Let's say CDs didn't exist yet, but everyone had
a CD player for some miraculous reason.
Okay.
And you saw someone selling CDs, right?
Mm-hmm.
Pirated CDs, right? But CDs didn't exist yet, except this guy had them, and you can play
them.
Right.
But, you know, this is a new market, and no one's tapping it, you know? If they were
smart, they'd make CDs, right? The companies would make CDs. And so that was a horrible
analogy, but I guess what I'm trying to say is, what they should do is, here's all these
people targeting these movies online. I know you don't like it online, but some people,
you know, they're indifferent. To me, that's a sign that there's a market there.
But you're right, it's untapped, and they are fucking this up big time, because they're
not, there is no movie iTunes, right? So, if they were smart, which they aren't, if they
were smart, there would be a way to download movies, DRM, let's say it's DRM, so that, you
know, they could release DVDs later on, but let's say they have movies online for seven
bucks.
If I pay to download it, why should I then have to pay again to get it on DVD? Let
me burn my own freaking DVD.
Well, you know what?
Yeah, anyway, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, yeah, I didn't mean to branch off
of that, go ahead.
But that's basically what I'm trying to say, you know, here's this big market, they're not
tapping it, and yes, a few years down the road, they will cry wolf, or cry fowl, or
whatever, but if they were to sell movies right now online, same time as movie theaters,
there'd be a huge market. Yes, some people would still pirate it, for sure, but I bet you
a lot more people would buy it, because people don't like, people like buying, people like
supporting, they like it, you know?
Right, yeah, well, to a certain extent, absolutely. I totally support, I bought Jason Scott's documentary,
absolutely, because I support it, and I hope you'll make a DVD available that I can buy from
you, you know, which you're going to sign for me, of course, and send me a copy. But
absolutely, and they've got to think how to tap this, I mean, instead of this whole traditional
way of thinking, they've got to think new, they've got to think outside the box. Like,
here's an example, I don't know if this is viable. I pay $5, $10, or something, to download
a DRM version of the movie that I can watch on my computer. Again, personally, I'm not
here, but when it's released on DVD, they have it on file, and they mail it to me for another
$5, or something. That way, I have it early, I have a digital copy, but I also get a physical
DVD, which I like to have from a collection standpoint. I kind of like to have my DVD
collection that I can go browse through it, and say, I'm in the mood to watch this, you
know?
And that sounds like a fantastic idea, and that's one thing, you know, if that were a business
model right now, guaranteed, I'd pretty much watch a lot more movies than I do now, and
that's how I'd do it. But I think the biggest problem they face right now is just it's so
slow to get changes through. Like, look how long it... When Napster came out, it's not
like they were really ignoring it. They're not complete idiots. They're sort of aware
that this thing's there. It's just it takes so long for them to do all these changes, and
unfortunately, they're not going fast enough, and they're really ultimately going to hurt
themselves by sort of not pressuring themselves to be faster to adopt new models that embrace
the Internet. Yeah. Some of them are complete idiots, though. Yeah, it'll go agreed. Some
of them. Oh, we're dropping docs now. All right, man. Well, let's see. The only other
thing is I did make a note to myself that I really thought it was cool the way you did
the closing credits with the ANSI art. I thought that was a nice touch and a throwback to the
old, well, for piracy days where you would get the info file and you get the ANSI art with
all the shouts and all the release names and thanks to this release group and et cetera,
et cetera. I thought that was kind of cool. Can we give somebody some credit for who did
that art? Yeah. His name is Zero, and I used to work with him back in the day, and he's a
very good ANSI artist, and you may catch some of his art on some art packs that are online.
Unfortunately, I can't give more information than that, but incredible artist. Cool. Cool.
All right. Well, what else do we have? Did we miss anything? We were pretty thorough in
all that, huh? Yeah. I realized that I interrupted.
I have one other little thing that kind of popped into my mind, too, is I don't know how
to politely word this, but you interviewed somebody who was part of a release group. How
do you not get in trouble by putting someone's face and recording talking about that kind of
thing? You change his name. You delete. You have no reference of him on your computer whatsoever.
All your information on him is in your head. And forgotten, by the way, I don't remember his phone
number. I don't remember. Does he have an email address? I don't know where he lives.
And you eat the tape with ketchup.
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, his face is out there, man. I think I might have blurred that one.
Well, you know what? Like, we were talking about this, me and him. And, you know, like, there's
no reference to his real group. And, you know, he said himself that he's retired. So it's
not like the FBI has face recognition. And even if they do, well, I can guarantee you here
in Canada, the closest thing to face recognition is probably someone drawing on, uh, with oil
on paper. So he's pretty safe.
Well, and you know what? That segment, see, watch how I do this. See, this is, this is how
you work it. That entire segment was completely fictionalized anyway for the movie. So it's
really non-issue.
You know what? He was lying the whole thing. He's a paid actor.
Exactly. See, that's what they do in the film industry. See? You're absolutely going
to end up being, you're going to be the next Scorsese, man. You're going to be the next,
uh, Lucas? No, not Lucas. He's a bastard. Um, um, actually, you know what? You're going
to laugh at this. I'm the only person, I'm the only person who still hasn't seen that
third Star Trek movie.
The first two were so...
It's actually not that bad.
Yeah, the first two were so horrible.
Oh, yeah. Guaranteed. The first one, that whole Jar Jar thing, horrible. The second one
was even worse. I, I actually didn't see it in theaters. I rented it and then I was
glad, but then I felt stupid for spending, you know, four bucks renting it.
Right.
Third one ain't that bad. Okay, think of, you ever heard of a guy named Yul Bull? He did
the Alone in the Dark movies.
Wow, that sounds really familiar.
Okay, he's, he's a guy who's so bad that he gets tax breaks because he's just that bad.
He is probably one of the worst directors. My fish, I had my fish with me watching one
of his movies and it imploded. Okay? It is a horror, he is bad. Alone in the Dark is a
movie you absolutely have to rent just because it's just that bad. Okay? Then you need a
good laugh. But, um, I, compared to that, you know, but the third one, if you like bad
movies or, sorry, I was going somewhere with this, but you know what, just watch it, rent
is five bucks, not a bad, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, the first Star Trek was really bad, or I'm sorry, Star Wars. Oh, damn
it, again, I've done that. I'll get all the Trekkies haunting me for that, stalking me.
Yeah, eight mil.
Star Wars one was horrible. I paid and went to see it in the theater and I really felt
ripped off. Like Kevin Smith, I felt horribly ripped off. So when the second one came out,
I did not go pay to see it in the theater. Because I already felt ripped off from the
first one. I wanted to actually get my money's worth from the first movie by watching the
second movie, which I thought was a little better, but still pretty damn bad if it wasn't
for the Yoda fight scene. The rest of it was pretty crappy. If I wanted to watch fucking
romance shit, I'd watch When Harry Fucked Sally or whatever that movie is. There's probably
a porn by that name. I just made it up, but it probably already exists. When Harry Met Sally
or some crap, I don't want to see all that stuff. Like saving Ryan's track.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think somebody in IRC, I glanced at, said that they're making
one for the Da Vinci Code. Oh, what was the...
Making it what?
I don't remember what the porn joke was. Oh, the Da Vinci, it was called the Da Vinci
Load. Oh, that's so awful. Okay, we've degraded as far as we can go on the show for this
time, but we're well over time, so we're going to squeeze in a couple emails at the
end of the show, but Julian, a.k.a. Seal, a.k.a. the next big Hollywood director, thank
you for being on the show. I appreciate it. And for those of you who don't, haven't seen
it yet, piracydocumentary.com. All right, so again, thank you for being on the show, and
we are going to do some email. And helping us out on the email segment of the show this
week is our good friend, Drewce. Thank you for letting me be on the show, buddy.
All right, well, let's jump into some email here. Our first email this week comes from
WebX7. I can't think of any other way to pronounce that, so WebX7 says, hey, I would like to request
documents from my local courthouse on a friend of mine that was arrested. Does anyone have
any idea on how I would do this? I would prefer free, but if I have to pay for copy costs at
my courthouse or something, I can live with that. Thanks. And I believe this person also
posted in the forums. Did you see that thread out there, Droopy? I did not, Mr. Stiggy.
No, okay. First of all, theoretically, you should be able to go to the courthouse where the filing
is or where the filing happened or whatever and request copies of it, but I've never done
that myself, so I can't say whether that's true or false. I would think that you should be
able to go there because it's a matter of public record, so I would think you should be able
to go there and get copies for a fee of, I don't know, a buck a page, I would imagine.
I don't know, maybe two. I don't know. But you're better off going online. The only one
that I'm familiar with is called Pacer, P-A-C-E-R, and if you do a Google search, you should find
it, but it's pacer.psc.uscourts.gov, but just do a Google search for Pacer and Courts or Pacer
and legal or something like that, and you'll find it, and this is the one that I use to
look up information about Decoder's case, and Decoder confirmed that, yes, that Pacer
was the one that he knew about as well. So you go on there. They do charge you, I think,
I don't think it was very much, maybe 10 cents a page or something like that to download,
so you can do a search and find what you want. The person's name usually is what it's filed
under if you don't know the docket number, case number, whatever, but you should be able
to get it. Now, they don't always put stuff on immediately, so, I mean, if he has a court
case in the morning, don't expect it to be there that night or possibly even that week,
but if you keep watching and keep searching for it, you can find it there. If you really,
really need the information, you know, contact a lawyer. Now, they're almost definitely going
to charge you, but they have full access to everything, and maybe they'll, hey, maybe
you get lucky, maybe they'll only charge you copying costs or access costs or something
like that, who knows? So it depends on how bad you want it.
Uh, let's see, what else do we have in here? Um, I don't have too much time because we
had such a long main topic tonight, so I'm going to skip through a couple of these short
emails. Oh, here's a, here's, here's one of our good friends here from the moderating
team. We got an email from Booter. Booter's our home, our home dog.
Did Booter ask how to hack?
A fellow, a fellow redneck. Um, no, not exactly how to hack. Actually, he, he, uh, sent an email
following up on a conversation from a previous episode, and let me just read it. I guess
it says, referring back to you and Rax's conversation on episode 151 about Moore's law, which is of
course that computing power is doubling every 18 months, is that what it is? Uh, there's
a company out there claiming, and Rax and I were talking about disk space more to the
point. Um, there's a company out there claiming that they will have 1.2 petabyte drives in four
to five years for only about $750. I guess we'll have to wait and see if they can pull
it off, but although you could store all the prawn in the world, who feels like waiting
two to five years for a fucking defrag?
So, Booter, thank you for the email, but listen, I gotta say this. Droops, I don't know how,
I don't know how you feel about this. I don't know if I'm, I'm alone on this one, but I'm
just gonna come out and say, nobody loves prawn more than me. I, I like prawn as much as the
next guy. Don't get me wrong, right? But I've never, I've never really been one to stash
porn, like store a bunch of porn locally on a drive in any kind of quantity. I've never
really felt the need for that, because, I mean, I can't even think of any prawn whatsoever
that I have, I mean, other than those movies that you and I made. But other, like, any downloaded
movies or downloaded prawn, I can't think of any of it. You know, just our personal stuff,
but I digress.
Did you put that personal stuff up on YouTube?
Um, well, I've been meaning to. Maybe by the time the show airs, it'll be out
there. Um, but, you know, there's that, there's whatabigcock.com.
Yes.
That one's out there. But other than that, no, I don't think we put anything else
out. Um, and here, and let me tell you why I say that. Here's my thought process, so
tell me what you think about this, Troops. My thought is that the internet is full of
fucking prawn! I can't go anywhere to any website without stepping in prawn.
Getting bukkake stuck to my shoe everywhere I go. So I really don't feel the need to stash
uh, 1.2 petabytes of prawn. Of course, I'm joking. I know Buddha was joking, too. But
do you have a prawn stash, Troops? Be honest.
Well, I used to have quite a prawn stash.
But?
Because, because sometimes you, maybe you're away from your internet, and you need some
peran on your laptop. You know, for perusal.
Okay.
But, I'm not very good at this whole computer thing, and my wife kept finding it, so I don't
have it anymore.
Oh, that's the greatest story ever.
Well, I just, I mean, okay, I guess, see, I just can't even picture not having internet
access anymore. It's 2006. Between war driving and free access, free wifi, and my cell phone
PDA, I have access always.
What if you're on a long road trip? You need a little porn.
Well, what, you act like they don't still make Playboy or something. Buy a freaking magazine.
It's hard to drive and hold the magazine.
You know.
But driving and looking at the laptop is much safer.
Well, I have the truck computer, so I can just put it on the little screen.
Oh, oh, God. That's a Hack TV video waiting to happen. That's like, Hack TV really, really
way underground.
Do you mind if I tell a story?
Go for it. Hack TV Prawn. That's going to be our new series.
On the way back from, uh, InterZone.
Oh, God. Is this going to be a not safe for work story, like, really bad?
No, no, no, no.
Oh, okay. Go ahead.
On the way back from InterZone, we're driving in our, uh, our T-Bird.
I'm already laughing, and I don't know the story. That's, that's...
If you're familiar with it, the T-Bird is really hard to see out of, because it's built
to be written around without a top on it. When you put the top on it, it's hard to see.
Okay.
So there's not really, like, a lot of viewing space from outside of the vehicle.
And we're bored, and we've watched all the movies we've brought, but I brought a relationship
video that was very graphic with us. And we decided to watch this.
Wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, hold. A relationship video? What, like, like, Kama Sutra, kind of
like, how to make better love or something?
Yes.
Oh, no! Okay, continue.
So we're, so we're driving along, and we notice these, uh, rednecks are beside us.
We being, wait a minute, we being...
Who came with me to InterZone?
Okay.
This is Droops.
Right. I'm trying to clarify, I'm trying to clarify to the listeners, because they think
it's me and you right now.
Okay, I'm sorry. So, my wife and I are enjoying a nice relationship video, and these rednecks
pull up beside us, and they're honking the horn, and, you know, waving their beers, and
having a good time. You know, looking, watching our relationship video.
Right.
So, so I put the hammer down, blow past those guys.
Mm-hmm.
Because I have a rule, I only get one speeding ticket per road trip, and I'd already gotten
one, so...
Okay.
It wasn't going to happen again.
Gotcha.
So, so we're driving along, and I'm pretty engrossed in the video.
And this trucker cuts me off, and I'm like, mother!
So, uh, I noticed they were boxed in by truckers.
And I said, oh my God, they're probably watching the video.
And I don't know how they can see it from where they were, but they, they have a very
good vantage point from, in those trucks, and they can see everything.
You've got to be kidding.
No.
Well, like, the clothes were still on, it's just the video, the clothes were off.
Hmm.
So, I pull out my scanner, turn it on.
I was going to say, that's when you, like, that's when it's nice to have a good old-fashioned
CB radio.
This is true.
So, I didn't have a CB, I had my scanner, so I was listening to the truckers, and sure enough,
they had locked us in.
Suddenly, I lit up my scanner, and I held it out the window, so they would see that
we were listening to them.
Right.
And, uh, they thought that was hilarious.
That is hilarious.
That's the greatest story ever told on BinRev Radio.
Well, I'm not done with it.
Oh, no!
It gets better?
In Mississippi, your county is written on your license plate.
Right.
So, they knew that we were from whatever county, Mississippi.
Right.
So, they start talking, and asking us questions, and what's happened to break light to answer?
Okay, we just got into Georgia.
Right.
We had gone to look around some stuff.
So, they were going to Tupelo, which is not very far from where I live.
In fact, we took the same exit they did.
And, they were like, you know, they wanted to watch the video, because they were bored.
And, we got to talking, and, because it's very easy to communicate with just the taps.
Like, they would ask a question, and they'd say, are you from here?
And, you wouldn't tap.
And, they'd say, from here, from here, from here.
And, so, they got to where it was right, and we tapped.
And, we had a nice little conversation with them.
Well, they said, hey, you know, we're going to Tupelo.
You'll stay with us.
You'll make it through, you know, the whole way, real fast, real safe.
So, we said, okay.
Well, that was like Smokey and the motherfucking Bandit.
There was about nine or ten 18-wheelers going to Tupelo, and we were in a convoy with them.
And, we positioned the laptop so they could see it better.
They're watching porn in another moving vehicle next to them on a road trip convoy of 18-wheeled trucks.
How did you, all right, wait, is this a real story?
Are you fucking with me?
This is a completely real story.
I can't believe that, how did you never tell me this story before, like, off the air?
Like, I can't believe that this, you'd have a story like this that you held back.
I haven't held it back for many people.
Oh, man.
So, anyway, they do their business, and they watch us.
And, like, stay there.
Wait a minute, what do you mean they do their business?
Their business of blocking for us.
Oh, okay.
You've got to be careful.
So, you know how you'll pull up, and, like, two 18-wheelers will be drag racing at 10 miles below the speed limit?
Right.
They would tell those guys to get the fuck out of the way.
Mm-hmm.
So that we could truck on through.
And we sped like bitches through the construction zone that I got my ticket in previously.
And in Birmingham, you have to get off the main road and kind of go through town, and they couldn't really make all the lights.
There were so many trucks.
Right.
So we kept having to pull off on the side of the road and wait on them.
But we trucked on through with them.
It was a good time.
So Prawn and CB radio is actually a really good thing to have on road trips.
Is that the moral of the story?
That's the moral of the story.
Wow, that was like a show-and-tell segment, which we don't officially do.
But that was a good story.
That was pretty good stuff.
Now, if I'd have had a Pentabyte drive in my truck computer and, like, a nice 30-inch display behind the truck.
Well, see, that's what you've got to do next time you go to a conference.
You've got to actually set up a big widescreen HD in the back window so you can get the convoy going again.
And then we'll just get the convoy going.
Exactly.
Actually, it sounds like a plan.
Well, anyway, back to this email.
The whole Prawn thing.
Again, hey, buy a magazine, you know, or take the video with you, a DVD or whatever.
But I've never been without Internet access.
Like, if I want it bad enough, I'll find it.
And it's not that difficult.
We all know that.
So, to me, Prawn is, I can't think of it as a non-renewable resource.
It's out there everywhere, and it's...
Well, see, you're not financially stable.
Let's take a guy that isn't.
War driving is free.
The bills, though, the money to pay for his Internet the next month.
And when you have no Internet, there's nothing else to do but looking for it.
War driving.
What if they don't have a laptop?
You're not putting a Pentabyte drive...
Well, then what are they putting their porn on?
Like, they have Internet one month.
The next month, they can't pay the bill.
There's free dial-up.
I don't want to hear this.
You're making up excuses.
Prawn on dial-up is misery.
Remember that, Stinky?
Remember back in the day?
Hey, it doesn't have to be video.
Images still suck.
Well, whatever.
All I'm saying is, it's not gas.
It's porn.
It's renewable.
It's not a non-renewable resource like gasoline.
I'm just saying, I like to keep the ones I like.
You've never met a prawn you didn't like.
Yes.
Anyway.
All right.
Let's see.
Let's do...
We can do at least one more email here real quick.
Next email comes from Digital Galileo, who says,
First off, I love the show and keep up the good work.
Regarding recording on the iPod...
Okay, here we go.
I asked about recording on the iPod.
Droops, maybe you can back me up on this.
All I had was a simple fucking question.
Can you record voice on an iPod?
I don't care about modification.
I don't care about iPod Linux.
I don't care about buying a third-party app.
Can you buy an iPod from the Apple store,
walk out, take it out of the box,
put batteries in it, and record your voice?
And finally, somebody says,
Digital Galileo, you can record on an unmodified iPod,
but at very low quality.
iPod Linux has a recording function
that allows you to record at a much higher bit rate.
There, that's it.
There's no microphone in an iPod.
Is there a microphone jack?
If you have Linux on there, it still doesn't matter.
You still have to have a microphone.
But is there a microphone jack?
No.
Well, then how do you record your voice?
You can buy a little Belkin Mix 1 that I have
that has a microphone that'll plug into your iPod.
That's what I said, so there's a microphone jack
to plug in a microphone.
It's not a normal jack.
It's some kind of proprietary thing?
Yes.
Oh, how?
That is so Apple.
Fuck.
Anyway, but it can be done without a weird modification.
It's just having the hardware.
Yes.
And iPod Linux, like Apple limits how you,
the quality of the recording,
but with the iPod Linux,
you can change that to whatever you want.
Right, which is what he's saying.
Which is, that's it.
Yeah.
Straight answer, simple question,
two episodes ago.
Was that so fucking hard to get an answer?
Why was that?
Ugh.
Anyway, whatever.
Thank you, Digital Galileo, for that.
You're wrong, man.
Yep.
All right, well, Drew,
help me close out the show.
What do you say?
All right, buddy.
I'll go ahead and give some shouts.
Shouts to, let's see, to Viatti,
I hope I'm pronouncing that right,
and Willikin.
Both of them sent in some email,
so thank you for those.
And to our first guest, Seal,
which leads into the site of the week,
which is piracydocumentary.com.
Now, Drew, did you have any shouts?
I have two, actually.
One shout out to the people at CarolinaCon,
who's awesome meeting Telco Bob and all the crew.
Yeah, I forgot.
You know, we don't have time to do that.
Next episode, we're going to do some CarolinaCon talk.
Anyway, so thank you to all you guys for putting that on.
And the second one is to Decoder,
because talking about that abacus
was the funniest fucking thing I've heard in a long time.
Decoder's so freaking funny.
Yeah, I liked slipping that in there.
That was pretty fun stuff.
All right, so, yeah,
piracydocumentary.com, site of the week.
Email us, radio at binrev.com.
Our closing music this week,
this is actually one of my favorite songs,
and one of the best songs I've heard in a long time.
It's from, the group is called
Futuristic Sex Robots,
and the track is called Snakes on a Plane.
For those of you who don't know,
from the upcoming Snakes on a Plane movie,
this is a song that they submitted
hoping that it would make it to the soundtrack,
and I don't think their decision's been made yet,
but I hope it does,
because it's awesome.
So enjoy that,
and go Brazil!
World Cup fever, baby!
Brazil's going to take it all!
And that's going to be it,
so, droops,
I will make sure we have some time next week
for CarolinaCon discussion,
which has been in the forums,
and something we need to spend some time on,
but until then,
we'll tell everybody that we will see them next week.
Same hack time!
Same hack channel!
I was flying on a plane to California
When I met this guy whose name was Sammy J
Got a gin and tonic, sapphire bomb base
Sammy said I prefer number 10 hickory
After a few, he looks me right in the eye
Keep it on the DL, I'm with the FBI
I'm on this plane to escort this guy
He could take down the mafia if he testifies
And then I felt safe, like nothing could go wrong
Oh shit, there's a snake coming out that bitch's thong
I remember the time Nas spoke to me
He said life's a beat, and damn you deep
I'm down on my drink, getting ready to die
But Sammy J stands up and says not tonight
I got a job to do
Enough is enough
I've had it with these motherfucking snakes and stuff
Gonna get this guy to court
Safe and sane
I want these motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking plane
At this point I passed out after I'm being full of Xanax
And when I woke up, we were safe in LAX
Snake was on the plane
We got snakes up on a plane
Snake was on a plane
We got snakes
Snakes on a motherfucking plane
I went to the bathroom to make us think
When this motherfucking snake came up through the sink
I'm gonna fight to hell, no time to think
Gotta get to the cart and have another drink
I'm taking every tube and inside every pipe
How could this be the end of my life?
If airport security has let me bring a knife
I could make it home alive to my best friend's wife
My best friend's wife
They're coming up through the floor
I got bit on my hand and I'm feeling sore
Unhinged to try to take in my head
I whispered it was Jennifer Connelly instead
Snake was on the plane
We got snakes up on a plane
Snake was on a plane
We got snakes
Snake's on a motherfucking plane
What if your dick was as big as the ocean?
It'd be the only snake not encroaching
On your seat when you get them free nuts
Anacondas chomping, all the fly butts
When I looked around, wish I'd taken the train
There were snakes all over the motherfucking plane
Or better yet, snakes in your brain
Puts be racing like it's smoking cocaine
Plane stacked with snakes
The flight's non-stop
I got more butts than a cigarette shop
Just another day on the TWA
Sucking out prison
Don't say that I'm gay
Snake was on a plane
We got snakes up on a plane
Snake was on a plane
We got snakes
Snakes on a motherfucking plane
Hop on the plane
Flight 121
Get my big ass to the robot show, son
Find my seat, first class, settle in
Somewhere to swingin' like she knows recycle bin
Bring a double rum and meet me in the can
Yo, Coax, hurry up with that shit, man
This is finest bitch, I'm a dude in the booth
Get up in that shit like a ninja pussy's hoot
Work that shit hard, leave a bitch screamin'
Little did I know there's a grip of snakes steamin'
Fuck a bitter in the ass, man, that's whack
Left the ground to playa, now I'm a necrophiliac
Snake was on the plane
We got snakes up on a plane
Snake what?
On a plane
We got snakes
Snakes on a motherfucking plane
Snake what?
On the plane
We got snakes up on a plane
Snake what?
On a plane
We got snakes
Snakes on a motherfucking plane
Blame!