 Hey and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of... what is the week? It's a week in January, I know that much. Nobody can know. I like, by the way, I'm seeing the stream here. This thing is like, it's like just eyes poking over this. Anyhow, this is the Vergecast for the week of January. I think it's January 16th. Is it based off the Monday or the Sunday? Monday. It's a Monday. Okay, so it's the 16th. Week of January 16th, 2012. I'm Josh Dabulski. I'm Paul Miller. I'm a guy who has a hair problem. You really got a fro. I'm Neelay Patel. He's also Neelay Patel. Yeah. And we're back. I can't look at this. This is a disturbing... Don't do it. You know what I was saying? If you caught it at the beginning, I was telling him to turn off because there's Time Warner internet. Time Warner. You know, the good thing about Time Warner is they never get crap from us on the podcast. You never hear us go like, what is wrong with Time Warner? They're not cool. So we should say where we are. So we're in beautiful downtown Las Vegas. We never left. Just kidding. We left as soon as possible. We are in our new temporary studios as we transition. So this year has been a really weird, crazy... Well, last year was a really weird, crazy year for us. And we went through a lot of changes. Our bodies went through a lot of changes as bodies do. Oh, so that's a later... I like how your voice cracked when you said our bodies. But anyhow, hold on. Let me just take a sip of Pura, my official drink, my official sponsor. We went through a lot of ethical changes. Well, yeah, we went through... We said, you know what? I'm not gonna... I won't take a Samsung sponsorship, but if a Rienzi Pura wants to pay my way, so be it. Be hilarious if they saw this, they were like, wait a second. That's the guy we've been looking for to sponsor our sparkling water. And then our sales spike. They should spike because it's very refreshing. Anyhow, we went through a lot. We've gone through a lot of changes the past year. We started this new business. What's the matter? Are we off the air? No, we're on the air. Are we... We're on the air. Everyone in our chat is saying we're off the air. How is that possible? We're back on. What happened? We went off for a moment. Are you guys... Are we on the air? Boy, this is fun. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. We've gone through a lot of changes in the last year, including being unlimited to starting a new business, launching a website, bringing on a ton of new team members. I bought a new pair of jeans. Neil, I bought a new pair of jeans. Very tight at the bottom. Very tight at the bottom. Very tight. Too tight. In fact, the way they make his angles look is rather obscene. They're tapered. I bought tapered jeans. But one of the biggest... I bought a boy for a jeans. I just want to say one of the biggest growing pains we've had is we really wanted to do a video podcast. We've never been really strict about the podcast, but we wanted to do a video podcast very badly. And so we've started doing them since we launched the site. And we haven't had our shit together, really, I have to say. We got pinholes, though. But we got pinholes and we got... It's getting better. Anyhow, we have a new studio now, but we're actually in the midst of looking for a big new office for the whole team. And we're going to build out our custom studio there. So this year, you'll see us get a really nice, beautiful space to do our show in. But for the time being, we're in this nice, beautiful space where our production guys are set up. And we're working on... We started late today. That was not our intention. And we're working on that. So I just want to say, the Verge cast was crazy at CES. It's always insane. And there were some situations there where we would have liked it to start earlier to go a little bit smoother, to not have Kelly Pickler start jamming in the midst of our thing. But we're working really hard. We do take this seriously. I hope that you guys, the listener knows that we really care about doing this for you and we want to make it as good as possible. Except you, Roby One Kenobi. I do not care. No, I love you. I just wanted to call out one listener. But anyhow, but you know... You're cool, Roby One Kenobi. I disagree. I'm not that into you. But he's just not into you. And when I say he, I'm speaking about myself in the third person. But we're working really hard to get this thing straight and good and great. And I just want to let you, the listener and the viewer know that it is a high priority for us. So if things seem a little rough around the edges... We're learning. This is new for us. It's new for us and we're also independent. So it's not like we don't have a studio. There is no studio. Except for the one we're sitting in. Except for the one we're sitting in now. No, now I'm saying, but up until today... But this one is new to the point where the Mac Pro editing stations that they just bought, the styrofoam... Yeah, there's like a pile of... There's like a stack of styrofoam skyscrapers. I will say their edit stations make me kind of jealous. It's pretty insane. But we should talk about tech news now that I'm done with my mea culpa, my big apology to the listeners slash viewer, whoever they may be. I want to load up the Ustream, but do you want to introduce the news? Hold on. I have to take a sip of delicious... I can't get the chat to load. I have to take a sip of delicious rianzi pura for all your refreshment needs. I mean, I've never seen anybody gun for an endorsement deal before. I just go after it. I just, you know, I asked for seltzer and I got this. So I wanted like a Schweppes, Schweppes for all your refreshment needs. I know it's time for the news. Neil, what's in the news? Well, we went to an event today. That was kind of a big deal. Could you be more explicit? Well, it was an event where we shared our feelings and then we met a series of people that share our common interests and we had to go from one to one as fast as possible. I don't think we really... I've actually never been... This is like speed dating. Did you have to introduce yourself by name and then admit something? I mean, I've never been speed dating, so I'm just imagining. Is that what speed dating is? You admit something? No. What are you talking about? Hey, hey. So you... I described what I thought was speed dating and what you took from it was a substance abuse meeting. Yeah. No, we go from person to person. Somebody wants me to talk about your hair, brother. It's out of... I've been doing a lot of this today. And I thought, you know, it's funny is like, what's incredible about Neil's hair is that I thought that I was having a pretty bad hair day. Oh, no. So we were in DC, Neil and I were in DC and we missed our train coming back. We actually almost got attacked by a police dog. We ran out into the train. We were like running actually to catch the train. We ran through like the wrong way in the train station in Washington, DC, which you know is a high security town because the president lives there. Yeah. And I would point out that the sight of the two of us running is not threatening to anyone. If anything, you're like, everybody relax. These guys aren't getting anywhere. They're not gonna do anything. Don't worry. They'll fall down on their way. These two nerds are not going to succeed in any type of crime that they are going to attempt to succeed in. But no, a woman, like a policewoman came out with it. She's screaming like a barking dog. Like attack dog. And we were very scary. And we're like, sorry, no offense. But I just step back away slowly. But she's like had the dog. We did this. We were talking as we walked away with our arms up. It's okay. It's no problem. Sorry about that. So sorry. It was very odd. Anyway, it was good. But so we're very tired is my point. And I thought I was going to have a really bad hair day. And Eli's hair is so gross that I feel good about my hair. This is just... Maybe you ought to drink more Rienzi, you pure up. Can I just douse my hair in it? Do you think the carbonation... Is that carbonated? It's clean. It's fresh. All right. Let's go on. So we went to an Apple event this morning. We went to Apple today. Apple had their... First off, they did an event at the Guggenheim Museum, which is cool. It's cool to be in the Guggenheim when there's no other people there. It's like a night at the museum, but cool. Night at the Guggenheim Museum. During the day. Day at the museum. At 10 AM. So Apple had an event. It was their education event. I'm not going to say much ado about nothing, but... No, I disagree with you. No, it's... And it was a proper... No, no, no, no, no. But with all Apple events, they're overhyped. And this one, just like every other Apple event was... I mean, people... I don't know what people thought. We knew it was going to be an education. So there was no expectation it was going to be like hardware, which is fine. They introduced some big things. They introduced a textbook, iBooks 2, which like now features textbooks. And they have a partnership, big partnerships with the guys who make, basically make 90% of the textbooks, which is... McGraw-Hill. McGraw-Hill. DK. DK. Oh, I forgot DK. I wrote something about it earlier, but DK. Houghton Mifflin. Houghton. That sounds great. Is that how it's pronounced? Yeah. And Pearson. Pearson. Yeah. And this one dude. This guy. Larry Schwartz. You haven't heard of him. Larry Schwartz is... No, E.O. Wilson. Biology. There's actually a guy. There's a guy, like E.O. Wilson and his like adventure, his like nature adventures or something. Can I... Nature hunters. Just looking at our stream, I will say one thing about this event. What? I took more pictures of Melancholy Phil Schiller at this event than at any other point in my life. Yeah. So Phil... He somehow caught a bunch of moments of Phil Schiller. Phil Schiller was leading the event. My favorite picture was... They played a video. They played a video of like how horrible our school system is. And then the next picture after that was just... He was just looking crushed. Distraught. Phil Schiller. He was like... I can't deal with it anymore. Yeah. He almost like... It seemed like he was gonna walk off stage and start crying or cry on stage. But yeah, so Phil Schiller led this event and he did... Neil got a lot of pictures of him looking dead. The best thing is that afterwards we got a chance to talk to him and we told him like, Oh yeah, Neil actually got a lot of pictures of you looking sad on stage. He's like, well, this is very serious. It is serious. The truth is like, here's what's cool. I wanna say like what's cool and what I think is not cool about the event. So first off, Apple introduced iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, which is an authoring, basically a modern day hyper card the way I see it, for making interactive books or I guess interactive anything. I mean... Yeah, there's no reason it has to be. Just because it has text in it doesn't mean it's a book. And just because it has pages and you can take notes and you can... It has table of contents, it doesn't make it a book. Just because it has paper. Just because it has a glossary and an index. So it's like kind of like pages, keynote and hyper card all mixed together. And then what was the other announcement? And iTunes U. iTunes U. Yeah, they've like altered iTunes U to make it more far reaching. So they're great education announcements and they made a point. They really hammered like, and I think they were very... I mean, they were focused on America. This wasn't universal like, hey, the international. Yeah, I mean, they sort of hinted that they'd be getting... Well, there's no question they're going to try to do things like this internationally, but I feel like today was very much about America, the American school. Well, they said America, they said they caught out America and said we ranked 28th in schools or something. Let me get sad Phil on the screen. He's mad. This was right after. He's mad at you. He was like, somebody, one of the teachers was like, our schools is broken. And then they cut back to Phil Schiller and he was like doing this. Who do you think he's most disappointed in? Obama? Let me find the one that the taxpayers for enabling this. I think he's most disappointed in... Teacher unions. There's one that's absolutely... I think he's most disappointed in... This is Eddie Q that we see here. I think he's most disappointed in... The current state of technology. In the fact that we've driven up to the intersection of the liberal arts and technology and we can't make a turn. We stopped at a red light. We need to make a turn. No rights on red. You know what? It's not a red light. It's a stop sign and we need to make up our minds and start driving forward. Because it's our turn. Because it's our turn. It's our time. The time is down. It's true. Don't stop believing. So hold on. So I was going to say the thing is... This one. This is my favorite. Sad Phil with... I only see the solar system on the screen. Oh. And you only see... What's going on here? I don't know. You should see sad Phil. Oh, there we go. I don't have that. There's a little delay. Oh, there we go. And now when... I don't know what's going on. Anyhow, okay. But so things that were cool and not cool. Cool that a company that does technology is... You know, and Apple's always been in the education space. Cool that they're talking about education. Cool that they're saying, hey, we need to help here. Like we should be thinking about how can we use technology to help better educate America's children or any children for that matter. Does it have to be American? I'm not done. Well, as long as they speak English, the official language of Apple. Well, the official language of Apple. And just addressing the fact that we've got real problems and they need to be addressed and maybe there's a way that technology companies can help address them and have real positive... Well, this is... There's that, but this is like a complete end-to-end solution. That's my cool thing. Hold on. I didn't get to my cool things. That's your cool thing? All right. So the other cool things is that they introduce what I think is really great and exciting and I think every kid should have. And the truth is that most kids will not have or have access to. And they like this textbooks, but the truth is like that's what most kids are gonna have to deal with for the foreseeable future. And they didn't say, and maybe this is a forthcoming thing, maybe it's something they're working on in the background, but they weren't like what I was really hoping for. They introduced this amazing content, like really beautiful content. You need a cough button. They introduced this really beautiful content and a great way to experience the content. And it's like you have to have an iPad. And they didn't say like, here's how we're gonna start to get iPads to kids. And I would have liked to hear something about that. That's it. That's my thought. It's only a Twitter account for my hair. That happened. It's true. Let me respond to you. Let's get your hair later. That was true when like books were invented. For like- Kids couldn't get iPads. That is true. When books were invented, kids had no access to iPads. Gutenberg was like, this is crap. I just wish I could give them access to iPads. No, I mean like for hundreds of years, the only books most people owned were the Bible and that was it. And there were no other- That's all you need if you ask me. This guy. But no, I mean, any- And Harry Potter. I mean, but textbooks change, right? I mean, they've developed and they mutated. I'm just saying Apple could take, we actually were talking to Ross Rubin about this. Yeah, he's like, they can take their cash. No, no. I said, they could take one of their $50 billion they have in cash in the bank and literally give every kid in America an iPad. Like how much would it cost? Would it cost a billion? I bet it wouldn't. What's their cost for an iPad? How many children in school in America are there? I mean, that's a lot of math that you're asking. I'm sure somebody- Can I get sad Phil in the frog dissection up on the screen? That's all I want. I'm just saying that, I'm just saying a billion dollars would go a long way to actually like getting these materials into the hands. Look at how sad he is about frog dissection. He's like, don't touch that frog. So go on. But I just wish they had said something. You know, there's that, but you know, they're a company. They sell things. But they've always had, you know, I'm sure they have, they always had their educational discounts and I'm sure they still do. They lease iPads out, they told us. Some number, we didn't put this on the site because these are always a little hairy and a little tenuous. But some analyst came out with a figure that like Apple or that Amazon is making on average like a hundred, 150 bucks per person in the first year of them owning the new Kindle. So they're extrapolating that number. The Kindle Fire. Okay. And they're saying like people on average are buying like, you know, a few books like a month already. So what are you saying? Well, well, you know, if Apple wanted to do a heavily subsidized iPad, I mean, they're going to make, they're still making 30% off of each of these book sales. And they're also, I mean, think about if you, if, think about it for each school, for every year, you know, let's say you had a set number of iPads and the student would get them for the year and then the next, you know, they'd have to give them to the next student or whatever. Well, that would make sense. I don't think, you know, the solution isn't necessary for Apple to give stuff to everybody. I don't mean give them like, I mean, just let them hold onto it and subsidize it to schools, which I think they're, they're leasing them to schools, but I don't know what, you know, what the cost is. It's just unclear how they're partnering because, you know, you mentioned this in your thing, you know, states have to approve the curriculum, you know, how are you administering these iPads in mass? You know, it's just not, it's not really set up yet. I know the iPad is getting popular in enterprise. I don't think that was, this is kind of an enterprise setup where you can, you know, mass control and mass, those tools are there. They were really upfront with us that they just don't talk about them with us. Yeah, they're like, when we go to schools, we talk about this stuff all the time. They weren't, they weren't so, and we talked about the cost, you know, and they were like, this makes sense for schools. We think the numbers work out if you look at the cost of a textbook versus the cost of an iPad and these, this software, but you know, or the books, but you know, when you think about it, you know, Laura, we were talking in our chat room and Laura was like, asked this question and I hadn't even thought of it, but it was, you know, a book can last for like a math book. Math doesn't change. Like they're not like there's a new number we didn't know about. Yeah. I mean, general like math, right? So like those books can last for like say five to 10 years. No, I disagree with that. I mean, you disagree with math doesn't change? Math, the math doesn't change. How you present. You need new relevant story problems. If you, if you have Jimmy's 55 Facebook friends, but then you lose seven. Cause the ones now are from the settings are like, Jimmy took a ride in his dad's brat and he could only fit three of his friends in the weird back part. That's kind of a truck and kind of isn't. And the kids are just like, Oh, what is a brat besides myself? Sounds like a Bratz doll. Yeah. Bratz. How could you go for a ride in a Bratz? They did say some interesting things about how these books, they can push updates to the books. I still text $500 per student per iPad. They said four years to us. They think that pays off over four years. That's a four year lease. Well, they said they lease in four year periods, but that we don't know what their lease terms are. Like we don't know. Is there a minimum, a maximum? Like, well, how much per iPad are they charging for the lease? Like, you know, I don't know any of them. I mean, we could be, I was like, what kind of fake school do we have to set up to find out about this? That would be nice to really know how this actually works for school. Maybe they haven't figured it out and that's great. I think ultimately this is most exciting for somebody who wants to just wants to learn stuff faster. Yeah. I mean, you can go get textbooks. There's 15 bucks. I say what is cool is that I'm going to get so many high school textbooks. I can find, I know I'm going to like, I'm going to learn about like chemistry. Now is the time for you to like appreciate the stuff that you tried to ignore in high school. Cause you were thinking about girls, right? Or brats or brats, the car and the doll. Yeah. And brat cars. Right. Do you even know what the brat is? I do. I do. I was thinking about girls. Can anybody name right now in Ustream? It's a Subaru brat. I got it. Come on. I want somebody to name the maker of the car. It's not a Subaru. It's not a Subaru. Who is it? Who made it? Who made the brat? I keep on getting scrolled up in the Ustream. It is Subaru. It is Subaru. But you know what? I'm glad that they're talking about it. I'm not, this isn't like, Oh, Apple, cool announcement about education, but what else do you got? You know, like I think that it would have been nice to hear more details on how this works in the real world. And I think, I think the announcement itself is how they're going to start to answer that question. Because before it was like, let's give a bunch of kids iPads. Now the cat's out of the bag. Well, no, but it's like, what happens when you give a kid an iPad? Like you have to have, there's no like built in. He downloads, he downloads dead space. The iPad was the remote, but this is the digital content distribution. Yeah. What? We're going right back there? It's a whole week of that? You didn't get enough? So that's it. So I think the stuff that they announced is actually really cool. You know, I think the idea that like you could write a textbook that's interactive is like cool. That actually is the place that I'm most curious. And I asked some, some Apple reps, you know, what's the approval process. And they're like, we have a process. They didn't go into detail, but, but like I could write any kind of crazy textbook I want through the math book. And I don't know anything about math. The coolest interactive features though, like you have to do those in HTML5. Like I played around with the tool a little bit. Like you can do really nice layout stuff and, and you can embed videos, connect stuff together. And they do obviously do all that note taking stuff and the making the cards and the glossary and stuff like that. You can embed videos and you can embed 3d objects. But for the really wild interactive stuff is going to be done in HTML5. That's an accessible, I mean, that's an accessible thing. No, people can do it. I'm just saying it's not like you can't just take your existing textbook assets and toss this into a... No, and you know, we saw a lot of books. How many books did you try out today? Did you try out a bunch? I, I... We tried out the, the bio book, the living world, whatever it's called. It's called life on earth. Life on earth, the living world. There's a one called biology. By the way, do you know I have a competitor to life on earth called the living world. It's very confusing. It's pretty good. And that one is the super interactive. Like they only have two chapters ready. It's going to be exclusive. I think, you know, it's the halo book for the... And that one is like really cool. I'd like to read a halo book. The halo book. Right. But then, you know, you go look at the textbooks they had, the other ones, biology, chemistry. And those are just books. No offense. And when you turn them from landscape to portrait, they don't paginate. They just, you endlessly scroll up. Or paginate. What is up with your weird words today? I'm from the Midwest. What did you say earlier? Incognito. Incognito. Incognito. Incognito. I don't like you. Anyhow. So, so I have to say, listening to us talk about this, it is no offense to Apple and education. Excuse me. Yeah. Can you cop away from the mic? It is really boring. This does not interest me that much. It's cool. I'm happy. I want kids to be learning and stuff. But it really is not very interesting to me. From a cultural perspective, from a technology perspective, it's cool. I'm excited. I want it to happen. But there's only so much I can really say about it. I think I've said everything I can say about it. I think this could be a pretty good publishing standard. Well, it's not EPUB, apparently. It's like related to EPUB, but it has its own proprietary stuff. It's EPUB's richer, meaner cousin. Let me get Sad Phil on the screen. I want him to judge Josh. What are you doing? Sad Phil's coming. Oh, God. I don't know, man. Wow. You really made him unhappy. Sorry, Phil. You're so... This is right after I really am going to do an inside edition here. Not quite smooth. Can you go deeper? Can you get further? Can you... We're never ever going to invite it to our events. Enhance. But anyhow, so let's talk about other news in the news. I also am excited that they made iTunes U better because I've tried to use that before to learn other things. Oh, I want to actually... That's very difficult to use before. Can we talk about... They showed a video to get people psyched about iTunes U. They showed a video of a physics professor, and he was... What was the theorem that he was showing in practice? I mean, some... He was showing the loss of kinetic energy. There you go. The loss of kinetic energy. Thank you for having gone to college. And he was doing this really exciting thing where he had this huge metal ball attached to a rope, and he was in the classroom. He's like, basically, I'm going to hold it up to my face and swing it. It's not going to swing back and hit me in the face. Otherwise, I'll die. And there was a classroom full of probably like 100 people. And it was thrilling. I was like, wow, I want to go to this guy's class. And then later, a few moments later, they showed a guy doing a lecture to a camera in a classroom that was obviously empty. And there was nothing there for me. I thought it was so... Seems so sad. It just was sad. I don't want to watch a TV learning show. So you know what's weird about that is... I want Bill Nye. I want Bill Nye, the science guy. Can I say two things about that? The first scene, Real Genius, which is one of my favorite movies. What? The movie Real Genius, the young Val Kilmer. It's a great movie. Is that Real Genius? The popcorn. Oh, yeah, I'm thinking of Weird Science. Also a great movie. Very, very similar. There's got to be a super cut of those two coming together. It was a Real Genius on Weird Science. Real Genius is a scene. Real Science or Weird Genius. Weird Genius. Isn't there like a bomb on campus or something? No, they make a laser. No, they make a laser from space. They make a laser. They make a laser from space. Anyway, there's a scene. There's a montage. It's an 80s movie. So there's a long montage in the middle. And it's the teacher and he's lecturing to a full classroom and there's one tape recorder. And every time the kid goes back, there's more and more tape recorders. As they walk to the lecture hall, it's a bunch of tape recorders recording a tape recorder playing a lecture. And when they play that video, that's all I can think of now. That's in Real Genius? That's Real Genius. Wow. That's awesome. Pretty great. Well, but it's sadder than even having companion tape recorders. It's like, I just, I don't know, I have to put myself in the position of the professor who's like pouring his educational heart out. They didn't have all this video streaming stuff when I was in college. Clearly. Which is so much better. But then I left and my cousins who were just slightly younger than me all went to college and they all had video lectures. They never had to go to class because they could just watch them. And they all did it. This ain't right. And all my friends are a year or two younger than me. They're into this in a way that makes no sense to you or me. I don't like it, man. I don't like it at all. I think that we need to do something about it. I think that we need to teach our children how to learn properly. You believe that they have a future. I believe they have a future if they don't have to watch it sad. You think we should teach them well? If they don't screw it up. If they don't screw it up. I think we should let them lead the way. Well, I think that they're going to screw it up if they're taught only through sad, lonely guy lectures. We should start an iTunesU called Lonely Guy Lectures with Josh Polsky. I guess this is how you solve the problem. What does it matter? Nobody even comes to class anymore. Maybe you're watching, maybe you're not. I have no way of knowing. It's like that's what he feels inside. Look, I will say the iTunesU stuff. Somebody said, I don't like the future or kids. Your life is an endless series of small disappointments. I cannot deny that. As the future endlessly comes, children are continuously born. That's the thing. There's a lot of kids in the future. Yeah. Not the future again. The compounding problem. The future again. So just a shrieking noise in our heads. Yes. Absolutely. That was a shrieking noise. Wait, what were you going to say about iTunesU? Yeah. No, when I was in school, we had a system called Chalk and we had to use it. It sucked. And this is like, this will kill Chalk. You do a lot of reminiscing. Did you ever notice that? I don't know what you're talking about with Chalk, but I got to say, right now, if you were ever curious about something and you wanted to learn and somebody told you, no, no, you can't learn that. Yeah. Who would do that? I have no idea. You mean if you applied to go to college and they were like, no. Like if your library re-implemented segregation or something like that, you couldn't check out books. Really? You're going that far? Alternate past history? What scenario? Actually, you know what? That was when I was growing up. I'll reminisce. Retrocon? What book you always tell me about? We're like, the iron dream. No, that's not, that's where the iron dream is where Adolf Hitler became an author and he didn't become Adolf Hitler. And he wrote stories about like being like Aryan superheroes, but that genre is called something man in the high castle. It's also who else has done a bunch? Gore Vidal, I think has done some, it's alternate history. Yeah. That's what it's called. So growing up, I went to the library all the time and I was obsessed with computers and electronics. And so I would go to the library's section on computers and electronics and everything was at least a decade out of date. And a lot of the stuff was from the seventies about computers. Like I could get a book at the library. I was like, what's a computer? And it had like somebody screwing a light bulb into a circuit board. The first time Paul came into the office, he was like, where's the vacuum tube room? My mind was blown. He came in on it, he came in as a stagecoach. Right now you can go on the internet and you can learn something just amazing. Like almost everything. You can learn some amazing things that are not true. You can look at a picture of said. But also you can learn almost everything anybody learns in college. So let me, you know what's interesting about that. At least in an undergrad level. No, but the thing about it is in like, you know, I'm an advocate for the future. I love the future. Yeah, that's no guarantee you will. Like there is something about like that structure of having a room full of people engaged in a lecture where like you're asking questions, you're having a conversation and you're, you know, it's a, it's a, it's an interactive experience. You know, it's like there's something different. You know, the reason I wanted to do when we started doing the Engadget show and then now we do on the verge, the reason I want to do in front of a live audience, because there's, you get something intangible. You can't, there's just, it's a more resonant experience. I think when there's a group of people there to experience something together. And I do think that matters in learning. I think that there's, it's, there's a reason we've huddled around the concept of like classrooms. We huddled around the concept of classrooms. What's wrong with that? I don't know. I, whatever. I don't know. It's actually the subtitle of my book, How to Save America. It's actually the sub. It's actually the sub. Let's not have a meeting with huddle. What's a, is there a company called huddle? There has to be. Yeah, I'm sure. It's actually huddl. It's actually, I forget it doesn't matter. This joke's, I'm going to use the word huddle. It's actually, it's actually, it's actually, it's actually, it's actually, it's actually huddl. It's actually, it's, I forget it doesn't matter. This joke's, I'm not going to bother going back to this joke. The sub, subheading. So let me, you know what, that's funny that you brought up the, you can go on the internet and learn anything. Because this, you know, you and I were talking about this. No, you and I, no. We were? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Sorry. You could, you could before SOPA. That. Yeah, no, I can't learn anything. Gosh. You're going to be anti-internet. I do, but I do believe, and I love Apple. They're a wonderful company, huge innovators. You know, I don't have to qualify it, but they, I do believe they are relatively anti-internet and kind of don't understand the internet and have like struggled to really find a way for them to like harness the internet to like serve Apple. And I think this is a very anti-internet. I mean, it's a book. You know, you static, you download it. Well, we saw, well, here's the thing that's really interesting. We saw this awesome demo, this chegg demo, which is HTML5 textbooks that are like cross platform. You can look at them in a browser on a laptop. There's like, you know, there's a web view, there's a mobile web view. And it's cool. It's HTML5. It's terrible name. I think Chegg is the company. Still bad. But it's like cross, it's like cross platform, totally like internet based. Chegg, you should change your name. It's Google docs, but like for books, right? I thought that was really cool. This is the exact opposite. It's like their own standard from what we can tell. It's all about their hardware. It's all about their software. It's all about their authoring. It's the Apple way. They don't want, and you know, the internet can be like not a great source for information as much as it's a great source for information. But they're a good part. I mean like what we saw today, the stuff we played with was utterly seamless. It was very ever slowed down. I was pinching and zooming videos. It was wonderful. It was a native experience. It was, you could tell like this is the way it's supposed to be. And there's the experience is going to be better until, you know, for a few years, the experience is going to be better. And that will be, you know, when the rubber hits the road, you know, when Apple, I don't know, I hate that. That's the rubber doing to the road. That's just the worst. The rubber is peeling out onto the road. Well, I mean, because Apple said it really supports these standards and you've always gotten the vibe that Apple, you know, Apple supported them well enough that it's ready to make that jump when that happens. But Apple is so much about making sure its experience is really perfect. It's an Apple experience. It is. Some of those books were like, they don't want to take those risks. Some of those books were definitely still just textbooks though. Like I will say like the, the, the life on earth or it's called world and balance or living living world life on earth. No life on earth is what it's called. Life in the world, the living world, the world it lives. No yours was the living world. Yeah. But like in that book, it's like cool. It's like they definitely like put the special thoughts out of it. Then some of those like some of the, um, just high school biology book was, you could tell it didn't, was not chock full of interactive elements. Compare that to the current state. Like there are a lot of textbooks already on the app store and you know, now you have a universal system for gathering notes. You've got a universal, um, generic UI, which is very helpful. So the generic UI stuff, when the iPad first came out and all those magazine apps hit and they're all crappy. Right. Because they all needed like a full screen tutorial. Yeah. They should, they had a killer opportunity to do this first with magazines. That's the broad consumer. Can't this be for mags? It should be. It is. It's going to be. I mean, that's what they want to do. iBooks author now is like, here it is, make your interactive magazine. Right. It doesn't, it's not so called textbooks. You know what we should do. We should make an interactive magazine about the verge. About the verge. I started making a textbook about the verge. Did you? Oh, I saw your textbook. It's really good. If you guys haven't seen this, you should go and look. Paul started doing. Did you publish it? Were you allowed to? No, you were doing it. Yeah. The only video I could find on my computer to embed was, was like a music video I got from the iTunes store. It was like the one video. It was just a copyright violation. It was heartless. Are you going to do that? That's how you're doing it? I'm going to get, I'm going to get soaped. So it looks like you're going to be taken down. Oh, you know, you can't take down stuff that isn't on the internet. You know what isn't on the internet? Apple stuff. Yeah, but don't worry. They'll come to New Zealand. They can't soap. It can't go after Apple. How do we even start this? They're still distributing their stuff over the internet. That doesn't mean anything. Does anyone want us to talk about Microsoft? It's not on the web. I don't understand why. Microsoft is a company. Oh, they announced like a bunch of things. Okay, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. I want to explain, I want to explain if you've just joined us on the podcast, let me explain how our format works. Okay. Cause it seems like there's some people in Ustream who don't know what goes on. So we talk about one topic and then we end that topic. Then we talk about another topic and then we end that and so on and so forth until the podcast ends. So if you want us to talk about something that you're interested in now, maybe the next topic will be that thing, but we're not going to finish our topic early because you don't like it. Okay. Wow. And I will, and I will slide through the internet pipes and kill you if you have a problem with that. That's true. Let's talk about SOPA. That was me shutting down this conversation. Like SOPA shuts down internet websites. Why would you drop drumsticks? You drop a mic. Okay. The drummer dropping his drumsticks is like the least hard move ever. You know, I actually wanted to, I actually wanted to, I wanted to end my description of how the podcast works on like a less aggressive note. It just didn't go that way. It just didn't go that way. It sounded like an angry father. It went up. You're going to eat that. Enjoy these vegetables or you're not getting up from the table. Yeah. Or I'll kill you. That's where you went. I have a new character. He's a gold, gold rush father. He's like, I've got gold. There's gold in our hills. No, no, no. Not Daniel Day Lewis. No, I, but I can actually do a pretty good Daniel Day Lewis froggle. There will be blood. I'm not going to do it now. All right. But you know that scene where he's in the restaurant. He's like, I'll come to your house and I'll kill your children. Something like that. Wow. Okay. I'll come to where you live. Kill you and your wife. And then I'll drink your milkshake. Sorry. Go on. All right. I'm going to try to talk about copyright law now. Oh gosh. I'll come to your website. Yesterday was a day. Call SOPA. Can you call SOPA? Is that a line? I own SOPA.org. Like 1-800-SOPA. If you see infringement in your neighborhood. Wow. SOPA.org is the worst website in the world. It's 1-800-SOPA. So, go ahead. So yesterday was the day. All I can think about is my day-to-day living. I'm just waiting for it to come back. I've been down this road with you. I can't make any promises. Yesterday was the blackout. So yesterday, so we've talked about SOPA at length before. I'm just going to bring up SOPA.org here. We can put this up on the screen. Yeah. This is a really important website. The Soybean Processors Association of India. Come on, man. I feel bad for them. I'll come to your house. Bringing prosperity through the golden bean is their mission statement. You like that, don't you? Okay. We've talked about SOPA a lot. SOPA is this law. Yes. It actually is not even anywhere. It's in committee. It's in committee. It's not even close to being a law. SOPA is a bill? It's the idea of a bill. It's a bill. It's the seedling that represents... It's the golden bean. We should watch the Schoolhouse Rock video about this. Yeah. The Schoolhouse Rock video is so far away from the reality of the process. What we should watch is the Simpsons Amendment video. Have you ever seen that? No. It's really funny. I'm sure you guys have seen the Simpsons Amendment. Go search for Simpsons Amendment. Go look for some copyright infringement site in China, and you can watch it. No, it's hilarious. It's like the Schoolhouse Rock song. But it's the real thing. But about how amendments... How you can just do any crazy stuff with an amendment. Right. It's really amazing. Anyway, SOPA is this bill, Stop Online Piracy Act. It's in the House. There is a version of it in the Senate called the Protect IP Act. Neither one of them is passed into law. SOPA and PIPA. PIPA. PIPA has come out of committee. PIPA Middleton. PIPA Middleton. Tremendous butt, from what I hear. I wouldn't look. Of course, I'm married. Got to go. See you later. That's the only thing I know about PIPA Middleton is that people think she has a great ass. That's all I know. Really? And then she's so pretty. We're making a lot of changes to the podcast in 2012. PIPA's out the... I'll come to your house. I'm sorry. I got to stop. There's a lot of time. I mean, if you say, I'll come to your house, I'm going to look at your butt. I think this is about perfect combination. Maybe if PIPA Middleton was there. Let's give Neelay five minutes of respect. Go ahead. Let's go. Let's do it. I don't know. Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds of respect. I'm done. Go. Thirty seconds of respect for the Neelay Patel story. That's going to be your podcast. You just go on and talk about how about time you finally got your 30 minutes of respect. Yeah. Anyway, so whatever. There are these bills. Yeah. There have been huge outcry. I'm just talking to Paul. Yeah. I'm just letting this happen over here. Huge outcry against them. These protests have been planned for a long time. The ones that happened yesterday. The bill, they've been backing off the bills in committee. They're saying, we'll take out the DNS blocking stuff. We'll water them down. Wikipedia and Google and Twitter. Not Twitter. Wikipedia, Google. Reddit. Twitter didn't do anything, did they? Twitter didn't do anything. Facebook didn't do anything. Shows their true colors. Many, many other sites all went black. We put up a black banner in our hero. I can turn this off. Turn that off. Yeah. So we also have a statement from Vox Media, which is our parent company. I made this cool and worded out. We officially oppose SOPA and PIPA. And you know what I think is really interesting about it is that that happened yesterday. And I think it had results, right? Oh, I think it definitely had results. And senators are backing away from PIPA. House members are backing away from SOPA. But that's a pretty nuclear option. For Wikipedia to black out its site to try to get something done is not consistently effective. This is kind of along the lines of the thing that TC wrote. And TC wrote. And so TC Sotic on our team. TC Sotic, who is a former, which I just found out, former lobbyist. He quit being a lobbyist to work for us. By the way, we just stopped one piece of corruption, one piece of government corruption by the way, any other lobbyists who have great writing talent? We're looking. He's great. He was a lobbyist for National Parks. We love lobbyists. Any lobbyists for the National Parks. He was like a good lobbyist. He was like, stop killing the parks. Stop that. Yeah. So you've got to play the game in Washington to win. And doing this kind of level of really intense blackout activism, that's only going to work once. Well, no, that is the problem. And it is like, and the point is, and I actually wrote this thing I wrote for the post that Neelai gave me a few pointers on because I'm ignorant of what SOPA really is. I thought it was just a weird new kind of French soap. I've been trying not to write who dropped the soap all day. No, please. Please don't. But he, we talked about it on the train yesterday, but, and resulting in the gist is like, I think, you know, there's a way to do, there is a way, like there's, there is piracy. I admit, I think it does exist. I think that there are, I think it does exist. No, it exists. Pretty sure. There are people, there are people who go like their one toke over the line on how they, what they're doing with OPP. I think there are people who are, who are many tokes over the line. What they're doing with OPP. Other people's property. Oh, I'm not, how can I explain it? And I'll take it frame by frame. Oh boy. Sorry. Don't make me, don't make me do what you know I need to do if you're going to go down that road. I think I only know the first verse. Anyway, I always go to other people. But you know, the gist of it is, and what you're getting to is. Blasphemy. Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, companies that live and work on the internet need to fight if they want to do this thing right. Like they need to say we're, just fine. You rhymed dude, it happened. Just enjoy it. I'm not enjoying it. You're ruining the moment. They need to fight, they need to fight and create something on that we need, we as the industry need to, like let's not have, let's not have, what's his name? Lamar Smith? Yeah. Let's not have Lamar Smith who literally I don't think has ever been on the internet and doesn't, certainly doesn't seem to know how it works. Let's not let him do the law. Those markup hearings were characterized by members of the house saying, well, we don't know how the internet works, but piracy is bad. And that is never, I mean, you can't, what I'm saying and what I think, you know, Paul, we had a conversation about this too, is you only get one Wikipedia blackout day, right, to make your point. Which is like, you know, and you used it. They used it. You do two widespread student failures. Well, I mean, it's like, they can't do this again next week. Right. You know, if so if it goes to the house again next week, I don't know that the effectiveness, they will continually dilute the effectiveness of this. Right. And I, you know, somebody compared it, Randy Picker, who is a professor at the University of Chicago, was on Twitter and he was comparing it to, well, what if the, you know, the electric company decides to turn off the power because they want to protest like a regulatory change. And it's like, well, you can't really keep doing it. And there's, you know, I'm not saying Wikipedia is the electric company. I have problems with both Google and Wikipedia doing what they did because Wikipedia is a non-profit, it's like it's paid for by donations. It's like it's not. But they see SOPA as an existential threat. You know, they had a long conversation. And I understand. And so I have a lot of sympathy for them at the same time. Like people like, you know, let's say you're a student and you greatly benefited from Wikipedia this year. And so you donated $10 when Jimmy started getting on your case and then it goes black or, you know, like, it's a little rough. I mean, it's a little rough, but it's also like, I mean, SOPA is a bad law and I do think it actually was an existential threat to Wikipedia. I think that, you know, if it passes and, you know, their copyright, you know, people can upload anything to Wikipedia and copyright owners often get mad about what's on there, even though they have a very strict policy. Well, and that's the thing. Wikipedia has an amazing policy. Just incredible. Google does not have a good policy and Google putting up their thing is just... You got some negativity in the Ustream for you, this opinion. Oh, really? Yeah. They're like, they literally are ready to drive over here and burn you alive. Well, I can imagine. Google is going to emerge from this as wearing kind of the biggest black mark. They're going to have... Google needs to have the best... The same thing that, like, you know, Facebook works so hard to be so transparent about its privacy, and it's still like, you know, steps over the line and people freak out and stuff, and it's working so hard to do that. Google needs to be the same way about copyright. It needs to be... Well, no, it's not that... It's not that it's ultra communicative and have the best in industry policy on it. No, that's like, that's kowtowing to a bad law. Yes. And I think that is the problem. Preach it. The reason Google is going to come out of this with a black mark, and I'm saying this for a very specific reason, is that Google is the one that should be in Congress saying copyright law is broken. That's what I'm saying. I absolutely agree. They should be doing that, but they should also be putting, you know, they should be unimpeachable as far as how their behavior is, at least according to whatever law... But human beings who use Google products are saying, we don't want it to be this way. We don't... You know, what is unimpeachable to the industry, which is their job is to make profit off of humans, may not be... And so is Google's to some extent, but like, you know, both... Not to some extent. Well, it is. It is. Okay. Google makes a lot of money because people put Dancing with the Stars episodes. Yeah, but Dancing with the Stars makes way more money. You know, like, it's not off of that show. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not the core of their business. Like, if Google... That's the way people want to paint it though. Like, the core of Google's business is piracy. Wait, wait, wait. But that is true, right? I mean, Google search, when it was released, they went through lawsuits saying, you're taking little bits of our content, you're indexing our whole page, you're making a copy, because they make a copy and they put it in an index. Right. Well, that was when we didn't understand what search was. And that's one thing all by itself. But look, I mean... They're like really hosting Dancing with the Stars episodes. They're really doing that, but they're also really hosting an entire copy of The Verge on their server. They're also really taking them down when they get complaints from these companies. I mean, they... But that's so... So this is like... And they only did that at the behest of those companies. And they just... No, no, no, no, no. Google just needs to be at the... ahead of the curve. Can I just take a quick little legal history time out here? All right. So I was telling this to you yesterday. The copyright law in America was last seriously revised in 1998. And that law was passed, the digital... DMCA, everybody hates it. They love that law. It was passed one month after Google was first incorporated as a company. So that was... And I said in a reaction to Google. Or in a reaction to the law. I'm sorry. Yeah, I wish. So that law doesn't know about Google. It doesn't know how Google works. It doesn't know... It certainly doesn't know about Facebook. Well, none of our laws know how Google works. Right. And so Google came out... Yeah, they released the algorithm. But the DMCA had this whole notice and take down thing in it. And it's been really effective. It's enabled all these companies to exist. It's enabled Vox Media to exist in a very real way. The SB Nation side of our company, it's all user generated content all over the place. And so because of the protections in the DMCA, which there's a lot of bad stuff, but then there's just one good part where it says, we won't hold Google responsible for what's on their servers that users put there if they're responsible for taking it down in response to a complaint. How could they have put Google's name in there if they didn't know who they were? No, not like that. Service providers. Oh, you were being like a... You were like... Service providers. You're like paraphrasing. And service providers was actually... It was read broader than it was written. Right. Right. The courts shoehorned Google into service providers. Into service providers, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. But that's like... But Google is like probably ultimately not the worst offender. Google is the largest offender. Of course. Google didn't implement their really, at least a lot better take down practices on YouTube until they got seriously sued. Google's strategy around IP law in general has been to just do it, see what happens. Right. And that's what I'm saying. They just need to get ahead of the curve. They need to get way ahead of the curve. That's all I'm saying. They need to have a clear policy and then present that. When you say ahead of the curve, what can you use by the way? Look, and they are. William Patri, who's Google's head copyright attorney, he just released a book called How to Fix Copyright Law. I've been desperately trying to finish it so I can publish a review. Anything good in there? It's really good. You can figure it out. It's hard to figure it out. But his suggestions are real. What if everything is free? We need to reduce the... It can't be free. I mean, we need to get... What if it was like a Star Trek Next Generation situation where you know... We've been down that path. Holodeck, et cetera. Just suits. Why doesn't he want to... Just suits? Why doesn't he want a Holodeck? Why is Google holding us back? Look, there's a little communicator guys out here, all these little dudes. Tricorders. Phasers. No, you know, look, we need the ability to get paid for our work. Transporting. And we can only get paid for our work if it's ours. That's part of the work. And so free is like, we give away our stuff for free. No, no, no. I don't want... I'm just joking about the free stuff. But I will say that there are obvious problems. I mean... No, they're a real solution. And the first one, and I think... They're not total solutions. This has to be like a growth... Because here's the thing, where we were five years ago is different than where we are now. And five years from now, it'll be different. So these have to be... One of the things that is not baked into anything is a sense of fluidity. Like none of our laws are fluid, right? They're very strict. Like there is no... We need to create laws about copyright that can adapt. We're not really doing that. I mean, we're not creating laws that make sense. So I would say, so what's interesting is that the one forward looking part of the DMCA was the notice and take down stuff. Where it's written in there. You can start a service, we won't hold you liable for copyright infringement if you respond to a notice and you take it down. Right. And there's this process. That is why YouTube exists. Ultimately that's why YouTube is allowed to exist. It's like the Supreme Court is through a bone. Well, it's just weird. It's like that sort of adaptability. I really can't talk today. That level of adaptability, like let the internet flourish. And we don't have it now. And it's, you know, the idea that we have a copyright law that regulates copies is insanity because this thing can make as many copies as I want it to. Yeah. Also kills fascists. Well, you know, I mean, you want me to... It does. Yes. I didn't know if you knew that. No, but here's a really crazy example. So there's this case that I read when I was in school. It's called MAI versus Peak. I'm trying to remember the caption. And it was before, it was before people understood computers. When the case was this company sold software to a customer and they said, we license you to run the software on your computer. And customers said, cool, thank you for the software. And they brought in a third party to be their support vendor, which is pretty standard practice. And the first company said, it's not this kind of story. And the first company said, no, no, no, no, no. We only authorized you to make a copy, not the other guy. We have to be your support vendor. And the court said, no, that's true. Because when you run the software, you copy it to the RAM of the computer and that is making a copy that we can regulate, you lose. That is insanity. And that's, I mean, that's like where we're at with this, where like just that level of making a copy, the courts are like, yeah, that's making a copy. That's the level at which we'll regulate. So like right now they're just turning a blind eye to the fact that we're copying things into our RAM all the time. I mean, stuff has changed since then, but that's the level of regulation that the law anticipates. And we can't do that anymore. Like that doesn't, there's a whole generation of kids out there that doesn't think making a copy should be an act that's regulated. I think everybody agrees that having access to content should be regulated. I agree. Like I pay the label, I can listen to the song anywhere I want. That makes sense. But this whole, like I have this copy of a record. What about if I pay for it, can I give a copy to a friend? I mean, maybe. What if the copy expires in four days? The ring. Yeah. You see the copy and then you stop being able to listen to it in four days. Yeah. If you don't have the rights, you die. Yeah. You just fade away. No, you just die. That's an entire set of questions. I mean, this is such a big, you know, we should just do, what we should do is do a special podcast for VIRGCAST where we get some policy experts on. I'll sit that one out. You can run it and just, and Paul, you and I, Paul can be like our every man. Yeah. I'll just ask like earnest questions. What you're saying, what is a copyright? Exactly. If I go to piratebay.com or.org or whatever the actual domain name is. Have you ever been to Pirate Bay? Is that illegal? Have you ever been to the Pirate Bay? Yes. Have you ever pirated something? Yes. Oh, you are done for. You just admitted to piracy. I know. I did. You want to talk about mega upload while we're... Wait, let's just, let's see. Have you ever been to Pirate Bay? Yeah. Have you ever pirated anything? Only things that I know. No, sir. I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think if I... Everyone's pirated. I'm trying to think of the last thing I illegally downloaded. Let me think. What was it? Can I just, can I say the honest truth about something? Yeah. I have no compunction about pirating network television shows. So you know, it's funny, but I actually will go and pay... So I hate torrenting things because I find it to be a complicated, annoying process and it ends up in a place where... Pirate Bay is getting rid of torrents. It ends up in a place where... Magnet links, right? Magnet. I don't even know what that is. It ends up in a... No idea. It's the next generation. You know what? Magnet's pretty great. It's the next generation. I'm not paying for stuff on the internet. How do they work? I will go, so torrents end up in a place where I don't want them and I'm not, I don't have a... Your downloads folder. Yeah, my downloads folder on a laptop or... Oh, right. You know, like, and then the process of getting to where I want it to be is a pain. So I'll happily pay $3 for the last episode of 30 Rock, which I missed. And by the way, I did just set my DVR to record 30 Rock while we were on the... That's why, so this is that thing that you just said, I will set my DVR to record it. I just did while we were podcasting. I actually think that I have no problem pirating. Because you would have set to record it. Because if, I mean, it's the luck of the draw. And like you're saying, like we're all making these like vague gray moral decisions all the time, but none of these are allotted. None of these are allotted, but this, I think the DVR example to me is the most concrete like here it is, this is why it's broken. It's if I'm at home and I hit record on my DVR. I'm going to say, I'm going to agree. This is what... Let me get through the example for the people. I understand. And then we can agree. I understand. I don't understand, but I want them to understand. I don't know exactly what you're saying right now. I don't know what you're saying. You got through to every man up here. Don't lie to me. Let me tell you something. So look, if I'm at home, I can't... I'll come to your house. Josh comes to my house with the voice and 30 Rock is on and we hit record on my DVR. I understand. We have... No, then I had this copy that I have the right to make. I know. I'm sitting there on that one thing. You made a copy, I know. I know. I know. Think about that. And then I can move that copy. I have rights to move that copy. You can't move that copy. Yeah, I can. To where? I can make all sorts of other copies. How? By shooting a video, putting a video camera on your TV? I have a TiVo. I can move the copy. So what happened? Tell me how you do it. Tell me how you move the copy. What do you mean? Just explain to me the process. I open iTivo on my computer and I move the copy. What's iTivo? Is that a license application? Yeah, it works. Like it just works. I didn't know it works, but did TiVo make it? Did you get that on Pirate Bay? Did TiVo know about it? They make other software that I think is worse that does the same thing. TiVo does. iTivo is the open source. Police know about murder. Yeah, police know about murder. They don't condone it. So you open iTivo. What do you do? I just want to know what you do. I just list everything on my TiVo. And then you do what with it? And then I can be like, put it on my iPhone. And it's in one format. But you're saying because all those things are possible, you don't mind torrenting something. Because the only difference is you'd have had it anyhow if you'd have thought to record it. It's like owning a Super NES cart and then getting the ROM. Maybe. That's like saying that he owns everything that might ever show on his cable. Ever. Right. But network television. Because you could record it. Network television in particular is beamed through the sky for free by every television network. Here's an actual honest question. Literally 30 Rock has pulsed through my body. Here's an honest question because I've known what you've been talking about for so long. Here's an honest question. So I've been by transitivity known. Go ahead. I'm going to start over. I can get you a math book. I know specific people who've been prosecuted for downloading HBO's show. HBO is maybe a little more vigilant for whatever reason. I mean, I know lots of people that I used to represent file sharing. HBO is not free network TV. Right. But let's say you do pay for HBO. No, I will get prosecuted for getting 30 Rock. Right. From that's what I'm saying. So you would feel comfortable going to court and defending yourself on that or you just lose. Right. Just wait a second. Wait a second. Because the thing that you're talking about doesn't if you bought a DVD set of 30 Rock, could you torrent a copy of an episode that you own? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. I'm saying like that doesn't just because you could. The problem is that we keep actually not saying the thing we just keep saying we're all saying what matters is access to content. Right. It's that at some point I pay the price for the content. And then the form in which it's delivered to me is decoupled and it doesn't matter. So if you buy the 30 Rock DVDs, it probably shouldn't matter that you're torrenting them because it's more convenient to get in the iPad. Right. completely set up so that every copy needs to have a permissions chain. Where it's this copy was made by somebody with permission who had permission to sell it to you and you have permission to buy it. But think about what you're suggesting about TV. Because then you... So the TV model, this is what I'm saying, the TV model is already set up so that if you're at home and you have your DVR and you push record, you are, the copy that you make has already gone through the permissions chain. Yeah, but listen, so let's say you want to then, let's say you record the full season of 30 Rock. You're only saying this because you have a cable company DVR that sucks and you think you can't get copy of it. No, no, no, no, no, listen, listen. If you had a TiVo, you would be having a different conversation. Listen to what I'm saying. You record the whole season of 30 Rock. Yeah. Okay? And you're going on a long trip and you want to watch it on your laptop. Yeah. So you dump all of that on your laptop. Or you burn DVDs because you bought a portable DVD player. I've totally done this before. Okay. So you're saying... So you're saying it's fine for that industry to lose a total, a whole chunk of their revenue streams could be completely shut down because you were able to record it on your DVR. It already is fine. That's what you're saying. But it already is fine. So you're saying... That is legal. That whole thing you described is legal. No, it's not. I mean, but what you're saying is... Absolutely legal. But it is. But you don't own the things you see on cable. Do they... You just see them. You're like buying a license to see the stream. You're not listening to me. When you hit record on your DVR, you have permission to hit record on your DVR. So why don't they just make all DVRs let you spit out DVDs to go take in your laptop? You know, Tivo used to make DVRs to let you spit out DVDs. And why don't they make them anymore? Because Blu-Ray and HD is too challenging. So I... But you know that this product used to exist. But it was sold in Best Buy for $150. So you're telling me that literally like if everybody here owned it... And Sling Player is legal as well. Yeah, Sling Player is legal. Sling Player is place shifting. But this is what I'm saying. It's different. It's taking that same thing and moving it elsewhere. These are all these little chunks of like pieces of... So you understand that the industry that creates this content is not going to say like, oh yeah, we don't care about selling the $60 DVD box sets anymore. It's not that. You can just record it on TV and do whatever you want with it. The industry doesn't have to say a damn thing to me, dude. I already have permission. But I'm saying... Get them out of knee-lines. But you understand if they made it easy for everybody to do. No, I don't care how easy they make it. You know why your Comcast... Are you sure this is legal? Sounds illegal to me. I'm 100% sure that recording something from television is legal. And doing whatever you want with it as long as you're the guy using it. There is a technical regime in place, the copy flag in place. And some things are marked copy once. You can only make one copy. Like what would be marked copy once? Every HBO show is marked copy once. You can't rip a DVD. I can. I can. You can. I mean like rip a DVD. No, no, no, you can't. But that's like... That's another legal... It's just ridiculous. This is what I'm saying. These are little bits and pieces. But if you bought the DVD set... You can't rip the DVD because you have to break the... You have to break CSS. You have to break the encryption. It's not copying the DVD. So if an HBO shows, if you bought the DVDs, you could make one copy of them and then you're done. Is that what's going on? You could only make a copy of it if you saw it on TV. Or if you recorded... Okay, if you recorded True Blood, then you... HBO marks its content copy one. But on TiVo. On TiVo. So what happens? So I've made one copy on TiVo and now I can't move it. Oh, interesting. Right. So that would be illegal. So then that... So TiVo... So I, TiVo won't let you move it. So broadcast... Broadcast, no problem. Broadcasters, they don't care because they're already... Literally 30 Rock courses through your body every day. Come full circle, that's why you feel morally fine about... Just the fact. Just, just, just, just, just, just, just, let me... That's why you feel morally fine about torrenting... Torrenting network television. Torrenting network television. Just doesn't bother me. But at the same time, it is illegal currently. Totally. But we all agree that's silly. It's kind of stupid. How do you feel morally about torrenting HBO shows? No, I mean, I'll pay for... It's weird because I already pay for HBO. Right. But think about... I mean, I already makes it incredibly easy for me to go watch all their shows. So it doesn't even occur to me. I wouldn't describe it as incredibly easy. It's pretty easy. Well, you can watch on your iPad or your iPhone or your Android device. I mean, or my Roku player. Oh, does it work with Fios? Yeah. Sorry, I'm living in a world where I doesn't... Where for some reason, DirecTV has HBO Go, but not for Roku. Yeah, I don't know. Which is really awesome. Yeah, I mean... So we, we solved copyright. We didn't solve... All we've done is we've identified... We just fixed copyright law. If this... If Congress people would just listen to this podcast. We just fixed... I get what you're saying about broadcast, but it is different. But it's literally... I mean, it's different with like a movie. It's different with HBO. I just think the fact that... So if I download a torrent, I go to court and... I mean, I really did used to represent kids who got sued for using Kazaa and everybody lost. How many? Oh, they all lost. That's too much for your career as a lawyer. I didn't want to be like that. I could tell you unequivocally everyone lost. They all did. They were poorly represented. They didn't have the... It wasn't that. They didn't have the defense they deserve. You want to know the depressing truth? Yes. They couldn't pay for the full representation. They were college kids. We got them $5,000 for settlements. Neil is like, oh, Neil like milks them for the $500 an hour. And then by the time they get to court, they're out of money. Yeah. And he's like, sorry, I got another case. No, I mean, the simple truth was like, we were like, well, it's going to be cheaper for you to settle. And they're like, we did it. I'm like, well, then you're definitely going to lose. I'd have fought it all the way. I would have been my own defense. Have you ever seen a movie with Tom Cruise in it? What do you think Tom Cruise would do? He would have said demand of the truth from whoever it was around at any time. Anyway. What if they can't handle this? Let me just wrap this one up. Yeah, let's do. Is there another one? I think it's really dumb that I could go to court for downloading a torrent of 30 Rock and lose when if all I had done was push one button at home, I would be in the clear. And that is insanity. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I agree with you. I agree with you. But I know there's no but I mean, that's like that. Does that apply to HBO? I've been agree with that. We can't we can't go down this. We can't. I just want to be clear. Like we're in a cul-de-sac. I know, but I just want to be clearly doing doughnut. I agree. I agree with the rule or no, I agree that it's a rule. I'm going to fly out the past. But I agree. I agree. If if the rule for ABC or NBC is that you can do it. ABC and ABC already give you the content for free. That's really I accept that. Yeah, but it's not the case for movies and for HBO. That's not for sporting events. That's why I opened. We're all agreeing. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. All green. This is ridiculous. It's broken. Well, somebody really fix it. I think it would I think it would be really me after they discovered that their DVD market like just went away one day. I think that would be detrimental to the business. It has to be fixed. Well, I think maybe they just can't make money that way anymore. But like they're happy like I will say that like they found a way to make money by selling things like VHS and DVDs and box sets have clearly been very lucrative for these companies. It's suddenly like it was possible that you didn't need the box set because like you recorded all the episodes on your TV. I think it would probably be a hit. They couldn't take the fix. Isn't no copyright. There's just there's a fix in new book. There's a fix in this book. That's hopefully he's the one who knew I finishes this book. And when I find the free time that you're going to write the book, you should write what you like. He lies. You should rip this guy's idea. He lies way. You know the best part about the best part about the SOPA blackout stuff yesterday was was that the the official Occupy Wall Street. Oh, this is cool. So I copy our post with Occupy Wall Street on there like what SOPA they took our thing without permission and then they did have a link. They had a link and I don't care. I gave I wholeheartedly permission. It was cool though to see it. I was like, are you sure that's the actual Occupy Wall Street? Yeah, it was just it was such a meta irony of like we're protesting. Copyright law changes by infringing the copyright. Like Lamar the guy who's fighting the copyright law changes with the Irish. What's going on? I've always thought of Occupy Wall Street people are Irish. I read like pirates. Yeah, like our mateys. We're occupying. That's not. It's an Irish pirate. Okay. It's an Irish pirate. Let's talk about mega upload. No, no. Everybody see mega upload. I just think it's got one extra syllable. It should be like mega load. Everybody should take a moment and just watch that music video. No, no, it's awful. So mega upload. By the way, all this stuff like no gadget news. Policy and education. Was there gadget news this week? No. No. This is the weekend for CS. People are like, finally I can talk about SOPA. All right, go ahead. Go. Come on, mega upload. I'm just kidding. So mega upload is this joke of a company. Oh, wait. Hold on. I have to have a sip of Rienzi Pura for the best taste. Seven individuals and two corporations have been charged the United States with running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works through mega upload.com and related sites, generating more than 175 million in criminal proceeds and causing more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners. That's the opening line from the Justice Department. Let's call the opening salvo. Why didn't they just use dropbox? So mega upload is this. Why didn't they just use rapid share? So, you know, the thing, the really crazy thing about SOPA is that all this protest happened yesterday. The law seems to be on the decline. And then today the Justice Department and the FBI announced that they've seized 18 domain names of mega upload. They arrested the founder, a man named Kim Dotcom. They arrested him in New Zealand. They got New Zealand authorities cooperated with the FBI and arrested him and three other mega upload executives. Three other racketeers. Three other. That would be an amazing movie, by the way, the racketeer, like the rocketeer. Anyway. You can call somebody a racketeer. Isn't there a movie called the racketeer? That's the rocketeer. The racketeer. Oh, but there's a racketeer movie. There might be. What was the Johnny Depp one? Black and white. Oh, that's about Ed Wood, the director. No, no, no, no, no. Where he's a racket. He's like at the guns and he's stealing things. Anyway. So three other. Oh, oh, Public Enemy. Okay. He's got the guns and he's stealing things. Is that about Dillinger? Yeah, it's about Dillinger. Okay, whatever. Three other mega upload executives are referred to by the Department of Justice as at large. If you're an at large Internet company executive, that's just sad. You're like, I had to close up my foldable keyboard and put away my laptop, my spool of Ethernet tables. Remember when all these companies were like incorporating on like their own nations and like those floating like. Isn't that Peter Thiel? Isn't that his thing? Yeah, he's all about. I want to start a floating nation. Yeah, we need our own country. So each of the individuals face a maximum where we could copy whatever we want. Copy all the network television we need. Bring a box set of HBO. Like, we'll just make a repeat. Oh, you think it's illegal here. Pirate Bay is totally legal in our country. So I don't know what the problem is. The individuals each face 20 years in prison on charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering. Five years in charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. Another 20 years on conspiracy to money laundering. And five years each on. And I read that they're considering adding additional penalties for that video that they made. Another 50 years for putting out that video. And 50 years plus. They made a movie in 1929 called The Racketeer. Oh, good. Would that be in creative commons? Wouldn't it be crazy if Johnny Depp were in that movie and he's a sort of weird vampire? 95 years for that movie, by the way. Shoot. Yeah. I was just about to copy that. The police are outside. I have a legal copy of it already, but I was about to duplicate it. I was given The Racketeer as a gift. I was about to hold it. I was given this torch of The Racketeer as a gift. No, I was given the DVD. But I lost it. I was holding down option. What happens if you say somebody gave you a DVD as a gift? You lost it in your home somewhere, but you know it's there. When they try to ding you for a copy and something. You go to jail. It's definitely in my... I just don't know where it is. It's under the couch maybe. I don't know. So I have a tour in it. It could be... I don't know. What is this voice? I don't know. It's a guy who's trying to seem like totally innocent. I honestly don't know where it went. Retaliation for the department. Wait. So this all happened. And I think the timing of this being announced is nuts. Can we just talk about the elephant in the room? No, there's a tiny elephant down here. I don't know where... No, sorry. This timing is bomb. I don't know. You know what? Just give me... It's been a long day. Don't be that way. What is the deal with this elephant? Can I just say my dream for this podcast now is for you to say can we talk about the elephant in the room? Yeah, I do. Maybe somebody will digitally insert it, Billy. Yeah. We can just cut to a shot of the elephant. He's opening after effect. Right now. He's digitally inserted. I don't need to do this. Okay, hold on. Do some TriCaster magic. Here's what I want to talk about. Wow, that worked. That really worked. So just like I feel like it's the worst. And maybe you're getting to this. I don't want to preempt your awesome moment, but I'm going to do it anyway. It's like the best argument against SOPA. Oh, absolutely. This was in our piece. If pirater... Yeah, it was in your thing. If pirating is so bad and you can go get the pirates, why do we need SOPA? You got them in New Zealand. You didn't get them because they were in Kentucky. You were like, he finally set foot on American soil. We can have them. It's like if you have a problem with foreign sites, you can apparently shut them down and you can go get the people who are responsible. And this list of countries that helped. It's almost like the Department of Justice is this is their subtle way of speaking out against SOPA. It kind of is. They're like, oh, you can't get them? Well, let me show you something. Yeah. Okay. So the United States, obviously, New Zealand, New Zealand again, another New Zealand agency, Hong Kong, London, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands and Germany. Are you just listing countries? These are all the companies that participated in the Let's Get Mega Upload effort. Wow. I feel like we had some kind of international coordination. We could finally put a stop to piracy. I mean, I think they just want to go after China. Isn't that what they want to do? They want to go after Sweden. There are sites... Sweden is a... The Pirate Party in Sweden is a big deal. There's a religion now, too. I'm just going to join that religion. What is it? I'm like, I've never really... What do they stand for? It's a file sharing. It's a file sharing. What's that? It's a file sharing. Who's their... who's their guy? I don't know, but you can probably extrapolate. What kind of deity are they? They probably view sharing of files as like a... Let me go on the biggest copyright infringer in the world. Is Julian Assange involved in any way? Like, do I have to pray to him? Is there going to be any... Billy, I don't see an elephant on the screen. Speaking of Julian Assange. Great segue. Speaking of Assange. Yeah. Anonymous went after... Oh, yeah. Great segue. To Anonymous. Department of Justice. Department of Justice, because they were so pissed. So Department of Justice went after the Mega Upload guys, which by the way, Anonymous, I feel like... No, no, no. They went after... Copymism. Department of... That's what it's called. Copymism. Copymism. I said Department of Justice. No, you said they went after Mega Upload. No, I said because of Mega Upload. Oh, right, right, right. And I feel like, you know, Anonymous, I'm not going to knock you, you know, because you'll destroy my life. That's right. You're great. I love you. I think you guys are keep on keeping on. But I do think Mega Upload, not great company to keep, maybe. Have you been to Mega Upload for some reason? Terrible company to keep. But very useful if you're... These activities by Anonymous as well, it's like, who cares, dude? You took on Universal Music Group's website. Nile Patel, Nile the Verge, if you had nothing else to say. No, look, it's... We have to grow up. We have to. You can't... This doesn't help. This doesn't win. Well, Anonymous doesn't care about growing up. I mean, Anonymous just wants anarchy, man. They're like the Joker. But this isn't... It's like the Department of Justice made this great statement. It's like, look, we already have the legal authority to shut down pirates. We can do this. The baddest of the bad. And then Anonymous is like, dude, guys, we can freak out and mess people up and make everybody in Congress that is already scared of the internet more scared of the internet. And that's like, you didn't engage. You forgot to engage the system. What if Anonymous is paid by the MPAA? What if? That's actually... What if the Universal Music Group just turned off its own website? Actually, now that you mention it, wait a second. They're like, dude. And then they go to Congress, guys, guys, guess what happened? These guys in masks showed up. I have to say something. If Anonymous were as serious about their conspiracy theories as they say they are, they might think for a second, why wouldn't some of this stuff be started exactly for that reason? Exactly for that reason. Why wouldn't some of this stuff... Look at the guy in the anonymous mask next to you. And the Guy Fawkes mask. What do you see looking back? Is it the MPAA? It's Kim Dotcom. Is it the DOJ? I mean, it is a good point though. Is that guy wearing a well tailored suit? When you think about a proper conspiracy, the true conspiracy lies where you least expect it. Also lies where you least expect it. That's a great tagline for this movie, by the way. The true conspiracy lies where you least expect it. Yeah. Huh? Okay. That place is you. No, that place... We got the double meaning right with the lies. Lies. Those are lies where you least expect it. The true conspiracy lies where you least expect it. And you think there needs to be a beat in the second part. Is the movie called... Inside. Is the movie called... The movie is called... True conspiracy? Inside. No, it's called Inside. Yeah. Inside. Yeah, because it's an inside job. And the hero is the villain and the villain is the hero. Who's also a villain. I think we should give up now. No, no. I think we're just getting started. I think this is good. I know we're just getting started and that's what's good. What was the tagline? True conspiracy lies where you least expect it. It's good, man. It's solid gold. I don't care what anybody says. And just to say, like I do think anonymous, take a look in the mirror, take off the mask first, and then check that you're the person you think you are because you may be somebody else. I like if the movie is called... That would be a scary part of the movie too. If the movie is called true conspiracy and then the sub line is lies where you least expect it. Yeah. Oh, that's good too. Just lies where you least expect it. I can't believe you're mentioning it or something. No, but you need to say, no, because you just say lies where you least expect it. It's just that one meaning. If you say the truth... No, no, no, no. Oh, how about the truth lies where you least expect it? Huh? Think about that. Yeah. And I think that'd be a great scene in the movie which I just described. Is the movie called true conspiracy? Is that what you're saying? No, it's inside is what it's called. Inside. But the line was true conspiracy. The true conspiracy lies where you least expect it. True conspiracy all by itself. Yeah, that's good too. That's really good on its own. But then there's a scene in the movie where... Can we just talk about the elephant? Oh my God. By the way, I just want to say, you know, we talked about... It took five minutes of technical work to get this elephant up on the screen. We talk a lot about domain names that we haven't yet purchased. This made the video podcast worth it for me. But I own elephantnames.com and I renewed it this year. Yeah, nice. You know, I just paid 20 bucks for a new netbooknudes.com. You know what would be cool is if Elephant Names was like one of the sites in the movie about the conspiracy. Ooh. You know, it seemed innocuous, but like there was a code. It's like I heart bees or whatever that... Remember when the halo, they had that like weird website where you have those... I don't remember that at all. What's it called? Anyhow, we should wrap up. Yeah, bees. What is that called? Truth lies where you least expect it. Yeah. The truth lies. They don't have any... Nobody told me about the bees yet. Anyhow, what are you talking about? A news stream? Yeah. What's that? Oh, look at that. I love bees. Are you really? I'm going to have this queued up all the time. An alternate reality game. They had a subliminal message in the Halo 2 trailer and there was a website and then you could dive into it and you could learn about... Bees? Yes, you could learn about bees. Okay. Well, that's our Vergecast for the week, our podcast of the week. That was nuts. If you want to get in touch with us, yeah, I think that we lose electricity in this new room. I mean, there's also a buzzing sound. I think it's electricity. Yeah, there's an incredible amount of heat. But no, it's not that bad. Yeah, do you guys have air in this new studio? No. No air? Seriously? Are you kidding me? Is this some sort of crazy joke? Billy, WTF? Thanks for the elephant, bro. Thanks for this very comfortable temperature room. Named Snickers. Are you sure? I'd check that out on elephantname.com. Yeah. Okay. That's our show for the week. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcastattheverge.com or you can leave a comment on the post when it goes up or you can find us on Twitter. I'm Josh Wytopolsky. Nilay is Reckless. Paul is Future Paul. By the way, I'm such an odd man out with a real name. You guys are all funky. The Verge is at Verge and we'll be back next week with more podcasty goodness. Chocolate on the outside, something crunchy in the middle, maybe a little nougat. Snickers. No, no nuts. What is nougat? Does anybody know what nougat is? Nougat is like a marshmallow whip. It's like a soy whip. It's a soy marshmallow combo. Nougat is soy? I'm making that up. I have no idea what nougat is. But we'll be back next week and until then... Next on The Verge, February 10, I want to say. Oh, I should talk about it. Yeah. Of course we're doing On The Verge, our midday late night talk show, our early evening late night talk show. Yeah. And we'll be back on February 10. February 10. We'll announce, we'll have guest stuff and some other things coming up, but that's when to get ready for it. Here in the delicious and also educational New York City. I don't know. Delicious? It does smell like Subway in the studio. I will say that. Oh yeah, I guess it does a little bit. That's disgusting. Not the Subway, a Subway. Yeah, the restaurant. The restaurant. Well, I think calling it a restaurant is a little bit generous. We're never going to be sponsored by Subway. It's a little generous. I mean, but would we? I don't know. Maybe if I lost a ton of weight. Can we fit the Subway demo? I mean, if I lost a ton of weight on the diet. You're just constantly holding your breath. I go to Subway all the time. I got buddies over there. Not my thing. Not into it. Anyway, we got to wrap up. So thanks for listening. And as always, I wish all the best to you and yours and- Rock and roll. I'll come to your house. Can we talk about the elephant in the room? Can we talk about the elephant in the room? All right. That's it. Rock and roll. Goodnight.