A small Atlanta, GA-based Internet radio station is threatening to unleash its lawyers on a technology blogger. Internet radio station Atlanta Blue Skye LLC has warned Radu-Cristian Fotescu, a Romania-based technology enthusiast and prolific blogger, that his Beranger.org blog has been "copied" and turned over to its lawyers. The issue stems from Fotescu's posting of a widely known workaround for bypassing JavaScript functions that try to disable a mouse's right-click context menu functionality, and the posting of information gathered from the Properties function of Windows Media Player.

The Atlanta Blue Sky (the company name ends with a superfluous e, but the radio station's name and Web site title do not) radio stream offers jazz and country music netcasts, which are generally delivered through Windows Media Player, either as a standalone application or as an embedded element accessible only through Microsoft Internet Explorer. Previously the company offered direct URLs to its radio streams, but recently changed them without publishing the new addresses. This seemed to force listeners to use only Windows Media Player, and only that via the Internet Explorer plugin, preventing other music programs and Web browsers from accessing the streams. In an attempt to prevent copying the stream URL into another music player, Atlanta Blue Skye LLC Web developers employed an old JavaScript trick to prevent users from accessing the context popup menu by disabling the ability to right-click on any elements of the radio stream's Web page. A basic implementation of such code, which can sometimes be seen by simply viewing a page's source code through any Web browser, looks something like this:

<script type="JavaScript">
function click()
{if(event.button==2){alert('The context menu is not accessible.')}}
document.onmousedown=click</script>

There's a big problem with this function, though -- it's easily defeated. By using JavaScript filtering or alteration plugins in the Firefox Web browser, by disabling certain JavaScript functions in your Web browser settings, by pressing the Esc key while holding the right mouse button down, or by selecting a Web page element and then pressing the context menu key on a Windows keyboard (it's between the right Alt and Ctrl keys), you can bypass it. Bypassing the right-click disabling function is arguably as old as the function itself, and is well-documented on the Web. By using the Esc key workaround, Fotescu was able to access the Web browser's context menu and discover the new stream URLs and posted both the addresses and the one-sentence procedure for bypassing the JavaScript right-click disabling function on his Beranger.org blog. The same stream information is also available to listeners by going to the File menu in Windows Media Player and selecting the Properties command while one of the streams is playing.

According to Fotescu, an email exchange shortly ensued between himself and an anonymous Atlanta Blue Skye LLC company representative in a situation that closely resembles the recent SunnComm CD copy protection "shift key" debacle. The first email from the company was quoted by Fotescu as:

"Your Blog, which we have copied, has been turned over to our lawyers. You should plan on a response from them shortly and a visit to Atlanta to be present in court. I am not allowed to make any further statement regarding this matter at this time."

Mr. Fotescu posted a public rebuke of Atlanta Blue Skye's antagonistic behavior in response. In a bizarre turn of events, when asked to comment on this issue, an apparent Atlanta Blue Skye LLC representative who refused to identify himself requested that JEM Electronic Media (The Jem Report's publisher) remove Radu-Cristian Fotescu's blog post on Beranger.org (which is not published by or officially affiliated with JEM Electronic Media, nor hosted on any of its corporate servers) and further asked that we not print this news story. The full text of the message follows:

"I can tell you only that this person has obviously and willfully engaged in procedures that, after being warned not to do so, have caused damage to this company's revenue stream. It is one thing to have done it on a singular or individual basis, but to do it and then publish the means, or procedure, by which it can be done, constitutes intent to harm and that is when it becomes a legal matter.

Atlanta Blue Skye, LLC hereby requests that JEM Electronic Media Inc remove the blogger's post and drop this story. The information and subject matter involved has cost us business, and revenue already, and we request that you not be part of the intentional harm that Radu-Cristian Fotescu has inflicted on us with his arrogance and obvious disregard for our request to cease.

We are like any business that is trying to make enough money to keep our ship afloat. After we pay royalties on the music, and the costs associated with streaming, not to mention the daily overhead, we barely get by. We are not a subscription service and so we rely on the Ads in our pages for income. When listeners can bypass these ads, we are left paying for them to listen on a per/streaming server-slot-basis but with no revenue to compensate us. Obviously this will eventually put us out of business. Your blogger is more interested in displaying his hacker calisthenics and his ego than in listening to a good jazz broadcast. It would appear from his posts that he enjoys inflicting hardship if he can author the means by which it is done. This is where he crosses the line and it becomes willful intent, knowing that the end result is harmful. Our attorneys are studying this and current applicable Internet law very carefully.
Atlanta Blue Skye, LLC

A still anonymous source with the same Atlanta Blue Skye LLC email address quoted above contacted The Jem Report recently and had this to add:

FYI..... there never was any attempt or threat to sue anyone. We have a partner in Terrestrial Radio who has lawyers who wanted to file an injunction to keep this blogger from continuing to post the means by which to get around the advertising on our site, and basically get the music for free. Unfortunately, we have to pay for each listener on a per server slot basis. If the advertising is bypassed, then we can not afford to stay up and running. All we asked was that he stop posting the direct address and means to find it out, every time we changed it. He refused, and so our partner turned it over to his legal beagles who wanted to file some kind of injunction... That is until they found out he was not in this country. What a mess. I am amazed at how all this has been blown out of proportion.

We are trying to run an honest radio station, with great programming, and without attempting to get rich. We simply need to cover our time and hard costs. This blogger has been making it hard to do. It is sad.... As the programming partner who chooses the music, I apologize to all for all the ridiculous legal positioning that seemed like threats. It sure did not come from me.... Anyway, I greatly appreciate all the listeners and hope that everyone will realize that the need for them to wade through the advertising pages is a necessary evil if we are to stay viable.

I love programming this music... and at bes, all I can hope for is people who can appreciate it and who will tune in the right way. What I hate is all this descension..... and most of all, the business (money) side of keeping all this going.

Editor's note: While Radu-Cristian Fotescu has contributed an editorial article to The Jem Report in the past, he is not an employee of JEM Electronic Media.

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