Hello,

My name is Taco Rubio, and I am the CEO/Founder of Phreak Radio. I wanted to send a few words out along with this audio waiver, to explain some things, and I appreciate your time.

This has been an incredibly complicated process for us at Phreak and for The Future United, and I realize it's been a frustrating time for you all. I'd like to apologize for any surprise, resentment, hurt feelings, confusion, or frustration that this process has caused for you.

When we signed the initial contract with The Future United back in April, we did so with the agreement that we'd stream you all (and the entire conference) in exchange for the rights to recordings. We left that as vague as we could, as we had to do a lot of research with what we could and couldn't do with them. This was mainly to cover ourselves; for example a big question was "If one of these musicians makes it big in 2 years, can they sue us for broadcasting or re-broadcasting their music?" as was "Who would pay the royalties for a re-broadcast?" 

We wrote the initial waiver the same way, using a boilerplate exclusivity form. Please bear in mind that we did not know, when the initial waiver went out, that this entire agreement was news to you - we are a hired contractor, and in our minds thought this was the final legal check-off in a long process, not the first notice. I apologize for that as well, and understand the hurt and frustration that caused.

In retrospect, it's perfectly understandable that you'd be upset about this. We got a lot of questions sent to us, such as "will this be cut up and sampled into other music?" and my favorite, "will this end up in a porn?" We couldn't believe our intent was so misjudged, so at that point we asked TFU to rewrite a waiver that covered our contract, our safety, and yet allowed us to stream you all, and rebroadcast you. I know that many of you shared your concerns with TFU, and I can't thank you enough for your incredible patience.

Attached is the new audio release form. I am certain that it will be closely examined, but in case anybody isn't great at reading legalese, here are the main points:

Phreak has the right to broadcast and record all music at SLCC, without having to pay you to do so.

Phreak will then transfer the rights to a Creative Commons Work release, and upload the music to archive.org. At that point it will be freely downloadable to the public, in perpetuity.

This was the best way we could think of to do our mission: to stream you all, record it all for posterity, and to make it available to people, while legally covering ourselves, you, and TFU.

That's it. I’d like to again thank you, as well as all the members of TFU, for your patience, understanding, and help in getting this waiver organized. I hope to meet you all at SLCC! I'll be the stressed out looking geek :)