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If you aren't afraid of a soldering gun (and you ought not to be if you are going to run a radio station, deal with the FCC etc) here is a link to Stephen Dunifer's web site in Berkeley that will show you how to build a radio station with the same capabilities for about 1/4th that 4000 dollar price.

http://www.freeradio.org/documents/index.html?view as=list&
http://www.freeradio.org/tech/images/primer.pdf

If you aren't afraid of a soldering gun (and you ought not to be if you are going to run a radio station, deal with the FCC etc) here is a link to Stephen Dunifer's web site in Berkeley that will show you how to build a radio station with the same capabilities for about 1/4th that 4000 dollar price.

http://www.freeradio.org/documents/index.html?view as=list&
http://www.freeradio.org/tech/images/primer.pdf

"It enables everybody to be a broadcaster," he says.

To call this pirate radio is insulting to real radio hackers. Increase the iTrip's range 20 or 30 percent, ooooh wow. That's what a whole 100 feet? When you can get 20 mile range by putting a hand made antenna in a tree connected to a hand soldered rig causing no interference to any other spectrum users (like you can learn to do from these people) I'll be more interested. And I won't care whether or not it involves purchasing the current fad consumer device like the iPod.

see http://www.freeradio.org

there are plenty of people who's rational, critical, and creative thinking offer greatness , specifically on radio... and i really don't know anyone who still watches cnn or any of the other 'trusted' media sources. when you don't have 9/10 radio station's owned by one company, the idea that npr is way to far to the right doesn't sound that outrageous. here, there is some 3 entities that compete for our fm radio, plus we have a community radio station here. plus there's always rantradio. i bet most of the people who listen to wbai, cjtr,rantradio, and a host of other radio networks out there also have grown past the 'seeing cnn as worth watching' stage.

Break the Corporate Media's Stranglehold on the Free Flow of Information, News, Artistic Expression and Cultural Creativity http://www.counterpunch.org/dunifer07252003.html

That's how the FCC finally shut down the micro-broadcasting of Free Radio Berkeley.

The FCC won on a technicality that since FRB never applied for a non-existent micro-broadcast license, they were in violation of FCC rules.

TCPA is a different issue - it's a set of BIOS features that will only let the machine start up if it's running a certified operating system configuration (which the hardware validates as unmodified), and a set of features that let an operating system and application programs check that the system is running in TCPA-approved mode (that's a bit similar to Palladium, but still fundamentally different), and a set of things that the system won't do if it's not running a certified system. Depending on which version of the spec and proposed followons you're reading and how aggressive the implementation is, there may be things that you'd like to do that you can't do on a non-certified system - like use the sound card, or maybe the _video_, or maybe it won't boot at all, or maybe it just won't let you load kernel modules, plus it obviously won't tell the software that you're running in Trust-Us mode if you're not.

Obviously, an aggressive implementation won't fly for many Linux users, but it may still be usable by Linux _consumers_. The best case is somewhat like having a car with the hood welded shut and a security system that disables it if you mess around; you can paint it any color you'd like, and put whatever you want in the trunk, but you can't start the engine unless your seatbelt's on and you blow in the breathalyzer (which is hard to reach when you're wearing your seatbelt, of course), and if you take the radio out, the radio won't work and the car won't let you put a different radio in, so the RIAA knows you're not playing MP3-CDs in your car, but at least it isn't always tuned to MS-NBC, though if you're playing a non-RIAA-certified CD, it only plays on the tinny little mono speaker in the dashboard, not the four-way tunable woofers or the heads-up display system, and if you do tune to a different radio station, it only uses the right-hand speaker if Rush Limbaugh is on, and only uses the left-hand speakers if it's National Public Radio, and I'm sorry but you can't play Free Radio Berkeley at all...

Free Radio Berkeley has plenty of links and info on setting up your own low-power radio station. Including why you don't need an FCC license, and what do to when they hassle you. FRB has been online w/o an FCC license since at least 1993.

Oh, bring a lawyer ;-)

I can still breath air for free, and I'm damn well going to use it for radio as well if I want to. IMHO, regulating the airwaves the way they do in the US is worse than any RIAA crud. At least we can choose to buy music from alternative sources. Can we choose to use different air?

There are several interesting alternatives to the radio model we have today. The first is micropowered broadcasting. Micropower broadcasting is all about creating very cheap, low-powered transmitters in the 1 to 100 watt range. At these power levels the equipment is cheap, simple to use, can reach across most cities and rural areas, and allows a larger concentration of micropower broadcasting. Micropower allows communities, neighborhoods, and special interest groups to have their own radio stations and communicate with their local communities. I find it to be an attractive, democratic vision. Also check out Free Radio Berkeley for information on low-cost transmitters that are available, as well as educational information.

Another model that is still developing, and which is beautifully decentralized, is the OpenSpectrum idea. This model is based on several ideas. One part that is core is that the spectrum is not prematurely allocated to particular uses and users; instead, people have transceivers that can both broadcast and receive at a range of powers and at a range of frequencies. These transceivers constantly look at the spectrum, jumping around and broadcasting at various frequencies depending on the density of other transceivers. One important aspect is that transceivers can also act as repeaters for other transceivers. A few years ago it was theoretically shown that if this is done that "one can build a practical network whose capacity increases the more stations you add". This is powerful stuff, and the ideas should slowly percolate into society over the next few decades as the technology continues to improve (things like Ultra Wide Band, software defined radio, decentralized wireless meshes, etc.)

Make media! Make Trouble!
Brad GNUberg

There are several interesting alternatives to the radio model we have today. The first is micropowered broadcasting. Micropower broadcasting is all about creating very cheap, low-powered transmitters in the 1 to 100 watt range. At these power levels the equipment is cheap, simple to use, can reach across most cities and rural areas, and allows a larger concentration of micropower broadcasting. Micropower allows communities, neighborhoods, and special interest groups to have their own radio stations and communicate with their local communities. I find it to be an attractive, democratic vision. Also check out Free Radio Berkeley for information on low-cost transmitters that are available, as well as educational information.

Another model that is still developing, and which is beautifully decentralized, is the OpenSpectrum idea. This model is based on several ideas. One part that is core is that the spectrum is not prematurely allocated to particular uses and users; instead, people have transceivers that can both broadcast and receive at a range of powers and at a range of frequencies. These transceivers constantly look at the spectrum, jumping around and broadcasting at various frequencies depending on the density of other transceivers. One important aspect is that transceivers can also act as repeaters for other transceivers. A few years ago it was theoretically shown that if this is done that "one can build a practical network whose capacity increases the more stations you add". This is powerful stuff, and the ideas should slowly percolate into society over the next few decades as the technology continues to improve (things like Ultra Wide Band, software defined radio, decentralized wireless meshes, etc.)

Make media! Make Trouble!
Brad GNUberg

There are several interesting alternatives to the radio model we have today. The first is micropowered broadcasting. Micropower broadcasting is all about creating very cheap, low-powered transmitters in the 1 to 100 watt range. At these power levels the equipment is cheap, simple to use, can reach across most cities and rural areas, and allows a larger concentration of micropower broadcasting. Micropower allows communities, neighborhoods, and special interest groups to have their own radio stations and communicate with their local communities. I find it to be an attractive, democratic vision. Also check out Free Radio Berkeley for information on low-cost transmitters that are available, as well as educational information.

Another model that is still developing, and which is beautifully decentralized, is the OpenSpectrum idea. This model is based on several ideas. One part that is core is that the spectrum is not prematurely allocated to particular uses and users; instead, people have transceivers that can both broadcast and receive at a range of powers and at a range of frequencies. These transceivers constantly look at the spectrum, jumping around and broadcasting at various frequencies depending on the density of other transceivers. One important aspect is that transceivers can also act as repeaters for other transceivers. A few years ago it was theoretically shown that if this is done that "one can build a practical network whose capacity increases the more stations you add". This is powerful stuff, and the ideas should slowly percolate into society over the next few decades as the technology continues to improve (things like Ultra Wide Band, software defined radio, decentralized wireless meshes, etc.)

Make media! Make Trouble!
Brad GNUberg

• This typical news story as seen in the Lexington Herald Leader.
• the Free Radio Berkley page
• The FCC policy page

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

But not "unreasonably" so, and that's where the courts step in. Can you stop someone from wearing a sign around in a grocery store parking lot? The courts say no, that's fine. Can you stop tobacco companies from advertising on television? Sure. What's the difference? I don't know, but you might think you have a better idea after trudging through thousands of pages of court documents.

Free Radio Berkeley fought a long battle through the courts against the FCC, and got shut down in 1998 after 5 years of suit and countersuit. That on its own shows the issue is hardly clear-cut-- there were plenty of decisions and overrides.

If you want to read about one of the most (in)famous low power radio stations ever, check out www.freeradio.org. It's an interesting read about a fairly ridiculous situation, although it's a little out of date.

The FCC is a collection of piss-boys and water-carriers for the major entertainment conglomerates. (Disney, Westinghouse, Sony, etc.) Expanding their purview to the internet will basically mean that they get to take (more) bribes from AT&T, Microsoft, WorldCom and GTE, and we, the users and builders, will get the shaft.

Just say no.