Slashdot Mirror
Low-power FM Transmitters Banned in UK
Acey writes "The BBC News is reporting that the Griffin iTrip falls foul of the UK Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949 (PDF). In short, the iTrip is an unlicensed FM transmitter and that's not allowed. The UK distributor, A M Micro, have pulled the iTrip. More ominously they warn that "Use of the iTrip in the UK therefore constitutes an offence and can lead to prosecution of the User". Guess that makes me an outlaw, because you'll have to pry my iTrip from my cold, dead hands."
Any rewards for turning people in?
Walkie-talkies should be banned as their signals can be picked up by an FM receiver (at least my old action man ones could, although the range was about 3 metres)
This could/can be the begining of eclectic microstations. You can tune into a 24/7 iTrip at work/your building/bus stop etc., instead of listening to one of big conglomerate boring stations.
My other sig is an ambulance!
No-one's ever going to be prosecuted for using one, any more than if you use wi-fi channel 12 in the USA. They just won't be for sale here.
Seems excessive, but if you lived in an apartment complex, you could have some serious fun with one of these things broadcasting to the station your neighbor happens to be listening to. :)
On the one side, I can understand the Governments position:
Thou Shalt Not have Unlicensed Radio Transmitters.
This is important, because if just anybody set up shop, soon the radio waves would be a mess of people just putting stuff out, and nobody could hear the station they wanted too - just the one with the biggest pen- ah, broadcast antennae.
On the other hand, I think the range of this thing is - what - 10 to 30 feet? Watch out, Britian! Those pirate radios will be able to be heard from the other room! Anarchy and chaos as Julie tries to dance to Nsync while Dad's got his iPod broadcasting the Spice Girls in the other room! Mum - you'd best be keeping that "Black Mages" heavy metal to yourself!
This seems more like an issue of someone in beurocracy[SIC] getting a bug up their ass and not using common sense more than anything else.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Yes, it is illegal, and not just in the UK - this is quite common in Europe, I believe. If you look at the Neuros forum pages, you'll see that they're intending to disable broadcast capability. They may well do this in firmware.
This is no exaggeration. I had no TV for 6 years and those gits hounded me relentlessly. They kept sending me threatening letters warning of a possible 1000 fine for not having a TV license even though I didn't have a TV. They made me sign a form declaring that I had no TV set, which I did, and then they sent me another one, and another one, and I phoned them and told them and then they sent and inspector to my house!
When I moved house, they started sending the letters again, which I signed and returned. A week or two later a poster went up on the billboard across the road saying "3 addresses at Himalayan Way do not have Television Licenses. We know who they are."
I was so tempted to go out with a can of paint and write "At least one of them has no TV set" but I didn't. A year later I bought a TV and a damned license. Now I spend too much time as a TV zombie and not enough time writing code.
Television is a powerful opiate and population control machanism. I admire people who can control it. I'm succumbing again.
Stick Men
Pirate radio stations broadcast towards England from ships off shore, outside of English legal jurisdiction. Here is some historic info: http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/spotday.htm
Why is this marked as informative? It shows gross ignorance. The BBC is independent of the government via mandate. In fact, the BBC seems to institutionally take the stance when reporting the news that anything from the government must wrong, irrespective of whether they're left, right or centre. The BBC isn't owned, or controlled or funded by the government. The only possible hold the government has is over the renewing of the BBC's license (is the right term?), which is generally valid for longer than the maximum length of time the current government can sit before they have to call a general election.
How will I pick up the chicks? How will I karoake? How will I LIVE?!?!?!
The FM range 88 - 108 MHz has been used for wireless microphones for ages - how are these Griffin Itrips any different?
Video Game cheats, hints a
I'm in the UK and recently bought on of these. It's an almost identical product called an FM 'Linker' but basically you plug it into any headphone socket et voila you're a radio station.
They say the range is about 5M (therefore just for personal use) but it is well over 100 metres. So I'm waiting to get busted when I broadcast web radio stations around my house (and over a small portion of town).
Don
------
There's a 4:30 in the morning now?
Slashdot - The Home of the Tortured Analogy
Indeed. I live in the US, I don't own a TV (CNN and Faux News? No thanks). I get much of my news from the BBC's website. Government-controlled? Is that why Blair and Alistair Campbell and friends are so upset with them lately?
The UK has *not* just passed a new law banning the iTrip specifically or deliberately, as half the posters on slashdot seem to believe.
The distributors of the iTrip, having taken legal advice, have decided that use of the iTrip probably constitutes a breach of an old law about FM broadcasting and have therefore chosen not to distribute it here.
Nothing has actually changed and British police are not about to start hunting down people with suspicious bulges on the top of their iPods.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
Hmm yes the Recording Industry Association of AMERICA traveled BACK IN TIME to post-WW2 Great Britain and wrote legislation to ban devices that make use of the FM spectrum so that 54 years later they could force a distributor of an iPod accessory in the UK via a mole they planted in the company to read the law and after speaking w/ the Radio Agency conclude that the device is illegal there.
Next they'll use their nifty time travel technology to go back and assure that Victrola loses to Eddison so that his proprietary cylindrical records become the standard instead of the easy to use flat Victrolas...
COME ON MAN, GET A GRIP
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Christ , get up to date, that was back in the 60s!
These days you just get teenagers and other retards broadcasting from the top of a tower block
with a directional microwave link to the studio so they're harder to track down by the police.
Dating yourself is a tradition among slashdot readers, and...oh, you meant...I thought that you were talking about...never mind
No, nobody is going to bother to enforce the law. It it doesn't cause a problem who cares? It is a complete non-story.
Like the ability of Freemen of London to heard sheep (or not) over London Bridge lots of laws lie around long after the environment they related to has changed out of all recognition.
They actually enforce this kind stuff. My company brought a bunch of 802.11b stuff over there for an event, and the day we set it up someone from their department of silly walks and radios showed up to talk to us about it.
In the end we had everything in order, and a large 802.11b installation will probably draw more attention than a fm transmitter speeding down the road, but they do watch.
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
You would love it if you lived near me. Top quality music and speech radio commercial free and located away from any existing stations.
Still as I said you'd have to be within 100m of me, and if you were, I'd move.
Don
------
Homer: Chop chop, dig dig, chop chop, dig dig
Marge: You know Homie, there's so much more two wives can do for you...
Homer: I hear digging, but I don't hear chopping.
Slashdot - The Home of the Tortured Analogy
the whole point of a lot of british broadcasting law isn't to protect the listener/consumer, it was originally designed to protect the broadcaster - the bbc. you have to understand that in the uk, unlike the us or europe, the legal tradition has been firmly against private broadcasting.
originally, the bbc was the only broadcaster allowed in the uk - radio being "too powerful" a tool to be left to private interests. but, of course, the bbc sucked and by the '30s most of the uk was listening to european stations - most notably radio luxembourg - with bad reception but better programming. many of the broadcasting laws from the 40s were designed to discourage these "foreign" stations.
by the 60s there were a lot of private broadcasters targeting britain, though, by setting up shop on boats outside the three mile limit in international waters. the notable one here is radio caroline of course. the labour government at the time was simply balistic about this movement but couldn't legally squealch it because of that pesky maritime law thing.
of course, it all came to a grinding halt when a guy called major smedly (who was a bit of a nut job in the first place) pulled a piracy job on a competing station called radio city. eventually, the battle took to dry land and smedly shot and killed calvert. the result was the marine broadcasting offenses act of 1967 which was pretty draconian and the pirate broadcasters were shut donw.
2 1337 4 u!
In Briatin you have to pay for a license for anything which lets you watch a TV signal.
As to whether that sucks...IMO what really sucks is having TV shows, movies, even sports games interrupted every 10 minutes for a 5 minutes commercial break. In return for a 190 annual fee, Brits get 2 free-to-air TV stations and 5 national radio stations with NO COMMERCIAL BREAKS. And we're not talking marginalised, underfunded US style public broadcasting - they're the most popular stations in the UK, with rights to most major sporting events, movies, music etc. So you can sit down and watch a 3 hour movie (with stereo sound) right the way through, just like in the cinema. Or a 5 set Wimbledon final, without missing any shots. Not to mention all those original BBC geek classics like Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Hitchikers Guide (originally a BBC radio show), Dr Who...Oh, and the BBC also has several (free) digital radio and TV channels as well.
Another bonus is that because of the competition with the ad-free BBC, commercial broadcasters in Britain restrict themselves to one commercial break every 15 minutes, so even on the 3 free-to-air commercial stations you can follow the plot of most shows without being constantly interrupted by life insurance salesman. Plus they have to compete with the BBC on breadth and quality, meaning that they can't get away with the endless repeats of Frasier and Seinfeld that seem to define primetime on most major US networks.
Now what I don't understand is this: the BBC can put out about 6 TV channels (including the digital ones) and dozens of radio stations (including local radio) for a charge of only 190 per year per household -- without needing any advertising income. This is far less than the cost of most cable or satellite TV subscriptions - and yet cable stations usually have as many commercials as free-to-air stations, and the programs rarely better BBC quality. What do they do with their money?
I guess it just goes to prove that with the right management and funding, publically owned services can outperform the private sector. Although actually I don't have a TV anymore...a DVD player hooked up to a computer monitor supplies the movies without me needing a TV license, radio and the net gives me the rest.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
In sweden, it would sound like this:
"Hello, we've noticed you don't pay a television license. Do you have a TV?"
"No"
"We detected a TV from our van, inside your property."
"No you didn't. Must be a mistake."
"Sir, I can hear [insert name of crappy US sitcom here] theme coming from inside your appartment."
"You must be imagining it."
"Sir, if we need to, we can get a warrant to enter the premises and be back within the hour."
"No you can't."
"Damn you right. We can't. But if you don't pay your license we'll taunt you again!"
The television license inspectors do not have the right to enter your house unless you admit them. And they would not get a warrant even if they tried. Only crimes above a certain severity can give them a warrant to enter your house.
Do you mean that actual pirates could be broadcasting on these pirate radio stations?
Ahoy, mate! Hand me that thar transmi'ah. I'll play a tune on me belly for all o' London t' hear!
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
They sent an inspector to me too, but of course I was at work. So I wrote back saying they were welcome to inspect our place, but would they mind visiting after 6pm or on weekends since... surprise surprise, they never called back. I guess they're not _that_ keen...
At the time though I felt a twinge of sympathy for Saddam Hussein. The British government kept telling me that it knew I had banned equipment (an unlicensed TV set). When I denied this they told me they knew I was lying and were going to send in inspectors. And when I offered to cooperate with the inspectors (though on my terms - I'll be damned if I'll be subject to unannounced inspections of my home at any time of the day or night - though Saddam even agreed to that), they pulled them out.
Luckily for me the analogy stops there. Otherwise my flat would be occupied by government agents triumphantly brandishing my laptop as proof that I had a mobile TV-development laboratory that could be turned into a fully functioning device within 45 minutes by the addition of a simple TV tuner card, which they had documentary evidence that I was trying to purchase from Niger...
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
In America, it would sound like this:
Officer: Do you have a TV license?
Person: Nope.
Officer: Good, because we don't have those here like in some unfortunate countries.
Person: Damn right. You think they need licenses to read books too?
Officer: Probably. You know how much it sucks over there.
Person: Over where?
Officer: Who cares?
Person + Officer: Ha hahahah hahahahahhaha!!!
Person: Hey, wanna beer?
Officer: Whoa there! I'm on duty...so no more than two or three.
Just because the U.S. is the greatest country in the world doesn't mean we're superior...oh wait, yes it does.
I ended up going with the third option for my wife's 2002 Nissan Altima, since it has no tape deck and I didn't want to mess with an FM modulator. It has a CD changer input in the back, but the place linked above doesn't have anything for the Altima. I found a guy who makes custom cables for it, so I ordered that along with a switch to put the radio in aux mode. Installation was pretty easy and actually kind of a fun project, especially drilling the hole in the dash to install the switch. ;-)
So as you can see, there are plenty of options. Of course what would be the best is a little dock that provides power, line out, and steering wheel remote controls. Just slide the iPod in and off you go!
Say hello to zMac.
I don't normally flame people on Slashdot, but IMO your knee-jerk pro-authority attitude is the root cause of all our problems in England. Having people with your sort of attitude around is a real drag. The kind of things you want don't make anyone safer, they make life harder and more dangerous for everyone.