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Pirate Radio Stations Challenge Feds
Thundgelmir writes "Yahoo news has an article about how pirate radio is taking on the FCC. It describes the growing trend of low-power FM stations, and their crusade to be heard across the country and around the internet." From the article: "Over four days, a dozen men and women shyly bumped shoulders as they studied schematics and tinkered with romex connectors, resistors, microphone cords, meters, sockets and capacitors — the stuff of illegal radio stations. 'We're not stealing anything. We're claiming something that's rightfully ours,' he says. His goal is to create FM radio stations faster than the FCC can shut them down ... 'It's always been our position that if enough people go on the air with their stations, the FCC will be overwhelmed and unable to respond.'"
Last time I checked, one needed a licence to broadcast on the FM frequencies.
Exactly. And it's not that the FCC likes to go after the pirate stations, TFA stated that FCC is complaint-driven, i.e. licensed stations are being pushed off the airwaves. Not polite.
The pirates should fight for a "pirate" range in the FM spectrum where unlicensed transmitters van freely broadcast. Problem solved.
The imp hits!
It would seem that the solution to pirate radio is very simple. Look at why they are circumventing the regulations in the first place: expenses and rules. And more the former than the latter.
The FCC's complaint is interference with licensed stations and/or emergency/critical services. So push prices down for low-wattage transmitters, and the FCC might find that they get more small radio stations following their rules... and that has got to be cheaper than crews in million dollar vans running all over the country playing whack-a-mole.
Now we have a new era with a new medium. The consuming public demand/expect that their requirements are met. The interesting question is whether the established media is as reactionary as in the 60's or whether they can meet the needs that the pirates meet.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Well-said, thank you. As to the established media being able to adapt ... in recent history, they've started to show an interest in catching up to their innovative rivals. So this could play out VERY interestingly. But, I fear, whenever the MPAA or RIAA are involved, it may degenerate into a witch-hunt.
:)
So I hope this all just concerns news and talk radio! lol
But let's extend it. Pirate IP addresses! I should poison the arp cache on the router and redirect fileserver requests to my own workstation. After all, I am not stealing anything -- I have a natural right to use 172.16.20.104! And if some other users can't get their work done, well, tough luck. Haha, look at these silly network admins trying to track down the problem! They'll are overhelmed and unable to respond! Ooh, now how about pirate license plates. I like my professor's. It has a good ring to it. Yeah, he might be inconvenienced when I get caught by that red light camera -- but I am not stealing anything! And next day, I will just paint a new set of numbers on the plate! No way will they cops ever catch me! Hm, what else. Oh, let's try pirate usernames. Let's hack the forum and get a username I like. Yeah, someone else might be using it already. But who cares, it's not like I am stealing anything... And if the admin blocks me, I'll just go through to the backdoor I installed and get myself another username! They will never shut me down!
The airwaves are a community resource. The FCC was created to control and parcel out the use of the radio spectrum for the best use by the community. Having said that, I know that big money is now involved in braodcast and frequency allocation - amateurs are having to fight off big money interests all the time. However the possibility to cause harm with poorly made and engineered equipment is more likely to create anger than sympathy.
If these people want a voice, take it to the internet. Streaming audio and video using the same studio equipment is possible and if the message has validity the word will spread. The technology is mature and anyone with broadband can do it. It's not as dramatic as getting arrrested and fined and your 'cause' getting press time I guess.
Too lazy to create a sig...
While it is artificial there is a really good reason on why FM licensing is there.
There's only a fixed amount of spectrum out there, and the licensing allows it to be allocated in a fairly efficient manner. If you do not do this, then anybody can blowup anybody else's transmission, and you're left with no reasonable programming (or cellphones for that matter, or satellite tv) at all.
Now while the barriers to creating a ratio station are quite expensive, the fact is that just about everyone would rather have some mediocre programming (what we have currently) over unabashed chaos that would happen otherwise. There are open bands of spectrum where you can do whatever you want with it, so it's not like it's a massive government conspiracy to keep the man down.
I agree that purposefully flooding the airwaves with interfering crap isn't a great idea, but someone needs to do something about the FCC. Do you realize that over-the-air broadcasts (both TV and radio) are pretty much the only forms of mass communication in the USA that are still subject to draconian censorship? I can say "fuck" out loud, in a book, in a movie, on a CD, on the internet, over the phone, but heaven forbid I say it over the airwaves! Ditto for nudity. I have Sirius satellite radio and on the hard rock stations I listen to not only do they not censor their music, but their DJs cuss regularly. It's clear that the vast majority of their fanbase does not, ahem, give a flying fuck. On TV, the situation is even more ridiculous because parents have access to the V-chip.
The FCC should not be in the business of censorship, period. The founding fathers explicitly gave us freedom of the press, and if they had known about radio waves they would have deemed those be free of censorship as well. The FCC has far overstepped its bounds (especially post-"wardrobe malfunction"), and if this is the only way to draw attention to the issue, so be it. I can only hope that these people operate their pirate radio stations in a responsible manner, on unused areas of the spectrum and at reasonable power levels. Provided they act responsibly, there's nothing wrong with breaking this law; indeed, I say that it needs breaking, it needs civil disobediance because it's a very ugly, glaring flaw splattered across one of the few freedoms the USA has actually protected quite well--better than most other Western nations, at least. (And before anyone starts ranting about how they allow nudity on British/French/German/Dutch/Australian broadcast TV, realize that more than a few movies and videogames have been outright banned in ALL of those countries. Other than child pornography and to a lesser extent beastiality, there's practically nothing you can't legally see/read/buy in America.)
Oh yeah, and the ownership rule relaxation is bullshit as well. It's not right that Clearchannel gets a government-approved (and protected) monopoly over half the fucking spectrum.
As long as it's on the Southern border, you've got me convinced.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You've sort of learned the wrong lesson from Satellite. People want to listen to what they like. They're not concerned about local variants or national consistency.
Unless you happen to like today's hott jams, today's hot country, your listen at work station, or the hottest RAWK in (your town here), you've got nothing to listen to on FM. Unless you like preachers, political ranters, or fools talking about sports all day, you've got nothing to listen to on AM.
Hence, satellite radio. If I lived in a place where I could get the same variety as the 30 stations that are programmed into my XM unit, I'd cancel my subscription in a second. Plus, I like to hear my DJs say fuck once in a while.
Most pirate radio that I've heard is rather uninteresting. Pirate play their favorite artist (who is disproportionately Zappa), or rant on their favorite topic. The truly insane pirates broadcast on shortwave anyways.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem
he realist in me says the FCC is chasing them because commercial radio pushes them to.
No, the FCC is chasing them because radio is and has always been the primary means of conveying emergency information. Television is a lot less reliable on both ends (though that's one of the main reasons the FCC regulates the television spectrum too).
Commercial radio stations have legal requirements for broadcasting emergency signals. Pirate radio stations obviously do not. It is literally a matter of public safety.
And if you don't believe it, ask any New Yorker that lived through 9/11 and the blackout 2 years ago. Most local TV stations were initially knocked off the air on 9/11, and during the blackout there was no TV at all. Everybody got their info by radio. (It's not just information, either - the Emergency Alert System is an automated system triggered by the signals sent over radio and TV.)
There are good reasons why these frequencies are regulated, and they have nothing to do with money. I hope the FCC continues to diligently go after pirate radio - in this case, regulation is a necessary thing.
If people want to set up their own radio station, it's easy enough to do it on the internet without running afoul of any laws. Heck, they'd probably get a lot more listeners that way, and reach a global audience. That they continue to try to flout the law in the face of a legal and better alternative suggests to me that they are intentionally breaking the law for the sake of breaking the law. As such, when they're caught I would hope they have that law thrown back in their faces to the fullest extent possible.
The vast majority of "pirate radio stations" are not interfering with licensed stations legitimately serving a particular market. In fact, a 10 watt transmitter like most of Dunifer's does not simply have the power to overpower a 100kW Class C FM station. In most of Los Angeles, where the only available slot was 104.7 MHz, it was not uncommon for a 50 watt station I was affiliated with to have problems with a station 50 miles away "interfering" on the same frequency. Were we causing "problems" for that station and their listeners? Hell, no.
Almost without exception, pirates are choosing frequencies that are not used locally, and operating stations that never exceed much more than 50 watts (most of them are in the 5-10 watt range). I can count on one hand the pirates who have even the technical competance to keep a high-power transmitter on the air, let alone actually own one.
Your analogy is not even correct. It is more likely to say that people are in a big outdoor auditorium, where the speaker is using a professional PA system, and the pirate radio operator has collected a bunch of his friends on a lawn near the back and is talking to them at a normal speaking volume.
An even better question is this. The "popularity" of unlicensed FM is only increasing. Isn't this an interesting sign to the professional broadcasters that there is a market segment they are not appealing to? Why are they not serving this market segment? Could it be that as a near-monopoly, they can ignore market forces?
There should be a broadcast spectrum that belongs to everybody. There isn't. That needs to change.