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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.'"
Wasn't this news in the 1960s? Sheesh. ;-)
Some laws that are in place do make sense. The FCC rules for broadcasting are in place for safety actually. Granted, a pirate radio station probaly won't bring down an airline, but what if it does interfere with radio transmissions in the ambulance and 911 when the operator is trying to say got left on Pine and all you here is salsa music? That's a potential hazard. There are better ways to make statements now than broadcasting over a pirated radio broadcast.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
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!
Except, ya know, people at sea, but screw them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
It is well beyond doubt that the FCC needs to be changed and the media ownership laws addressed. It is also obvious that the frequency spectrum needs to be regulated however; even a brief look at how the FCC is acting for the benefit of corporations should signal that change needs to happen.
There are numerous examples to the corrupt nature of the FCC; one of the most recent was the fact that the FCC had reports destroyed that directly contradicted the actions they have taken on behalf to their corporate masters.
The airwaves belong to the people and should be run to the benefit of the people. Obviously our government is not acting as it should in many areas, the issue is, how to affect change? With only a single political party in the US, I doubt voting helps.
Viva la resistance!
Well, here in Poland we used to have resistors pinned into the clothes as the sign of resistance against the Soviet Union-sponsored government oppression. And the people caught wearing them were prosecuted.
FM frequencies are merely a collective decision of a bunch of eletromagnetic energy to exist in a cohesive waveform for a period of time, and over a certain distance.
And that have commercial value.
Millions of consumers have receivers in their homes/works/cars that operate with transmissions on those frequencies, so the realist in me says the FCC is chasing them because commercial radio pushes them to.
Meanwhile, the tinfoil in my hat says it's about Big Brother restricting public broadcast and free communication... oh, and keeping the little guy down, man.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
The United States in unique in that the law explicitely states that the EM spectrum is the property of the American public. (This has been the law for almost a century, infact -- I think it goes all the way back to the 1912 Radio Act) Because it is a shared resource, however, the government issues licenses to use the spectrum. However, "moneyed interests" (corporations - especially clearchannel) dominate the landscape and the FCC does whatever the want, typically shafting the consumer in te process. The Communications Act of 1996 exacerbated the situation, because it removed rules governing how much of the spectrum one company could gobble up. So if these radio pirates are going to challenge the extremely corrupt FCC establishment, I say more power to them.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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.
This is actually a fairly interesting question.
From today's perspective, where we look at the EM spectrum and see that the majority of it is really suited more for short-range communication than anything else, it seems like something that ought to be regulated at least in part by the states.
However, the authority of the FCC comes from the Communications Act of 1934, and its predecessor agency from the Radio Act of 1927, which were drafted in a time when most of the radio spectrum in use was down in the HF bands, which travel hundreds or thousands of miles and thus require widespread regulatory authority. From this authority -- which began due to a need to keep civilian transmissions from interfering with maritime wireless service -- they simply continued to regulate as frequencies grew higher and higher, and transmission distances shorter and shorter, until the FCC frequently has a say in things in which there is little or no business for Federal regulation.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The FCC does exist for a good reason. The radio space within the US is something that is owned by the people of the United States. The rules that are in place are to protect the masses from having that resource rendered unusuable to them. Citizens' Band ("CB") was established so that individuals could express whatever they wanted on their spectrum.
The commercial radio stations that play music we don't like, and shove commercials down the ears of listeners, AND screw payola out of artists... also do pay their licensing fees to the people of the United States.
What you let your government spend the money on is another matter entirely.
Take off every 'sig' !!
During the sixties it brought down the state monopoly that only had old chums debating on the airwaves. It brought music to the airwaves. Not so bad for arr pirate!
Well, time to build a fence around Texas!
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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!
Problem is that most "pirate" stations are put together by insane nutknobs that do not take a few minutes and dollars to make it right.
Here are some tips if you want your pirare radio station to not get turned in.
1 - plop the station on top of another one... Retarted. the megawatt station will kick you hard, so you get to annoy only a 5 block radius if you are lucky and far away from the station.
2 - use that $29.99 10 watt transmitter kit off ebay. Can you say splatter? your signal sucks and is splattering all over the band and probably into the avaiation bands. Nothing like that to get the FCC and FAA attention.
3 - do the transmitter right but overdeviate all over the place. Limiter and compressor is REQUIRED. as you scream your rants into the microphone you gotta make sure to not over deviate.
4 - spew hard profanity 24-7. Nothing will get you off the air faster than playing all the fowl mouthed 13 year old boy music out there, or screaming FUCK over and over and over again in the microphone. Someone will hear you, not like it and report you. Profanity on the airwaves is more of an issue to the FCC than you not being licensed.
sadly most pirate radio violates every one of those points.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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
Not sure if they're still operating, but we have a pirate radio station operating in the Quad-Cities Area on the Mississippi.
Basically their position is that federal regulations state they are able to operate a radio station without license during wartime.
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.