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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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.