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China To Crackdown On Unauthorised Radio Broadcasts (www.bgr.in)
An anonymous reader writes: Reportedly, in a national campaign aided by more than 30,000 airwave monitors, in over past six months, more than 500 sets of equipment for making unauthorised radio broadcasts were seized in China. The campaign, launched on February 15 by the State Council, resulted in 1,796 cases related to illegal radio stations, after 301,840 hours of monitoring from February to July, according to an online statement by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The number of incidents was down by 50 per cent from April to August, the China Daily quoted the statement as saying. So-called pirate radios have appeared in most parts of China since 2015 and this "has been a channel for criminals to defraud and promote aphrodisiacs, along with counterfeit and poor-quality medicine," according to the Ministry of Public Security's Criminal Investigation Department. The operating cost of a pirate radio is low, but profit can be high. A pirate radio station that broadcasts advertisements for aphrodisiacs can pocket more than 70,000 yuan ($10,500) a month, with an overhead cost of no more than 10,000 yuan, investigators said in a post on Sina Weibo. It said most spare parts for broadcasting equipment can be bought on the internet.
And "Unauthorized" ones as well! ;^)
has been a channel for criminals to defraud and promote aphrodisiacs, along with counterfeit and poor-quality medicine,"
That has to be the strangest explanation imaginable.
I would expect the Chinese censors would be more concerned about political content than ads for "aphrodisiacs".
So-called pirate radios have appeared in most parts of China since 2015 and this "has been a channel for criminals to defraud and promote aphrodisiacs, along with counterfeit and poor-quality medicine.
No surprise here, given the objectives of the ruling party China.
What happened in 2015 to cause so many "pirate radio broadcasts"? It's not as if the technology to accomplish this was just invented. News from China continues to send chills down my spine.
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The parts to build a pirate radio are already made in China. Some assembly required. No need to blame the evil internet for this.
Over here in the US we call that kind of content 'commercials'
has been a channel for criminals to defraud and promote aphrodisiacs, along with counterfeit and poor-quality medicine,
But selling the gall bladder of bears, and only the gall bladder, or the hands of gorillas or promoting cupping and acupuncture or Louis Vitton bags or a whole host of other counterfeit and non-existent medicine is perfectly acceptable, right?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The submitter and Slashdot editors are illiterate.
Crackdown is a noun.
Crack down is a verb.
Title should be: China To Crack Down On Unauthorised Radio Broadcasts
FFS.
Maybe if the Chinese government actually gave a fuck about human lives instead of treating people like a disposable single-use resource, and there was sufficient medical care and real medicines to go around, there wouldn't be a need for pirate radio stations run by scammers and fraudsters to sell fake stuff. Maybe if the Chinese government spent less money on it's military operations to encroach on other people's territorial waters and their wars of conquest of neighboring countries, they'd have enough money and resource to actually take care of their citizens properly instead of them falling prey to counterfeiters and fraudsters. Maybe if the Chinese government stopped making it their priority to be a '1st world nation' when they clearly aren't and realigned their priorities towards actually giving a shit about their citizens, all these problems would solve themselves. But NO, of course not, they don't give a flying fuck about human lives, all they care about is grabbing more land, controlling more of the oceans, and building an empire. What a bunch of assholes the Chinese government is, I don't know how the people who live there can stand it.
All of these radio stations run by ordinary people risk filling other people's minds with information that might not come from properly educated sources.
The people running their own radio stations might not care about noble tasks like keeping officials in office for example. In fact, I bet they tend to overlook important things like that all the time!
The Chinese are a little bit ahead of the curve, but we're making incredible progress here with the IRS helping people to realize things like the correct party to vote for, NASA outreaching to external communities that can help us (muslims), the FBI only pursuing criminals that aren't going to have them killed under mysterious circumstances, and BLM for helping us understand which ethnicities matter.
It just goes to show how dangerous freedom is and how we all need to become completely dependent on the government. Even if everyone's lives individually get worse, well, society and the Public are collectively better!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio_in_the_United_Kingdom#Legal_situation
So you not only lose your equipment, but you can pay a fine, go to prison, and even be taken to court by a commercial company for loss of advertising revenue. That's alright then.
Do they have their own sales staff? How do you even find out how to advertise on a pirate Chinese radio station?
I know that people will want to go on the China oppressing freedom SJW bandwagon, but this is a complete non-story and non-issue.
Every country in the world has a regulatory body that controls the country's RF spectrum. It's the only way for radio to work reliably.
How many times a day does the FCC "crackdown on unauthorized radio broadcasts"? There are literally dozens and possibly hundreds of times every day that the FCC confiscates illegal radio equipment and brings charges against illegal broadcasters. Are you going to get up in arms about that?
Here's one example of someone using a jammer to jam cell phones. https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-339559A1.pdf
Building an FM transmitter was simple for a 15 year old back in 1960. It was even legal as long as one used a whimp of an antenna which limited the range to about the size of your home. But if you just happened to put a longer antenna on it you could broadcast for miles while using very little electricity. Let us imagine that it was during the Cuban missile crises and that in less than 10 minutes of broadcasting got cars with strange antennas as well as a helicopter landing next to a certain home. We can further imagine that that little FM rig was slapped onto a motorcycle and moved a mile or so and back on the air for about five seconds which was just long enough to confuse the pinpoint triangulation of the broadcast point. That just might have happened in south Florida. i used to enjoy listening to such pirate stations in Brooklyn NY by the way. Today with modern equipment i'll bet a decent FM broadcast radio could be smaller than a pack of smokes and moved every few minutes.
"Lights out,
Guerrilla Radio.
Turn that shit up"
If you operate a pirate radio in the US, surely FCC would come and knock on your door? In the UK, the OFCOM would come and known on your door. I am a licensed amatuer radio operator in the UK.
Here in China, pirate radio isn't the "romantically rebellious", "devoted for freedom" type you might have imagined. It's just like your usual annoying stupid email spam. You WANT to get rid of that.
There're HUGE lots of scam commercials, fake talk-show shills and other frauds all over radio and TV, pirate or even legal ones once in a while. They indeed mostly sell suspicious alcohols, medicines and healthcare products, while aphrodisiacs are only a tiny bit among them. Under-educated people are easily tricked into these bullshits.
The Chinese, if not counting the extreme zealots type, of course claim that those lands and waters are originally theirs in the beginning, and it's the "others" that are in the wrong who try to take those from them, with good or bad evidence of their own to back it up. It works in both ways, so we can't just take one-sided arguments from any side.