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Despite FCC's Promise To Take Aggressive Action To Stamp Out Radio Pirates, Illegal Stations Are Flourishing (newyorker.com)
Last year, when Donald Trump appointed Ajit Pai chairman of the F.C.C., Pai promised to "take aggressive action" to stamp out pirates. In early May, the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement, or PIRATE, Act was introduced in Congress; it would increase fines from a maximum of a hundred and forty-four thousand dollars to two million dollars. But the stations aren't going away, The New Yorker reports. From the article: Transmission equipment has only become cheaper and more sophisticated. "The problem, as I see it, is that the technology has gone beyond what the law has been able to do," said David Goren, a local resident who works as a producer on licensed radio shows. Between 87.9 and 92.1 FM, Goren counted eleven illegal stations, whose hosts mainly spoke Creole or accented English. Pirates, he said, "offer a kind of programming that their audiences depend on. Spiritual sustenance, news, immigration information, music created at home or in the new home, here."
Pirate radio? They should make an app for that. Maybe call it Arrrrrrrdio?
Don't worry, I'll show myself out
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The fight against the free market continues. Can't be having people saying just anything over unused radio frequencies. Or the internet...
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
The reality is that the FCC is an underfunded and incompetent extension of the RF industry. They will attempt to protect broadcast spectrum, and fail. While leaving the rest of the spectrum to rot on the tree.
They rarely enforce and have been reduced, through ongoing budget reductions, to in some cases turning the enforcement over to the actual users of licensed spectrum. They've closed there local offices, fired their engineers, all while giving lip service to the job they should be doing. Heck- I'm pretty sure they do not even have the ability to triangulate to find a pirate station.
They don't even stop illegal radio equipment from being imported- then sold everywhere from big box stores to truck stops.
Good luck... They cannot even clean up problem frequencies where *everyone* knows who the offenders are.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
...and i have proof.
Ask me anything.
Why not just get these people licensed? It seems less expensive than chasing these people around when there's better things the FCC could be doing.
The correct term for them is "undocumented radio stations".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
it would increase fines from a maximum of a hundred and forty-four thousand dollars to two million dollars.
That will do absolutely nothing to deter the pirate radio stations, which seldom are for-profit entities, but special interest and religious kooks.
They can't afford $144,000 either, so it doesn't matter whether you raise this. As long as people think they won't get caught, it doesn't matter how harsh the penalty is.
Too high fines even work against the intention, in that you might report your neighbor for running an illegal radio station if he was facing a $1,000 fine, but won't do so if he risks $144,000 or $2,000,000. Ruining a person's life is not something all of us are willing to do, even if they were the ones who broke the law.
(This is also why excessive prison terms for certain crimes make things worse, not better.)
Illegal Radio Abuse..... ....as opposed to the legal kind?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Do they actually have advertisers? One would think that if an ad for Bob's Discount Autos was heard on a "pirate" radio station then a visit from the FCC and a fine would encourage Bob to not advertise and thus the radio station would go away fairly quickly. If the power requirements are so low that the stations need not advertise then perhaps a more reasonable approach would be a low cost for low power broadcast license?
Most are low power and doing nothing much except be hobbyist projects.
Is that really worth a $2,000,000 Fine?
Just create a special low power license and limit it to noncommercial use.
I'm curious how their audience finds them? If you setup a pirate radio station, do you always use a specific frequency even if you're forced to abandon your transmitter or gets seized?
Is the transmission equipment so cheap that pirate stations essentially don't care if it gets seized? They're probably more worried about finding another choice rooftop location with power than the transmitter itself?
How do they manage backhaul? My guess is that you would have the "studio" and the transmitter at different locations.
Why bother with pirate radio these days?
You can stream anything you like on the internet. Unlike the FM spectrum, there is an unlimited amount of "channels" available. No risk of getting punished. 20 years ago, pirate radio was a desperate way to be heard - or make some money. But now you can do it risk free on the net. So why pirate radio?
'Pirates, he said, "offer a kind of programming that their audiences depend on. Spiritual sustenance, news, immigration information, music created at home or in the new home, here."' Wow! I would be delighted if pirate stations did that in London. Here they all seem to play the same sort of music and shout all over it.
Anyone else getting flashbacks of Naked Gun 2½ when reading these new stupid backward-designed acronyms?
"I'm very proud to welcome our guests from the nation's energy suppliers.
First, head of the Society of Petroleum lndustry Leaders - better known as SPIL, Mr Terence Baggett.
Now, chairman of the Society for More Coal Energy, or SMoCE, Mr Donald Fenwick.
And president of the Key Atomic Benefits Office Of Mankind - KABOOM, Mr Arthur Dunwell."
#DeleteFacebook
A quick search shows that low-powered FM broadcast equipment is around $20 (for really low end stuff)-$50 (still not very powerful but probably sufficient for a local station).
> If you setup a pirate radio station, do you always use a specific frequency
This is one of the problem with pirate radio stations. They very often use frequencies that are already legally licensed to other radio stations. They don't care what frequency they use other than taking into consideration of the power requirements of broadcasting in a specific range. Obviously, if a legal station is sending out a very strong signal, the pirate stations will not use that frequency. They'll choose frequencies from stations broadcasting further away, or not sending out a strong signal at all.
You have joined us in the brave world of common knowledge... the knowledge that the severity of the fine is rarely a deterrent of crime.
That's the real question: I want to know what it is they're broadcasting that's got that bastard Pai's panties in such a twist. My gut tells me it's not likely music or anything as innocent as that. Don't post links to 'official' sources, I don't think they'll be trustworthy, I'd like to see first-hand accounts from people who have received these so-called 'pirate stations'.
Very often they set up stand alone transmitters on a rooftop with tapped electricity. They just use a 4G dongle to stream the audio (or a point to point mocrowave link for old school guys and gals)
So what if I'm listening to one of these stations with spurious emissions or exceedingly high dBm level near their broadcast area with a drifting transmitter, and an EAS message comes through on an adjacent station? Now all of a sudden, the PLL lock on the radio does the funky chicken trying to figure out what signal to lock onto and an entire area listening to the emergency message doesn't get all of it because of the pirate station. That puts lives at risk.
There's a reason we regulate spectrum. We don't want to go back to the days before the FCC when rescue ships were being sent to the middle of the North Atlantic in the winter because of fake distress calls just so we could avoid another Titanic disaster. We certainly don't want existing licensees who have paid good money and are subject to regulations and fines to be run over by unlicensed idiot operators. I have enough problems as a ham and shortwave listener dealing with RFI from poorly choked solar inverters and other garbage out there.
So while not all pirates are harmful, they most certainly can be at the wrong moment. There needs to be a crackdown and proper enforcement by the FCC.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Funny how this same organization sponsors international commercial and amateur broadcasting regulations. Whiff. Try again.
Indeed the charter doesn't limit freedom of expression. I don't advocate that at all, either. To do so in a civil way requires removing anarchy from the airwaves. Try living in SE Asia and finding out what airwave/radio madness is all about.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Why do law-enforcement agencies feel the need to come up with a cheesy acronym or smarmy rhyme for everything they do? Does some government drone feel a real sense of accomplishment every time they perpetuate this annoying practice?
92 MHz is only line-of-sight plus a little. So, these stations probably service small areas where they're the only stations that are listened to at all. If they're running low power, they probably don't interfere much with the stations on the other side of town. If they run high power, their likely at a fixed location and therefore easy to track down, and would be cause for enough complaints such that they'd be shut down.
Still, I don't believe in flaunting the law. The FCC is skeleton staffed, so it takes a complaint or a number of complaints to get enforcement.
I'm sure I'd care a lot more about this if I Heart Media didn't own half the spectrum, playing the same garbage across all of it. My wife and I have a game we play in the car, where we try to guess how many stations are playing the latest top 40 hit simultaneously. Highest we've seen is four. Four different stations all playing the same goddamn song at the same time. With internet and satellite radio ubiquitous, we really need to start reevaluating how we prioritize the spectrum.
Altruism doesn't give you a pass. Such rationalisms are the crux of narcissistic behavior. Living in a civilized world means looking after everyone, and deeply at your own motives.
Rationalizing incivility leads to a lot of the evil that the world sees today. You're not a hero, only a cowboy with an exciter.
I'm willing to bet he's doing a hell of a lot more "looking after everyone" than you ever have or will. You sound like a whiny little bitch who grew up getting spanked for every little thing and now you're damned if your going to ever let anyone else "get away with" anything. It's all back & white for you.
The root cause of this is the monopolistic homogeneous hegemony of the mega networks like Clear Channel that provide no local content and incessant chatter.
They were to busy stamping out net neutrality to deal with pirate radio.
I still want first-hand accounts of these pirate stations, but from TFA it sounds like these are part of 'The Resistance' against the current administration.
Given the garbage music on FM radio, maybe they should just open access to anyone for the FM band, as long as they are local stations, maybe with a 200-1000 watt limit and create more a neighborhood radio sort of thing on FM, and eliminate the monopoly of the 100,000 watt commercial stations. Most FM stations simply replay the same mass produced hollywood drivel over and over again. If necessary, if there is a lot of demand from local stations, allocate access to frequencies in 1 hour blocks, all to local people in the community, the 200-1000 watt limit would make it a 5 mile radius thing anyway ensuring that there would be plenty of open band for locally run low power stations with plenty of bandwidth in most cases. Smaller community stations would allow more locally sourced music to be created and would help promote the arts and music in society in communities rather than instead zombie like consumers of hollywood drivel. This would do much more to promote the community interest than what you have now. If the FCC is allegedly to make the limited spectrum available to serve community interests, making it so the community itself can use it exclusively by low power stations is what does that the best. Instead the current regime of 100,000 watt megastations does not serve community interests, it serves the interests of globalist corporate interests.
I'd rather they took a stab at telemarketing phone calls. 50% of my calls are from spammers at this point.
With our cities chock full of homosexuals, negroes, beaners, lesbians, NPR types, hipsters, etc, it is time to free a portion of the radio spectrum to give these people a voice. I suggest opening up the FM frequencies between 87 MHz and 92 Mhz to anyone with a transmitter who wants her voice heard. Let's liberate that portion of spectrum to all comers. The only way to fight hate speech is with more speech! And the FM broadcast band is as simple as a cell phone to use and setup. No complicated antennas are needed. A piece of wire two or there feet long is sufficient. Plug it into your modern transmitter (about the size of a best seller novel), and let the world know how YOU feel! FM power to ALL the people! Let YOUR voice be heard!
Hmm need some more work on this law acronym.
Oh **** did I just press send!?
Still needs some work.
Oh ****** I did it again didn't I!?
but who listens to the radio anymore ?
I haven't tuned in any stations in the car for years. They're still set to whatever the factory defaults are.
The receiver in my living room has no antenna connected to it and has no stations programmed either.
Maybe they don't care about Pirate stations because so few even bother to listen any more.
Um.. if a radio is intended to be used illegally, then is using it really "abuse?"
Turning the radio off, or going behind its back and getting a legal permit, would be ways to abuse it.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Seriously, this just sounds like more Federal govt. B.S. Over-promising they're going to get tough on something that's not practical or even clearly necessary.
Pirate radio?! This is the era where terrestrial radio is a dying thing in America. I know a surprisingly number of people who upgraded factory stereos in their vehicles and didn't even bother to reattach the antenna because they "never use the radio part anyway".
If the pirate stations are really interfering with reception of legitimate ones, then I'm sure complaints will get filed and they can go after those specific offenders. But it makes no sense to turn this into a crusade? The few times I've heard a pirate station operating near where I lived, it was someone running really low wattage on a frequency between a couple legitimate ones. They had a small group of fans who would go out to certain store parking lots just to tune them in, because they were unable to hear them from their homes. We're talking maybe a 2 mile radius.....
It is on local frequency 93.3. The radio is plugged into my car's cigarette lighter, and broadcasts 24/7.
Where did you get it? Amazon. Search for FM transmitter.
What does it broadcast? My MP3 collection.
Why broadcast MP3s? To pick them up on the radio of my old car. Legacy compatible.
Are their any commercials? Hell no.
What is the range? About 100 feet. I can listen in the house when the car is parked in the garage.
Why 93.3? It is not in use in my area.
What is the broadcast power? It will run off of my car battery all weekend without incident.
Who else does this? Just about every gymnasium that I have ever worked out in.
George Washington would kill you. drawn/quartered
stamp out illegal flourishing pirates of radio.
kyfs
The amendment would ban naming proposed legislation or laws in such a way as to make acronyms of the law spell out real words, because there's no reason why this proposed law has to have this as its name, other than because they thought it would be cute to call it the "PIRATE" act. We could call it the Final Universal Constitutional Knowledge Yet Amending Legal Legislation, or the "FUCK Y'ALL Amendment". Because, as this amendment points out, right there in its name, the name has little to do with the law in question, it's just there to make the acronym spell something funny.
It is important to note that this "PIRATE" Act cost us MONEY, in the form of paychecks to lawmakers to draft this shit, and they had to spend some time, (or pay someone else, out of our money) to spend some time figuring out which words to use to make the name of the law's acronym spell out whatever they want it to spell.
BETTER YET, make the law that if the acronym happens to spell out (or come really close to spelling out,) a real, actual word, that the words used to make it spell that MUST be changed to the first word in the dictionary, (whichever one they use in Congress,) starting with that letter, having at least the number of letters in the word corresponding to the position in the letter in the acronym (in alphabetical order, in case that wasn't obvious,) and skipping/excluding any word that is an abbreviation, a proper noun, (someone's or something's name,) containing punctuation, symbols, etc., or which is a contraction, or other combination, or which only meets the requirements because of the addition of an ending, (such as "-er" or "-edly",) or which is a one-word alternative form of a hyphenated word pair or group, or which is onomatopoetic, etc.
SO, since they want to call this the "PIRATE Act," The word from which we get P would be the first word starting with P that is at least one letter long. The second word in the actual name would start with I, and be the first that is at least two letters long. The third would be the first word in the dictionary starting with R that is at least three letters long, and so on.
In this case, using the New Oxford American Dictionary, the full name of the "PIRATE Act," would be the...
"The P Iamb Rabbet Abaca Tabard Earnest Act." Try saying THAT three times fast! They should have to call this the "P Iamb Rabbet Abaca Tabard Earnest Act. Maybe then they wouldn't be able to giggle to themselves so much about it, which I just KNOW they're doing. "heheheheh we made it the PIRATE act... hahahahah" They did that using OUR tax dollars, too. That's, I know, a silly thing to be upset about that they did, given all the other abominations and atrocities they've committed only in the last... oh, couple of days or so, in our name, allegedly, with our consent, (hahaha!) and with our tax dollars, (extracted effectively at gunpoint,) but it's REALLY annoying that they keep pulling this shit, and it should STOP.
Under my proposed amendment, they would be exempt from this rule, if the name of the law, when abbreviated, doesn't SPELL anything special, or anything related to the thing being regulated. For example, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (or whatever,) could still be called that, as the treaty has NOTHING TO DO WITH SALT. So calling it SALT is fine. They would be banned, however, from calling any law the "Nuclear Unification Kablooie Escape" Act, because that spells out "NUKE". Click "LIKE" if you agree with this idea. Oh, wait, there's no "LIKE" button. SHIT!
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Doesn't matter. At a certain point, increasing the punishment isn't going to change jack shit. Hell, I couldn't pay 140k in a lifetime, you think that increasing it would have any effect on me? That's like upping the punishment from life to ten times life. It makes no fucking difference.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Come on now!!! Don't be so hard on that government drone. He can't help that he will never be anything but a government drone. That cheesy acronym allows him to justify his 6 figure salary!!!!!!
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You know... LPFM is broken and the AM band is slowly bleeding away. How about this... open the AM bands to low power ( 25 watt) transmitters. Each station pays a minor fee like $20 per year, receives a callsign and agrees to not knowingly interrupt other broadcasters. Sure, some will anyway. The 50kw clear channel stations would still be kings and might even benefit from the new low power stations by gaining some of their audience. The whole issue of music royalties should have no play in the FCC dealings. If someone wants a station on 999kHz to ramble on in Creole about the evils of the FCC, go for it IMHO.
Whatever happened to the low power stations, under 5 watts, that were promised in the '90's?