Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 83 posts

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#41

Post by bearcobra »

jhallenworld wrote: post #24

There is an interesting story about the high power side of broadcasting. There was a station in the US, WLW that was 500 kW. This one station reached almost the entire country. The FCC finally limited the maximum power to 50 kW. Mexico had no such restriction, so "border blasters" appeared- high power stations on the boarder transmitting into the US. They ran ads, made money and had huge audiences. Most famous is Wol…

The Reply All episode where they get into some of the history of XERA and John Brinkley is pretty great. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhexl

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#42

Post by leoh »

jhallenworld wrote: post #24

There is an interesting story about the high power side of broadcasting. There was a station in the US, WLW that was 500 kW. This one station reached almost the entire country. The FCC finally limited the maximum power to 50 kW. Mexico had no such restriction, so "border blasters" appeared- high power stations on the boarder transmitting into the US. They ran ads, made money and had huge audiences. Most famous is Wol…

Imagine, if you will, that this law was applied to Facebook, Twitter, etc. That you could only see content produced within some number of miles. Without Having so much reach, I wonder if we could devise a system that returns to amplifying local voices and creating community as opposed to louder, problematic voices from afar.

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#43

Post by magduf »

jfengel wrote: post #30
jhallenworld wrote: post #24

There is an interesting story about the high power side of broadcasting. There was a station in the US, WLW that was 500 kW. This one station reached almost the entire country. The FCC finally limited the maximum power to 50 kW. Mexico had no such restriction, so "border blasters" appeared- high power stations on the boarder transmitting into the US. They ran ads, made money and had huge audiences. Most famous is Wol…

I would expect that radio stations in general were suffering from people switching to other forms of media. If that's the case, would it perhaps drive the licensing price down? And if the licenses could be affordable, perhaps it would be possible to raise funds for people to do low power radio in that space? I don't know if it would be legal to do it that way, but if somebody presented the FCC with a plan (including…

>I would expect that radio stations in general were suffering from people switching to other forms of media. If that's the case, would it perhaps drive the licensing price down?

Actually, I kinda doubt it. I think radio is a lot like landline telephones: it's "dying", but it's taking a long time because there's a bunch of dinosaurs who still use it and won't quit until they're dead. (Disclaimer: I listen to radio in my car sometimes, but only NPR, not anything commercial.)

So basically there's a captive audience here that won't go away any time soon, and is getting older and easier to manipulate into buying stuff. It's not a growth sector for sure, but it is something a company can put minimal investment into and milk for profit. This is seen now with landline phone service: it's gotten really unreliable in many places these days because the infrastructure is decaying and companies are spending the absolute minimum to keep it going, but they're milking it for profit from all the dinosaurs who refuse to give it up.

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#44

Post by magduf »

blotter_paper wrote: post #38
jeffdavis wrote: post #23

Maybe the FCC should set aside a few portions of spectrum that are completely unregulated. Probably a lot of bad actors would show up. But who knows? Maybe most of them would get bored and leave.

This is basically what wifi, bluetooth, and garage door openers use. The sad thing is that they carved out chunks of the spectrum that don't reach as far as the already-in-use TV and radio spectrums. We get the leftover bits for arbitrary consumer transmission, the good parts are spoken for by corporations with deep pockets. I'd like to see the whole thing opened up, it would make meshnets easier to get going.

>We get the leftover bits for arbitrary consumer transmission, the good parts are spoken for by corporations with deep pockets.

Actually, no. Check out a chart of the usage of the radio spectrum in the US, and you'll find a shockingly huge amount of it is reserved for the military.

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#45

Post by Chlorus »

magduf wrote: post #43
jfengel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that radio stations in general were suffering from people switching to other forms of media. If that's the case, would it perhaps drive the licensing price down? And if the licenses could be affordable, perhaps it would be possible to raise funds for people to do low power radio in that space? I don't know if it would be legal to do it that way, but if somebody presented the FCC with a plan (including…

>I would expect that radio stations in general were suffering from people switching to other forms of media. If that's the case, would it perhaps drive the licensing price down? Actually, I kinda doubt it. I think radio is a lot like landline telephones: it's "dying", but it's taking a long time because there's a bunch of dinosaurs who still use it and won't quit until they're dead. (Disclaimer: I listen to radio in…

> it's gotten really unreliable in many places these days because the infrastructure is decaying and companies are spending the absolute minimum to keep it going, but they're milking it for profit from all the dinosaurs who refuse to give it up.

Citation? I haven't heard anything about this and I work closely with telecom.

> and is getting older and easier to manipulate into buying stuff.

You know, Slashdot was never quite this toxic back in the day.

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#46

Post by magduf »

Chlorus wrote: post #45
magduf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would expect that radio stations in general were suffering from people switching to other forms of media. If that's the case, would it perhaps drive the licensing price down? Actually, I kinda doubt it. I think radio is a lot like landline telephones: it's "dying", but it's taking a long time because there's a bunch of dinosaurs who still use it and won't quit until they're dead. (Disclaimer: I listen to radio in…

> it's gotten really unreliable in many places these days because the infrastructure is decaying and companies are spending the absolute minimum to keep it going, but they're milking it for profit from all the dinosaurs who refuse to give it up. Citation? I haven't heard anything about this and I work closely with telecom. > and is getting older and easier to manipulate into buying stuff. You know, Slashdot was never…

>Citation? I haven't heard anything about this and I work closely with telecom.

It's what I've seen with some of my family that lives in smaller towns or rural areas. Some crappy company like CenturyLink buys up the infrastructure and then just lets it rot, but charges huge prices for phone service, higher than cellular service. Then service quality is poor and outages are common.

>You know, Slashdot was never quite this toxic back in the day.

How on earth is it "toxic" to state a fact? Older people are generally easier to manipulate, which is why there's laws against "elder abuse". Are you going to try to claim now that dementia doesn't exist, because that's "ageist"?

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#47

Post by tracker1 »

I'm curious... if you're mostly doing talk, then wouldn't something around a 32k stream be potentially sufficient these days? I haven't run the numbers, but if anyone has calculated on what it takes to run a web/online stream I'd be interested.

Of course, that precludes music licenses for the most part.

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#49

Post by walrus01 »

tracker1 wrote: post #47

I'm curious... if you're mostly doing talk, then wouldn't something around a 32k stream be potentially sufficient these days? I haven't run the numbers, but if anyone has calculated on what it takes to run a web/online stream I'd be interested. Of course, that precludes music licenses for the most part.

From a technical standpoint it costs basically nothing, you can get a dedicated server with 100Mbps speed quota on a 1000 Mbps upstream, for under a hundred bucks a month.

Sufficient to support a very large number of Icecast stream listeners.

All of the software needed to do it is zero dollars and some combination of GPL/BSD/Apache licensed.

Re: Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations

#50

Post by moftz »

leoh wrote: post #42
jhallenworld wrote: post #24

There is an interesting story about the high power side of broadcasting. There was a station in the US, WLW that was 500 kW. This one station reached almost the entire country. The FCC finally limited the maximum power to 50 kW. Mexico had no such restriction, so "border blasters" appeared- high power stations on the boarder transmitting into the US. They ran ads, made money and had huge audiences. Most famous is Wol…

Imagine, if you will, that this law was applied to Facebook, Twitter, etc. That you could only see content produced within some number of miles. Without Having so much reach, I wonder if we could devise a system that returns to amplifying local voices and creating community as opposed to louder, problematic voices from afar.

Ideas would spread the exact same way. Most people follow their friends and relatives. Most of those people usually live near you. It wouldn't take much for ideas to spread on a sort of mesh network of these interconnected groups.
Post reply on HN