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

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

#51

Post by moftz »

Zak wrote: post #12

Is there a real problem to be solved by this proposed legislation? Of course, in theory, it's necessary that radio stations not transmit on the same frequency too close to each other, or there's interference. If this is happening in practice, then increased enforcement might well be called for. If, on the other hand, interference isn't happening in practice, then increased enforcement seems like both a waste of resou…

If demand for spectrum is low in a certain area and there is plenty available for these pirate stations, then just have an easier process to become legit. There obviously needs to be some sort of process to make sure everyone is playing fair, you can't have total anarchy on the spectrum but there could be less burdensome application process for lower power stations that can prove they are operating for the common good. If you are just playing music and running used car dealer ads, you can go through the normal registration process.

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

#52

Post by jhallenworld »

bearcobra wrote: post #41
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

There is a documentary about the "doctor":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkMXDVBnrv4

Goat glands, oh boy..

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

#53

Post by blotter_paper »

magduf wrote: post #44
blotter_paper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough. The deep pocketed corporations do still get preference over little people though, even if Big Daddy Government gets his slice first.

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

#54

Post by Multicomp »

If we could get cognitive radio going over SDRs, mesh networks using automatic frequency hops to the nearest radio whitespace would become drop-dead easy.

From there, the FCC could issue regulations to the tune of 'use any non-military band for up to X seconds, provided you confirm you are not interfering with any other traffic every Y milliseconds' and the entire licensing scheme of "radio bandwidth is a finite good" could be virtually eliminated. It would be like going from IPv4 to IPv6 in terms of total amounts of available IP addresses.

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

#55

Post by vinay427 »

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…

> 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.

I would consider actively switching if there were an alternative that was strictly better. Something with the quality of at least HD radio and the reliability and accessibility of FM radio, for instance.

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

#56

Post by nullc »

Broadcast radio is dying to the point that it's difficult to purchase a high end FM tuner now-- pretty much anything that exists is old models. Heck, used XDR-F1HD regularly sell for twice their original price. In many places big chunks of the dial are vacant, and where it isn't a few companies own most of the stations.

The public and the industry needs more pirate radio -- if the political will to undo the regulatory capture that's killed LPFM can't be fixed quickly.

Instead of enhancing penalties, they should instead be limited to actual damages for signal interruption to licensed stations plus no more than 2x whatever licensing would have cost had the FCC been willing to issue a license, which they're usually not.

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

#57

Post by thedoir »

at_a_remove wrote: post #21

The Great Translator Invasion of 2003 created a situation where the portions of the band where community radio, run by and for residents ( local information, for local people), was instead occupied by "translators," replicating signals from religious broadcast networks like Moody. Between that and NPR behaving as if they were about to be blasted off the air by third adjacent-channel interference from tiny station wit…

What happened in 2003 and where can I learn more about the translator situation?

It doesn't seem to be limited to religious programming. For example, KUSC, a non-profit classical station, has 4 translators. I don't understand why. NPR affiliate KCRW has 5 translators.

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

#58

Post by nullc »

kragen wrote: post #35
gleapsite wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A long time ago I used an rtlsdr hooked up via usb-otg in order to track aircraft [1]. I'd be really interested in a minified version that didnt need the otg dongle. Or even a stand alone battery operated sdr that could be controlled with bluetooth? I dunno how big that market is, especially absent a network like you propose. [1] https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ads-b-decoder-rtl-sdr-now-available-...

If a broadcasting area can be 10 square kilometers with 100,000 people in them, and you need 40 base stations for $5000 to cover that, I feel like the infrastructure investment is insignificant compared to the engineering effort. Apparently the market exists. In the US you could even transmit FM radio at the legal power levels from the base stations too, reaching like one apartment building from each base station. A…

> A bigger legal problem is the copyright question.

_Unfortunately_, statutory licensing means that you can license most commercial music for your station for a couple hundred per year ( https://www.prometheusradio.org/music-licensing-noncommercia... ). Considering the investment of time that goes into scheduling, promoting, etc. a successful station the licensing costs aren't that big a deal.

I say unfortunately because the existence of blanket rates and in particular compulsory licensing has undermined the free market, and as a result new/independent performers have a much harder time getting aired because they essentially can't compete in terms of price (e.g. you can play our stuff free!) because almost every station/venue is already paying blanket rates and doesn't have much marginal cost in playing the commercial stuff.

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

#59

Post by nullc »

Animats wrote: post #29

Whatever happened to "Community Radio" low-power licensing? Or is a 3 mile radius just too small?

They aren't currently issuing LPFM licenses.

Commercial operators and, in particular, NPR have fought incredibly hard against LPFM even with the anemic power/radius limitation.

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

#60

Post by kragen »

nullc wrote: post #58
kragen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a broadcasting area can be 10 square kilometers with 100,000 people in them, and you need 40 base stations for $5000 to cover that, I feel like the infrastructure investment is insignificant compared to the engineering effort. Apparently the market exists. In the US you could even transmit FM radio at the legal power levels from the base stations too, reaching like one apartment building from each base station. A…

> A bigger legal problem is the copyright question. _Unfortunately_, statutory licensing means that you can license most commercial music for your station for a couple hundred per year ( https://www.prometheusradio.org/music-licensing-noncommercia... ). Considering the investment of time that goes into scheduling, promoting, etc. a successful station the licensing costs aren't that big a deal. I say unfortunately bec…

Right, but those rates don't apply to internet streaming. This proposed new service isn't exactly internet-based, but it isn't an FCC-licensed commercial radio station either, and it's digital and packet switched; you can bet your left ovary that sooner or later it would face music industry mafiosi arguing in court that it should have to pay the internet streaming radio rates, not the ones KVIL pays.
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