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Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

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Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#61

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

hutzlibu wrote: post #30
stracer wrote: post #28

Fascinating how terms such as "pirate station" get into common language and nobody is getting a pause. Pirates are people who ransack other ships on the sea. The term has originally nothing to do with not having a license. Is a ship crew who sails the seas without a license a group of pirates? No. Is this a language psyop to implant people with a negative view of people who do stuff without official license?

"No. Is this a language psyop to implant people with a negative view of people who do stuff without official license?" If it is, it was quite succesfull, as at least some of them are using the term themself, also in the warez scene (pirate bay). Romanticizing pirates is not a new thing (while ignoring the bloody murder part).

Rape and pillage (different things) doesn’t have the same romance as pillage and plunder (same thing).

Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#62

Post by jandrese »

AAAAaccountAAAA wrote: post #49
stracer wrote: post #28

Fascinating how terms such as "pirate station" get into common language and nobody is getting a pause. Pirates are people who ransack other ships on the sea. The term has originally nothing to do with not having a license. Is a ship crew who sails the seas without a license a group of pirates? No. Is this a language psyop to implant people with a negative view of people who do stuff without official license?

Pirates were people who attacked merchant shipping without a license. Those who had a license for that were called privateers.

Clearchannel is privateer radio?

Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#63

Post by johngladtj »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #47
stracer wrote: post #28

Fascinating how terms such as "pirate station" get into common language and nobody is getting a pause. Pirates are people who ransack other ships on the sea. The term has originally nothing to do with not having a license. Is a ship crew who sails the seas without a license a group of pirates? No. Is this a language psyop to implant people with a negative view of people who do stuff without official license?

Pirate stations steal bandwidth from the people that paid to use that radio channel.

Those people who paid are stealing from everyone else.

Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#64

Post by volkl48 »

stracer wrote: post #28

Fascinating how terms such as "pirate station" get into common language and nobody is getting a pause. Pirates are people who ransack other ships on the sea. The term has originally nothing to do with not having a license. Is a ship crew who sails the seas without a license a group of pirates? No. Is this a language psyop to implant people with a negative view of people who do stuff without official license?

I don't know that the origin of the name is fully known, but:

Pirate radio in the UK in the 1960s was often from actual ships floating just offshore in international waters (or disused forts/installations located in them).

There was more of a "evading the authorities at sea" aspect than I think you're giving it credit for.

Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#65

Post by dredmorbius »

wolverine876 wrote: post #8

The obvious issue is whether radio adds any value now that we can stream over the Internet, with unlimited channels. While I'm a geek and love the idea of broadcast over free airways, practically how is radio any more useful now than cable tv? Here are some answers: * We're talking about pirate radio, not commercial. Pirate radio is a person broadcasting to the world, or really to their neighbors. We can do that on t…

WNYC's On the Media ran a great six-part podcast/broadcast series "The Divided Dial" about radio, its reach and significance, and of course the increasing polarisation of the medium:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/divided-dial>

Several times the point was made that radio is cheap, is accessible by virtually anyone, and in particular is effective at reaching rural regions and those travelling (often in cars or trucks), whether commuters, on-site work (construction, farming, etc.), or transportation work.

For many such audiences, radio is largely the only effective means of reaching them.

Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#66

Post by dredmorbius »

beowulfey wrote: post #41
wolverine876 wrote: post #8

The obvious issue is whether radio adds any value now that we can stream over the Internet, with unlimited channels. While I'm a geek and love the idea of broadcast over free airways, practically how is radio any more useful now than cable tv? Here are some answers: * We're talking about pirate radio, not commercial. Pirate radio is a person broadcasting to the world, or really to their neighbors. We can do that on t…

Sometimes the ephemerality of the medium is what makes it special. Radio exists just while you hear it. Having it be accessible everywhere via the internet ruins that sense of place. I don't know, maybe I'm just old.

This is another point that OTM's "The Divided Dial" series covered.

It's both a creative feature of the medium and one which makes systematic study of it challenging, as there's often no official recording and study requires either researches making their own recordings or listening live, and in either event, listening at best at perhaps 2x realtime speed, which means that analysis is slow.

(How much AI and speech-to-text services might assist in this I don't know.)

Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#67

Post by adrianmonk »

happytiger wrote: post #19

We need more punks running pirate radio and less Clearchannel corporate nonsense. Like anybody’s life is better because of corporate radio… I for one welcome the interference. What is Radio being used for that’s so critical these days anyways beyond emergency spectrum stuff (that doesn’t get messed with on these spectrums to begin with)? Just remember that the system generally wants to shut down any media it can’t co…

88.1 MHz to 91.9 MHz is already reserved for noncommercial operation[1]. "Corporate radio" can only operate from 92.1 MHz to 107.9 MHz.

So the two pirate radio stations transmitting at 88.5 MHz and 87.7 MHz would most likely be interfering with noncommercial stations, presumably the kind of radio you say you want to protect.

---

[1] See https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/how-to-apply

Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#69

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

johngladtj wrote: post #63
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirate stations steal bandwidth from the people that paid to use that radio channel.

Those people who paid are stealing from everyone else.

If radio channels weren't managed by a central authority the spectrum wouldn't be able to be used by anyone.

Re: Another crackdown on Boston-area pirate radio stations

#70

Post by quesera »

cf100clunk wrote: post #14
kyledrake wrote: post #3

I wrote a book on low power AM broadcasting. It's pretty rare that pirate stations cause meaningful interference, they operate at very low wattages (sometimes 100 watts or less) and usually have low pass filters installed in-line that prevent harmonics interference, whereas commercial stations operate at 100,000 watts and are far more likely to cause interference issues even when designed correctly. It's more likely…

> I wrote a book on low power AM broadcasting. Sound great. I hope you'll post a link. > they operate at very low wattages (sometimes 100 watts or less) Since the original article is about a station on the shoulder of the TV VHF-Low and FM bands here's my take on it. Even a very low power transmitter rated 100 watt ERP. Frankly the pirate's rig might even achieve ERP levels in the 6-8 kw range if they get lucky, enou…

> Interference issues crop up because the pirate broadcaster likely did not have the engineering knowledge or resources to analyze and predict problems in that chain

In this case, in Boston, the FM band is full. No new licensees can be fit in, due to the dearth of open channels and minimum power regs.

So any pirate is likely to be stepping on someone. Maybe not in protected contours, but I'm willing to bet that the complainants are not actually measuring interference anyway.

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