
Pirate Act: what the law says and how it threatens pirate radio stations - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/26/20978243/pirate-act-radio-stations-law-legislation-fcc-haitian-dj-joan-martinez
======
jhallenworld
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 Wolfman Jack on XERF.

[http://www.ominous-valve.com/xerf.html](http://www.ominous-
valve.com/xerf.html)

[http://www.theradiohistorian.org/xer/xer.html](http://www.theradiohistorian.org/xer/xer.html)

[http://www.ominous-valve.com/wlw.html](http://www.ominous-valve.com/wlw.html)

Anyway for low power community radio, the situation is ridiculous. Some part
of the FM dial should just be reserved for low power self-regulated radio. The
rules are the way they are to protect incumbents and the same thing is
happening on the internet. A recent example is when the David Pakman youtube
show got dinged by CNN and NBC because he was rebroadcasting CSPAN.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z43JMffa1x0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z43JMffa1x0)

~~~
bearcobra
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](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhexl)

~~~
jhallenworld
There is a documentary about the "doctor":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkMXDVBnrv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkMXDVBnrv4)

Goat glands, oh boy..

------
ChuckMcM
Back in the day I listened to a pirate station that broadcast out of Arizona.
Similar to what the article mentioned, that station was run by people who were
passionate about music, camping, and what was going on with respect to the
National Forest service and the BLM with respect to public lands.

Objectively, they met all the mission requirements that the FCC at the time
said they stood for, use of the common air waves for the public good. Their
'crime' was that while they operated a great station the lack of regulatory
control meant they were 'at risk' of doing something "bad." They eventually
got shut down, the world was not a 'better place' for it.

~~~
mc32
Was getting in compliance too burdensome for them?

For every well-behaved pirate, there’d be many ill-mannered pirates if you
didn’t seize their operations.

~~~
mindslight
"Ill-mannered" ? I can't think of anything more ill-mannered than a handful of
companies abusing the letter of the law by "owning" all of the licensed
spectrum in a given area, and then filling it with lowest common denominator
chum in a race to the bottom.

In this day and age where main societal attention has moved past radio, most
of the FM band should be put under a regime similar to 2.4GHz. Preserve the
few remaining high power commercial broadcasters to maintain the capability
for emergency communication, and let a vibrant ecosystem (without the revenue
to pay hefty license fees) regrow on the rest.

(edit: Well, the exact 2.4GHz regime might not be the most appropriate,
because the obvious play is to broadcast on every frequency for more exposure.
But the spirit of my argument remains - "pirate" operations remain vibrant
because they can't be bought up and consolidated the way legalized stations
do, and so their operation should be _encouraged_ )

~~~
tjohns
The problem with that plan is that broadcast radio does not let two stations
(in the same general area) share the same frequency, period. So you need to
have frequency coordination.

Compare with the ISM bands, like 2.4 GHz, where you can use complex digital
signaling (e.g. CDMA/TDMA combined with robust error correction and detection)
to effectively timeshare the frequency. The only reason this works well is
because the frequencies are two-way and severely power limited - and even then
the WiFi channels are congested.

Your home WiFi network has a range of a few hundred feet. A broadcast radio
station can easily reach hundreds of miles. The reason those broadcast
licenses cost so much is because there's just not enough broadcast spectrum to
go around.

A better option for most users is to just stream over the Internet.

(That said, I would certainly love to see a chunk of spectrum set aside for
low-power ad-hoc/community stations. But I don't think it would work reliably
if it ever got popular.)

~~~
mindslight
I was aware of that when I wrote my comment. Also the 2.4GHz has a lower
inherent range due to higher frequency and water absorption.

I just don't foresee a huge interest in amateur stations being a problem that
couldn't be sorted out informally. So Timmy decides to stomp on the broadcast
of Tommy a few doors down - they'll figure it out. It certainly can't be worse
than the current situation where Tommy isn't broadcasting at all.

Perhaps I'm discounting the effects of "100W SWR-tolerant FM Transmitter" on
eBay for $60 direct from China. But _shrug_ with the current state of radio
consolidation, why not cross that bridge when we come to it?

FWIW I would say there is clearly more than enough broadcast spectrum to go
around at the current prices, given how much dead space there is.

~~~
jdsully
In this situation 1+1=0. If Timmy and Tommy go to war the frequency is
effectively useless. Neither will be heard without severe interference.

------
arvinaminpour
If anything, I think there's a lot of value for having people broadcasting on
a community level.

In the era of the internet and hyper-connectivity, we've lost that sense of
community and having local broadcasters that don't work for companies and
don't have corporate agendas is a step towards restoring it.

The available local broadcast frequencies just need to be shared by people in
the community and there has to be a strong sense of accountability for mess
ups

------
bobowzki
I like pirate radio but it's illegal by definition.

They completely fail to mention that spectrum is limited and that you are
probably causing interface for someone else.

The right thing to do would be to give them free or subsided licenses.

~~~
Nextgrid
If the spectrum is otherwise used for cancers like advertising then I wouldn't
consider interfering with it to be a bad thing.

In addition, I don't think these "pirate" operators have any nefarious
intentions and wouldn't wish to actually interfere with any station (as it
would be counter-productive to their own listeners, since the existing station
would scramble their own broadcasts too) so I am not sure this has ever been a
_real_ problem.

------
Zak
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 resources and... is there a
name for social benefit coming out of things being in a legal grey area?

~~~
moftz
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.

------
at_a_remove
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 with pitiful
transmitters, it is very difficult to come up with situations where the band
is being used as promised.

I am not surprised that pirate radio is still a thing, given this kind of
outcome.

~~~
thedoir
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.

~~~
at_a_remove
"A 2003 FCC licensing window for new translator applications resulted in over
13,000 applications, most from religious broadcasters. Due to the number of
license applications, LPFM advocates called it the Great Translator Invasion."

It isn't _limited_ to religious programming but it the major component.

Translators are really just re-broadcast mechanisms, and because of the
various oversights in the regulations, the original signal does not have to be
over the air or local, so networks can spawn off in parts of the band that
were, in the spirit of things, intended for programming created by the same
people the LPFM signal could reach: those in the nearby area.

There's a long, long history of lower power stations and tons of inside
baseball on the topic. Unfortunately, removing market caps in the nineties
caused a wave of consolidation in the radio industry that swallowed up many
local stations with higher power. The Great Translator Invasion similarly
purged the local stations with lower power.

Despite that consolidation and what you would think would be efficiencies of
scale at the cost of programming from locals, many of the media companies that
"borged up" the little guys have gone bankrupt. I won't pretend to know too
much about all of this, I can only say that due to my contacts in the radio
industry I have had multiple points of input giving me an overall negative
opinion of how this has worked out over the years.

------
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.

~~~
superkuh
The lack of technologies like cognitive radio aren't preventing mesh networks.
If you're talking the useful bands for data transmission (ie, VHF and up but
mostly very up) then the only thing that matters is height above terrain.
Unfortunately except for exceptional situations (coastal mountains or megacity
roofs) that height and getting power up there costs a lot of money. That's why
neighborhood and city mesh networks don't work. And it's why cell networks do.

------
kragen
It would be interesting to see an ISM neighborhood mesh network for
broadcasting this kind of thing. With modern openly-licensed codecs you should
be able to get decent music quality in 16kbps or less, so a half-duplex
channel at 512kbps could carry 32 concurrent transmissions. With mesh nodes
every 500 meters, you can use four nodes per square kilometer and spare the
mobile nodes from spending battery on forwarding packets when they're not
plugged in, or even transmitting signals. If you build the network on a for-
profit basis, you can subsidize distribution of $20 radios from broadcasting
fees. Is there an equivalent of RTL-SDR for pocket-sized projects yet?

Related: Cory Doctorow’s 2003 short story, “Liberation Spectrum”:
[https://craphound.com/stories/2003/01/10/liberation-
spectrum...](https://craphound.com/stories/2003/01/10/liberation-spectrum/)
[https://www.salon.com/2003/01/16/liberation_spectrum/](https://www.salon.com/2003/01/16/liberation_spectrum/)

~~~
gleapsite
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-...](https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ads-b-decoder-rtl-sdr-now-available-
android/)

~~~
kragen
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 bigger legal problem is the copyright question. You could start with music
from Jamendo and the Internet Archive but sooner or later your broadcaster DJs
are going to want to broadcast Lindsey Stirling or One Direction, and then
you'll have to prove in court that it's legal!

~~~
nullc
> 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...](https://www.prometheusradio.org/music-licensing-
noncommercial-broadcasters-and-webcasters) ). 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.

~~~
kragen
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.

~~~
nullc
Follow the link and look midway through it, statutory licensing also applies
to non-interactive internet streaming too-- though the rules are somewhat
different.

------
Mathnerd314
FCC interview: [https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/podcast/pirate-
radio](https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/podcast/pirate-radio) They minimize the
regulatory burden and emphasize the dangers of interfering with air traffic
control, and suggest internet streaming as an alternative, among other
interesting tidbits.

------
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.

------
fortran77
I loved listening to the pirate stations in NY in the late 70s and early 80s.
WFAT, WFSR, WLAU, etc.

But there are more options today for "broadcasting" over the Internet than
there were then.

While I wouldn't want to see any "pirate" face jail time or huge fines for a
first or second offence, it still can be disruptive to the legally licensed
radio stations that were granted use of those frequencies. Like it or not, the
airwaves are a limited resource, and need to be managed and provisioned.

------
jeffdavis
I recently got into HAM radio a little bit. I like to believe that radio
(aside from wifi and cell service) is still useful, but the use cases are
getting pretty thin.

There are lots of ways to deliver news. I get the feeling that a lot of the
appeal of using pirate radio is _because_ it's illegal.

I know there are a few benefits, like tuning a car radio to the right
frequency, and not requiring someone to know how to set up a streaming audio
service. But it seems to be a declining use case.

------
BLKNSLVR
I feel the need to mention the movie "The Boat that Rocked", despite being 99%
fiction (based on fact), there's a "spirit of the hacker" to it that provides
a level of comfort to my soul.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_That_Rocked](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_That_Rocked)

------
whyrlpool
A surprising number of radio stations in major cities in the UK started out as
pirates. Why aren’t lawmakers in the US instead trying to make it easier for
pirate radio stations to operate legally?

~~~
seph-reed
The U.S. is in the waiting room for a serious house cleaning. As it is,
literally everything revolves around some big companies profit margins. If it
doesn't benefit that, it's not important.

God I hope we fuck em up soon. They subverted the justice system, and now
there's no pressure release for when bad things happen.

------
jeffdavis
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.

~~~
blotter_paper
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.

~~~
magduf
>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.

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

~~~
magduf
If you look at the spectrum, however, the deep-pocketed corporations are only
getting preference of a very tiny sliver of the spectrum. They _should_ be
getting preference, because they can do a lot more with that spectrum than the
rest of us can. I hate to argue for deep-pocketed corporations, but it's true:
we simply wouldn't have things like cellphones and 4G without them controlling
the spectrum this way. You can't have things like that with massive amounts of
interference from amateurs broadcasting whatever they want with low spectral
efficiency (the spectral efficiency of old analog stuff is terrible compared
to modern protocols). You can't legislate the laws of physics; there's only so
much spectrum available.

The solution, to me, is simple: if the little people want to be able to do
more with the radio waves, they need to get the government to release some
bands to them for amateur or low-power use, instead of expecting everyone to
cram anything and everything into the 2.4GHz band. There's a _huge_ amount of
spectrum out there, but we're not allowed to use it because it's reserved for
military radios. The military doesn't need to control the vast majority of the
spectrum; it's not like they're exchanging vast quantities of data with it,
the way we civilians do with our phones.

------
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.

~~~
walrus01
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.

------
aaron695
I really don't think pirate radio would be interesting if it was legal in
itself.

Add to that they then might get mainstream advertisers and follow the FCC and
syndicate to wide non-localised areas if legal, destroying everything unique
about them.

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

~~~
nullc
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.

------
sojmq
In the days of streaming over the Internet I don't see the need for pirate
radio stations.

~~~
OrgNet
It is harder to track who's listening to which FM station and might be useful
if your internet is being blocked or censored

~~~
kube-system
On the other hand, internet radio is useful if your FM station is being
blocked or censored.

------
sh-run
I'm completely unfamiliar with this, but could they not get HAM licenses and
operate on amateur radio frequencies? Or simply turn what they are doing into
a podcast?

Or is the issue that their target audience only has access to AM/FM radios?

~~~
trothamel
That, plus Ham radio basically doesn't allow broadcasting. Ham radio
communication is (more or less) intended to be between parties that
communicate with each other. There are some exceptions, like telemetry, but
Ham isn't intended to replace commercial broadcast stations.

------
dgkhfrt656u
The FCC's purpose from its inception was to centralize power in the hands of a
few powerful capitalists. In a free country, why would the national government
have complete control over a radio station that broadcasts solely within a
single state or city?

[https://reason.com/2017/04/05/roosevelts-war-against-the-
pre...](https://reason.com/2017/04/05/roosevelts-war-against-the-pre/)

