Catch up with the mediageek radioshow: New FCC Chairman & FCC Enforcement 2008

If you haven’t been keeping up with the mediageek radioshow or subscribing to the podcast, now is a good time to listen to this week’s show featuring our favorite FCC watcher, Matthew Lasar. We talk about the man reported to be Obama’s pick for FCC Chair, Julius Genachowski, and what his appointment to the FCC might mean for internet freedom and media ownership.

Listen to this show right now:

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The first show of the new year featured my annual year in review discussion with John Anderson of DIYmedia.net. In the first half of the program we noted the relative lack of progress on many issues and discussed Larry Lessig’s call to get rid of the FCC. For the second half we got down to brass tacks reviewing John’s research on FCC enforcement action against unlicensed broadcasters in 2008 — a whole lotta smoke, not much fire. Ragnar also excerpted a portion of this on his Pirate’s Week podcast.

Listen to part one of the year-in-review:

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Listen to part two, all about FCC enforcement in 2008:

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mediatwit

I realize not everyone reads the blog from the webpage itself — some read by RSS readers. So you might have missed my Twitter feed over on the right sidebar. I started using the micro-blogging Twitter app about eight months ago, and integrated it into the site some time in the fall. I like Twitter because it’s an easy way to publish quick thoughts or links–tweets are limited to 140 characters–without having to go through the full WordPress blog interface. On top of that, there’s a critical mass of users making it good way to network and pick up some good info.

But this post isn’t just about my Twitter usage (which would make for a lame post), but rather two interesting mediageek-like uses I’ve seen.

Ragnar is the producer of the Pirates’ Week podcast, covering pirate radio–primarily shortwave–for more than three years (listen to an interview with Ragnar on the radioshow). An avid shortwave listener, Ragnar has now been posting his reception reports of pirate stations to his Twitter feed. This is a perfect use of Twitter because Ragnar posts while the station is broadcasting, along with its frequency. Pirate shortwave stations are all hit-and-run affairs. They don’t broadcast 24/7, but rather for a half-hour or hour at a time, especially when shortwave propagation conditions are good (they change with the seasons, time of day and atmospheric conditions). So listening to pirate shortwave stations is always a bit of hunt. While the chase is part of the fun, it’s still nice to have someone give you hand by letting you know when he’s found a station.

To some extent Twitter is even more up-to-the-minute than blogs, since the tweets are short and easy to post quickly, making it an ideal platform to broadcast breaking info. You can also configure Twitter to text message your phone with tweets–you can choose whose tweets do that. If you’re a hardcore pirate listener, then this might be a way to stay on top of things without being on the computer.

Boulder Free Radio is an unlicensed FM radio station that recently returned to the air in that Colorado city with a new crew, resurrecting the name and spirit of a former station that called it quits in 2005. The KBFR crew is also using Twitter to post programming info, events, and other stuff of interest to listeners.

My understanding is that the station is broadcasting nightly, with longer broadcasts on the weekends. To the best of my knowledge the station doesn’t currently maintain a website. So using a Twitter feed is a good way to keep listeners informed of when broadcasts and other events may be happening. Of course, publicity is always a risk for a pirate station, since you also possibly publicize to the FCC. But the more instantaneous nature of Twitter means that you don’t have to give much advance notice. This is an advantage when dealing with the FCC, which isn’t necessarily well suited to running out to bust pirate broadcasters like cops answering a 911 call.

Announcing broadcasts via Twitter would be especially useful for hit-and-run stations that attempt to minimize detection by the authorities by maintaining a less predictable schedule.

Twitter is also designed for two-way communication. Anyone with a free Twitter account can send public or private messages to another Twitter user as easily as posting a tweet. This could be a good way to take requests, reception reports and listener feedback without using the phone or email.

If any readers know of some interesting or innovative use of Twitter by other indy media makers — pirate or otherwise — I’d be curious to hear about them.

Limited Area Broadcasting

I’ve just spent a little chunk of time plowing through the archives of the Low Power Radio blog, which I found through my referrer logs. It promises insight on “how to set up and operate your own low power radio station.” By low power, the blogger Kev means:

Micro radio, micro power broadcasting, part 15 radio, community radio, neighborhood station, experimental broadcasting, hobby broadcasting – I love it all!

It’s primarily a pretty good compendium of annotated links that’s been going with a few posts a month since February. Indeed, I found info about many more part-15 low-power transmitters for both AM and FM than I knew were available. There’s been a community of so-called “legal” low-power broadcasters in the US for a very long time. Many enthusiasts and broadcasters have been congregating for years at a message board called “Community Radio USA”. One of the denizens of that board has his own site called HobbyBroadcasting.net HobbyBroadcaster.net, which I found while reading through the Low Power Radio Blog.

While here at the ‘geek the focus is often on unlicensed broadcasters operating with power above the part-15 limit (roughly 100 milliwatts or so), there’s much utility to be found with part-15 stations, especially in dense urban areas or similar circumstances. Since FM part-15 limits are based on field-strength it’s relatively difficult to build a station with much reach that remains truly legal — even if you pump only 10 milliwatts into a very efficient antenna several hundred feet off the ground you’ll likely be reaching further than part-15 regs allow.

However, AM limits are specified in antenna length and power (100 milliwatts), allowing much more room for creative engineering and getting more broadcast range without breaking the law. Kyle Drake’s excellent LPAM handbook is a great reference for anyone wanting to try out legal part-15 broadcasting on the AM dial.

Much of the info that the Low Power Radio blog has dug up is more historical in nature, culled from both internet and print sources, like this 1991 handbook for starting a station. While the references to equipment manufacturers and sellers may be outdated, there’s still some decent tech and historical info to glean. I’m glad that someone is compiling and sharing this stuff and I hope that the blog sticks around a while.

Another “Reformed” Pirate

Following up on my tangent that veered onto the infamous off-shore US pirate, Radio New York International, the Radio Kitchen has a new post about WHVW in New York’s Hudson Valley, an eclectic AM music station owned and run by “Pirate” Joe Ferraro, who partnered with Allan Weiner in RNI. In addition to shortwave station WBCQ, WHVW makes for another licensed broadcast station run by a former unlicensed broadcaster.

As the Radio Kitchen’s Professor describes:

It’s funny. Joe’s patter reminds me more than a little bit of WBCQ’s Allan Weiner. Which makes sense, because they were friends at one time– fellow radio pirates in fact. Sadly, they had a falling out, which I once heard Allan mention in passion on his show. Apparently money was a problem and maybe some broken promises too. I don’t know the details. But it occurred to me as I was listening to Joe’s show, that if you could somehow combine WBCQ and WHVW into one radio station, it could be a killer combination. Then again, they already kinda did that, as two kids sharing an illegal frequency back in the 1970’s.

It sure seems like the radio dials would be a little less rich without the contributions of these former pirates.

Tom Roe on free103point9′s New FM Station and Microradio Past

Tom Roe, program director for free103point9, was my guest for last week’s radioshow where we discussed that organization’s approach to transmission arts and how they were able to obtain a rare noncommercial full-power FM broadcast license. That show is now available for downloading or listening online.

In the second half of the live broadcast version of the show Tom and I talked a little about the fact that free103point9 actually started out as an unlicensed micropower station in 1997, before deciding to go online only. This makes free103point9 one of only two contemporary broadcast stations to have roots in unlicensed radio. The other one is shortwave station WBCQ whose operator, Allan Weiner, was the man behind the infamous Radio New York International, a station which in 1987 attempted to emulate European pirates by operating off-shore. Weiner wrote a memoir of his pirate radio days called Access to the Airwaves: My Fight for Free Radio. Unfortunately the publisher, Loompanics Press, went out of business in 2006, although it looks like new and used copies are still available online.

Fully indulging in the tangent, after the jump you can watch a compilation video of news coverage of Radio New York International from 1987.
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Catching up with friends

My pals on the internets have been keeping busy informing the masses about what’s really going on with overlords of our media environment. If you don’t keep up with Matthew Lasar’s Ars Technica articles or John Anderson’s DIYmedia missives, here’s some recent posts you should check out:

• Matthew reports that FCC Democrat Jonathan Adelstein is now on board to approve the Sirius/XM satellite radio merger, but only with significant conditions. This makes him commissioner #2 after Chairman Martin. Matthew also digs up some interesting dirt about Commissioner Tate tapping industry lobbyists for advice.
• John comments on the “glimmer” of hope that the FCC would take real action against Comcast for its BitTorrent filtering being downgraded to a “mirage.”
  

  After about a day and a half of happy-buzz, Martin and the FCC clarified their position – Comcast will not be substantially penalized in any meaningful fashion for its data-discrimination practices. There will be no further investigation, no priority inquiry, not even a monetary forfeiture: instead, the FCC will require the company to “disclose” its bandwidth-management practices and “encourage” Comcast to adopt more “protocol-agnostic” methods of shaping the traffic that flows over its pipes.

• Back in June John noted the current trends in FCC enforcement action against unlicensed broadcasters, observing that “the FCC is on relative track to meet its record-breaking enforcement effort of last year.” However, the FCC isn’t collecting any more financial forfeitures, and
  

  Although the FCC is getting more diligent about reducing the time between finding out about a pirate and making contact with the station, there is no obvious correlation between a diminution of stations on the air as a result.

The FCC Can Has Google for Piratez

Ever wondered how the FCC tracks down and busts pirate radio operators? Anyone familiar with the subject has heard about radio tracking equipment that helps agents triangulate a signal, but what other tools are in their arsenal?

Google is a big one. Another tool? Taking pictures of the buildings where they find signals, and photographing the license plates of cars parked in front.

That’s what we learn thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Lumberjack, the student-run newspaper of California’s Humboldt State University. The paper filed the request regard the FCC’s investigation of the Humboldt Free Radio Alliance last year which led to the station shutting down.

Amongst the notes revealed in the case file obtained by the paper are an agent’s “investigation” of a MySpace page:

“The webpage shows a number of people who are dj’s. Printed out the myspace web pages and placed them in the case folder,” FCC documents said.

The Commission apparently learned that the station had shut down from a Google search, too, which brought up a post to an Indymedia site:

“Googled ‘Humboldt Free Radio Alliance’ an (Internet publication) IndyMedia article related to our shutdown,” stated the FCC documents.

“Since information indicates station off the air and may be trying to find a new location, will close the case based on the certified mail receipt. A new location will require a new case.”

What’s interesting about this is the sheer mundaneness of it all. Aside from being able to use signal finding equipment, there’s very little cleverness about finding pirate operators. And you really don’t even need the fancy equipment in the first place. A relatively sensitive radio can help you track down a pirate signal to within a block or so. Then you can look around for an antenna, which needs to be mounted high and away from other blockages, and so is likely to be somewhat conspicuous if you know what you’re looking for.

Indeed, the way most pirates evade the FCC is through simply keeping things on the down-low and common sense. Not broadcasting 24-7, and keeping a more erratic schedule are two very simple ways of minimizing detection and making it a little more difficult for the FCC to track you down, since agents have lots of other things to do besides hunt down pirates.

It’s also good to see some confirmation of the fact that agents do use the internet. Ever since I started following the pirate radio underground on the ‘net some 14 years ago, the most common admonition you’d read–whether on usenet, listservs or bulletin boards–is not to post too much identifying information about your station and its broadcasts.

Of course, the problem with not using the internet to publicize a station is that it makes it more difficult to attract listeners who might be interested.

Although I haven’t seen the case file, my guess is that the FCC only starts its Google searches once it’s opened an investigation. That is, I doubt that the Commission spends a lot of time trolling the internet to find pirate radio websites and posting–though I also would believe that agents do peruse pirate-related sites like the Free Radio Network. The Commission after all is truly a complaint-driven bureaucracy.

More likely is that the searches start once the Commission has received complaints from listeners or other broadcasters.

So, keep that in mind if you want to publicize your unlicensed station online. Publicity comes with a price, so a little caution goes a long way.

Is Boulder Free Radio Back?

Monk–the captain of the original, but departed Boulder Free Radio–observes the apparent resurrection of the mantle. The new captains say:

Pirate Radio lives again in Boulder! We may go by others names and on different frequencies. We may broadcast live on the air, or streaming over the internet, or both. We may do it from our homes, our vehicles, businesses, parties or local bars. Some days, we don’t do anything at all and the air is filled only with static. Other days, we bring voices and music from other citizens in Boulder and from around the country, and the world.

The first iteration of KBFR was infamous in micropower circles for maintaining a clever and long-running game of cat-and-mouse with the FCC that lasted years. Monk finally shut the station down in 2005 after being hunted down and busted by the Commission.

From their website it looks like the new KBFR team intends to utilize many of the stealth methods employed by Monk. It will be interesting to hear how successful they are.

John Anderson on Freak Radio Santa Cruz: the State of Media in 2008

My pal John Anderson recently joined Skidmark Bob on Santa Cruz’s long running unlicensed station to dish about many of the topics he writes about at DIYMedia.net and discusses with me on the radioshow. Topics include Pirate Radio, FM Radio, on-air Television, Net Neutrality (or lack their of), translator FM stations and the very bleak outlook of corporate control and abuse in all types of media.

Download the MP3 at Santa Cruz IMC, or listen right here:

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The O.P.s — Original Pirates — Full Power and Micropower

As long as there have been transmitters, there’s been broadcasters who aren’t interested in appealing to a higher authority for the right to use them. As for nearly as long, there’s been some federal agency hunting them down. But not nearly successfully enough to quash unlicensed broadcasting altogether.

To whit, this 1934 Modern Mechanix article complaining about not just the ship-board off-shore pirates and the Mexican-based border stations, but also the broadcasters operating with what we’d call micropower:

All the so-called “radio pirates” are not across the border or out on the high seas. A. D. Ring, principal engineer of the-federal radio commission, says that at least 200 outlaw stations have been under surveillance in the United States alone.

Most of these stations operate on from one to five watts power and claim immunity from federal restrictions on the assertion that their radio waves do not travel from one state to another. However, supersensitive equipment employed by federal investigators has broken down this claim and as a consequence many such station operators have been indicted and held for trial in the federal courts.

It’s somehow comforting to know that the “my radio signal doesn’t cross state lines” defense was alive and well more than seventy years ago, even if it didn’t hold any more water then than it does now.

It’s also comforting to see that despite all the bluster from the regulatory agency, unlicensed broadcasting is still alive and well 3/4 century later. (via Slashdot)