Pirate Radio and the FCC
2pnet.net News:- “Stephen Dunifer is the founder of Free Radio Berkeley and International Radio Action Training Education (IRATE). Disenchanted with the direction of mainstream media, he launched his own unauthorized FM radio station from the hills outside of Berkeley in the spring of 1993. His transmitter was about the size of a brick.”
The above quote is the intro to John Tarleton’s 2000 interview with Dunifer, the man who put what might now be described as ‘radio blogging’ on the map.
Today, “Part rock star, part Johnny Appleseed and fully the bane of the Federal Communications Commission, Dunifer has long, gray hair, large, clear glasses and a deep commitment to what he calls ‘Free Radio’,” says the Associated Press, which has him declaring:
“We’re not stealing anything. We’re claiming something that’s rightfully ours.”
Because Dunifer’s aim is to create FM radio stations, “faster than the FCC can shut them down,” says the story.
Anyone who lived in the UK during the early days of pirate radio, as it was called, will be familiar with the tussles would-be radio entrepreneurs, wanting to start their own, independent stations, had with Britain’s regulatory authorities.
But this is different. It’s radio en masse.
“Pirates, as they call themselves, draw loyal audiences in their communities but complaints from the larger, licensed public and private radio stations who say the microbroadcasters interrupt their signals,” says the story. “And they are a thorn in the side of the FCC, which is tasked with shutting them down” and, “Ten miles away from Dunifer’s radio camp, at an undisclosed location in San Francisco, an FCC enforcement team is part of a nationwide campaign to thwart the pirates.”
AP has FCC spokesman David Fiske saying pirate radio can make it impossible for the public to listen to licensed broadcasting and can cut into air traffic control communications and, “If there are more enforcement actions, that’s because there have been more complaints.”
At Dunifer’s Radio Camp, “students are warned about the FCC and taught how to evade the enforcement agents,” the story goes on “At the end of four intense days, they walked out holding their own, hand-built, ready-to-use FM radio transmitter, a shiny box slightly larger than a brick. Participants came from as far away as Namibia and as nearby as five blocks away.
But Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, concedes, “It’s like whack a mole,” says AP, adding:
“You knock it out in one place and it pops up somewhere else.”
When we went to Dunifer’s see to see what his latest thoughts were, it was TCHTO all the way.
- The connection has timed out for freeradio.org.
- The connection has timed out for Transmitters Uniting the Peoples of the Americas – Free Radio Berkeley’s Latest International Project – radiotupa.org.
- The connection has timed out for Moving Onto the Airwaves – A Graphic Free Radio Manifesto.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
John Tarleton – Interview with Stephen Dunifer, Microradio Pioneer, June, 2000
Associated Press – Pirate Radio Stations Challenge Feds, September 24, 2006
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss
Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
September 28th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
“David Fiske saying pirate radio can…cut into air traffic control communications”
Assuming the broadcasts are in the “normal” FM radio freqency range (if they were not no one would be able to tune them in…) then that is a bare faced lie.
Also, These low power stations MUST choose a broadcast frequency that is not being used by a high power commercial transmitter otherwise the “pirate” signal will be wiped out. The REAL issue is that these NON-Commercial stations can become popular and take listeners away from the MONEY. Less listeners, less advert money. The other complaints are smoke and mirror hogwash.