Microbroadcasting Summer Camp

ScottGant writes "Wired has this story about Steven Dunifer and his four-day Radio Summer Camps sponsored by Free Radio Berkeley that offers how-tos for building transmitters and antennas, along with advice on handling any FCC agents that might come knocking. Imagine this: A thousand little stations send radio programming across cities and towns from senior centers, dorm rooms and attics. The understaffed FCC would be powerless to shut them down. Audiences would have substantive content choices. No one would tune into Top-40 radio. And the media moguls would slink back into their caves. The FCC and Big Radio are obviously paying attention to the microbroadcasters -- it was pressure from independent broadcasters that forced the FCC to grant a limited number of low-power, or LPFM, radio licenses to community organizations, a decision that the NAB resisted. Are these Pirates or Patriots?"

Are these Pirates or Patriots?

[Gr33nNight]

Are these Pirates or Patriots?

Can they be both?

To poor for camp

[ifreakshow]

I can't afford camp so I'm just going to rent this [imdb.com] instead.

No one would tune into Top-40 radio?

[Neil Blender]

Bullshit. That's like saying if you broadcast pirate TV shows, noone would watch Survivor or American Idol.

Re:MicroBroadcasters

[MisterJones]

I agree. Aren't these microbroadcasters on the same level as spammers? By broadcasting whatever they please over top of the expected/indended brodcasts, they interfere with the regular reception on my radio. Maybe I don't want to listen to their band's demo tape for 60 hours in a row. What if I prefer 'top-40' drivel?

Does the fact that larger radio stations are owned by a company and have a license make them evil?

imagine...

[neiffer]

adding the internet to this mix...streaming a station to 100 people who then broadcast it to a combined millions...someone could broadcast to a substantial audience from their basement

Re:No one would tune into Top-40 radio?

[WormholeFiend]

well, given that illegal movie downloads have tripled over the past year according to this BBC article
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3692999 .stm

i wouldnt be surprised if some people start broadcasting pirated movies any time soon...

just imagine the backlash that this would cause!

Powerless to shut them down??!!??!!

[MisterLawyer]

"The understaffed FCC would be powerless to shut them down."

Young Skywalker, do not underestimate the power of the FCC [radio4all.org]:

When the Federal Communications Commission came calling to shut down two local pirate radio stations late last year, the pirates say they got hit with a heavy dose of law enforcement muscle - choppers, submachine guns, flak jackets and other equipment and tactics usually seen in the takedown of killers or major drug desperados. (emphasis added)

BPL

[Barbarian]

Yet the FCC is shirking it's duties by accepting the upcoming wideband interference of broadband over power lines in the frequency range of 3 to 80 mhz.

Judging from American history....

[gilroy]

Are these Pirates or Patriots?"

...there isn't much difference, except time for a historical perspective...

Ultra low power FM

[certsoft]

You can also get "sorta Part 15 compliant" transmitters if you only want to cover a 1/4 mile radius or less. I put together one of these kits: FM100B [ramseyelectronics.com] and it works well.

As for subversive news, the article mentioned Democracy Now, I've never heard that one, but I often catch Free Speach Radio News on Pacifica Radio's streaming audio, or if I miss it, download it from FSRN [fsrn.org]

Re:MicroBroadcasters

[hackman]

It doesn't make the larger radio stations evil directly, they ended up that way because they are under control of a very few companies. (Basically 2 to my knowledge).

They are trying to gain some audience so they can change the way the FCC operations, the fact that significant resources beyond the technical gear is required to communicate over the airwaves could be interpreted as limiting freedom of speech.

I'm not saying it should be wide open to anyone, it certainly needs some regulation. I'm saying the existing restrictions on frequency use have gone beyond just protecting the frequences and moved into the realm of monopoly-like power over a critical resource.

Re:MicroBroadcasters

[Woodmeister]

Yup. All of your points are quite valid. The main problem here though is probably "Big Radio". Because spectrum is scarce and the need for a reliable means of the most essential means of receiving information exists, we do need the FCC (or the CRTC up here in the Great White North) to enforce rules regarding the improper use of the public airwaves. However, the airwaves are a "public" resource, and some of it should be allocated to any Joe who wishes to operate a low power (ie. a couple of watts or less) FM station as a service to the community. The need for licencing such LPFM stations is still there (to let the authorities know who is who), but it should be more trivial for folks to obtain said licences. Big radio will always be able to play the game, but much pressure has been applied over the years to make them the only player.

73, DE VO1JWW

Setup Data Networks not radio!

[dgp]

Set up a thousand little 802.11 hotspots with point-to-point links to send all sorts of data across cities and towns from senior centers, dorm rooms and attics! Its already legal! The hardware is already cheap!

Now you've not only got local content streaming radio, you've got VoIP services, freely distributable media sharing, local news blogs, etc etc.

This is the dream of many wireless community networking groups, including The Personal Telco Project [personaltelco.net] in Portland, Oregon, USA.

Already happened

[eltoyoboyo]

Maybe the poster might be to young to remember the Citizen's Band phenomenon in the 1970's. And while the underlying thought might be that the FCC is powerless or understaffed, try broadcasting in Clear Channel's AM/FM bandwidth and see how fast you get slapped with a cease-and-desist order.

How about decentralizing the FCC?

[Jonny Royale]

How about, instead of the FCC having total control of the airwaves for the enitre country, they give control to the states, or the metropolitan areas to control locally? Or some split deal (broadcast power below a certian level is run by the state/city, higher has both state and federal, or only federal).

It seems that if I have a low power station, and I registered with a city or state authority for the frequency in that city, I should be covered, since if the power shouldn't be enough to get to antoher city, and they won't have to worry about me there. The FM spectrum is small, but you can have broadcasters on the smae frequency, as long as the boradcasters aren't near enough to each other to intefere with one another. and that sort of management would be easier by a more local authourity.

Sounds just like the web

[bobsledbob]

Adding thousands of mini FM stations to me sounds like the same thing that's happened with the web. Ya, there are a few decent sites out there, but on the whole, the internet if full of crap.

The parallels are pretty interesting, though. If a market were to be saturated with thousands of mini-stations, one would naturally assume that a station or two might decide to take on the roll of 'directory' or 'portal', helping you find a frequency you're interested in tuning into.

I'm definetly for this kind of initiative, and I want to say that the FCC has done a good job at allowing creativity and innovation, particularly in support of hobbiests. However, it seems that big money has more influence and forces the FCC's hand most of the time. That's the real shame of it all.

Comments from someone that had a LPFM station...

[telemonster]

Hello. I had a LPFM station, and was visited by the FCC. A few notes...

With the modern equipment and some caution, it is easy to avoid harmonics, and I never experienced adjacent channel interference. Supposidly down in Flordia (Miami?) there are lots of problems with intereference as immigrants run poorly constructed equipment. However, in most cases (like my visit) the FCC could cite ZERO interference. Either the FCC heard about it on the internet (they look), or a commercial station turned you in because they don't like the thought of competition in the market. I don't think LPFM stations would show up in the ratings.

The FCC responded to the LPFM (Low Power FM (Pirate radio)) craze with the LPFM rulings that appeared to setup a legal chance for people to have 10 and 100 watt stations. The thing is, most of the tickets went to churches. ***YAWWWWNNN*** Congrats, the radio band is now filled and there is no room for evil pirates playing non-top 40 format. Church groups are already allowed to have translators, so it was kind of a disappointment. I think Kennard was big on the church tip, so this might explain it.

If you WERE to drop your station over a commercial station, multipath signal antics would cause neither to sound good a short distance from your arial.

The NAB is really out to protect it's members. Monopolistic. No one wants competition. So that is just the way it is....

An *INTERESTING* thing is the new Icom D-Star ham radio equipment. It does 128kbps TCP/IP data via repeaters for Ham radio. I'm not 100% positive, but maybe if someone designed a cheap 1.2ghz digital receiver that could decode mp3 data from the DCOM ham radio system it would be possible to run a metro radio service using streaming mp3 data, along with the callsign of the station owner. There are projects to interface to various car decks, but widespread audience wouldn't be obtainable with the hardware requirements and some HAM people might get pissed if tons of the transmitters started showing up spewing 24x7 data.

I gotta admit, it was run running a station. But the requirements for operating legal are a bore, and it seems to take the fun out of it. LDBrewer was the big source for the equipment, and FCC owned him in a major way. The lack of gear has slowed the spread of LPFM. It is pretty much died AFAIK.

And yet another thing, does anyone know if something like a HP 22ghz spectrum analyzer can be set to watch the broadcast FM spectrum (88mhz to 108mhz)... then if anything new shows up, throw an alert via RS232? I've always wanted to monitor for FM pirates in my area...

You never know what might show up on the dial...

Re:Definitely Patriots

[sweetleaf]

Currently, the FCC is the legislative branch of the media conglomerates.

The FCC exists primarily to cater to ClearChannel / Kiss FM. It's not about serving the public, it's about serving big business [mediareform.net].

Pirate Radio is an act of civil disobedience.

There is an old saying - Want a free press? Buy one. Of course, for those of us that can't buy one - you can start your own!

Just imagine 1,000 Slashdotters rebroadcasting Airamerica Radio [airamericaradio.com] across the midwest. We might finally have a voice to reckon with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

Re:Sheesh

[evilviper]

The FCC does happen to have a legitimate job, and nobody is trying to get rid of them. The problem is, they, like most of the government, have become completely corrupt, and a large movement like this is the only way to force them to do what the public wants, not just what the big companies want.

Re:Comments from someone that had a LPFM station..

[MadHungarian1917]

Speaking as a Ham,

Sending music over the ham bands using ANY encoding is illegal it was banned back in 1934 as part of the Communications Act.

Even singing "Happy Birthday" can win you a "Notice of Apparent Violation" from your friendly local fed.

Re:MicroBroadcasters

[MonkKBFR]

Wow... harsh words indeed. We run Boulder Free Radio in Boulder, CO. We tried to get a license (LPFM) but the NAB and NPR bought a couple of senators and had the rules changes so you couldn't GET a license unless you were in the middle of nowhere (no other stations around). They changed the rules in the middle of the game. I'd already bought the equipment (took 6 mo. to get back in 2000) and here I was, equipment in hand and no way to get licensed. I could sell it on eBay or say screw it and go on the air. I said screw it. We go out of our way to put a clean signal out on a clear channel. We have a EE/RF engineer as one of DJ's and we have a cleaner signal than all the 50,000 watt religious stations and most of the clear channel stations in Denver. We are very good spectrum neighbors. Most pirates are. VERY few step on anyone else. There is no quicker way to get shut down (and it's just plain rude). We bring a mix of music and news/views that you can't get on McRadio today. We focus on local musicians and we give them a voice. We give local groups the opportunity to do shows around their causes. We create a VOICE for people that no one else will give them. The FCC is supposed to make the limited resources of FM Spectrum available in ways that are good for 'the people'. They don't. They sell it to the highest bidder. The average person will never even see a radio studio, let alone have the opportunity to broadcast from one. You're listening to a few programmers in New York and Houstons tastes linked to CD sales, MTV video's and shows in corporate radio controlled venues nationally. It's a big machine designed to squeeze as much money out of you as it can. It has nothing to do with ideas, new music or freedom of speech. It's like a limited resource (say, national parks) being sold off to Disney or Proctor and Gamble to 'take care of'. Imagine a national park under corporate care. Every few feet you'd have a sign in the tree's selling tampons and little speakers next to that babbling brook trying to get you to buy more Bud at that corporate 'relief station' a mile down the pristine trail. Think about it... you've been brainwashed and you don't even know it. [e-mail] www.kbfr.org