Pirate radio
The term pirate radio usually refers to illegal or unregulated radio transmissions. Its
etymology can be traced to both the illegal aspects of the transmission, as well as to the
occasional use of sea vessels - fitting the most common perception of a pirate - as the
base for the transmissions. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal
broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal
two-way radio operation. Rules and regulations vary widely from country to country. In
countries such as the USA and many countries in Europe, many types of radio licenses
exist, and often the term pirate radio generally describes the unlicensed broadcasting of FM
radio, AM radio, or shortwave signals over a significant coverage area that could be picked
up by listeners.
Sometimes radio stations are deemed legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal and
considered pirate stations where the signals are receivedespecially when the signals
cross a countrys border. In other cases, a broadcast may be considered pirate due to the
nature of its content, its transmission format especially a failure to transmit a station
identification according to regulations, or the transmit power wattage of the station, even if
the broadcast is not technically illegal such as a webcast or a ham radio broadcast.
Therefore pirate radio can sometimes mean different things to different people. Pirate radio
stations are sometimes called bootleg stations a term especially associated with two-way
radio, clandestine stations or Free Radio stations.
Pirate radio history and examples
Denmark had the first known radio station in the world to broadcast commercial radio from a
vessel in international waters without permission from the authorities in the country that it
broadcast to Denmark in this case. The station was named Radio Mercur and began
transmission on August nd . In the Danish newspapers it was soon called a pirate
radio.In the s in the UK, the term referred to not only a perceived theft of the state-run
airwaves by the unlicensed broadcasters but also the risk-taking nature of offshore radio
stations that actually operated on anchored ships or marine platforms.
A good example of this kind of activity was Radio Luxembourg located in the Grand Duchy
of Luxembourg. The English language evening broadcasts from Radio Luxembourg were
intentionally beamed toward the British Isles by Luxembourg licensed transmitters, while the
intended audience in the United Kingdom originally listened to their radio sets by permission
of a Wireless License issued by the British General Post Office GPO. However, under
terms of that Wireless License, it was an offense under the Wireless Telegraphy Act to
listen to unauthorized broadcasts, which possibly included those transmitted by Radio
Luxembourg. Therefore as far as the British authorities were concerned, Radio Luxembourg
was a pirate radio station and British listeners to the station were breaking the law
although as the term unauthorised was never properly defined it was somewhat of a legal
grey area. This did not stop British newspapers from printing programme schedules for the
station, or a British weekly magazine aimed at teenage girls, Fab from promoting the
deejays and their lifestyle Radio Luxembourgs wavelength was metres.
Radio Luxembourg was later joined by two other well known pirate stations received in the
UK in violation of UK licensing, Radio Caroline and Radio London, both of which broadcast
from vessels anchored outside of territorial limits and were therefore legitimate but
unauthorised in much the same way as Luxembourg. Indeed, all three stations even had
registered offices based in mainland UK.Where actual sea faring vessels are not involved,
the term pirate radio is a political term of convenience as the word pirate suggests an
illegal venture, regardless of the broadcasts actual legal status. The radio station XERF
located at Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio,
Texas, USA, is an example.
Overview
While Mexico issued radio station XERF with a license to broadcast, the power of its
, watts transmitter was far greater than the maximum of , watts authorized for
commercial use by the government of the United States of America. Consequently, XERF
and many other radio stations in Mexico, which sold their broadcasting time to sponsors of
English-language commercial and religious programs, were labeled as border blasters,
but not pirate radio stations, even though the content of many of their programs were in
violation of US law. Predecessors to XERF, for instance, had originally broadcast in
Kansas, advocating goat-gland surgery for improved masculinity, but moved to Mexico to
evade US laws about advertising medical treatments, particularly unproven ones.
In , New York City station WHN was accused of being an outlaw station by AT&T
then American Telephone and Telegraph Company for violating trade licenses which
permitted only AT&T stations to sell airtime on their transmitters. As a result of the AT&T
interpretation a landmark case was heard in court, which even prompted comments from
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover when he took a public stand in the stations
defense. Although AT&T won its case, the furor created was such that those restrictive
provisions of the transmitter license were never enforced.
Free radio
Another variation on the term pirate radio came about during the Summer of Love in San
Francisco during the hippie days when many things were named free. Examples include
free store, free love and even free radio, which usually referred to clandestine and
unlicensed land-based transmissions. These were also tagged as being pirate radio
transmissions.The term free radio crossed the Atlantic Ocean, where it was adopted by the
Free Radio Association of listeners who defended the rights of the offshore pirate radio
stations broadcasting from ships and marine structures off the coastline of the United
Kingdom. However, the term free radio also has another meaning, because it differentiates
between that form of licensed broadcasting supported by the sale of commercial airtime
which anyone can hear free of charge, from that form of licensed commercial broadcasting
especially television that listeners and especially viewers have to subscribe to and which is
usually known as Pay TV.
Technological development, and in particular the miniaturization of transmitters and the fact
that they can be put together by amateurs, encounters a collective aspiration for some new
means of expression. Félix Guattari. Plan for the Planet. In Molecular Revolution.
Psychiatry and Politics. London: Penguin Books, . p. .In Europe, in addition to
adopting the term free radio, supportive listeners of what had been called pirate radio
adopted the term offshore radio, which was usually the term used by the owners of the
marine broadcasting stations.Freebooter was yet another variation of the term pirate radio
and it was sometimes used by the business press in the USA when describing marine
broadcasting in Europe.
While pirate radio began as a defamatory term in Britain, it later became accepted as having
a secondary meaning to describe adventurous forms of licensed broadcasting that had
roots in true offshore unlicensed broadcasting. To this end the British licensing authorities
have allowed both independent stations and to date even one local BBC station to use this
name, while the government retained use of the term pirate radio to describe any stations
on land or at sea, which are broadcasting without a license and contrary to law.
Pirate radio by geographical area
Since this subject covers both national territories, international waters and international
airspace, the only effective way to treat this subject is on a country by country, international
waters and international airspace basis. Because the laws vary, the interpretation of the term
pirate radio also varies considerably.Questions have been raised about various types of
broadcasting conducted by national governments against the interests of other national
governments, which have in turn created jamming stations transmitting noises on the same
frequency so as to destroy the receivability of the incoming signal.While the USA
transmitted its programs towards the USSR, which attempted to jam them, in the
government of the United Kingdom decided to employ a jamming transmitter to drown out
the incoming transmissions from the commercial station Radio North Sea International,
which was based aboard the Motor Vessel MV Mebo II anchored off Southeast England in
the North Sea.
Other examples of this type of unusual broadcasting include the Coast Guard Cutter
USCGC Courier, which both originated and relayed broadcasts of the Voice of America
from an anchorage at the island of Rhodes, Greece to Soviet bloc countries. Balloons have
been flown above Key West, Florida to support the TV transmissions of TV Martí, which are
directed at Cuba. Military broadcasting aircraft have been flown over Vietnam, Iraq and
many other nations by the United States Air Force. The European Union financially
supported a radio station broadcasting news and information into the former Yugoslavia
from a ship anchored in international waters.
New media pirate radio
Pirate radio has long been synonymous with AM LW,MW & SW and FM VHF unlicensed
broadcasting and border blasting in most parts of the world. With the advent of the
internet, many conventional AM/FM radio stations have also taken to simulcasting via the
web. These range from public broadcasters, licensed commercial radio, and in some
countries, the rd tier of low power license exempt radio stations.Despite pirate radio being
known for over the air transmission, a new type of pirate radio stations now operate online.
The distinguishing feature is that these online pirates will usually not pay music copyright
fees, like most of their AM/FM pirate cousins. These online pirate radio stations will usually
attract a small and loyal audience and may go unnoticed by the authorities, unlike AM/FM
pirates who can easily be heard and traced on a conventional radio.
A recent case of online pirate radio was seen in the UK. Hitz Radio UK and not to be
confused with HitzRadio.com USA managed to attract large amounts of mainstream media
publicity in early . This publicity resulted from Ryan Dunlop, the owner of the station,
nominating Hitz Radio for various business awards. After this publicity, many people with
radio industry knowledge began to probe the station, which had claimed millions of fans
and tens of thousands of listeners online. These claims, along with others, were part of the
portfolio put forward for the business awards. When industry insiders checked these claims,
it resulted in the UK music copyright agencies PPL and MCPS-PRS Alliance chasing back
fees owed by Ryan Dunlop and Hitz Radio. That in turn resulted in the audience claims to be
false, based upon the amount of back dated fees owed for copyright.
Piracy in amateur and two-way radio
Illegal use of licensed radio spectrum also known as bootlegging in CB circles is fairly
common and takes several forms. Unlicensed operation Particularly associated with
amateur radio and licensed personal communication services such as GMRS, this refers to
use of radio equipment on a section of spectrum for which the equipment is designed but
on which the user is not licensed to operate most such operators are informally known as
bubble pack pirates from the sealed plastic retail packaging common to such
walkie-talkies. While piracy on the US GMRS band, for example, is widespread some
estimates have the number of total GMRS users outstripping the number of licensed users
by several orders of magnitude, such use is generally disciplined only in cases where the
pirates activity interferes with a licensee. A notable case is that of United States amateur
operator and political activist Jack Gerritsen operating under the revoked call sign
KGIRO, who was successfully prosecuted by the FCC for unlicensed operation and
malicious interference . A subcategory of this is freebanding, the use of allocations
nearby a legal allocation most typically the MHz Citizens Band on modified or
purpose-built gear.
* Inadvertent interference Common when personal communications gear is brought into
countries where it is not certified to operate. Such interference results from clashing
frequency allocations, and occasionally requires wholesale reallocation of an existing band
due to an insurmountable interference problem; for example, the approval in Canada
of the unlicensed use of the United States General Mobile Radio Service frequencies due
to interference from users of FRS/GMRS radios from the United States, where Industry
Canada had to transfer a number of licensed users on the GMRS frequencies to
unoccupied channels to accommodate the expanded service.
Deliberate or malicious interference refers to the use of two-way radio to harass or jam
other users of a channel. Such behavior is widely prosecuted, especially when it interferes
with mission-critical services such as aviation radio or marine VHF radio. Illegal equipment
This refers to the use of illegally modified equipment or equipment not certified for a
particular band. Such equipment includes illegal linear amplifiers for CB radio, antenna or
circuit modifications on walkie-talkies, the use of export radios for freebanding, or the use
of amateur radios on unlicensed bands that amateur gear is not certified for. The use of
marine VHF radio gear for inland mobile radio operations is common in some countries,
with enforcement difficult since marine VHF is generally the province of maritime authorities.