From douzzer Wed Aug 27 00:17:46 EDT 1997
From: Daniel Pouzzner <douzzer@kill-9.ai.mit.edu-antispam>
Newsgroups: alt.radio.pirate
Subject: Why pirate RADIO?
Sender: <douzzer@kill-9.ai.mit.edu-antispam>
Organization: (private)
This is email I sent to bdezonia@facstaff.wisc.edu, in response to
personal email from him. I worked too hard gathering information for
it, to not post it here. In this article, "You" addresses him, not
the Usenet at large, of course.
---------
Granted I am exceptionally prone to modelling differing points of view
in militaristic terms.
You do need to better appreciate that the core of the "pirate" radio
movement consists mostly of people who are grossly dissatisfied with
the legal, economic, psychological, and cultural status quos. These
people are pariahed when they speak their minds.
Your suggestion that such people can expect the benefits of state of
the art corporate technology to befall them, is specious.
Your optimism that the scenarios I laid out (corporate/government
monopoly of the means of media distribution) will not come to pass, is
really just a statement about your own naivete. These scenarios have
already largely been played out. The FCC is a puppet of the NAB.
Most radio stations are owned by vast conglomerates (Jacor,
Westinghouse, Chancellor, and a handful of others two of which are
about to be bought out by top-5ers). Worldwide, television
programmers and newspapers answer to corporate boards populated by
boardroom migrants from Fortune 100 companies.
"why pirate RADIO?"
Nearly everyone uses cable or DBS to feed signals to their
televisions, so that avenue is closed to viable proponents of
revolution. The manufacturing and distribution of a newspaper or
magazine is logistically prohibitive. Hard media, and lawful
broadcast, inherently involve a loss of anonymity, making it
unsuitable for certain particularly inflammatory (though 1st
Amendment-protected) speech by dint of the very real risk to life and
limb the speaker is made to accept. Audio programming exhibits a
characteristic unique among the media, in that it does not necessarily
monopolize the attention of the audience. One can cook, drive a car,
work on a computer, go jogging, etc., while listening to the radio.
This is desirable.
You and I both live in a society where talk show hosts, abortion
clinic doctors, academic scientists, law enforcement agents, cultural
groups, and various other clearly delineated groups of people, are
systematically targetted by murderous nutcases (Ted Kaczinski, John
Salvi, Tim McVeigh, Justin Volpe, etc ad nauseum). Those people in
America who aren't protected by personal security, publically piss
people off at their own very real peril. Pirate broadcasting provides
a means for effective free speech without becoming a sitting duck for
violent extremists.
>I want people to see past the current
>limitations to consider a future that might alter their hobby.
hobby? Some "pirates" are hobbyists. Many are not, and none of the
core members of the "pirate" movement are. Many are fulltime
professionals in the radio industry, and a small number are dedicated
to "pirate" radio full time.
>how many
>simulataneous listeners does your average mini-broadcast have?
Easily thousands. A real phenom could clock tens of thousands at once
in a major metro area. In LA, NYC, etc, a broadcaster can reach a
potential audience of many millions. If 10% of the disgruntled
english-as-a-first-language 20-somethings in NYC listen to a quality
show for them and about them that airs for two hours, at the same time
each week, that's an audience of ten thousand. If you push past 100
watts (a very imaginary glass ceiling), the potential audience grows
rapidly.
>you can get cd quaility sound via MP3
No, I can't, and neither can you. MP3 is lossy-compressed using
subbanding. It may sound to you like a CD, but it is not a CD.
>>it is not the case that
>> the whole world runs Wintel or AppleMac.
>
>So what? Your point is ...
That even the current state of the art is not available to me, despite
my being obviously well-versed and capable in the relevant areas,
because of the habitual use of proprietary technologies.
>> Eureka, DTV, IBOC, DBS, cable digital radio, and satellite radio.
>
>Of these technologies I don't know much. But why is ondemand the only
>thing you are concentrating on? What about precanned streams -- where
>playback is not interrupted? Fill me in.
None of those are definitionally, or even typically, on-demand.
>Why are the proposed digital schemes the only way?
They aren't, but the standards formation process is performed by
committees. These committees suffer not just from the inherent
inferiority of committee decision-making to individual decision-making
in the design process, but also a panoply of variously concordant and
conflicting hidden agendas.
The result is that standards are, almost categorically, far less
useful than they could be. Marvelous standards are theoretically
inevitable but practically rare to the point of negligibility (and
when they do come about, they usually start as ad hoc standards by
dint of overwhelming popularity).
>Your scenario requires a complete undermining of all existing
>technologies (broadcast TV, radio, and the Internet in its current
>capabilities). Do you see it all going away? All of it controlled by
>corporations and governments. On the Internet I can't have a home page,
>an AVI broadcast, WAV files, TXT files, etc. ?
It already is basically all controlled by corporations and governments
(as detailed above). Did you experience the Internet outage a month
or two ago, when Internic botched a propagation? With the push of a
lever, the Internet ceases to work - no email, no netnews, no web.
Centralized control. Internic is owned by SAIC, and SAIC is a private
employee-owned collossus, mostly servicing government contracts, with
a board populated by national security (NSA, CIA, Pentagon) insiders.
The influence of the corporate state is more insidiously nefarious
than you have imagined even in your wildest nightmares.
What I see on the Internet is the White House, pressured by the NSA,
FBI, and CIA, continuing to impede the deployment of cryptographically
sound infrastructure. I see them signing the CDA into law (promptly
rejected by the courts). I expect continued attacks on anonymous
remailers and those who run them. I see people who would embrace
government microregulation of Internet messaging in the form of
anti-"Spam" legislation. I see revolutionaries who publish their
manifestos on the net, being thrown in jail with no bail set, on
absurd and trumped-up charges (Jim Bell). I expect to see ISP's
coordinate with eachother, establishing a "credit network" so that
individuals deemed objectionable by some metric, are systematically
locked out. I expect authentication of all messages, connections, and
operations to become effectively compulsory, using a key registered in
a single, government-regulated key database.
I observe that without Sprint (Fortune Global 500 #288), AT&T (#16),
MCI (#248), and UU Net/Worldcom, there is no Internet at all. I
observe that these corporations can, within the framework of plausible
deniability, conspire to prevent the relay of messages they find
objectionable. I observe that these are vast, publically traded
members of the transnational corporate community. I observe that the
paper wealth of these corporations is annihilated with any dramatic
shift in the status quo.
Let's find out how these guys get around.
Voting Board of Directors memberships:
MCI:
Bert C. Roberts Jr.: Chairman/CEO MCI, chairman of the National
Alliance of Business, member of the board of the National Association
of Securities Dealers, and member of the National Information
Infrastructure Advisory Council.
Clifford L. Alexander, Jr.: President Alexander and Associates
Judith Areen: Dean of the Law Center Georgetown University
Michael H. Bader: Partner Haley Bader & Potts P.L.C.
Sir Peter L. Bonfield: Chief Executive British Telecommunications plc
Richard M. Jones: Former Chairman and CEO Guaranty Federal Savings Bank
Gordon S. Macklin: Corporate Financial Advisor MCI
Sir Colin Marshall: Chairman British Airways plc
Rupert Murdoch: Chairman and Chief Executive The News Corporation Limited
J. Keith Oates: Chairman Marks & Spencer plc
Richard B. Sayford: President and CEO Strategic Enterprise
Gerald H. Taylor: CEO MCI
Judith Whittaker: General Counsel/Secretary Hallmark Cards
John R. Worthington: Consultant MCI
ATT:
Robert E. Allen: CofB and CEO ATT, boardmember PepsiCo, Chrysler,
Bristol Meyers Squibb, member CFR (Council on Foreign Relations)
Kenneth T. Derr: Chairman and CEO Chevron
M. Kathryn Eickhoff: President Eickhoff Economics
Walter Y. Elisha: Chairman and CEO Springs Industries
George M. C. Fisher: Chairman and CEO Eastman Kodak
Donald V. Fites: Chairman and CEO Caterpillar
Ralph S. Larsen: Chairman and CEO Johnson & Johnson
Donald F. McHenry: President IRC Group, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Michael I. Sovern: President Emeritus and Chancellor Kent Professor of Law Columbia University
Thomas H. Wyman: Senior Advisor of SBC Warburg Inc. and Retired Chairman of S.G. Warburg & Co. Inc.
Sprint:
William T. Esrey: chairman and CEO Sprint, chairman of NSTAC (the
President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory
Committee)
Ronald T. LeMay: president and COO Sprint
DuBose Ausley: chairman of the Capital City Bank Group
Warren L. Batts: chairman and CEO Premark International
Michel Bon: chairman of France Telecom
Ruth M. Davis: president and CEO of The Pymatuning Group
Donald J. Hall: chairman of Hallmark Cards
Harold S. Hook: chairman and CEO American General Corporation
Linda Koch Lorimer: VP and secretary of Yale University, director of Centel Corporation
Charles H. Price II: chairman of the board Mercantile Bank of Kansas City, United States Ambassador to the United
Kingdom
Frank E. Reed: the former president and chief executive officer of Philadelphia
National Bank
Charles E. Rice: chairman and CEO of Barnett Banks
Ron Sommer: chairman of the board of management of Deutsche Telekom A.G.
Stewart Turley: chairman and CEO Eckerd Corporation
UU Net/Worldcom:
Francesco Galesi: Director of WorldCom, Chairman and CEO of the Galesi Group
Richard R. Jaros: Director of MFS, director of PKS, KDG, RCN
Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of KDG ("RCN"), CEC, C-TEC
Corporation ("C-TEC"), United Infrastructure Company and Megacable
S.A. de C.V.
Stiles A. Kellett, Jr.: Director of WorldCom, director of Frederica
Bank & Trust and Mariner Health Group
David C. McCourt: Director of MFS, Chairman of the Board and CEO C-TEC,
President and CEO and a director of RCN
John A. Porter: Vice Chairman of the Board of WorldCom, Chairman of
the Board of Directors and CEO of Industrial Electric Manufacturing,
a director of Uniroyal Technology Corporation and Intelligent
Electronics
Walter Scott, Jr.: Director of MFS, CofB and President of PKS,
director of Berkshire Hathaway, Burlington Resources, CEC, ConAgra,
First Bank System, Valmont Industries, KDG, RCN, and C-TEC
John W. Sidgmore: President and COO of MFS
Scott D. Sullivan: CFO and Secretary of WorldCom
Lawrence C. Tucker: Director of WorldCom, general partner of Brown
Brothers, director of the Blenheim Group PLC, The WellCare
Management Group, Inc. and Riverwood International Corporation
Michael B. Yanney: Director of MFS, Chairman and CEO America First
Companies L.L.C., director of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, C-Tec,
Lozier, Forest Oil, Freedom Communications, Mid-America Apartment
Communities. PKS Information Services
Carl J. Aycock: Director of WorldCom
Max E. Bobbitt: Director of WorldCom
R. Douglas Bradbury: Chief Financial Officer of MFS
James Q. Crowe: CofB and CEO of MFS
Bernard J. Ebbers: CEO and President of WorldCom
Top Management and Technology Leadership (revealing intraindustry coordination):
MCI:
Seth D. Blumenfeld: President and COO MCI, boardmember USTTI (The US
Telecomm. Training Inst.)
Martha Hanlon: member EMA (Electronic Messaging Association)
Bryan Ichikawa: member SCF (Smart Card Forum)
Peter P. Guggina: Director-Technical Standards MCI, ATIS (Alliance for Telecomm. Solutions)
ATT:
William D. Miller: member INCOSE (International Council on Systems
Engineering),
Robert Jones: member EMA
Frederick Honold: member SCF
Frank Ianna: Executive VP AT&T, member ATIS
Sprint:
Terry J. Yake: VP-Applied Research Sprint Corporation, Board Chairman
ATIS,
UUNet/Worldcom:
Robert L. Decker: VP-Engineering WorldCom, member ATIS
Lesley Lyford: Chair European Marketing Development and Education
of the Frame Relay Forum
So, let's see. The interests of the Internet are manifestly the same
as the interests of the banking industry, the oil industry, the
entertainment and news industries, the legal services industry, the
airline industry, the beverage industry, the photo industry, the
tractor and battle tank industry, the personal and medical hygiene
industry, the educational establishment, the pharmaceutical and retail
drug industries, the industrial electrical industry, the auto
industry, and of course, the national and international bodies of
government. I glossed over many smaller commonilities of interest of
course.
All the decision-making power in a corporation is vested in its board
of directors and its stockholders. The boards of directors, I covered
above. Most shares of stock, in any large corporation, are owned by
the very wealthy and by institutional investment pools. What sorts of
decisions do you expect these interests will make, when push comes to
shove?
>It seems to me that the Internet provides a new battleground for
>democracy - one that might increase democritization in the long run too.
>Don't assume only the bad alternatives will play out.
The Internet is just such a battleground, but it's not exactly what
you think. The governments and corporations at issue have been
running flat out attempting to sabotage the net, and have discovered
it is extraordarily difficult to do so _in the present political
climate_. Therefore, they can be expected to do two things: finding
and expanding covert strategies to undermine the power of the net
(sending spam, abusing anonymous remailers, etc), and attempting to
shift the political climate so that compulsory content and access
restrictions on the net are politically viable.
It is well to observe that the network already, and inherently,
suffers from such a degree of fragementation, and such a low incidence
of useful information, as to effectively preclude the use of the net
in attracting and enlisting people whose specific interest did not
exist beforehand. That is, the Internet (minus spam and scam) is like
an extremely large reference library - and such a library is of
utility only to someone who knows exactly what he is looking for
beforehand.
The fact is, the Internet has only the most trivial of barriers to
entry. A newbie can be set up and sending/reading netnews for $250
(old used PC, used modem, AOHell) and the most trivial of skills. The
financial and time investment, and skillset, required to broadcast FM
stereo within the (almost entirely reasonable) FCC technical
constraints is much, much greater. In any viable reformation of
broadcast law allowing current "pirates" to broadcast legally, there
are serious additional demands: unfailing adherence to a transmitter
power-up and power-down schedule, nuances of radiative pattern, etc.
Broadcasting is something that an individual can do without reliance
on anyone else, once he has purchased the basic componentry with which
a transmitter and studio can be built. In extreme cases, he can power
the transmitter with wind or solar power. The dedication required to
do this competently, respecting the rights of other broadcasters, is a
technically, theoretically, and practically, inherent barrier to entry
(filtering out, to a certain degree, those who lack real dedication).
The standing legislation banning such operators outright, when no
technical justification exists (and indeed, technically identical
transmitters repeating the programming of much larger stations, are
routinely licensed in vast numbers) is grossly in conflict with the
spirit, if not (most likely) the letter, of the 1st Amendment. What
it amounts to is a blanket prohibition on free speech by an
identifiable, separable category of people, who DO own the means of
free speech.
You can read my current proposal for broadcast law reform at
http://www.mega.nu:8080/webconst/article_Common_Areas_and_Interests_Radio_Broadcast.html
-douzzer