313
Alabama station in disbelief after 200-foot radio tower stolen
(www.nbcnews.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
313 points (98.5% liked)
News
23287 readers
3758 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Here in the Netherlands, pirate radio is definitely still a thing. As long as radio has been around, people have tried to regulate it. And if something's regulated, people are bound to ignore and break those rules.
Our own local station actually has its roots in pirate radio. Back in 1994, a group of local pirates got together and formed a legit, licensed FM radio station. The reason being that those pirates got caught frequently. They figured going legit would be cheaper than constantly paying fines and having equipment seized.
Even in 2024, pirate radio still exists. In 2023, the police and Dutch telecoms agency caught 114 illegal stations. When someone finds an illegal transmitter, police get involved. In some cases, that's also due to safety issues. There have been cases where the pirates put the equipment in trees, surrounded by asbestos as a deterrent to dismantling it. That's actual, legitimate crime that endangers people. When caught, they can get fined up to 45.000 euros.
Now, you might be thinking: why even risk that? Why be a pirate when you can just set up a completely legal online station? Online radio gets you an even wider audience without all the risk. But to the pirates, that risk, the illegal nature, is part of what draws them to it. Most pirates aren't assholes, thankfully, and they frequently run nicer, more modern equipment than the stuff we use. As long as they keep off legit FM frequencies, we don't really have beef with them doing their thing.
I haven't heard about pirate radio in the U.S. in years though. So I don't think that's the case here.
Makes sense. Here in the Netherlands, it's quite densely populated. You only need a very small antenna and not much power to reach other people. I know a guy who's a pirate. He has a telescoping antenna fixed to the back of his house that he can raise up when transmitting. He can reach everyone in his city of about 24.000 people, even with relatively low power. When he's not using it, the antenna isn't visible to anyone.
In the US you'd need a lot more power and a bigger tower to reach people, which means easier detection.
Part of that is how quickly the US will find the stations. The FCC won't let you be.
I briefly worked the telephone support line for a radio scanner manufacturer a few years ago and had an FCC field agent call to confirm a couple of things before they purchased several to scan for pirate radio stations