Net radio goes underground By John Borland Special to ZDNet News July 3, 2002, 5:00 AM PT Inspired by Britain's iconoclastic history of pirate radio broadcasting, Iain McLeod wants to save Internet radio. The 39-year-old McLeod, a game designer who works out of his home in England, is the author of Streamer, a new software program designed to let people create online radio stations that are difficult for the authorities to trace. Like many a Net rebel before him, McLeod says he's fighting what he sees as the big record labels' desire to control online music. Industry pressure, combined with new rules that will make it much more expensive to play music online in the United States, threatens to force independent DJs into extinction, he says. "I've always been a fan of pirate radio and dislike badly used authority," McLeod said. "How many U.S. citizens would actually vote for the wholesale closure of U.S. Internet radio if they were actually consulted? Approximately none of them, I think." McLeod's Streamer technology is just one sign that a large portion of the Net's Webcasting culture may be going underground or gearing up for a fight with copyright police. Three weeks ago, the U.S. Librarian of Congress set rules for the amounts online radio stations must pay for the rights to play music online. Nearly five years in coming, the fees fell substantially below what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had sought. But many small stations say they still can't afford the rates. Webcasting always has had a tinge of pirate radio in its genes. For every big business such as America Online's Spinner.com or Listen.com, scores of tiny stations with only a few daily listeners have defiantly broadcast their own all-Gregorian chant or bluegrass banjo stations into the digital void. A few of these have grown large enough to turn their efforts into small businesses. Most have remained labors of love or of the obsession that has always driven music fans. Under the new rules, this kind of passion will carry a price: $500 minimum to play music online plus .07 cents per listener, per song. According to a note posted on the AOL Time Warner-owned Shoutcast site, this would average out to about $7 per month, per listener for a hobbyist station. Already a handful of stations have shut down or are planning to pull their own plugs in the next few weeks. More are likely to follow, industry insiders say. San Francisco's popular SomaFM>, which drew more than a thousand listeners a day at its peak, went offline just days after the Webcasting decision. At the top of its Web site, which now gives news but no music, a short message reads: "Killed by the RIAA. June 20, 2002." Tag's Trance Trip, operated by one of AOL's Nullsoft employees, went off the air just hours after the rates' release. Florida-based Good Time Oldies signed off June 30. Some efforts to combat the new fees are already under way. Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Jay Inslee, D-Wash., say they're considering legislation that would allow small Webcasters to continue. The rates can also be appealed to federal court in Washington, D.C. High-tech pirate tools Then there's the underground path. The technological pieces are falling into place for a pirate radio scene that flies in the face of industry's enforcement efforts, much as file swappers have done for years. What is far from certain is whether many people will follow would-be pirate broadcasters into the underground. As technology develops to hide Webcasters from royalty-hunters, it also will make it more difficult for them to find an audience. The technology to turn ordinary PCs into Web radio stations has existed for years. Shoutcast was one of the first simple packages to do this. According to statistics kept on the site, more than 2,800 people were broadcasting using Shoutcast technology Tuesday, with more than 47,000 listeners. Open-source technology dubbed Icecast allows people to do the same thing. Many of the hobbyist broadcasters who use these services are vowing to continue streaming in spite of the ruling. "It's been my dream to be a DJ," said Pat Cook, a 27-year-old Webcaster from Harrisburg, Pa. "I'm not letting something stupid like this stop it. If they want money, they'll have to come to my door to get it." Label representatives say they will come after Webcasting scofflaws. SoundExchange, a group created by the RIAA to collect and distribute the royalties to labels and artists, has an enforcement committee. It's not yet clear whether the group itself or member labels will do the enforcement activities, however. "If people are not following the statutory license and paying royalties, it will be copyright infringement, with potentially severe penalties," said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, which is made up of label and artist representatives. "If they're flying under the radar, who knows how long they can stay there." On their own, the older streaming technologies make it simple to track down the broadcasters and ask for royalties. However, peer-to-peer technologies such as Streamer are aimed at shielding the Webcasters from prying authority eyes. Streamer itself is new--and buggy. McLeod is the first to admit this. He released it early, before finishing its development, after hearing news that the Webcasting fees had been put in place and that popular file-swapping company Audiogalaxy effectively had been shut down by a record industry lawsuit. The Streamer technology works a little like Gnutella or other file-swapping services that don't rely on central servers. A stream of music would be relayed through a daisy-chain of listeners and PC relay points across the Net, so that the original broadcast point would be difficult--though not impossible--to track down. Although Streamer may have technological issues to work out, this model is already up and working in other places. Technologists note that the idea is a more efficient way of distributing streaming media than traditional Webcasting servers. Indeed, ChainCast Networks, a company that offers an industrial-strength version of the same idea, already has large customers including Cox Radio and Entercom Communications. Analysts aren't bullish on the notion of many people switching to this type of underground broadcasting. It's complicated and would make it difficult to bring in money, they say. "Certainly the technology is there, so it's possible," said Ryan Jones, an Internet media analyst with The Yankee Group research firm. "But before there is a drag-and-drop (technology), I can't see who would really want to go through the effort to create a station that doesn't generate revenue." For McLeod and others like him, it's not about revenue or about large numbers of listeners. He's inspired by Radio Caroline and the other ship-based stations that broadcast off the coast of Britain in defiance of that country's radio monopoly in the 1960s and 1970s, he says. "I'm not going undercover to hide from the RIAA," McLeod said. "If people don't oppose their paid-for legislation, then democracy is in serious trouble. Your U.S. democracy doesn't look too healthy from here anyway." source http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-941405.html?tag=catfeed&subj=technews&part=advertisingcom&type=pt

http://www.auschron.com: HOME: VOL.22 NO.4: NEWS: 50 WATTS OF FREEDOM 50 Watts of Freedo BY CHRIS WOMACK September 27, 2002: Radio activist Pete Tridish of Philadelphia's Prometheus Radio Project has been traveling across the southern U.S., hoping to spread the free-radio gospel by helping community groups take advantage of the Federal Communication Commission's new Low Power FM license. While typical commercial stations use 10,000 watts or more, LPFM stations broadcast at a power of only 50 to 100 watts. At a recent appearance at MonkeyWrench Books on North Loop, Tridish spoke with LPFM applicants and local radio activists -- many of them former "pirate" broadcasters -- about the history of LPFM, radio technicalities, and the kind of stations Prometheus hopes will emerge with the new licenses. When Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, nationwide radio station ownership limits were removed and local limits relaxed. A buying frenzy ensued, creating mammoth companies owning hundreds of stations. In response, a large number of unlicensed low-power "pirate" stations were created all over the U.S. by activists arguing that their actions were justified by corporate consolidation. Prometheus was founded as a pirate radio support organization, and Tridish says, "We pledged to put 10 stations on the air for every one the FCC shut down." Among these upstart stations were the now-defunct Austin pirates Radio One, Free Radio Austin, and Rabble Radio, as well as KIND Radio of San Marcos, which still exists but has been ordered to stay off the air while a judge considers the station's legal arguments for continuation. In early 2000, the FCC voted to create a license that would allow -- and legitimize -- low-power noncommercial stations similar to the pirate stations. The activists believe they have effectively forced the FCC into creating the LPFM license as a bureaucratic fig leaf, because none had existed before unlicensed stations claimed space on the dial as a free-speech right. Yet a rider to the 2001 appropriations bill currently mandates greater frequency space between LPFM stations and existing stations than is required for full-power broadcasters. Tridish says that in using the licensing system, Prometheus' role has become "to perform a little triage, to get as many good people through the process as possible." They are also hoping to defend the frequencies against further homogenization: Prometheus discovered numerous California applications from a group called Calvary Church, which they fear will rebroadcast the same programming on each station. "We filed 65 petitions to deny," Tridish said. During a June 2001 Texas LPFM license application period, nine applications were filed for licenses in or near Austin. Bastrop, Dripping Springs, Austin, and Fredericksburg each had one applicant, while San Marcos had five applications for the same frequency. Only one application has been successful so far: On Aug. 7, the FCC granted an LPFM construction permit to Dripping Springs' Principle Broadcasting Foundation Inc. for the frequency 99.9 FM. Foundation President Phillip Sandifer, a music writer/producer and self-described radio geek, says it will take three months to have the station dousing Dripping Springs with 50 watts of "various splinter groups, high school students interested in broadcasting," and anyone else interested in community programming. Of the big station owners and the FCC, Sandifer says, "It seems like they're trying to do every neat, cool, fun thing except what radio was intended for in the first place -- which is provide a voice." Steve Maus and his son Brian came to Tridish's workshop to meet other radio activists and to talk about the equipment they'll need if the FCC grants the application filed by the Bastrop County Environmental Network for the 99.7 frequency. Maus hopes the high school kids and community groups they plan to put on the air will infuse radio with some variety. "The state of radio is just getting worse by the year," he says. The National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications paid for one hour of an engineer's time to help out with the technical details of BCEN's application -- now they wait for the slow grinding of the FCC official wheels. The lone Austin LPFM application -- submitted to the FCC by Our Lady's Maronite Catholic Church on East 51st Street -- apparently doesn't stand a chance. There simply isn't enough space on the local dial for the new stations under Congress' spacing requirements, which will force the LPFMs to use the fourth adjacent frequency from any other broadcaster -- meaning, a station that wants to set up at 99.9 could only do so as long as there is no other station closer than 99.1 or 100.7. (Commercial stations are limited to third adjacent, and can apply for a waiver to use second adjacent.) That's why Tridish and some of the folks at his workshop still like pirates. "I think they're just as legitimate as they always were -- as long as there are people that don't have a community radio station."