On September 18, 2012, agents from the Kansas City Office again used direction-finding techniques to confirm if the station was still operating on 87.9 MHz from the same location, and found that it was. The agents, accompanied by the property owner, inspected the unlicensed station’s antenna and transmitter, which was located in a locked basement room in the Iowa City residence. The station was automated with a computer providing audio to a non-certified FM transmitter. The property owner stated that Mr. Costa rented the basement room housing the station. Later that day, the agents interviewed Mr. Costa, who admitted that he rented the basement room and installed the radio station equipment. Mr. Costa, however, denied operating the unlicensed station, and claimed that several unnamed individuals owned the equipment and gave him rent money each month which he, in turn, gave to the property owner to pay the rent. Mr. Costa asserted that the alleged operators of the station did not provide him with their names or contact information in order to protect him and them from the Commission. Mr. Costa also stated that he was told by the unnamed operators that he could expect the Commission to inspect the station at some point and order him to cease operations.
This is the first I ever heard of this kind of operation and if true I feel bad for the property owners who may not have known better.
It's low on the pirates part to put others through the legal trouble. If someone wants to go through the effort of putting up a pirate station they should also take responsibility for it if they get caught, unless the transmitter is located in a place that gets no one in trouble because it can't be traced back to the pirate and/or an owner.
What I wonder is why would anyone go through the trouble of running that kind of operation just to play electronic jukebox over the neighborhood radio with no live programming or means to actually DJ a bit?
Second time caught and now they are imposing a $10,000 fine. Real smart
The whole report is interesting to read as linked above.
Post by byensradio on Feb 13, 2014 15:58:03 GMT -6
That's kind of the same operation that we're running. Streaming audio over the internet, and then we have a raspberry pi picking it up and snding it over to the FM transmitter. However we don't have a basement anywhere, we run off rooftops and the alike with cracked wifi. Makes your entire operation more robust to takedowns and more flexible - you can broadcast if you have internet access. This means that we can have people all over the world broadcasting on FM at a certain location.
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