Surely with the rise of internet radio stations and internet connections everywhere, the need to operate a pirate radio station is diminishing?

"Unfortunately this is exactly the kind of regulation that Ofcom wants to get rid of, believing the free market will always serve the needs of the majority."

Surely pirate radio stations are the epitome of the free market - there is a product that people want, they provide it, they make profit.

No underpants required.

Everytime I hear someone mention the "free market" I know there is a better than 90% chance that the next thing they say will either be an outright lie or just woefully naive.

Not. Even after the country has officially switched to exclusively DAB (assuming it actually happens), there's nothing to stop pirates from continuing with analogue broadcasts in exactly the same way they do now - listen for an empty channel and switch on the carrier. The UK may be embracing digital in a big way but there are many areas in the world that simply aren't, so analogue equipment - both transmitters and receivers - will still be readily available for a long time to come. People who want to listen to pirates will just Ebay for a cheap receiver (or even easier, head on down to the Brick Lane market).

Remind me - what's RIPAs initial purpose?

Why can't we just dedicate a portion of the spectrum to unlicensed stations?

Make it wide enough to fit 2/3 stations in and that should serve any local area.

Of course you'd need some restrictions to stop big players exploiting this free air space. Maybe a maximum range (so you can't blanket the country) so that it is local.

Because we used it up the 1st time we made the pirates legal.

The problem is the commercial stations (as with TV) producing to lowest common denominator.

Yes, some of the London pirates transmit online at the same time, but only the bigger ones afaik. Drive through Tottenham on a weekend and you'll find the FM dial absolutely crammed with dodgy stations.

And doesnt internet radio miss the point - the pleasure of twiddling the dial till you find something you like?

It's damned annoying when the service radios are over-run by pirate (c)rap music. Not all of us are on Airwave (thank goodness), but even using the standard FM stereo when I'm going home, these b@st@rds key the "Traffic Message" setting and iIm then locked onto them for the next 10 miles, as is every other poor sod around. Its a particular pain as I cannot disable this function whilst a message is being "received". I missed a whole chunk of a Terry Pratchet serial. May they rot in the 8th dimension for this.

"Utilising the commercial radio licensing regime for the purposes set out in this document also risks history repeating itself, whereby formerly illegal stations that were successful in obtaining licences sold them on to large commercial radio groups, which, in many cases, 'mainstreamed' the programming."

Well why did Ofcom let the licences be sold on? What is so difficult about making a licence non-transferable?

Local radio stations should be local and independent

"In 2006 Ofcom's field operations team responded to 70 safety-of-life cases (a significant increase from the 41 such cases reported in 2005)."

Would be interesting to know who had interference issues as much of the kit is professional equipment from the likes of Broadcast Warehouse. An FoI request could be revealing. Do suspect that the main driver is safety-of-profit complaints from the large commercial groups.

Pity that Ofcom cannot focus on issues such as the 0844 / 0870 / 0871 rip offs.

by re-writing the history and economics of radio. But ho what is this we read - Ofcom wants to make "possession of the equipment" illegal? Well blow me if they haven't been looking at how our wunder-kinder police operate and thinking, we could do with a big bit of all that inaction too. Why bother with illegal acts when you've convinced yourself that having the means means illegal intent, and mens rea is abolished because all your thoughts are belong to us (as we put them there in the first place).

I am equipped to reproduce good music/non-GM plants/non-GM Blissetts/truth. So I should expect the black helicopters of Ofcom in its real guise of attack dog of the media-infotainment complex.

On my radio I just press the TA button during the traffic alerts and I get back to the Togmeister. Usful because I'm pissed off with getting leeds, sheffield & stoke traffic news whilst I drive through Rochdale...

This blows apart the whole idea that digital gives you more choice. "Mainstreaming" just means that more channels = more rubbish.

Going soft on "Character of service" is exactly the wrong way to go. The licence should be tied to a charter specifying the station's output. If the charter is broken then the licence should be revoked.

In the US anyone is allowed to operate a low powered radio station. The limitations are the output power and, of course, not interfering with a legitimate station. They don't cover a huge area (the power is limited by the field strength) but I'm pretty sure that you could use these like WiFi access points all taking the same feed off the 'net. The transmitters themselves are like slightly upmarket versions of the dongle you use to get your iPod onto the car radio (and are priced to match -- you won't pay more than $100 and usually a lot less).

In NZ anyone can run a radio station in certain bands at the top and bottom of the dial (guardband). There's no license required and each waveband is first-come, first-served. There is a power limit, and you aren't allowed more than one transmitter in any given city. Most stations have this and Internet. Some of them have a full power frequency (iwi, student) in one city and low power everywhere else.

Works well and provides a good opportunity for starting musicians and DJs. (Flight of the Conchords, and that).

I still get pirate radio stations breaking in around Canary Wharf and the Woolwich flyover, some even use the TA to hijack the radio and broadcaste event information, but I have to say it's less annoying than 3 Counties Radio which seems incapable of using its TA correctly, don't mind the traffic news, but I really don't need anything up to 10 minutes of chat afterwards.

Be nice if the so-called regulator spent more time on the consumer protection bit of it's remit, rather than ensuring business gets what it wants.

If that's the case then they'll probably be using the french DRM (Digital radio mondiale), which gives fm (ish) quality on signals below 30hkz.

As it happens you only need a pc and a soundcard to encode it.

Shouldn't they be busy cuffing BT executives?

With Ofcom legalizing the use of micro FM transmitters in December 2006 for personal use, defining the boundary marks of what is or isn’t illicit broadcasting becomes increasingly blurred. Strictly speaking these micro transmitters are limited to an output of 50nW with a range of about 8 meters. But I recently purchased one from the local supermarket with the CE marking, and to my surprise I could pick up the signal almost a mile away, and that is broadcasting from within a brick building without any kind of external antenna attached! Recent tests have shown that many of these transmitters are actually nearer 20mW in power output - thousands of times greater than what is legally stipulated and yet they still carry the CE marking. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for using one of these devices, so the question is, how powerful does the transmitter have to be before Ofcom will consider pulling the plug on it and consider it to be a pirate transmission. Is it 100 nW, 50 mW 500mW, or 1 Watt?