[00:00.000 --> 00:03.680]  There's about 10 hackers in an elevator.
[00:03.860 --> 00:07.280]  I know this sounds like a bad joke, but there's about 10 hackers on an elevator.
[00:07.420 --> 00:22.080]  We're going downstairs, and the doors open at like 12, and there's this kid, and there's plenty of room in the elevator, and there's this kid who like literally looks up and down and side to side and steps back and walks away.
[00:22.300 --> 00:24.720]  Was that too afraid to get onto that?
[00:24.760 --> 00:28.140]  And I was screaming after him, you know, it's okay, we're not pedophiles.
[00:31.320 --> 00:34.220]  This next panel is the Prometheus Radio Project.
[00:34.700 --> 00:38.600]  They have been instrumental in Low-Power FM.
[00:38.860 --> 00:40.440]  They do some radio barn raisings.
[00:41.080 --> 00:43.140]  It's a project that I've contributed money to.
[00:43.380 --> 00:49.660]  These are some really great guys that are trying to get some real radio back on the air since it's all turned into crap channel.
[00:51.400 --> 01:00.240]  So, we have Dharma Daily, Josh Marcus, and Dave Arney, and hopefully Pete Tridish will be showing up eventually.
[01:01.620 --> 01:02.780]  And we did, yes.
[01:02.900 --> 01:03.860]  I sorted that out.
[01:04.060 --> 01:05.400]  Thank you for interrupting.
[01:05.780 --> 01:05.920]  Okay.
[01:07.700 --> 01:09.320]  So, take it away.
[01:09.600 --> 01:09.880]  Okay.
[01:12.360 --> 01:13.260]  Hello, everybody.
[01:14.300 --> 01:18.300]  My name is Josh Marcus, and I'm a volunteer for the Prometheus Radio Project.
[01:18.640 --> 01:29.460]  I'm very excited to be here at the hacker conference at HOPE talking about Prometheus Radio Project, because I think that there's a really exciting parallel between Prometheus and what I hear from a lot of people here.
[01:30.100 --> 01:34.460]  Prometheus started as radio pirates who were breaking the law because the law was stupid.
[01:34.960 --> 01:40.400]  And their experience up against the law galvanized them in this struggle to free the airwaves.
[01:40.560 --> 01:51.040]  And one thing I hear people talking about again and again here is how to use knowledge that people have regardless of boundaries and their experiences to figure out, like, how to actually change the system.
[01:51.180 --> 01:51.640]  So, that's exciting.
[01:52.760 --> 01:54.100]  You want to tell the meeting story?
[01:54.680 --> 01:56.380]  Should we do the introduction?
[01:56.860 --> 01:57.300]  Oh.
[01:57.400 --> 01:59.060]  Well, I thought that was part of the introduction.
[01:59.060 --> 01:59.560]  Okay, great.
[01:59.900 --> 02:06.040]  So, let's talk about... let's just talk for a minute about the Prometheus Radio Project and where it began and what it is.
[02:07.440 --> 02:14.620]  So, Prometheus began... the seeds of Prometheus began as Radio Mutiny, which was a pirate radio station out of Philadelphia.
[02:15.060 --> 02:16.620]  It was an exciting station.
[02:16.620 --> 02:17.540]  It had music.
[02:17.740 --> 02:18.320]  It had news.
[02:18.720 --> 02:21.620]  It covered primarily the West Philadelphia area.
[02:22.640 --> 02:24.520]  And it was an exciting thing.
[02:24.780 --> 02:28.580]  It had a real diversity of voices on the air, which was really exciting for us.
[02:29.120 --> 02:31.880]  from young people to old people and all different sorts of communities.
[02:33.100 --> 02:39.620]  But a troubling example comes from a one-woman show, who is an Ethiopian and mom.
[02:39.840 --> 02:42.780]  And she had a news show and a music show.
[02:42.980 --> 02:44.960]  And she was on the air for a good long time.
[02:45.200 --> 02:52.640]  And after there were some conflicts with the FCC, because the FCC started cracking down on the station, she stopped showing up to her show.
[02:53.260 --> 03:02.060]  And Petri Dish, who I wish was here to tell the story, hopefully he'll be here soon, asked her why she wasn't showing up anymore.
[03:02.240 --> 03:05.680]  And she was basically explained that she had immigration problems.
[03:06.160 --> 03:14.640]  And she was concerned that if she was caught being involved with the station, her immigration status could be in jeopardy.
[03:14.640 --> 03:19.320]  And here they were, trying to build a station to give voice to the disenfranchised, voice to the voiceless.
[03:19.580 --> 03:23.960]  And this woman, who was providing a wonderful show, was scared to be on the air.
[03:24.140 --> 03:32.460]  And that lesson really taught Petri Dish and the other people who started the Prometheus Radio Project that it was important to actually change the system.
[03:32.700 --> 03:40.140]  That pirate radio is exciting and important, but it doesn't actually give voice to all the people who should have their voice on the air.
[03:40.140 --> 03:47.740]  And that the media system, in which a few corporations have their voice and no other voices out there all the time, was no longer acceptable.
[03:49.420 --> 03:59.960]  Because of Prometheus' mission and their representation, involvement with other stations, they got involved in the LPFM movement right when it began.
[03:59.960 --> 04:09.900]  And they were involved in a legislative process a number of years ago that originally led to low-power FM stations being put on the air by the FCC.
[04:10.880 --> 04:17.180]  Low-power FM stations are 10-watt and 100-watt stations licensed by the FCC to broadcast.
[04:17.480 --> 04:20.980]  They're effectively like pirate stations, but they're legitimate, quote-unquote.
[04:22.220 --> 04:36.580]  One problem is when that law was passed, Jesse Helms, I think, in particular, a wonderful senator, added a rider to that bill severely restricting how many stations could be put on the air.
[04:36.840 --> 04:51.120]  But some stations were put on the air, and Prometheus committed itself both to going around the country, getting people to apply for those licenses, and actually going and building those stations, or building those stations with people, and also continuing the fight to open the airwaves.
[04:52.900 --> 04:53.340]  Okay.
[04:55.480 --> 04:59.740]  So, do we want to talk about the burn-raising or the lawsuit now?
[05:00.420 --> 05:02.600]  Yeah, let's talk about the lawsuit.
[05:02.940 --> 05:03.080]  Okay.
[05:03.380 --> 05:04.780]  I'll let Dharma talk about this mostly.
[05:05.160 --> 05:15.400]  One thing I wanted to bring to the table is Prometheus Radio Project has been in the media recently because a number of years ago Prometheus actually sued the FCC.
[05:15.920 --> 05:19.000]  It was represented by a group called the Media Access Project.
[05:19.880 --> 05:20.440]  Woohoo.
[05:20.940 --> 05:27.580]  And amazingly, a year ago, Prometheus got a stay on the new FCC media consolidation rules.
[05:27.820 --> 05:43.300]  The FCC, under Michael Powell, the son of Colin Powell, decided that the current laws that keep big corporations from owning all of the media, that keep, you know, say, one station, like Clear Channel, from owning all the TV stations and all the radio stations,
[05:43.360 --> 05:47.400]  which are already pretty loose, they decided they wanted to loosen them even further.
[05:47.400 --> 05:51.360]  The reason why media consolidation... there are a lot of reasons why media consolidation is a real concern.
[05:51.620 --> 05:55.860]  One reason is, like, if you listen to the radio, it's really boring, right?
[05:56.020 --> 05:58.860]  All you hear are the same musicians.
[05:59.500 --> 06:06.040]  And a corporation can, like, own a few musicians and own the advertising and control who gets heard so they can make the most money.
[06:06.180 --> 06:08.540]  And it leads to boring content and bad content.
[06:08.740 --> 06:10.740]  The other problem is just a threat to democracy.
[06:10.960 --> 06:22.120]  The whole idea of a free press is that we can hear different voices, and if five white men in suits can decide that there are certain viewpoints we won't hear, that's, like, a fundamental threat to what's supposed to make our democracy strong.
[06:23.620 --> 06:24.840]  So, thank you.
[06:24.940 --> 06:30.480]  So, in any case, a year ago, Prometheus got a stay on the new rules, which did not come into play.
[06:30.660 --> 06:35.840]  And just recently, FCC actually won their case, which was an unbelievable victory.
[06:35.980 --> 06:36.320]  Unbelievable.
[06:36.640 --> 06:40.920]  And the FCC is now forced to rewrite their rules and justify them.
[06:40.920 --> 06:42.560]  And we'll talk more about that later.
[06:42.820 --> 06:43.060]  Okay.
[06:43.220 --> 06:44.800]  I'm going to tell you the frozen meat story.
[06:46.420 --> 07:00.020]  So, I got involved in doing work around pirate radio several years ago, mostly to support pirate radio, doing research around stations that were getting harassed.
[07:00.740 --> 07:04.860]  And Petri Dish said, hey, you know, I remember what you used to do.
[07:04.980 --> 07:06.540]  Can you do stuff like that for Prometheus?
[07:07.000 --> 07:08.040]  And I said, yeah, sure.
[07:08.220 --> 07:09.300]  And didn't hear from him.
[07:09.420 --> 07:12.480]  And I'm up in the Catskills, hanging out with my kids.
[07:12.600 --> 07:23.020]  And all of a sudden, this phone call comes and says, you know, can you write...can you look at these 12 ownership studies that the FCC has put out and study them and write a comment to the FCC?
[07:23.340 --> 07:25.660]  And I was like, what?
[07:26.880 --> 07:31.700]  But one of the things that Prometheus always does is, you know, we're like the little red hens.
[07:31.700 --> 07:34.920]  We may not have the skills to do it, but we show up, we're willing.
[07:35.300 --> 07:39.920]  And that's what really counts most of the time, is just, you know, showing up.
[07:40.740 --> 08:02.140]  If you believe in free speech and you believe in stuff like, you know, maybe somebody else besides D.C. lawyers should decide what the quality of our communication system is, then that means sometimes doing something like sitting through reading economic studies that were written by the FCC and their favorite corporations.
[08:02.880 --> 08:06.900]  So here I am in my little apartment in the Catskills with my kids.
[08:07.220 --> 08:08.540]  I'm not an economist.
[08:08.540 --> 08:10.300]  I don't even have a college degree.
[08:11.260 --> 08:18.160]  And I'm sitting in this little room, fighting, you know, reading through these studies.
[08:18.420 --> 08:27.340]  And lo and behold, wrote the comments with Pete Tri that gave us the legal standing to be in the ownership lawsuit.
[08:28.280 --> 08:34.080]  So, you know, I hear all the time from people, and I'm sure that you do too, that, you know, one or two people can't make a difference.
[08:34.080 --> 08:39.320]  But we honestly believe that we can.
[08:39.520 --> 08:45.880]  Sometimes all you have to do is show up, and that can build something bigger.
[08:46.220 --> 08:58.220]  And as it turned out, Pete Tri and I were one of two and a half million people that wound up writing to the FCC and to their congresspeople complaining about the ownership, which is like 1% of our population.
[08:58.220 --> 09:12.940]  Part of that is some of these guys, you know, coming up with the idea to write a simple Perl script so that anybody that had access to the Internet could easily write comments.
[09:14.360 --> 09:29.980]  You know, again, just, you know, one guy in Philly taking his little knowledge of Perl scripting and turning it into something that was incredibly powerful and able to galvanize millions of people to be heard.
[09:31.760 --> 09:35.260]  So, the fight for LPFM goes on.
[09:35.480 --> 09:38.180]  We have other fights that are happening.
[09:41.220 --> 09:52.120]  You know, we really believe that every person deserves to have access to communication and cultural and civic participation that is meaningful.
[09:53.280 --> 09:58.620]  And so, you know, we see LPFM as being an accessible technology that's very inexpensive.
[09:58.700 --> 10:00.020]  It's easy to use.
[10:00.320 --> 10:01.560]  People understand it.
[10:01.680 --> 10:03.220]  They want to be involved in it.
[10:04.540 --> 10:06.780]  And so, we want to see it expanded.
[10:06.780 --> 10:11.100]  And right now, there's a bill that S-205...
[10:11.100 --> 10:12.680]  S-2-0-5?
[10:12.840 --> 10:14.480]  S-2-5-0-5.
[10:14.600 --> 10:15.740]  S-2-5-0-5.
[10:15.900 --> 10:22.060]  S-2-5-0-5.
[10:23.700 --> 10:25.200]  To expand it...
[10:25.200 --> 10:26.660]  To expand it and get more stations.
[10:30.620 --> 10:34.440]  Write to the FCC and let them know that you care about this.
[10:34.660 --> 10:38.340]  And that you want to see more people have more access to the airwaves.
[10:38.600 --> 10:42.720]  I mean basically, you know, numbers count.
[10:43.720 --> 10:44.880]  I mean, you can make a difference.
[10:47.540 --> 10:49.640]  Just one thing to add about that.
[10:49.640 --> 10:50.960]  S-2505.
[10:51.320 --> 10:57.600]  What S-2505 is, is it's a bill that John McCain's office proposed, which is a wonderful thing.
[10:57.800 --> 11:06.360]  Which basically, there's a thing called a third adjacent rule, which is this Jesse Helms rule, which has allowed a few low power stations on the air.
[11:07.180 --> 11:10.860]  But most cities in most areas, they are not available.
[11:11.100 --> 11:18.080]  Because unless your area happens to have very, very few stations, they say there's not enough room because they claim possible interference.
[11:18.080 --> 11:24.540]  The FCC has now done a technical study, which is called the MITRE report, which shows that actually there is no interference.
[11:24.740 --> 11:25.560]  It's actually fine.
[11:25.740 --> 11:30.040]  There could be many, many, many more community stations all across the nation.
[11:30.700 --> 11:36.780]  And now, for once, there's beginning to be an opportunity to actually open up the airwaves to all these stations.
[11:37.620 --> 11:41.700]  And the stations that have already been built are amazing, and we'll talk about a few of them.
[11:41.700 --> 11:50.440]  And so, that's why it's really, really important for now that there's this bill on the table, to call John McCain and call your senators and say that you support LPFM.
[11:50.600 --> 11:57.160]  Just a little bit more about these frequencies being opened up.
[11:57.260 --> 12:08.240]  So, the third adjacent rule says that if you have a station on 90.1, then there can't be another station on 90.3, the first adjacent, 90.5 or 90.7, the third adjacent.
[12:09.260 --> 12:12.100]  The technical rules for, that's for LPFMs.
[12:12.320 --> 12:21.900]  So, if you have a translator station, which is just like an LPFM, except that it's more power, 250 watts instead of 10 or 100, and it doesn't originate any content.
[12:21.900 --> 12:25.480]  It's just taking an existing radio station and sending out the same stuff.
[12:25.820 --> 12:27.620]  You can have those on a second adjacent.
[12:28.560 --> 12:30.840]  Their rules say that that doesn't cause any interference.
[12:31.080 --> 12:39.300]  But if you have the exact same equipment, it's just the audio going into it is coming from a mixing board instead of from a radio receiver, then you can't have it there.
[12:39.300 --> 12:47.600]  So, the rules are, I mean, if you follow what they're saying, then there's no reason that you can't have LPFMs on the second adjacent.
[12:48.020 --> 12:57.400]  The effect of making this change to it being the third adjacent is that there are no spaces for LPFM stations in any of the top 100 radio markets in the U.S.  except for New Orleans.
[12:58.360 --> 12:59.880]  There's a spot for one station.
[13:02.020 --> 13:12.520]  Yeah, that's the most important point, is that what Dave is talking about is the translators are, of course, owned by the big corporations.
[13:13.260 --> 13:19.140]  That's how Clear Channel does their business, and there's very flexible and easy rules for them to get translators.
[13:19.460 --> 13:25.540]  But the same technology is applied to community use is very, very restricted.
[13:26.100 --> 13:36.760]  And that's really because, you know, up till now, there hasn't been a huge, a lot of sunshine on the communications infrastructure.
[13:37.300 --> 13:42.120]  With people getting involved and saying, you know, this is what we want our communications infrastructure to look like.
[13:42.320 --> 13:46.380]  This is what we want, you know, the kind of access that we want and need.
[13:46.380 --> 14:15.260]  So, which one of the things that we've been looking at recently is the Wi-Fi movement and unlicensed spectrum and how the possibility of services that are now provided by public access television on cable and low power FM service might someday be over wireless community networks.
[14:15.260 --> 14:20.720]  And we're really excited about the development of community networks and municipal networks.
[14:22.060 --> 14:36.080]  The main reason that we're excited about it is, as many of you who are hackers or have experience know, the Internet is only as free as the controls that are placed on it.
[14:36.080 --> 14:46.720]  So, the fights that you're seeing over intellectual property, digital rights management, trusted computing, all of those things are things that are looking to be placed onto wireless networks.
[14:47.580 --> 14:49.940]  You know, we're up against...
[14:50.860 --> 15:00.240]  The business model that has existed for a hundred years around radio and television is captive audiences providing money from captive advertisers.
[15:00.240 --> 15:18.660]  And we saw, through the LPFM fight, we saw the big broadcasters come to Congress with manufactured evidence, lying, just bold outright, confusing, lying, and untruth.
[15:19.560 --> 15:32.660]  During the last set of hearings for the introduction of these third adjacent rules, one of the things that they presented to Congress was a CD of examples of what interference would sound like if you had a third adjacent station.
[15:33.400 --> 15:38.940]  And this CD was made by taking two audio samples and playing them at the same time over each other.
[15:41.780 --> 15:42.400]  Yeah.
[15:42.760 --> 15:46.900]  So, we expect that that experience...
[15:47.960 --> 15:54.420]  The broadcasters are afraid of a couple of people in a neighborhood playing songs for each other and talking about the church picnic.
[15:54.720 --> 16:02.960]  What are they going to do in, you know, against ubiquitous computing and pervasive connectivity in the wireless context?
[16:03.460 --> 16:05.900]  I don't think they're going to be very happy about that.
[16:05.900 --> 16:29.780]  So, in the future, there's this looming possibility, though, that is so bright and so exciting that the ability for communities to own and control their own communications infrastructure is very close to the hearts of people that do LPFM.
[16:29.780 --> 16:41.220]  We like the idea of self-provisioning models of communication instead of controlled and restricted flow of communication.
[16:41.560 --> 16:45.600]  And that's kind of the direction that the technology could potentially go in.
[16:45.600 --> 17:03.180]  But the odds of, you know, looking at the political culture that we have and the economic culture, that is only going to happen if there's a real movement that combines people with technical skills to create those platforms, keep them open.
[17:03.180 --> 17:12.680]  We need, you know, proactive policy and proactive technology to make it happen.
[17:12.860 --> 17:14.140]  And proactive economics.
[17:20.240 --> 17:22.840]  I could go on about Spectrum forever.
[17:23.140 --> 17:26.200]  But do you guys want to talk about the burn-raising?
[17:26.200 --> 17:26.400]  Okay.
[17:27.440 --> 17:31.440]  So, there's two things I want to talk about.
[17:31.740 --> 17:36.220]  One thing I want to talk about is these radio barn-raisings that Prometheus holds.
[17:36.420 --> 17:37.540]  Because they're really exciting.
[17:38.140 --> 17:43.100]  And they're a wonderful model for bringing technology to resource-poor communities.
[17:43.540 --> 17:51.280]  And then later, we'll also want to talk about some of the technical projects that Prometheus has been working on, that people can get involved with, and they're just generally exciting.
[17:52.120 --> 17:53.300]  So, the barn-raising.
[17:53.460 --> 18:02.560]  So, the idea of the barn-raising is basically that there's certain communities that if a barn falls down, the whole community comes together and builds the barn, right?
[18:02.700 --> 18:11.720]  And in a weekend, you know, or a week, if a community comes together, they can build this barn, and that family who had the barn knocked down by themselves couldn't do it.
[18:11.880 --> 18:13.100]  Just wouldn't have the resources.
[18:13.440 --> 18:18.740]  So, the idea is, you know, if there's a community need, and we can come together and fill it, we should do it.
[18:19.320 --> 18:28.700]  The idea of the radio barn raising is that Prometheus is working with communities who could use a low-power FM station, a community radio station.
[18:28.780 --> 18:30.820]  But they're not radio engineers.
[18:31.120 --> 18:34.920]  They've never run the station before, so the question is, how do we make it possible?
[18:35.280 --> 18:38.560]  And the barn raising is a wonderful model for a bunch of reasons.
[18:39.740 --> 18:42.040]  Let's talk a little bit about just what the barn raising is.
[18:42.220 --> 18:45.860]  What happens is, all sorts of people go to the town for a weekend.
[18:45.860 --> 18:48.560]  And we have a conference, kind of like this, and there are workshops.
[18:48.740 --> 18:54.200]  And we teach about, you know, being a radio engineer, how to be a DJ, how to do interviews.
[18:54.480 --> 18:59.000]  But in the background, people are all working together to actually build the station.
[18:59.000 --> 19:04.420]  By which we mean, put up the antenna, set up the transmitter, actually build the studio.
[19:05.760 --> 19:15.840]  There's two barn raisings that are good examples just because the groups are exciting and the barn raisings have stories about them that kind of illustrate the feel of the barn raising.
[19:16.380 --> 19:20.180]  which are really, like, life-changing, inspiring events.
[19:20.340 --> 19:24.040]  I mean, I don't mean to talk about it in such strong terms, but they really are wonderful.
[19:24.720 --> 19:25.560]  They're really wonderful things.
[19:26.580 --> 19:33.940]  The most recent barn raising I've been to was for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Immokalee, Florida.
[19:34.320 --> 19:39.060]  The Coalition of Immokalee Workers advocates for tomato pickers in Florida.
[19:39.680 --> 19:43.120]  These are people that don't receive a living wage at all.
[19:43.360 --> 19:49.200]  And they live in these communities where rents are exorbitantly high and prices are exorbitantly high.
[19:49.860 --> 19:52.800]  And most of them don't live in the country legally.
[19:53.340 --> 19:58.800]  And the conditions, it's not saying too much to say that it's basically like a slavery condition.
[19:59.860 --> 20:06.740]  Recently in National Geographic, they did reports on sort of modern-day slavery and the Immokalee workers were featured.
[20:07.040 --> 20:20.040]  So what happened is we all, a bunch of people, like people like us in this room, some radio engineers, just some people who have been involved in this in the past, all went down for a weekend and built the Coalition of Immokalee Workers Station.
[20:20.360 --> 20:30.560]  Though it's not really correct to say that we build it because the idea of a barn raising is that if you know how to do something, you shouldn't actually do it, right?
[20:30.680 --> 20:31.260]  That's the idea.
[20:31.640 --> 20:35.520]  Now, normally in our society, the idea is, well, experts do things, right?
[20:35.640 --> 20:38.600]  If something is technical, it's sort of scary and mystical.
[20:38.840 --> 20:44.160]  And so unless you have sort of a pointed role to be able to do it, you shouldn't do it.
[20:44.160 --> 20:54.740]  But we all know, people who are hackers or people who aren't afraid to take things apart or figure out how things work know that actually a lot of things are manageable if you work with people or if you take the time.
[20:55.420 --> 20:59.280]  And so the idea of the barn raising is that you work with someone.
[20:59.700 --> 21:06.840]  If you want to learn how to solder, you watch someone do it first, and then you do it with someone, and then you do it yourself.
[21:07.280 --> 21:09.280]  And then you teach somebody else how to do it.
[21:10.540 --> 21:16.640]  So, the Immokalee workers have a board that was soldered by five women who never soldered before.
[21:17.180 --> 21:19.720]  And that's the board that is running their station now.
[21:20.080 --> 21:24.740]  And so, the skill sharing is the key, I guess, word here.
[21:25.040 --> 21:31.400]  You're not going to come in and be the expert and say, I'm the expert, let me at that soldering iron.
[21:31.760 --> 21:35.440]  You're going to take somebody aside and say, hey, have you ever soldered before?
[21:35.720 --> 21:37.200]  And they say, no, I've never done it.
[21:37.200 --> 21:40.060]  And they're like, cool, let's go solder this board.
[21:40.280 --> 21:41.320]  Here's how you do it.
[21:41.440 --> 21:47.120]  And then an hour or two later, when that person's got it down, you don't go in and say, I'm going to teach somebody else.
[21:47.120 --> 21:50.620]  You say to them, why don't you show so-and-so how to do this?
[21:50.640 --> 21:51.580]  She looks interested.
[21:52.320 --> 21:53.400]  And then you walk away.
[21:53.720 --> 21:56.020]  And that's the barn raising model.
[21:56.140 --> 22:01.260]  And we think it can be applied to a lot of other technical community projects.
[22:01.780 --> 22:06.120]  My favorite example to illustrate this is in the station in Immokalee, Florida.
[22:06.540 --> 22:12.500]  You know, there's an antenna, there's a transmitter, there's a long cable connecting the two, which in this case was half-inch Heliax.
[22:12.540 --> 22:18.620]  It's an armored cable where the outer shield of it, instead of being braided like a normal TV coax or something, is actually a copper pipe.
[22:19.100 --> 22:23.580]  And the connectors that you put on the end of this cost like $60 to $80 each.
[22:23.800 --> 22:25.100]  They're easy to screw up.
[22:25.820 --> 22:28.200]  And we had three professional radio engineers there.
[22:28.240 --> 22:29.900]  And we sort of showed it to all of them.
[22:30.140 --> 22:32.160]  All of them looked at it and said, I'm not going to do that.
[22:32.160 --> 22:33.480]  You know, get somebody else to do it.
[22:33.860 --> 22:36.060]  They were all really scared to work with these things.
[22:36.260 --> 22:42.840]  So what we did is we found a couple people who were up visiting from a pirate station in Nicaragua who had never soldered anything before.
[22:43.340 --> 22:46.960]  And we sat down, you know, and worked with them for about two hours.
[22:47.120 --> 22:49.900]  We got the first connector put on.
[22:50.040 --> 22:57.640]  It comes in a little box with an illustrated, like, 20-step manual with a photo of each step of the process, various specialized tools.
[22:57.640 --> 23:01.360]  Did the first one in about two hours, then I went off and did something else.
[23:01.520 --> 23:03.260]  They did the second one in about four hours.
[23:03.520 --> 23:05.520]  I think they did the last one in about half an hour.
[23:05.660 --> 23:08.340]  They were better at it by the end of it than anyone else there.
[23:09.280 --> 23:24.840]  And, you know, it just goes to show that even with these very technical specialized kind of skills, if you have somebody who's willing to work at it and you take a little time to show them how to do it, you know, they took a lot more away from that than they would have had I sat in a room by myself and just put the ends on the cable and brought the cable out for them later.
[23:26.860 --> 23:28.720]  Sharing knowledge is sharing power.
[23:30.520 --> 23:36.820]  One sort of funny story about the station we built in Opelousas, Florida.
[23:38.200 --> 23:41.340]  I just want to get across the feeling of being in a barn raising.
[23:41.540 --> 23:45.280]  I think a lot of people here would really enjoy it because we're not experts.
[23:45.480 --> 23:53.400]  I'm not a professional radio engineer, but you get to fiddle with equipment and learn how to do things and learn together with the people that you're working with to make things happen.
[23:53.940 --> 24:00.700]  So the Southern Development Foundation was the first civil rights organization in the country that owned its own radio station.
[24:01.140 --> 24:04.160]  And they're in Opelousas, Florida, not too far from New Orleans.
[24:04.780 --> 24:12.300]  So we were setting up their station and the first time... we were having some problems.
[24:12.480 --> 24:24.120]  There was a problem with the dummy load, which is... when you turn on a radio transmitter, you want to have a dummy load on it, an antenna, so that the power doesn't surge back into the transmitter and blow out the transmitter.
[24:24.540 --> 24:26.300]  This is a really serious problem.
[24:26.580 --> 24:31.340]  And actually, something we're going to talk about later is this is a really serious problem for pirate stations.
[24:32.220 --> 24:40.080]  And, you know, there's been this movement to send transmitters, pirate equipment, down south for people to use.
[24:40.600 --> 24:43.500]  And people will get it and they'll set it up and they'll turn it on and it'll blow out.
[24:43.500 --> 24:48.360]  And then there's no RadioShack for 500 miles, 1,000 miles, 10,000 miles.
[24:48.480 --> 24:49.860]  So it's a very serious problem.
[24:50.060 --> 24:53.900]  And a technical challenge we'll lay down later is to solve that problem.
[24:53.960 --> 24:54.780]  But we'll talk about it later.
[24:55.320 --> 24:57.300]  In any case, there were some problems.
[24:57.300 --> 24:58.160]  We were really confused.
[24:58.640 --> 25:02.380]  Everything seemed like it was fine, but it seemed like we'd blown out our transmitter.
[25:02.940 --> 25:07.460]  And we tested things and tested things and all the professional engineers were testing things.
[25:07.460 --> 25:12.520]  And we looked at, you know, looking at the equipment and some things seemed fine and some things seemed messed up.
[25:12.960 --> 25:17.300]  In any case, what we said later about it was that our chief engineer was Johnny Walker.
[25:17.520 --> 25:29.560]  Because later that evening, after drinking a good bit of a bottle of whiskey, Dave realized that actually we had set it for 1073 instead of 1037.
[25:30.000 --> 25:35.680]  And even though we took test equipment and test equipment, people just saw the number, saw the number, saw the number, and no one realized it.
[25:35.680 --> 25:42.200]  It's one of these things where you set the frequency with little dip switches that are inside a board that you can barely see that you're reaching with a screwdriver.
[25:42.960 --> 25:46.640]  And you look in, you see a one, you see a three, you see a seven, and it must be right.
[25:47.140 --> 25:50.100]  And about 10 people looked at it and said it was fine.
[25:51.960 --> 25:55.700]  It was a short between the earphones, is I think the old saying.
[25:58.520 --> 26:13.640]  Well, one other thing I just want to talk about, just because this whole attitude of teaching other people, instead of like demonstrating your like hacker eliteness over other people, is something that, you know, it's like part of our culture is sort of like people want to be dominant with their information.
[26:13.860 --> 26:17.280]  So learning how to teach each other instead of one-upping each other is like a real challenge.
[26:17.820 --> 26:22.520]  I thought that the Kate story was kind of funny in that context about like who listens to who.
[26:22.880 --> 26:27.540]  Yeah, this was down in Cancun before the WTO meeting there.
[26:28.040 --> 26:30.360]  There were some people working on various radio projects.
[26:30.720 --> 26:41.160]  And we went through the whole weekend, we'd built a bunch of antennas just soldered together out of copper pipe, which I think for a long time were hidden in a flower box while people thought the cops were coming through the building.
[26:41.300 --> 26:52.720]  But anyway, when it came time to put these antennas actually up, there was this woman, Kate, who was there visiting from London, who is really great and she learned basically everything while she was there.
[26:53.980 --> 26:58.660]  She knew what she was doing and was trying to sort of oversee putting up the antenna.
[26:59.640 --> 27:06.040]  And one of the things that she kept reiterating to everyone was it has to be, you know, a certain amount away from anything that's metal.
[27:06.240 --> 27:12.300]  It needs to be like mounted on a wood beam like up in the air somewhere and, you know, away from anything else.
[27:13.200 --> 27:17.000]  And everyone would sort of say, oh, yeah, yeah, that's great, you know, whatever.
[27:18.180 --> 27:19.480]  And they went off.
[27:19.720 --> 27:22.980]  While she was gone one day, they went and mounted the antenna.
[27:23.220 --> 27:30.020]  And it turned out that when she came back and saw it, they had actually bolted it sideways off the top of another antenna on the tower.
[27:30.540 --> 27:31.880]  It was really pretty impressive.
[27:31.960 --> 27:33.980]  It's like the worst possible place you could put it.
[27:36.340 --> 27:46.220]  So that's been a problem that we've been fighting with is, you know, even once we teach people these skills, they go back and they're working with other people who say, well, you know, you don't know what you're talking about.
[27:47.660 --> 27:50.120]  And so that's something that we struggle with and that they struggle with.
[27:52.660 --> 28:03.200]  Just one last thing I just want to say about the barn raisings is that one thing that's really wonderful about the barn raisings is that radio ends up, even though it's like it's an old technology, you know, and we've all used it.
[28:03.320 --> 28:07.440]  And, you know, while it's big in other parts of the world, but here in America, people listen to their cars.
[28:07.440 --> 28:14.560]  They listen to it somewhat, but there's the idea of appropriate technology, which is that you're trying to like solve a problem for community.
[28:14.840 --> 28:25.780]  And it's often really tempting, especially if you're kind of like technologically minded, to find like the newest technology, the coolest technology, the technology you'd like to learn about and use that technology to try and fix the problem.
[28:26.040 --> 28:37.000]  The reality of the situation is that if you go into a community and you build something that's cool, but they can't actually maintain themselves, it can be worse than useless for them, right?
[28:37.100 --> 28:41.760]  Because they put all this time and energy and hope into the project, but yet it's not really going to work out for them.
[28:41.960 --> 28:55.020]  And there's a really cool story that I'm trying to track down the details of that Java man, who's in there in the back waving, told about basically teams used to go down to a country somewhere in the global south.
[28:55.020 --> 28:56.020]  We all know the details.
[28:56.220 --> 28:58.660]  And we'd build bridges, we'd build a bridge for them.
[28:58.780 --> 29:05.100]  And they would use metal, they'd use sort of modern bridge building techniques, but the bridge area would totally flood every year.
[29:05.260 --> 29:09.680]  And the bridge would literally get destroyed, like, or at least severely damaged every year.
[29:09.880 --> 29:12.660]  And they couldn't... and the village there couldn't maintain it.
[29:12.880 --> 29:17.600]  And so eventually, people went down there and built a bridge using wood and using vine.
[29:17.840 --> 29:22.380]  And it's not new bridge building technology, but it was technology that they could work with and they could use.
[29:23.160 --> 29:27.780]  And so it was actually useful and we are trying to pass along this technology.
[29:28.360 --> 29:32.020]  Not just use it ourselves and give it to them as some sort of gift.
[29:32.180 --> 29:33.400]  Because that's not really a gift at all.
[29:33.860 --> 29:39.760]  So a challenge as we are trying to figure out, for example, maybe like the Wi-Fi networks, right?
[29:39.900 --> 29:42.740]  We'd love to maybe do like a wireless network barn raising.
[29:42.980 --> 29:46.920]  But the question is, how do we make that technology into an appropriate technology?
[29:47.200 --> 29:49.080]  What kind of problems can it really solve?
[29:49.280 --> 29:50.240]  And is it ready?
[29:52.260 --> 29:55.420]  Yeah, so we're going to throw out some tech challenges.
[29:56.040 --> 29:57.520]  Anybody can step up.
[29:58.960 --> 30:04.540]  See us afterwards or tell your friends about some of our problems.
[30:04.700 --> 30:05.960]  We want to tell you about our problems.
[30:06.440 --> 30:07.740]  And then we'll take questions.
[30:08.000 --> 30:08.360]  There's time.
[30:08.460 --> 30:13.520]  So when we were here at H2K2, we talked about our studio transmitter link project.
[30:13.760 --> 30:18.580]  And one of the very exciting things about that is one of the problems that we were having was silence detection.
[30:18.580 --> 30:24.340]  We needed to know when the link was down, when there was just silence going over it and not an actual signal.
[30:24.840 --> 30:29.280]  Because the FCC has this silly rule that you shouldn't broadcast more than like 30 seconds of silence.
[30:30.800 --> 30:34.060]  So somebody actually solved this problem for us, which was awesome.
[30:34.240 --> 30:35.040]  We didn't have to do it.
[30:35.880 --> 30:42.780]  And came up with a circuit and has this nice little thing that we can build with like a buck or two's worth of parts.
[30:42.780 --> 30:44.020]  And it works great.
[30:44.240 --> 30:51.220]  And so we're hoping that with some of these other problems, you know, by the time of the next HOPE conference, you know, one of you will have come up with a solution for us.
[30:52.160 --> 30:55.320]  The first problem is this foldback circuit.
[30:55.480 --> 31:01.640]  So the problem is if you turn on a radio transmitter and it's not hooked up to any kind of resistor or antenna or something, it'll burn out.
[31:01.640 --> 31:04.380]  The output transistor will actually melt down.
[31:05.100 --> 31:11.940]  So what we want is a circuit that will detect whether there's an antenna attached and turn off the transmitter, if this is the case.
[31:12.180 --> 31:14.640]  Just a SWR foldback circuit is what they're usually called.
[31:16.120 --> 31:18.920]  They're built into most commercial transmitters, but they're expensive.
[31:19.200 --> 31:24.680]  We want something we can build for like 10 bucks out of parts from, you know, RadioShack or DigiKey or something.
[31:28.470 --> 31:29.490]  Let's talk afterwards.
[31:33.630 --> 31:34.030]  Cool.
[31:36.890 --> 31:40.030]  Yes, we have one person already.
[31:40.310 --> 31:40.810]  Thank you.
[31:41.030 --> 31:42.210]  Yeah, it's wonderful to step up.
[31:42.730 --> 31:49.970]  You know, actually, when we set out the challenge last year, people in the audience, because we have a lot of smart people here, were like, oh, you can just do this, it's easy.
[31:50.570 --> 31:55.130]  The challenge will be like working with us to actually help us make something that actually works, right?
[31:57.470 --> 32:04.350]  Yeah, but I bet together, you know, a couple of us could bang it out, and that would actually be like tremendously valuable.
[32:04.630 --> 32:05.750]  Like tremendously valuable.
[32:06.290 --> 32:13.810]  And it's one of these examples where like a little technical solution, a little work can go a tremendously long way, especially if we share that knowledge.
[32:17.470 --> 32:27.110]  Another sort of more complicated challenge is right now when we build a small station, micropower station, we usually go and we buy a radio transmitter kit from someplace, usually in England.
[32:27.310 --> 32:28.910]  There's a few different companies that we buy them from.
[32:29.210 --> 32:33.630]  And we'll take it down there, the circuit board, all the unassembled parts, and we'll solder it together.
[32:33.870 --> 32:41.690]  And they come with, depending on the brand, they have better or worse manuals, better or worse documentation, and last a shorter or longer amount of time.
[32:42.710 --> 32:58.650]  What we would really love to have is sort of along the lines of the open cores project is an open hardware design for like a one watt transmitter that'll meet or exceed, you know, whatever relevant regulations are, and that can be built cheaply, where we can have a circuit board design,
[32:58.990 --> 33:05.790]  schematics, troubleshooting manual, everything that we can give out and will become, you know, the standard transmitter for micropower stations.
[33:06.430 --> 33:12.910]  So if anybody's interested in working on a project like that, we'd love to get together a team of people and, you know, start hacking at it.
[33:14.850 --> 33:23.070]  Another cool project that we talked about two years ago at the last HOPE conference is a software project called Flow.
[33:23.670 --> 33:31.930]  One challenge is getting audio from a studio to a transmitter if the studio and transmitter are in different locations.
[33:31.930 --> 33:39.470]  One reason this is really, really important for community stations is because of the ridiculous FCC rules on low power.
[33:39.830 --> 33:46.310]  Often, you know, you want a station in your city, but because of the rules, you can only have the transmitter ten miles away.
[33:46.530 --> 33:54.550]  So actually, for example, in Maryland there was a station who was able to get a license ten miles away on an island.
[33:55.670 --> 34:07.730]  So for them to get their signal ten miles across the bay so the signal could be sent back across the bay, what we did is we built an Internet solution using all open source technology so it could be shared.
[34:08.170 --> 34:24.070]  And so amusingly, the audio signal at the studio would go into a Linux box, get encoded using sort of standard web streaming technology, sent over the Internet to California where it was sent into space where it could be beamed down through the satellite Internet through the transmitter.
[34:24.070 --> 34:33.330]  It was very, very frustrating to me that we had to send the audio signal into space so that the FCC would allow it to be transmitted ten miles across this little community.
[34:34.430 --> 34:46.570]  A problem... we have the appropriate technology issue here, though, because, you know, we had this problem to solve, get audio from one place to another, so I'm like, that's great, we'll use open source tools, this isn't that hard of a problem.
[34:47.110 --> 34:50.410]  In practice, all problems are much harder than you think they are.
[34:50.510 --> 34:53.570]  You know, it's easy to do a little bit, but have it be reliable is much harder.
[34:53.570 --> 35:03.150]  But the thing that has never been done is really package it up in a way that someone who, you know, doesn't know how to touch a Linux box can actually use.
[35:03.430 --> 35:17.230]  And so a wonderful project would be, for example, if someone, you know, someone with some sysadmin skills, you know, folded in this, you know, a couple of Perl scripts and a couple of applications into, say, something like Knoppix, like a CD bootable Linux.
[35:17.710 --> 35:27.190]  And so that we could actually hand out, give these people a CD, one for the studio and one for the transmitter, they plug it into two computers, and voila, they have a cheap studio transmitter link.
[35:28.550 --> 35:32.750]  And that would be a wonderful project, and I'd love to work with anyone who is interested in doing that.
[35:33.510 --> 35:46.190]  An Internet link, you know, it's not an ideal solution because it's only as reliable as the Internet, but for a station that has no other options, it can, you know, make the difference between being able to have a station or not have a station.
[35:47.030 --> 35:55.470]  The microwave links, which you can get, where you just aim a microwave on either end, one at the studio, one at the transmitter, they're more reliable.
[35:55.670 --> 36:02.070]  But in Fresno, for example, there wasn't any frequency available, and sometimes it's just not possible at all.
[36:02.110 --> 36:15.530]  Yeah, the traditional way that a station would do this would be to spend about $10,000 on the problem, have a microwave tower on each end, a four-foot dish, and, you know, you've got a dedicated chunk of spectrum that you can use to send the signal to your transmitter.
[36:16.890 --> 36:30.070]  Problems that we've run into trying to use this other places, like the station in Maryland, where the studio is on one side of the Chesapeake, the transmitter was on the other, is we actually thought about putting, you know, Wi-Fi on a tower on both sides and just shooting it 10 miles across the bay,
[36:30.290 --> 36:31.670]  you know, maybe fog would be a problem.
[36:32.010 --> 36:38.430]  But one of the big problems is that there's large container ships that come through, and we couldn't build a tower that was tall enough to go over the tops of the ships.
[36:39.650 --> 36:44.870]  Another problem that happens with using microwave point-to-point links is that a lot of times there just isn't frequency available.
[36:45.390 --> 36:51.010]  And using Wi-Fi, we're just not able to get the kind of quality of service or reliability that we need for a radio station.
[36:51.230 --> 36:56.830]  You know, we need to be down for no more than 30 seconds at a time, and preferably, you know, that's once a year or something.
[36:58.110 --> 37:02.470]  So we're just not able to get anywhere close to that using off-the-shelf Wi-Fi stuff.
[37:02.470 --> 37:09.130]  So, well, that brings me back to the policy stuff and what we're trying to do in support of unlicensed.
[37:09.370 --> 37:21.790]  Because Wi-Fi is just the beginning of what's possible with when you combine computers, with networking, with radio, with transmitting wirelessly.
[37:22.130 --> 37:24.410]  When I say radio, that's what I mean in this case.
[37:24.410 --> 37:35.190]  So Wi-Fi is like our first taste that the public has been able to have of what they call smart radio, which is networking and computers and wireless transmission.
[37:36.590 --> 37:41.330]  These technologies, though, have been around for quite a while, some of them as long as 50 years.
[37:42.130 --> 38:02.550]  And to give you one example of what we're up against, where LPFM is available, you know, in a couple of hundred places around the country, think about cell phones, and one cell phone 50 years ago, the amount of the airwaves that were taken up by one conversation,
[38:02.950 --> 38:09.310]  now 100,000 channels of communication are available in that same amount of airspace.
[38:09.910 --> 38:14.890]  So what we're wondering, you know, is, huh, well, where's the public's cut?
[38:14.890 --> 38:25.290]  Are we going to be able to have that kind of expansion and communication possibilities available at the community level?
[38:25.430 --> 38:26.550]  And how do we keep that open?
[38:27.110 --> 38:49.090]  And one of the things that ties into the ownership studies, what was going on back with the FCC and the ownership studies, is that the FCC has created another barrier for the public, another hoop for us to jump through, because the FCC says that whatever rules they pass have to be based on quote-unquote science.
[38:49.090 --> 38:50.950]  They have to be based on facts.
[38:53.070 --> 39:06.530]  So we have to be generating, you know, studies and all kinds of stuff to be proving that, you know, the public is capable and able and desires to use these technologies.
[39:06.530 --> 39:30.630]  So what we're looking to do is generate some studies over this summer showing that the FCC should expand on licensed radio by going out and just taking spectrum analyzers and just measuring and showing that there's availability on the television channels and the television band,
[39:30.630 --> 39:36.310]  because there's a, there's a ruling coming up in September, we can comment.
[39:36.830 --> 39:43.590]  If people go out and test and say, hey, look, there, you know, there's nothing here on this television band.
[39:43.770 --> 39:47.810]  Why can't we use it for unlicensed Wi-Fi?
[39:47.810 --> 40:01.250]  And then the problems that, that Dave is talking about are solved because you have a better, better quality transmission in the TV band than you have with what's currently available for Wi-Fi.
[40:01.830 --> 40:08.350]  So that's one, that's one long, long explanation of one of the projects that I'd like people to jump, jump into.
[40:08.350 --> 40:08.730]  Yeah.
[40:09.090 --> 40:11.510]  So again, this project is we want to make a map of the U.S. that shows where these TV bands that are up to be deallocated, where those are empty and where they're full.
[40:17.550 --> 40:24.870]  And our bet is that it's going to be, you know, if we color each area where it's not empty, the map's going to be almost entirely white.
[40:25.150 --> 40:28.490]  These channels aren't used very many places throughout the country.
[40:28.490 --> 40:43.410]  But what we need are data points for that map, which are going to be people who go out and take a scanner, or, you know, if you're a ham radio person and you have some way of receiving on these frequencies, go and measure and see how much signal is there at those places.
[40:44.650 --> 40:54.710]  And then go to the Prometheus website or contact us and help us build a tool so that we can have a participatory way.
[40:54.710 --> 41:11.270]  We're interested in developing a participatory research model as applied to communications, the way that the environmental movement has used, like, bucket brigades, taking scientists and trained people to do their own measurement and get involved in the science that affects their lives.
[41:11.450 --> 41:14.210]  So we're interested in trying to bring those kind of things in.
[41:14.390 --> 41:20.830]  Now, what Dave is talking about is actually going with the spectrum analyzer and measuring people that have that ability.
[41:20.830 --> 41:37.090]  Another thing is that there's just databases out there that if you want to, you know, if you've got lots and lots of money and you want to, you decide you want to have a TV station, you can buy software packages that'll show you, you know, the terrain of where you should move your tower and all that kind of stuff.
[41:37.850 --> 41:46.130]  So people could also, if you have the ability to do data analysis and work with data sets, that's another way of doing it.
[41:46.130 --> 41:49.470]  And I'd like to see both things happen before September 1st.
[41:49.470 --> 41:52.170]  So we really can show that the public's interested here.
[41:53.830 --> 42:07.170]  I guess just another area problem set for sort of technical challenges is just, like, all the amazing things that Prometheus has done and can do with sort of simple web tools and programming.
[42:07.170 --> 42:19.610]  So, I mean, it's really worth stressing that, you know, a fellow Kevin in Philadelphia wrote a script that would take comments and then format them appropriately so that they could be submitted as formal FCC comments.
[42:19.610 --> 42:25.630]  And over 700,000 comments were submitted to the FCC, which changed the political debate.
[42:25.790 --> 42:31.690]  And the issue of media consolidation, for a lot of reasons, finally hit the big time, at least for a brief moment.
[42:31.690 --> 42:37.310]  There are other kinds of, like, web, like, projects that are ongoing that could use help.
[42:37.570 --> 42:45.850]  There's been a database of community radio allies that different groups working on this issue have been able to share, which has been really exciting.
[42:46.530 --> 42:53.690]  The people working with Prometheus have been very involved in sort of independent media online issues.
[42:53.870 --> 42:58.730]  So, for example, there's Indymedia, like Indymedia.org and those sort of groups in different cities.
[42:58.730 --> 43:15.510]  And for a lot of cities, the core thing that they use is just sort of simple web-based technology, maybe written in PHP or Perl, which allow people to publish their own articles, publish their own audio, publish their own video, and really be the media in the way that,
[43:15.590 --> 43:17.630]  you know, the t-shirts are talking about.
[43:17.810 --> 43:21.830]  Because, you know, the idea is that, you know, all of us can be journalists and all of us can spread media.
[43:22.010 --> 43:30.170]  And through these sort of web tools and web publishing tools that a lot of people can work on, they know a little web design or a little programming, can make a lot possible.
[43:31.710 --> 43:49.770]  So, I just wanted to mention that August 20th through 22nd in Urbana-Champaign, there is a community wireless summit where anybody that's interested in community wireless networking is invited to come to, if you know something, come bring your skills.
[43:50.810 --> 44:02.610]  this is going to try to bring together anybody that has any interest from policy or technical or anything, to come together and try to work together to expand the community wireless movement.
[44:04.650 --> 44:05.610]  That's our five minute.
[44:05.850 --> 44:06.530]  That's our five minute.
[44:06.590 --> 44:06.790]  Okay.
[44:07.070 --> 44:14.490]  Also, in August, we're going to have the next Prometheus barn raising, which is going to happen in the great state of New Hampshire.
[44:14.490 --> 44:19.230]  And we'd love to see, maybe not all of you, but some of you there.
[44:20.490 --> 44:22.070]  You know, housing can be a little short.
[44:22.990 --> 44:26.730]  So, if you go to the website, it's prometheusradio.org.
[44:27.110 --> 44:28.470]  There will be details up there.
[44:28.870 --> 44:30.990]  I think there's a banner for barn raisings.
[44:31.330 --> 44:35.630]  Yeah, I mean, I just want to really encourage people to try and, you know, make that effort to go.
[44:35.630 --> 44:40.090]  You know, like I'm, you know, I'm just a volunteer and I got involved.
[44:40.290 --> 44:51.430]  And really, the barn raisings are a really wonderful opportunity to spend a weekend using what skills you have to really do something wonderful and also make a real connection with people that you wouldn't otherwise know.
[44:51.650 --> 44:52.550]  That's a wonderful thing.
[44:52.950 --> 44:53.570]  We have five minutes.
[44:53.710 --> 44:54.730]  Should we just take a question or two?
[44:54.950 --> 44:55.170]  Yeah.
[44:55.430 --> 45:00.470]  Did I say the URL, communitywirelesssummit.org, with three S's?
[45:01.130 --> 45:18.290]  And the website for Prometheus, again, is just prometheusradio.org, where Prometheus is spelled like the god who was punished for giving fire to humanity, which is, you know, sort of the metaphor for all of us trying to take the technological knowledge we know and spread that fire,
[45:18.430 --> 45:19.570]  spread that knowledge to other people.
[45:20.670 --> 45:21.510]  Any questions?
[45:24.430 --> 45:27.950]  If there are questions, they'd probably appreciate if you come up and use the microphone.
[45:31.190 --> 45:33.190]  Can you repeat that summit thing?
[45:33.370 --> 45:33.670]  Sure.
[45:33.910 --> 45:38.530]  It's communitywirelesssummit.org.
[45:39.550 --> 45:40.150]  I'm sorry.
[45:40.410 --> 45:40.750]  Thanks.
[45:41.590 --> 45:48.610]  Did the FCC ask you to come to any of the ownership meetings, like the Virginia one or New York one and Columbia?
[45:49.110 --> 45:53.370]  And I just want to say the low-power FM movement is just incredible.
[45:53.690 --> 45:57.410]  You've been on the forefront getting canard to do this low-power FM.
[45:57.410 --> 46:02.170]  Then we have Helms, who's just this mass f*cker who did this.
[46:02.750 --> 46:08.210]  And now we're going forward and speaking truth to power to really get it to happen.
[46:08.410 --> 46:13.310]  And I think everyone can take part by the grassroots power.
[46:13.310 --> 46:21.010]  And I mean this map thing where you got the injunction to stop the ownership, the 6%, 60% or whatever, that was incredible.
[46:21.890 --> 46:22.410]  Thanks.
[46:23.130 --> 46:28.990]  I just wanted to say that watching Prometheus, because I'm just a volunteer, it really has been amazing.
[46:29.490 --> 46:31.150]  So there have been these localism hearings.
[46:32.010 --> 46:35.490]  Powell is like, well no, I won't give you anything and I won't free the airwaves.
[46:35.570 --> 46:41.370]  But we'll have these hearings in different cities where people can talk about why localism is important to them.
[46:41.370 --> 46:43.290]  Where localism is just local media.
[46:43.910 --> 46:55.430]  And because of organizing by Prometheus and other groups like Free Press, those meetings have been full of people from those communities demanding that the FCC free the airwaves, give access back.
[46:55.430 --> 47:05.030]  And you can also, that's another thing you can file on if you're concerned about local origination of content and cultural and civic participation at the local level.
[47:05.330 --> 47:08.790]  There is a docket that's open right now at the FCC.
[47:09.190 --> 47:10.610]  You can find out more on our website.
[47:10.930 --> 47:12.690]  Comments are due September 1st.
[47:13.750 --> 47:30.730]  The question that you had is, going back to the civil rights movement and thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King, the FCC is required to take comments from the public and have public hearings on communications policy.
[47:30.990 --> 47:33.950]  A lot of it is symbolic, but we're trying to change that.
[47:40.550 --> 47:44.990]  Okay, the question was, how difficult is it to start a community radio station in your area?
[47:45.910 --> 47:54.910]  Real quickly, I think the process is, first off, you can go on the FCC's website, and they actually have some pretty cool little web tools that you can use to find out what frequencies might be available.
[47:55.630 --> 47:58.990]  And then, there are no fees to apply for a low power FM license.
[47:59.610 --> 48:04.450]  Any non-profit community group can apply, and many of those groups are an individual.
[48:05.850 --> 48:07.810]  So it's not hard to apply for it.
[48:07.910 --> 48:10.910]  It costs, you know, a few thousand dollars in equipment to set it up.
[48:11.130 --> 48:16.630]  The hardest part of the whole process is finding a community to work with you, because you're not going to be the only DJ.
[48:17.610 --> 48:22.150]  And finding some kind of organization or, you know, group that you can work with on this.
[48:29.110 --> 48:31.930]  And the follow-up was, how much does it cost a month to run one?
[48:32.870 --> 48:40.710]  Once you have the equipment, you know, rent, you know, paying for your tower space, if you have your antenna on a commercial tower, it's not a whole lot of money.
[48:48.810 --> 48:51.450]  What is your take on unlicensed broadcasting?
[48:52.370 --> 48:53.610]  I mean, completely unlicensed.
[48:54.990 --> 49:03.810]  Officially, Prometheus is not involved in any unlicensed broadcast, particularly because of its pirate roots.
[49:04.070 --> 49:05.030]  Within the U.S.
[49:05.490 --> 49:05.890]  Yeah.
[49:06.090 --> 49:08.430]  In other countries, Prometheus is involved with pirate broadcasting.
[49:08.970 --> 49:13.730]  Personally, a number of people who, like me, who's just a volunteer, I'm really excited about it.
[49:13.870 --> 49:20.310]  And I'm excited about some of these tools, like, broadcasting content on the Internet to unlicensed broadcast.
[49:20.670 --> 49:28.490]  Because, you know, part of this new model where, you know, the content provider is separated from the actual transmitter, it can be very exciting.
[49:29.590 --> 49:35.390]  I just want to say, in the future, we'd like to see unlicensed, like, the Wi-Fi and things like that.
[49:35.530 --> 49:40.690]  We would like to see the expansion of unlicensed to take over the licensed services in the future.
[49:40.990 --> 49:44.510]  Would you like to see it less licensing and less constrictive?
[49:44.930 --> 49:45.070]  Yeah.
[49:47.590 --> 49:52.970]  In the future, we don't think the technology is there yet.
[49:53.290 --> 49:57.030]  I mean, we don't have accessibility with the communities that we work with at this point.
[49:57.650 --> 50:06.570]  I just want to introduce Petri Dish, one of the founders of the Prometheus Radio Project, and use, I guess, our last five minutes to let Petri talk.
[50:06.570 --> 50:08.910]  I think we have zero minutes.
[50:09.090 --> 50:09.290]  We'll do it.
[50:09.390 --> 50:10.130]  We have zero minutes.
[50:10.410 --> 50:10.630]  Go ahead.
[50:11.650 --> 50:17.810]  Are these community radio stations subject to the same censorship laws and rules that the other main stations are subject to?
[50:19.730 --> 50:20.490]  They are.
[50:20.790 --> 50:22.310]  And the...
[50:22.310 --> 50:34.330]  But the truth of the matter is, one of the better things about FCC policy is that they say very little about what you can say on a radio station, except for in the realm of indecency and obscenity.
[50:34.330 --> 50:41.510]  And those rules are ridiculous, and they almost always get thrown out by the courts as they go through the system anyway.
[50:41.890 --> 50:49.450]  We don't focus a lot on that because the vast majority of stations break those rules all the time and nothing ever happens to them.
[50:49.790 --> 50:59.070]  So our main focus is getting access for as many communities as possible, for as many local organizations as we possibly can.
[50:59.290 --> 50:59.670]  Thank you.
[51:02.530 --> 51:03.670]  One last question.
[51:03.670 --> 51:26.550]  Are you aware of the current and the recent past in Miami, there's a huge problem with pirate radio stations, and the FCC is pushing for, instead of just fines, jail time, anywhere from three to five years in jail for broadcasting illegally for second events?
[51:27.150 --> 51:33.530]  Yeah, and the worst thing that's happening there is that actually not the FCC, but the state has passed a law...
[51:33.530 --> 51:34.950]  The state, but the FCC is pushing with them.
[51:35.090 --> 51:36.370]  They really want to see this.
[51:36.510 --> 51:46.070]  And I think that it's a really bad thing for states to start getting involved in doing a second level of regulation of broadcasting.
[51:46.870 --> 51:57.010]  It makes sense that the federal government, if anyone's going to regulate broadcasting, it should be the federal government because radio signals don't respect boundaries, right?
[51:57.470 --> 52:05.550]  So when a state government gets into the picture by adding its own set of fines and penalties, that's totally ridiculous.
[52:05.550 --> 52:08.190]  I don't think that's going to be sustained by the courts either.
[52:09.370 --> 52:17.490]  Whatever shreds there are left of separation of powers and separation of jurisdictions in this country, I hope that all that stuff gets struck down.
[52:17.630 --> 52:18.890]  And I kind of think it will.
[52:19.790 --> 52:20.110]  All right.
[52:20.330 --> 52:20.650]  Thank you.
[52:28.410 --> 52:30.550]  Oh, is there a last one?
[52:30.770 --> 52:31.510]  Do we have time for it?
[52:31.630 --> 52:31.950]  Sure.
[52:33.330 --> 52:38.950]  Is there some place that publishes a list of frequencies owned by these big corporations like Clear Channel?
[52:39.190 --> 52:46.070]  Because we ran into a problem in South Jersey where me and a buddy of mine were trying to get a LPFM started up.
[52:46.370 --> 52:47.750]  We submitted a bunch of surveys.
[52:47.930 --> 52:49.710]  The FCC said, no, nothing's available.
[52:50.090 --> 52:53.050]  And then within a year, Clear Channel brought up two stations in the area.
[52:53.670 --> 52:59.970]  And we were wondering, is there a list somewhere of what these corporations actually own that prevent us from getting frequencies?
[52:59.970 --> 53:10.230]  I believe the Center for Public Integrity has a database that is pretty good telling you who the ownership are by ZIP Code.
[53:11.370 --> 53:13.910]  And then how does the FCC's tool work?
[53:14.950 --> 53:18.510]  The FCC has a tool, although it's much more obscure to use it.
[53:19.390 --> 53:27.110]  The Center for Public Integrity is a better bet for actually finding bi-corporation and so on.
[53:27.850 --> 53:32.770]  You can just look them up on the web, Center for Public Integrity, and they'll be really helpful.
[53:33.050 --> 53:33.330]  Thank you.
[53:34.050 --> 53:45.090]  I am so sorry that I'm here so late, but we have a whole bunch of literature that I just brought in my bag that's going to get splattered across some local surface right up here.
[53:45.090 --> 53:46.590]  There are also mailing lists.
[53:46.650 --> 53:57.750]  If you want to get deeper involved with Prometheus Radio Project, come out to our barn raisings and help build these stations, help build wireless networks and communities, and get involved in spectrum reform and media ownership.
[53:57.930 --> 54:04.690]  Come on up and sign up on our mailing lists, and we'll get you integrated into the fight for better, for your airwaves.
[54:04.690 --> 54:05.610]  Thanks.
[54:05.950 --> 54:09.030]  And I've got about 10 cartoon guides to spectrum policy, too.
[54:09.650 --> 54:09.710]  Great.
[54:10.870 --> 54:11.050]  Okay.
[54:11.470 --> 54:12.210]  Thank you very much.