I might try to get in touch with some of these ham radio people that have this equipment to track these LOWLIFE operators of this WLDW station down. Straight up Dog the bounty hunter style kicking down doors and making them take this illicit radio operation off of the airwaves.
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WLDW Wild 106.7 any info on this station?
- Thread starter Syfy
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I might try to get in touch with some of these ham radio people that have this equipment to track these LOWLIFE operators of this WLDW station down. Straight up Dog the bounty hunter style kicking down doors and making them take this illicit radio operation off of the airwaves.
Might I recommend a new hobby?
If it bothers you so much, why do you listen to them? Oh, you don't listen to them. You live in Colorado. Why are you commenting about something which in no way relates to you?
Please be cautious about suggesting illegal activity in hopes of shutting the station down.
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This is awesome.
BMI, ASCAP, SESAC and Azoff's group have almost no potential for money recovery. The rates are principally adjusted to station revenue, and most pirates have limited income. They generally have no assets to go after other than some cheap gear, and there is no chance of recovering punitive damages.
So for the author/composer societies, there is no incentive to go after pirates as it's expensive and fruitless. On the other hand, when they go after restaurants and venues there is a formula for occupied space, etc. that is easy to prove and lots of legal precedent.
They must have some pretty sophisticated broadcasting equipment if they can reach phildedelphia when they are broadcasting from Aston pa to philadelphia about 25 miles around thats pretty good.
The reason I am upset is that they are stealing basically from the people who wrote the song by playing their music running ads and then sending them no royalty checks in return. Id think youd also be concerned with this frank or would hope at least. If you see something wrong and do nothing about it i dont think thats right.
Another issue here is even IF BMI/ASCAP/SESAC/whatever knows this is going on and wishes to sue to recover royalties, the pirates will never pay it. Pirates are well known for basically ignoring monetary judgements from the Government..in addition, most of these pirate operations are not set up as a legal organization, so it’s sometimes impossible to determine who is running things. .Doubtful a private organization like a music rights organization will get them to pay up any faster. They disappear, judgement will never be collected.
Possibly the best idea to solve this problem (and the one I forgot about) is to contact EMF/K-Love and mention there’s a pirate operating adjacent channel near WKVP...interference and all. If they find it them to be an issue, trust me, THEY will take care of it from there with notifying the proper authorities to shut em down. They may not have someone minding the store in Philly, but they certainly don’t want their main station in market #4 to be interfered with because of a pirate top 40 outfit 15 miles away. That can cut into a potential chunk of their donation base. I should point out that EMF’s engineering crew in suburban Sacramento are top-notch. Granted, the word will be sent out to a contract engineer in PA to investigate further, but you should have no problems reaching out to EMF engineering in Rocklin and expecting them to take you seriously.
Possibly the best idea to solve this problem (and the one I forgot about) is to contact EMF/K-Love and mention there’s a pirate operating adjacent channel near WKVP...interference and all. If they find it them to be an issue, trust me, THEY will take care of it from there with notifying the proper authorities to shut em down. They may not have someone minding the store in Philly, but they certainly don’t want their main station in market #4 to be interfered with because of a pirate top 40 outfit 15 miles away. That can cut into a potential chunk of their donation base. I should point out that EMF’s engineering crew in suburban Sacramento are top-notch. Granted, the word will be sent out to a contract engineer in PA to investigate further, but you should have no problems reaching out to EMF engineering in Rocklin and expecting them to take you seriously.
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If you have where their evil lair of operation is, you can have a judgement issued to seize their property and assets until they pay the royalties due. And given their operating over 25 miles of broadcasting range that some pretty good equipment they have transmitters boards lots of things that could be seized.
It's not worth it. The royalties on a station with very limited revenue would not, in all likelihood, even pay for the cost of serving them papers.
ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc. fees are based on a formula that takes into account the size of a station and its market and its revenue range. Zero times zero is zero.
Hams going bounty hunter-style and kicking down doors is something none of us will ever see in our lifetimes or beyond.
About 15 years ago there was a list of unlicensed Part 15 microbroadcast stations on a web site, and ASCAP trolled the list, sending e-mails to each of the stations on the list asking them to pay music royalties. Most people told them to GTFO and the list disappeared from the web soon after.
Also, don’t forget, the odds of actually “catching” the pirate Dog The Bounty Hunter-style are somewhere near zero. Usually the tx site is not the studio site.
Just like most licensed stations, there is probably nobody at the transmitter site. There may be an automation computer, Chinese made transmitter (probably under 1.5kW), single bay antenna, and maybe a method to remotely send audio to the site such as a Barix Box and/or a hotspot. That’s it. Tops, there’s probably $2,000 MSRP of gear to confiscate. If it’s on an apartment building as described, chances are good the actual owner has no clue the station is there. Maybe a maintenance person gave it the OK, but that isn’t worth a hill of beans.
In that case, the owner has the right to remove the equipment and store/dispose of it as it would when a tenant leaves items behind. They have to store it (usually) for a set amount of time, they can charge a storage fee, and if the owner of the radio equipment never shows up, it can eventually be sold.
Just like most licensed stations, there is probably nobody at the transmitter site. There may be an automation computer, Chinese made transmitter (probably under 1.5kW), single bay antenna, and maybe a method to remotely send audio to the site such as a Barix Box and/or a hotspot. That’s it. Tops, there’s probably $2,000 MSRP of gear to confiscate. If it’s on an apartment building as described, chances are good the actual owner has no clue the station is there. Maybe a maintenance person gave it the OK, but that isn’t worth a hill of beans.
In that case, the owner has the right to remove the equipment and store/dispose of it as it would when a tenant leaves items behind. They have to store it (usually) for a set amount of time, they can charge a storage fee, and if the owner of the radio equipment never shows up, it can eventually be sold.
They are running ads sometimes every hour on the hour and have about a 25 mile broadcasting radius range thats gotta be pulling in at least 20k a year.
The average US OTA radio station bills a bit over $1.1 million. Small terrestrial stations only pay a minimal fee for ASCAP and BMI, and if a station bills $300 k or less I believe the fee is something less than $1,000 a year (I have never dealt with a station that small, but I remember some years back seeing numbers in the All Industry licensing committee documents).
For a couple of hundred dollars in back fees on $20 k in revenue, the rights societies are not even going to cover court and document costs and will never recover the money.
Just as a sidebar: when I worked in Argentina in the early 2000's, there were hundreds of pirates in the country... maybe as many as 200 just in Buenos Aires (which is about the population of the NYC metro). We had a "mobile unit" with two "technicians" who looked for pirates on 98.1, 98.3 or 98.5. if they located one with the gear they had, they visited the station, often in an apartment, or "inspected" the antenna on the rooftop. The antennas never survived inspection, and if the studio was found, what they did violated all kinds of laws but it got the pirate off the air... generally for good. If they returned, it was elsewhere in the dial.
And you came up with that estimate, how?
This is hysterical. kidrauhl- you're not a saint. it's honestly sad how serious you take this lol. you need a new hobby asap. these guys aren't hurting a single person, and yes while they might be "illegal" it's like jaywalking- not a big deal. Dude please, get off this forum and give it up. It's time a moderator close this thread please.
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