Radio "piracy" began with the advent of regulation of the airwaves at the dawn of the
age of radio. Initially, radio, or wireless as it was more commonly called at the time, was an open field of hobbyists and early inventors and experimenters. The degree of state control varied by country. For example, in the UK,
Marconi's work was supported by the post office, but in an era of weak regulation, a music hall magician,
Nevil Maskelyne, deliberately hijacked a demonstration. The
United States Navy began using radio for time signals and weather reports on the
east coast of the United States in the 1890s. Before the advent of
vacuum tube technology, early radio enthusiasts used (electronically) noisy
spark-gap transmitters. The Navy soon began complaining to a sympathetic press that amateurs were disrupting naval transmissions. The May 25, 1907, edition of
Electrical World, in an article called "Wireless and Lawless", reported authorities were unable to prevent an amateur from interfering with the operation of a government station at the
Washington, D.C. Navy Yard using legal means. In the run-up to the London Radiotelegraph Convention in 1912, and amid concerns about the safety of marine radio following the sinking of the on April 15 of that year, the
New York Herald of April 17, 1912, headlined President
William Howard Taft's initiative to regulate the public airwaves in an article titled "President Moves to Stop Mob Rule of Wireless".
Europe In Europe,
Denmark had the first known radio station in the world to broadcast commercial radio from a vessel in
international waters without permission from the authorities in the country to which it broadcast (Denmark in this case). The station was named
Radio Mercur and began transmission on August 2, 1958. In the Danish newspapers it was soon called a "pirate radio". Radio Mercur changed its name to Radio Syd in March 1962. In the Netherlands in 1964,
Radio Noordzee and
TV Noordzee began broadcasting from the
REM Island and
Radio Veronica acquired a new ship, a converted
fishing trawler named
MV Norderney.
United Kingdom In the 1960s in the UK, the term referred to not only a perceived unauthorized use of the state-run spectrum by the unlicensed broadcasters but also the risk-taking nature of
offshore radio stations that actually operated on anchored ships or marine platforms. The term had been used previously in Britain and the US to describe unlicensed land-based broadcasters and even
border blasters. For example, a 1940 British comedy about an unauthorized TV broadcaster,
Band Waggon, uses the phrase "pirate station" several times. A good example of this kind of activity was
Radio Luxembourg located in the Grand Duchy of
Luxembourg. The English language evening broadcasts from Radio Luxembourg were beamed by Luxembourg-licensed transmitters. The audience in the United Kingdom originally listened to their radio sets by permission of a
wireless license issued by the British
General Post Office (GPO). However, under terms of that wireless license, it was an offence under the
Wireless Telegraphy Act to listen to
unauthorized broadcasts, which possibly included those transmitted by Radio Luxembourg. Therefore, as far as the British authorities were concerned, Radio Luxembourg was a "pirate radio station" and British listeners to the station were breaking the law (although as the term 'unauthorized' was never properly defined it was somewhat of a legal
grey area). This did not stop British newspapers from printing program schedules for the station, or a British weekly magazine aimed at teenage girls,
Fab 208, from promoting the DJs and their lifestyle. (Radio Luxembourg's wavelength was 208 metres (1439, then 1440 kHz)). Radio Luxembourg was later joined by other well-known pirate stations received in the UK in violation of UK licensing, including
Radio Caroline and
Radio Atlanta (subsequently Radio Carolines North and South respectively, following their merger and the original ship's relocation),
Radio London, and
Laser 558, all of which broadcast from vessels anchored outside of territorial limits and were therefore legitimate.
Radio Jackie, for instance, although transmitting illegally was registered for
VAT and even had its address and telephone number in local telephone directories. By the 1970s, pirate radio in the UK had mostly moved to land-based broadcasting, transmitting from
tower blocks in towns and cities.
United States In the US, the
1912 "Act to Regulate Radio Communication" assigned amateurs and experimenters their own frequency spectrum, and introduced licensing and
call-signs. A federal agency, the
Federal Radio Commission, was formed in 1927 and succeeded in 1934 by the
Federal Communications Commission. These agencies would enforce rules on call-signs, assigned frequencies, licensing, and acceptable content for broadcast. The Radio Act of 1912 gave the president legal permission to shut down radio stations "in time of war". During the first two and a half years of
World War I, before US entry,
President Wilson tasked the US Navy with monitoring US radio stations, nominally to "ensure neutrality." The US was divided into two civilian radio "districts" with corresponding call-signs, beginning with "K" in the west and "W" in the east. The Navy was assigned call-signs beginning with "N". The Navy used this authority to shut down amateur radio in the western part of the US. When Wilson declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, he also issued an
executive order closing most radio stations not needed by the US government. The Navy took it a step further and declared it was illegal to listen to radio or possess a receiver or transmitter in the US, but there were doubts they had the authority to issue such an order even in war time. The ban on radio was lifted in the US in late 1919. In 1924, New York City station
WHN was accused by the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) of being an "outlaw station" for violating trade licenses which permitted only AT&T stations to sell
airtime on their transmitters. As a result of the AT&T interpretation, a landmark case was heard in court, which even prompted comments from
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover when he took a public stand in the station's defense. Although AT&T won its case, the furor created was such that those restrictive provisions of the transmitter license were never enforced. in
Chicago,
Illinois, challenged the U.S. government's authority to specify operating frequencies and was charged with being a "wave pirate". The station responded with this February 1926 publicity photograph of its engineering staff dressed as "wave pirates". In 1926,
WJAZ in Chicago changed its frequency to one previously reserved for Canadian stations without getting permission to make the change, and was charged by the federal government with "wave piracy". The resulting legal battle found that the Radio Act of 1912 did not allow the US government to require stations to operate on specific frequencies, and the result was the passage of the
Radio Act of 1927 to strengthen the government's regulatory authority. While
Mexico issued radio station
XERF with a license to broadcast, the power of its 250
kW transmitter was far greater than the maximum of 50 kW authorized for commercial use by the government of the United States of America. Consequently, XERF and many other radio stations in Mexico, which sold their broadcasting time to sponsors of English-language commercial and religious programs, were labelled as "
border blasters", but not "pirate radio stations", even though the content of many of their programs could not have been aired by a US-regulated broadcaster. Predecessors to XERF, for instance, had originally broadcast in
Kansas, advocating "
goat-gland surgery" for improved masculinity, but moved to Mexico to evade US laws about advertising medical treatments, particularly unproven ones. ==Free radio==