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And not just to adjacent stations - iBiquity's proposed 10-fold power hike for FM digital sidebands will cause what one commentator has called "honkin' interference" to an HD parent station's analog signal. Although the suspicions of just what increasing the signal strength of FM-HD sidebands would do to analog FM radio coverage have been well-discussed in the engineering community for nine months now, the new report from NPR Labs confirms the worst.

The "monumental 18-month study," involving extensive laboratory and field-testing of increased FM-HD sideband power finds that increased digital interference is simply unavoidable. While the tests do show that increasing FM-HD sideband power by a factor of 10 will make digital service coverage equivalent to (or, in some cases, slightly exceed) the coverage of a station's analog signal, the modification comes at a price:

Mobile analog FM covered population would be reduced an average of 26% for the sample stations. Interference would affect some stations severely in portions of their analog mobile service area: 41% could lose one-third or more of their [analog] covered population and 18% would lose more than half of their population. ...

Analog FM indoor and portable covered population totals are reduced by 22% and 6%, respectively. Interference would affect some stations severely in portions of their analog indoor service area: 27% could lose one-third or more of their covered population and 16% could lose more than half of their population.

Also:

Station impacts from IBOC DAB to analog FM vary widely from station to station, primarily due to the fact that the IBOC DAB digital sidebands are actually co-channel to neighboring stations on first-adjacent channels; the FCC’s first-adjacent allocation rules for analog FM cannot adequately protect against some close-spaced conditions [emphasis mine].

In addition, "Improvements in IBOC DAB receivers and antennas are not currently expected to be a significant remedy for the shortfall in indoor and portable reception. Other techniques, likely transmission-based, will be needed to improve service." Does this mean HD-enabled stations will be permitted to increase their analog power levels to compensate? Talk about making a congested band even worse....

In summary, "Unqualified 10% IBOC [FM] transmission power is predicted to cause substantial interference to analog reception of a significant number of first-and second-adjacent channel stations," in addition to the aforementioned analog/digital host-station cross-talk problems.

Interestingly, these tests were not conducted under the auspices of the National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC) - a broadcast standard-setting body which has been intimately involved in HD Radio protocol development every step along the way - except for this one. NRSC members are publicly questioning the integrity of the power-hike recommendation, and urge more research to be done before the FCC moves on this idea.

On top of all of this, there are increasing reports of trouble involving HD-reception in vehicles, and serious questions as to whether the FCC has the jurisdiction to force receiver manufacturers to incorporate HD reception technology into newer radios. (consumer adoption trends place satellite and wi-fi-enabled Internet radio receivers well-ahead of HD).

According to the FCC's own figures, about 1,750 stations are now broadcasting in some form of HD technology - that's just about 10% of all licensed stations in the nation. Will the agency destroy the village to save it?

I just updated the Enforcement Action Database: FCC field agents really went on a tear in July, and they are on pace to meet or beat their enforcement record set just last year.

But the really interesting cases I found involved stations who were licensed, let them lapse, and then just kept running as if nothing was amiss.

The first involves the Christian Family Network in Battle Creek, MI. Until just last month, CFN ran an AM station, WOLY. The station first went on the air in 1963. Unfortunately, the organization let its license lapse in October of 2004.

For nearly two years, Christian Family Network continued to run WOLY without any license at all. In 2007, the FCC contacted the station to remind them that, um, they're pirates now. CFN filed an application for Special Temporary Authority to continue broadcasting, but never received acknowledgement from the FCC, and never got around to re-filing for that all-important actual license.

In July, the FCC finally fined Christian Family Network $10,000 - for effectively running a full-power AM unlicensed radio station for four straight years. In an ironic argument, CFN says it wasn't able to file for a new license to cover WOLY-AM because it didn't have a computer. Nice try: the FCC still accepts forms via papyrus - you know, the stuff the Bible was written on. Chances are, you've got some of that laying around your offices, probably with your own letterhead pre-printed on them.

Secondly, CFN pleaded poverty - not because it's actually poor, but because it fears that the FCC's $10,000 penalty may jeopardize "assets worth more than $1,000,000" currently held by the organization. No surprise: appeal denied.

Secondly, there's the case of A-O Broadcasting Corporation. A-O used to hold the rights to KMTN-FM in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. At the end of 2002, KMTN's license also lapsed, and A-O did not renew. Yet, in April of 2004, KMTN magically returned to the airwaves, sans license.

The station stayed on the air for nearly a month, navigating a warren of correspondence with the FCC until finally agreeing to silence its rogue signal. In late April of this year, the Enforcement Bureau issued a $10,000 Notice of Apparent Liability to A-O Broadcasting for effectively running a pirate radio station.

Last month, however, the FCC cancelled A-O Broadcasting's pirate penalty. Why? Inability to pay - this is a common statutory consideration the FCC must make when considering the range of reprimand for offenders of its rules, but A-O Broadcasting finds itself in dire straits precisely due to a previous run-in with the FCC.

Back in 2004, KMTN was caught running a very dangerous broadcast operation - so dangerous that anyone straying too close to its transmission tower risked being exposed to more than three times the RF radiation limits set by law. And that was with the station operating at less than its half of its licensed power of 100,000 watts. This transgression cost A-O Broadcasting a steep $28,000 fine.

Unable to pay the previous penalty, A-O Broadcasting pleaded poverty this time around. The FCC bought it.

What is wrong with these situations? In both cases, operators of these pirate stations previously held licenses - they were well-aware of the rules and what it took to keep their stations within the bounds of legality. Christian Family Network simply disregarded the rules for several years running, and in light of that their penalty smacks of a slap on the wrist.

In the case of A-O Broadcasting, isn't there something a bit strange about the FCC repealing a penalty because the party at hand already has such a bad record? Aren't those the types of entities that the rules are precisely designed to stick it to?

Again, compared to your garden-variety free radio station, these two violators went far beyond the pale - yet their penalties do not reflect the egregiousness of their actions. Just more evidence that corporate piracy still pays.

This is a first, as far as I know. The FCC's tried to bluff their way into busts in the past, but not past actual cops.

In June, FCC Enforcement Bureau field agents made a run into Mount Carmel, Tennessee, to investigate unauthorized jamming of a police radio channel in the area (the problem had been going on for months before the FCC got around to sniffing around).

While in town, the agents ran into Mount Carmel and Church Hill police officers not once, but twice, on traffic stops. In both instances, the FCC folks told the local cops that they were part of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Meth Task Force. They had no credentials to back up their claim, and that made the cops suspicious.

Later, after the truth came out, Church Hill Police drafted - but did not issue - arrest warrants for the two FCC agents for impersonating a law enforcement officer. In every state, impersonating a cop is a crime - in many states, it's a felony (not so in Tennessee, lucky for the FCC).

Quoting Mount Carmel Police Chief Jeff Jackson, "A novel idea would have been to tell the truth — 'Yeah we’re FCC employees and we’re investigating radio complaints.' Or, at the very least there’s hundreds of lies they could have told my officers. They happened to pick the one lie that there’s a crime in the books against."

Fortunately for these rogue field agents, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation intervened and asked for no prosecution - although it is not happy that its good name was sullied by a couple of nimrods.

Chances are, these rogue agents either came from the Enforcement Bureau's New Orleans or Kansas City field office. I'm thinking the former because the Tennessee cops remarked that the FCC folks were driving an SUV with Alabama license plates.

Just a friendly reminder, folks: FCC field agents are not police. They have no powers of arrest; they carry no weapons; and they cannot coerce anyone into doing anything without the assistance of real police officers. In most cases, these are Federal Marshals, but it's not unheard of for local cops to lend the FCC a hand, especially in high-pirate areas like south Florida.

Let's just hope this is a case of a few bad apples, and not some sort of new policy made out of desperation for the FCC's relatively flaccid field muscle. Reprimands, at the very least, are most definitely in order here. If I were one of the aggrieved in Tennessee, I'd file a complaint with the FCC's Inspector General to make sure some justice actually gets served.

Two suspicious proposals to expand the FM spectrum have surfaced at the FCC. While on its face the idea seems promising, the devil, as always, is in the details.

The first proposal was filed in late July by the Educational Media Foundation - parent company of the K-LOVE and AIR-1 Christian music radio networks, which can already be heard on more than 150 full-power, low-power, and FM translator stations.

A second, new group, called the "Broadcast Maximization Committee," which represents the interests of AM broadcasters, followed up with its own proposal within days of EMF's filing. It is difficult to believe the timing of the filings were coincidental.

EMF and the BMC both assert that when the digital television transition is complete next February, the spectrum currently reserved for analog TV channels 5 and 6 - which is immediately adjacent to the existing FM broadcast dial - should be re-appropriated to expand the FM dial to accommodate new users.

The kicker is who those new users would be. In its proposal, EMF tacitly supports the reservation of some of this new spectrum for LPFM stations, but only as a ruse to advance its main agenda, which is to make sure most of it goes to FM translators. Citing the "embarrassment of riches" seen in 2003, when tens of thousands of applications for FM translators were filed (many of them arguably fraudulently), EMF implicitly suggests there is more demand for translators than for true, live-and-local LPFM stations. The truth is that the proliferation of FM translators has already detrimentally affected any future expansion of the LPFM service.

The Broadcast Maximization Committee, on the other hand, represents incumbent broadcasters who have long had their eye on the FM dial. Two years ago, the National Association of Broadcasters initiated a proceeding with the FCC, requesting that the agency assess the state of AM broadcasting. The endgame proposed a bounty of up to as many as five FM translators per AM station. AM broadcasters cite the degrading quality of the AM dial, due to interference issues (some of which they themselves have caused), as the rationale for giving these beleaguered incumbents new spectrum on an already-overcrowded FM dial.

The BMC's plan is essentially an expansion of the NAB's original scheme. Only eight of the 100 proposed FM channels would be reserved for LPFM expansion; another eight would be reserved for full-power, noncommercial educational stations. The rest would be employed to potentially liquidate the AM dial: existing AM broadcasters would move to full-power FM stations in the expanded band; the AM dial itself could then be possibly repurposed.

The irony in all of this is that both proposals use the guise of LPFM - something neither constituency has looked favorably upon in the past - as cover for their own greed. It's doubly-ironic for the fact that during the initial LPFM rulemaking in 1999 the FCC considered and rejected the notion of appropriating analog TV channels 5 and 6 to expand the FM band.

It's anyone's guess as to whether or not the FCC will seriously entertain these proposals. It would be a shame if it did, at least in their current forms.

It appears that the U.S. Senate may be moving toward a floor vote on the Local Community Radio Act. This bill originally began under the auspices of undoing the Congressional fiat in 2001 which severely restricted the promulgation of new low-power FM (LPFM) radio stations. By imposing draconian channel-spacing regulations on the new service, LPFM stations were precluded from being sited in areas of the nation in which 80% of the population lives.

The Local Community Radio Act has been the focus of a seven-year campaign to right this wrong. Most importantly, it would relax channel-spacing rules for LPFM stations (allowing them to be placed in more urban areas) and give LPFM stations a semblance of parity with regard to other classes of FM station. This would make LPFMs less susceptible to being bumped off the air by a larger station looking to move or otherwise modify its own transmission infrastructure.

In the House of Representatives, the Local Community Radio Act is currently bottled up in committee, though it does have 96 cosponsors; in the Senate; the bill was approved by the Commerce Committee in March and has been placed on the Senate's calendar for a full floor-vote, which may occur sometime this fall. In the Senate, the bill currently sports 10 cosponsors.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the Senate's version of the Local Community Radio Act contains two "poison pills" which would greatly diminish the future expansion of the LPFM service. The first would exempt the entire state of New Jersey from any LPFM expansion; the state's Senators are very sensitive to lobbying from New Jersey's commercial broadcast industry.

Given the state's geographic location (essentially wedged between two metropolitan areas - New York to the east and Philadelphia to the west), there are very few open channels for broadcast radio stations in New Jersey, and the state's incumbent broadcasters do not want new competition in an already-congested market.

The second poison pill, however, may very well be the deal-breaker for any LPFM expansion. In 2000/2001, when Congress passed the "Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act," it inserted what I like to call a "Rosa Parks provision" which effectively banned any prior pirate broadcaster from owning or governing the operation of an LPFM station. In essence, this provision wholly marginalized the very people who committed electronic civil disobedience in order to make LPFM a reality.

The Senate's version of the Local Community Radio Act expands this existing injustice:

The Federal Communications Commission shall modify the rules authorizing the operation of low-power FM radio stations...to prohibit any applicant from obtaining a low-power FM license if the applicant has engaged in any manner in the unlicensed operation of any station in violation of section 301 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 301). [emphasis added]

This is clearly an overbroad prohibition. Whereas the FCC first offered amnesty to pirate operators, then only to have that olive branch snatched from its hands by the Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act, this version of the Local Community Radio act would stigmatize a much larger potential group of radio activists. What if you never ran a pirate station, but donated money to one, or attended a station fund-raiser? What if you helped make flyers to publicize a pirate station? Does this constitute unlicensed operation "in any manner"?

The original "Rosa Parks provision" of the Local Community Radio Act was challenged in court - a challenge which failed, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the cast. Further punishing those who risked something in order to make LPFM a reality re-opens the question of whether such a banishment is even Constitutional; many FCC licensees have been convicted of crimes much worse than unlicensed broadcasting, and they have never been banished a priori from participation in a broadcast service.

Fortunately, only the Senate version of the Local Community Radio Act contains these provisions at the moment. However, if the Senate moves first on the bill, the House may follow suit by harmonizing its version's language with what the Senate's already done. Either that, or the discrepancies between the two versions of the bill will be fleshed out in conference committee - behind closed doors, with no public input. That is, if the House even moves on the bill before the session ends.

If that doesn't happen, the entire lobbying process for the Local Community Radio Act will be forced to start from scratch next year. Given the Senate's modifications, I'd rather see this particular effort die than become law; while it would most definitely expand the reach of the LPFM service, it does so at the cost of an entire state and an entire class of activists, without whom this entire debate wouldn't even be possible.

According to my pal Bennett Kobb, limited tests of the DRM broadcast protocol are now taking place on a station in Alaska specifically licensed for the research. It is important to note, however, that the tests do not involve the broadcast bands - although Digital Radio Mondiale has been certified to work on them all.

Instead, the ultimate hope of these DRM tests is to assess the protocol's performance in the 26 MHz segment of the spectrum. This falls between frequencies designated for radio astronomy and maritime mobile use - and, according to the experiment's proponents, could be utilized to provide "hundreds" of new, low-power community-based broadcasting stations across the country.

It is a daring aspiration: instead of fighting for crumbs on the already-congested traditional broadcast bands, or lobbying for a wholesale replacement of the flawed HD Radio technology, U.S. DRM proponents would like to see this digital broadcast service be implemented as a wholly new program.

The license for WE2XRH was granted by the FCC in July, for limited testing in some shortwave bands; the company running the tests, Digital Aurora Radio Technologies, hopes this will be a step toward expanding DRM's use in other spectrum. It claims that with just 10 to 20 kilohertz in bandwidth, DRM can provide "FM-like" quality to the entire state of Alaska on up to four separate channels of programming. Successful tests of DRM in the 26 MHz band have already been conducted in India.

What is notable about this experiment is the duration and at least one of its affiliates. WE2XRH (click here and type in the station's call letters for all technical notes and FCC activity to-date on the station) hopes to be operational for up to two years. The Department of Defense is also heavily involved in the tests, reportedly curious as to the propagation and throughput-capacity capabilities of Digital Radio Mondiale for battlefield purposes.

I'm sure having the DoD on board helped the FCC to expedite the experimental license; I sincerely hope its influence does not hijack the good intentions of those who've done so much to introduce DRM to our shores.

As lobbying over the conditions of the merger between the Sirius and XM satellite radio networks entered the home stretch, iBiquity Corporation and the National Association of Broadcasters requested that the Federal Communications Commission mandate all future satellite radio receivers to be interoperable with terrestrial digital AM and FM broadcasts.

This was a move by HD Radio's proponents to try and get something for nothing. XM and Sirius both subsidized the adoption of satellite radio receivers, especially in vehicles, by making the reception technology freely available and offering special deals to new subscribers (such as free service for a year or more, especially for folks who bought new cars and trucks with a satellite radio receiver as an option). In contrast, iBiquity Corporation wants those who make and market HD radio to pay it a cut from every HD receiver sold - effectively asking auto companies to partially pay the way for HD's adoption. This is a proposal that nearly all have resisted.

On July 10, just two weeks before the FCC cast all its votes on the Sirius-XM merger, General Motors and Toyota filed brief comments addressing the question of interoperability between digital satellite and terrestrial radio technologies. GM and Toyota both strongly opposed the notion of making interoperability a condition of the satellite radio merger. Not because of any problem with the satellite companies themselves, but due to misgivings about HD Radio.

Not only is "HD...already penetrating the automotive sector without a mandate" and "[n]othing in our companies’ respective agreements with [satellite radio broadcasters] inhibits our ability to offer HD radio," GM and Toyota further worried that "once mandated, the holders of the intellectual property for HD would have no incentive to be fully responsive to the demands of the marketplace."

In sum: two of the world's largest vehicle manufacturers are leery of the wholly proprietary nature of HD Radio and believe that its success or failure should be based on listener adoption, not mandated inclusion in the dashboard. It is a very strong message of no-confidence in the HD technology; perhaps the strongest articulated by any vehicle manufacturer to date. The FCC's final decision on the merger did not make satellite and HD interoperability a condition of the deal - this question will be taken up in a separate, future inquiry.

After a week-long, non-transparent deliberation, the Federal Communications Commission has reportedly signed off on the merger of the XM and Sirius satellite radio networks.

Many of the tea leaf-readers did not correctly forecast the outcome: most expected at least one Democratic Commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein, would vote for the merger, provided there were certain public interest obligations on the new, singular satellite broadcast entity. These would have included requirements such as a percentage of total satellite radio capacity be devoted to non-commercial, possibly public-access channels, and that the new company provide tiers of service that do not gouge existing and future subscribers. Some of these conditions will apply to the merged company, but the Commissioners' votes themselves ultimately split along party lines.

Instead, approval of the merger centered around a much different issue: resolving the shocking fact that XM and Sirius have committed radio piracy on a scale dwarfing anything ever seen in U.S. broadcast history. This first came to light in 2006, when it was revealed that both XM and Sirius were illegally operating hundreds of terrestrial repeater stations. These repeaters help amplify the space-based satellite signal and are integral to providing nationwide coverage for both networks. Several hundred repeaters were either being operated out of variance with FCC rules (overpowered and/or misplaced); some of these were wholly unlicensed (essentially pirate repeater stations built and maintained by XM and Sirius). This behavior was condoned at the highest levels of both companies.

On top of committing piracy on the transmission-side of their airchain, both XM and Sirius knowingly and willfully designed and worked with manufacturers to sell aftermarket mobile satellite radio receivers which translate the satellite radio signal into an FM signal, which can then be picked up by a vehicle's original stereo system. The power levels for these "transceivers" are strictly capped, but XM and Sirius ignored these technical rules - essentially turning hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of vehicles into mobile FM pirate rebroadcasters.

For two years, the FCC has been investigating these appallingly egregious violations of its rules. In order for the merger to be finalized, this investigation had to be concluded. A consent decree signed between the FCC, XM and Sirius, the language of which was finalized just hours before the last Commissioner voted on the merger, requires the two companies to pay a combined $19.7 million to settle their piracy problems. In addition, XM and Sirius agree to turn off or modify the operation of more than 100 terrestrial repeaters, which until last Friday continued to operate afoul of the FCC's rules.

That point bears repeating: even though the FCC was well-aware that XM and Sirius were engaged in widespread, willful, and repeated violations involving unauthorized (and, in some cases, unlicensed) broadcasting, and the companies knew they were under investigation, they continued to break the rules until the last possible moment - and the FCC implicitly endorsed this practice.

Now, let's do the math. XM and Sirius have admitted to operating at least 200 outright-pirate or out-of-tolerance terrestrial repeaters. If the consent decree were simply based on the number of transmission-related violations the two companies engaged in directly, this would work out to ~$98,000 per violation. But this figure does not include any penalty assessed for marketing those technically-rogue transceivers.

The number of these transceivers in the marketplace is not quantifiable - but if they were added into the math, each considered as a separate violation in and of itself, it would most definitely bring the per-violation penalty for each company down by several magnitudes. Were XM and Sirius your garden-variety FM pirate, and given the willful, repeated, and reportedly continual nature of their violations, the penalties should be much stiffer. Put simply, if you or I tried a caper like this, we'd most likely end up in jail.

However, a consent decree is not the same as a monetary forfeiture; mostly the preserve of corporate cases, a consent decree allows XM and Sirius to make a "voluntary contribution" to the U.S. treasury in exchange for not being held to account for any wrongdoing. Thus, a consent decree is not really a penalty at all - it is a slap on the corporate wrist, a wink-and-nod that wrong was done, but the official record will not reflect it.

The fact that the FCC treats corporate pirates much differently than your garden-variety free radio station is well-documented. Such violations are apparently standard practice within the wireless microphone industry. The notion that the XM/Sirius merger boiled down to this disparity is stunning. Fortunately, the consent decree also requires the merged company to develop a "compliance program" for its terrestrial-based RF emissions, which hopefully means it will not engage in future pirate or pirate-like practices. That being said, the fact that neither XM nor Sirius are being held seriously accountable for past bad behavior on does not make me all that confident that the new-found "compliance" itself will be much more than a charade.

Fiscal necessities - the realization that satellites alone could not provide XM and Sirius with complete, nationwide coverage, and the fact that aftermarket mobile satellite radio transceivers needed more power to make the signal listenable on a car's FM tuner than the FCC would allow - led the companies to engage in this illegal behavior in the first place. Neither company has yet turned a profit, and there's no guarantee that this merger, in and of itself, will fix that particular quandary. Therefore, there's no guarantee that the new, singular satellite broadcast entity will not engage in the same behavior going forward, only this time in a more subtle and quasi-sanctioned fashion.

No, not the massive archive curated here: this boost is courtesy of Stephen Colbert's "Make [John] McCain Exciting Challenge." The Colbert Report uploaded footage of McCain standing behind a green screen, and then asked the public to make his speechifying more attention-grabbing through the magic of digital video editing technology.

Some of the contributions are kind of lame (McCain droning on in front of a UFO, some dinosaurs, or mixed into a plethora of movie scenes), while others are more creative. Somebody mashed McCain with Madonna, for example, and another made a pretty wack techno mix.

Nobody's yet gone the extra mile to "re-translate" McCain beyond his visual surroundings (i.e., re-wording the man himself in order to make him make more sense). Hopefully, that step isn't far behind. If you are so inspired, don't hesitate to let me know; your creativity is always welcome here.

After months of frustration, the hosting provider for DIYmedia.net has saved my day by stepping in and graciously providing me with independent, unrestricted e-mail capability. I'll never have to rely on Comcast again for that application (provided Comcast's general broadband network uptime remains reliable, which is a questionable proposition).

You know you've got a systemic problem when the first prompt a customer encounters at your 1-800 number is, "For trouble with your service...."

Secondly, Paul the Mediageek and I had extended conversations on my late-spring adventures in Budapest, which he's subsequently made into shows. You can listen at these links.

What a difference a weekend makes.

Last week, Congress passed a bill retroactively legalizing and expanding the surveillance of the communications of U.S. citizens. This bill may have and negative effects on the campaign to re-instill the principle of network neutrality as a point of law.

Shortly after Congress' action, two developments took place: both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union filed lawsuits against the FISA Amendments Act, challenging its constitutionality on a number of levels. Notably, none of the principals of the media-reform movement have signed onto these legal efforts as of yet.

Secondly, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin made noises that his agency was preparing to sanction Comcast, the nation's second-largest broadband-service provider, for violating its "principles of broadband network management practices" (i.e., engaging in widespread data-discrimination across its network). Many net-neutrality advocates interpreted these words as a "victory" for the principle; I even speculated that Martin's move was timed in part because Congress' work on the surveillance issue may have inadvertently undercut the agency's jurisdiction and authority over the network neutrality issue.

After about a day and a half of happy-buzz, Martin and the FCC clarified their position - Comcast will not be substantially penalized in any meaningful fashion for its data-discrimination practices. There will be no further investigation, no priority inquiry, not even a monetary forfeiture: instead, the FCC will require the company to "disclose" its bandwidth-management practices and "encourage" Comcast to adopt more "protocol-agnostic" methods of shaping the traffic that flows over its pipes. Any "order" that comes out of the FCC's August 1st meeting will be more of an admonishment than a "precedent-setting win" for the principle of network neutrality.

As a result, I stand behind my original worry about the risk that "network management" becomes synonymous with "national security" as an unintended consequence of expanding an unconstitutional surveillance program, and we must examine and confront the network neutrality dilemma through this new prism.

I also am inclined to believe, as Matthew Lasar commented on last week's Mediageek radio show, that the FCC may be making a more symbolic move in order to reiterate a claim of administrative jurisdiction over the network neutrality issue. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also made noises about asserting authority over network-management practices, and Martin's posturing may be a sign of something more akin to the iteration of an agency turf-struggle than substantive movement in the direction of regulation to promote a more democratic online environment.

I'm sure there will be plenty of conjecture and preemptive spin regarding net neutrality before the FCC's August meeting, but only the Commission knows what it will do - and truth be told, it probably really doesn't even know at present. Chairman Kevin Martin has a penchant for cutting backroom deals, pulling controversial items off Commission's agenda at the last minute, and even delaying or canceling meetings when the policy-stars aren't lining up just his way.

This all could very well end up being much ado about nothing, save for the publicity-mileage the various constituencies who dominate discussion of the issue will get out of it. The most likely remedy for all of this will ultimately be found in Congress or the courts. It was the judiciary (and the FCC) which got us into the net neutrality mess in the first place, and that leaves Congress. Given that the "Internet Freedom Preservation Acts" are stuck in neutral themselves, telecommunications companies and broadband service providers will continue to get away with business as usual. The longer business as usual stays in effect, the harder attaining the goal of making network neutrality a point of law again becomes.

Although Congress may have just inadvertently given telecommunication companies a huge legal boost to engage in network management via the pretext of "terrorism-related" surveillance, it is a long shot from being a done deal. For starters, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched the first in what is expected to be a multi-lateral legal attack on the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act; the starting point is a claim that the law violates the separation of powers clause of the Constitution, in that Congress' action unconstitutionally empowered the Executive branch while emasculating any judicial oversight or reprimand of abuses conducted under the permission of the legislature.

Should the entire FISA Amendments Act be declared unconstitutional - and not just the provision granting telecom companies retroactive immunity for spying on us without proper legal justification - the diminishment of network neutrality under the auspices of national security would be undermined, perhaps fatally. That would be a very good thing. EFF's legal experts don't expect action on their lawsuit to really begin to gain traction until later this year - right around (or shortly after) the November elections. The case itself won't likely be resolved until sometime next year at the earliest.

The other glimmer of hope is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin's intent to sanction Comcast in some way, shape, or form for unjustly interfering with communications across its network. The actual penalty remains to be determined, but will most likely involve a monetary forfeiture. The sanction-proposal is currently being drafted at the FCC, and it is reported that the full Commission may vote on the issue at their August 1st meeting.

This is quite a change of stance for Martin and the FCC. Although the agency has opened an inquiry into just what network neutrality is (and should be), it has undertaken this task reluctantly, and prior comments by Martin had suggested that he'd rather let "the marketplace" sort out the issue. The fact that Martin's newly-stated intention comes just shortly after the passage of the FISA Amendments Act suggests perhaps that the agency itself is aware of how the legislation may limit its options for dealing with future policy, which has forced the FCC to move more forcefully against Comcast than it might have originally intended.

Meanwhile, the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" languishes in committees in both the House and Senate; passage of the bill is not likely during this session of Congress, which means the grassroots lobbying effort to enshrine the principle as law legislatively will most likely have to start over next year.

Today the U.S. Senate voted to approve legislation that essentially legalizes the warrantless surveillance of the communications of U.S. citizens. We know such behavior's been going on for more than two years, when a whistleblower stepped forward to disclose that AT&T had been working closely with the National Security Agency (NSA) - so much so that the NSA now has its own special rooms in AT&T communications backbone facilities. In these rooms are giant, electronic taps that essentially monitor, record, and allow for the analysis of every phone call, facsimile transmission, and all other electronic communications passing through AT&T's network.

As the largest telecommunications provider in the United States, it is virtually impossible for any communications network traffic to travel from point A to point B without transiting some node in AT&T's vast infrastructure. Which in effect means that for as long as this program has been going on, we've all been under Big Brother's scrutiny to some degree.

After the stunning scope of the surveillance program came to light, civil-liberties advocates started digging deeper, and found that AT&T wasn't the only telecom company that was "assisting" the U.S. government in its "war on terror" by snooping on innocent Americans. This set off a flurry of litigation urging the courts to force AT&T and its corporate colleagues to disclose just how far beyond the Constitution they went in their support of the U.S. Justice Department's requests for information - and, by extension, just how far the Executive Branch of the government overstepped its own Constitutionally-defined authority.

"No fear," thought the telecoms, "we'll just go to our friends in Congress, who have such a stellar record at protecting civil liberties, and they'll give us a 'get out of jail free' card."

And that is essentially what the Senate did today. It not only legitimized the continuous, warrantless surveillance program currently in place, but expands some parts of it (which parts, we don't exactly know), and retroactively immunizes telecommunications companies from punishment over laws (privacy and otherwise) they've broken (and continue to break) at federal behest. This even though more than two-thirds of the Senate still doesn't know the true extent of the NSA/DOJ surveillance program, because the NSA/DOJ won't tell them.

The next likely occupants of the White House, who are both Senators, split on the issue - though not like you'd think. John McCain (R-AZ) abstained from voting on the bill, while Barack Obama (D-IL) voted for it. The White House is thrilled; president Bush plans to sign the bill into law with no delay.

The full implications of this decision remain to be seen. It could have disastrous consequences for the ideal of "network neutrality," or the notion that all communications traffic routed over the Internet should be treated equally and not discriminated against based on content, sender, or receiver. Telecom companies have already done much to make the Internet a more closed, proprietary space; now, Congress may have inadvertently given them the legal legs on which to continue to engage in - and intensify - so-called "network management" practices.

After all, what better reason for "network management" is there than surveillance? And hey, if the government says it's okay, then who the f*ck cares whether or not we throttle, shape, or otherwise block other traffic, like file-sharing programs or voice-over-IP telephony? "Network management" might have just become synonymous with "national security," and if that is the case, all bets are off. What good is an "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" if one of the fundamental freedoms of Internet communication has just been squelched?

The "FISA Amendments Act of 2008" is but just one of several bad things happening on the privacy and freedom-of-expression fronts in Washington, D.C. Another stinker working its way through Congress right now is the "PRO-IP Act." Like lots of other bills, this one has a clever name, which stands for "The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property." As the culture industry more generally is now one of the United States' top exports, and major media companies have been working for years to warp copyright law to reduce public creativity with regard to the use of cultural products, passage of the PRO-IP act would be quite a coup.

The PRO-IP Act is especially scary for two reasons. The first is that it would create a federal "copyright czar" to work with major media companies to investigate and prosecute copyright infringement on several levels. This would more directly make the federal government an agent of Big Media, placing the onus for copyright prosecutions on the very same institutions that are supposed to, you know, guarantee freedom of speech through transformative expression and fair use.

What's worse, the PRO-IP act would also essentially apply the federal "war on drugs" forfeiture laws to copyright-related crimes. Just as law enforcement agencies across the country discovered the bounty they could reap by seizing assets they believed were used in the commission of drug crimes - resulting in the confiscation (rightfully or not) of billions of dollars of cash and property - the same frame of mind will be applied to copyright-related crime.

Imagine this scenario: you've decided, for your own reasons, to get rid of your personal CD collection, but first you digitize the music. On your hard drive, you now have copies of copyrighted material - copies which you rightfully own, because you bought the CDs. Now, let's say your home is destroyed by fire - your CDs are melted but somehow your computer survives.

Once you've gotten back on your feet, you re-connect to the Internet and engage in some innocuous file-sharing with friends (let's even assume you're sharing legal files). Since we already don't know just how much power telecom companies have to monitor and control our communications, and they're demonstrably more than willing to bend to the government's wishes, let's assume that the fact that you're engaged in file-sharing sets off some warning bells in a network operations center somewhere. You become a suspect; they somehow discover that you have copyrighted information in your possession, and you may be sharing it with others.

Under the PRO-IP Act, the Justice Department would then become involved. They'd open an investigation on you, allowing them to scrutinize your communications records - up to and including the information stored locally on your own devices. If they (meaning the RIAA/MPAA, prompted by the Justice Department) determine that you've committed a copyright violation, you'd be liable for both monetary and criminal damages. In addition, if reasonable cause can be found that you've somehow unjustly benefited from the sharing of copyrighted material, then the drug-forfeiture schema comes into play - allowing law enforcement to seize your computer and any other of your possessions it believes you received as a form of "unjust enrichment".

The PRO-IP Act, which was actually introduced late last year, has already and overwhelmingly been approved by the House of Representatives; currently it awaits hearing in the Senate's Judiciary Committee. An earlier provision which would have made it possible for people to be fined up to $30,000 per "unauthorized file" on their computers or other portable media devices was removed during House deliberations.

Finally, there is a piece of trade law under development that would forcibly apply U.S. copyright law - including, potentially, the draconian provisions of the PRO-IP Act - to several other countries. This measure is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. ACTA originally began as a trade agreement designed to track and interdict the counterfeiting of real goods, like designer clothes and prescription medicines. At the behest of U.S. authorities, ACTA's purview was secretly expanded to include intellectual property. Under the new definition, "counterfeiting" involves the "unauthorized" copying of any digital media.

Here's another hypothetical: you decide to take a trip overseas, and bring along digital media devices. Upon your return, or at the customs checkpoint of any ACTA-participating country, you are stopped and asked to remove all of your digital media devices (laptops, cell phones, iDevices, etc.) for "inspection." Your items are then scanned for "unauthorized (read: counterfeit or copied)" information. The customs officer demands you show proof that you rightfully own the data you carry. You cannot. Your devices are confiscated, and you may face further penalty.

ACTA is also imminent: during the G8 Summit this week, the ACTA plan was endorsed and a timetable for implementation envisioned by the end of the year. The United States has already sullied itself quite thoroughly in the court of public opinion at fora like the World Trade Organization, so ACTA's being pushed as a multilateral agreement, whereby the U.S. individually pursues, entices, and/or coerces countries into accepting our principles of information freedom.

So far, Australia, Canada, most of the the European Union, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, and Switzerland have nominally committed to the implementation of ACTA. Combined with the PRO-IP Act and Congress' outright dereliction of duty with regard to the protection of our Constitutional liberties more generally, you might say the outlook is bleak; you might even say focusing on a fight over something like network neutrality alone is now strategically misplaced, because by the time you get what you think you want the meaning of "neutrality" has been redefined out from under your feet.

If you want to learn more about the PRO-IP Act and ACTA, check this conversation Skidmark Bob and I had a couple of weeks back on Freak Radio Santa Cruz.

Two days early, a crew of engineers and volunteers re-wired our transmission facilities to install WEFT's new 10,000-watt transmitter. Coverage has not only returned to normal, but increased slightly, and the fidelity provided by the solid-state unit we now have has noticeably improved our signal.

According to a story in the daily newspaper, WEFT's station manager says we'll be "raising funds to replace more aging equipment as well." Just in time for our fall fundraising drive....

I just uploaded some snaps to Flickr from my May trip to Budapest, which includes a few photos of two of the community radio stations in the city that I had a chance to visit.

Through the fortuitous circumstance of happening upon a fellow Wisconsinite while attending the ESF workshop (Paul the Mediageek just produced a show of us discussing that event in greater detail), who was also very interested in community radio, we ended up making contact with representatives from two community stationsin Budapest, which we visited after the conference was over.

The first was Civil Radio, a forum specifically designed to provide a voice for "the social life and civic associations of the districts [in which its 50-watt signal can be heard], analyses the contacts between local governments and civic organisations, and reports on different NGO-support systems developed by different democratic governments." The station's programming is an eclectic mix of public affairs - on the afternoon we arrived, a news-analysis program was just wrapping up, and some teenage girls were waiting outside the studio to speak for an hour on their own issues.

At the same time, Civil Radio is also attached to a local cultural center, and often broadcasts its events live. This gives local performers of all genres of music, theatre, and spoken word the chance to be heard in (most of) Budapest. The station is run on a shoestring budget, mostly by volunteers, and although it receives some government support its direct identification with and representation of Hungarian civil society makes its relationship with the authorities not as smooth as it might otherwise be.

Interestingly, Civil Radio broadcasts from a tower left over from the country's Communist rule. The tower happens to be located on land owned by the local water utility, which has no use for it, so the station appropriated it. The utility and station now have an informal agreement allowing the practice to continue.

The second station we visited was Radio C, which stands for "cigányok," or "Roma" in Hungarian. Radio C represents the voice of the Roma people, a marginalized population found in all the countries of Europe and beyond (also referred to as "gypsies"). In Hungary, the Roma that we spoke with at the station characterize their situation as "of your Blacks in the 1940s" - ostensibly separate but equal, segregated, and treated with relative disdain by the rest of society.

Radio C is helping to lay the framework for what the Roma see as a bridge of understanding, justice, and eventual equality between themselves and the rest of Hungary - the station as foundation for a larger civil rights movement. Most Hungarians don't realize it, but much of their musical tradition stems from Roma culture; many of the country's most talented musicians happen to be Roma people. In this manner, the station serves a dual function: it is the quasi-official representation of Roma culture, but it also enlightens Hungarians more generally to the commonalities they all share but might not naturally recognize.

Radio C also makes sure it represents the voice of the Roma in civil discourse; the station began without a license after Hungary's capitalist transformation, but was begrudgingly legalized by the new government. Since then, the station has patiently and persistently leveraged its voice in order to gain access to and a place of power within society at large. The Hungarian government has reluctantly recognized the Roma as an important part of the country's civil and cultural heritage; some now serve in government; and the government itself has promised to fund Radio C directly (though it has yet to make good on this).

Regardless, the station perseveres, though it's not quite clear just how. It has plenty of paid staff, but no real recognizably consistent income stream. Yet enough people obviously recognize the importance of the station and do whatever it takes to keep the lights on. In that sense, Radio C embodies the self-sustaining spirit of the Roma people themselves. It would seem to be paying off: the 10-kilowatt Radio C is the eighth-most listened-to station in Budapest, serves more then 250,000 online listeners a month, and has ambitious plans to extend its range with a network of stations throughout Hungary.

The personalities of the Roma we met were amazingly affable and generous. Hank (the fellow Wisconsinite) and I were somewhat conspicuous in the neighborhood, but having the Radio C folks with us invoked magic acceptance by everyone we met. Many thanks especially to the station's general manager and operations director, Tivadar Fátyol and Ferenc Szénási, for making us feel such at home.

For the last few weeks my home community radio station, WEFT, has been hobbling along at reduced power, due to severe weather which fried our 20 year-old, 10,000-watt transmitter. Over the course of this time, the station's rented a 1,000-watt transmitter, bringing our effective radiated power up to about 1/5th of its licensed capacity.

Buying, shipping, and installing a 10,000-watt transmitter is not cheap (think approximately $60,000). Fortunately, because our old transmitter was insured and verifiably destroyed by an "act of God" (lightning/water damage), we should be receiving something around $27,000 in compensation. In conjunction with that, WEFT had a "rainy-day fund" set up shortly after we paid off the mortgage for our studio building more than 10 years ago. We paid off the mortgage early and saved the remainder. That fund has about $35,000 in it.

In a nutshell, it looks like WEFT will be back up to full-strength by July 4, sounding bigger and better than ever, without taking a huge fiscal hit in the process. However, this incident has been a wake-up call to the station to review and inspect the rest of its transmission airchain. This will be a multi-year project, and not without its own costs, but I hope we get cracking.

Last month, I attended an exploratory workshop hosted by the European Science Foundation about the prospects of community media in a digitally-convergent communications environment. Not surprisingly, when one thinks "community media," radio first comes to mind, and we represented in full: most of the 30 invitees to this workshop were either involved in radio activism and/or regulation in their respective home countries.

My personal mission was to warn as many other countries away from casting their fates with iBiquity's HD Radio platform, as it not only carries a plethora of technical risks, but it may decimate community radio stations as we know them (draft, not for publication). Fortunately, this was an easy job: the Europeans can see through the snake-oil that is HD Radio, and the general consensus of the workshop was that HD should be opposed at every step.

However, this is not stopping iBiquity from trying to break into international markets: the company's received permission from the Mexican government to deploy HD-capable transmitters along the U.S. border (essentially for those Mexican stations that actually serve U.S. listeners); "experimental" FM-HD transmitters have been installed in France and The Philippines; and other countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, have actually conducted in-depth field tests of the HD Radio protocol. This even though some of these countries have already adopted digital radio transition plans, all of which use a much different digital transmission protocol than iBiquity's proprietary system.

So why is HD seeing the light of day overseas? There are a few major reasons. The first is that many countries, such as the newest (and aspiring) members of the European Union, like Slovenia and Macedonia, do not yet have formal digital radio transition policies in effect. iBiquity sees these as ripe markets, where the "no-pain, some-gain" mantra of HD's biggest selling-point may sway the less-informed.

Secondly, iBiquity may attempt to leverage international trade law (which has been primarily to reflect U.S. interests) in order to force countries to consider and/or adopt the HD standard as part of the benefits of globalization. The decision on whether or not a country adopts a new digital broadcast standard is made essentially by government fiat. iBiquity, I believe, hopes to get its foot in the door in other countries in order to turn to those nations which have not yet committed to a digital radio transition and say, "Hey, you can't exclude our standard from consideration. If you do, we'll consider your transition-plan a violation of international 'free-trade' laws (presumably suggesting that the selection of a feasible, non-HD DAB infrastructure would constitute some sort of illegal 'government subsidy') and haul your ass in front of the World Trade Organization for damages."

Such a threat may be enough to entice developing countries to at least give iBiquity a hearing; it is certainly a possible way for iBiquity to raise the funds it desperately needs to stay in business, even if it doesn't further the technology's adoption. And it most definitely may be a tactic U.S. trade negotiators could consider: iBiquity is a wholly-owned U.S. corporate interest, and what's good for U.S. business is good for the country, after all.

But perhaps the most important thing I learned at the Budapest workshop is that many established countries, which settled upon digital radio transition plans many years before the U.S. did, are now rethinking their own initiatives. The problem is not inherent to any specific technology; it's due to the fact that no digital radio protocol exists which does things that citizen-consumers see as important enough to upgrade their receivers for. Although most "first-world" nations have already committed to a non-HD DAB rollout, many of them are finding it a tough go: DAB-compatible receiver sales are flat, and those who operate the DAB transmission networks in these countries are not providing a diversity and quality of programming which sets DAB apart from traditional analog radio services to entice listenership.

For example, many countries are reconsidering their entire DAB strategies; Germany, for one, has decided to abandon its original DAB technological platform and is now openly considering alternatives. And although HD is but one of several alternative DAB technologies now available, they all suffer from a common flaw.

That flaw is relatively simple: no digital radio technology has proven itself to be a worthy replacement to analog radio service. Every DAB proponent has promised increased program diversity and higher audio fidelity; these are promises that have not been fully borne out in practice. Every DAB transmission protocol has run into some real-world technical difficulties which inhibit its quality of service. In addition, digital-capable receivers remain much more expensive than analog-only models. And the promises of "new uses for radio," such as datacasting, are not catching fire as DAB proponents had hoped.

This raises two very important questions: is radio even ready to go digital? If so, what is the compelling reason? Broadcasters look at developments such as wireless broadband access, satellite radio, and portable music devices as the killers of their present business-models. If people can receive a larger range of more compelling audio content from services and devices other than their local radio stations, then what value do those stations actually have? And if radio stations begin to devote their spectral allocation to the provision of services other than freely-available audio content, have they forfeited their primary reason for being?

It's quite a conundrum. If radio stations go digital, do they stick with being audio providers, or do they branch out into the provision of other services? And if they choose the latter, should we still call them radio stations? In this context, radio's digitalization calls the entire medium's identity into question. And this is a global phenomenon, irrespective of the DAB technology at hand.

The ESF workshop organizers will be publishing a "scientific report" on our findings within the next month or so. It should make for interesting reading.

Documents were filed with the agency late last week by HD Radio's proprietor, iBiquity Digital Corporation, to allow FM-HD stations to increase the power of their digital sidebands by a factor of 10. The rationale behind this request is increasing field evidence which shows that the digital portion of FM-HD signals fails miserably at matching increasing analog signal coverage, and the existing power level does not allow digital signals to penetrate buildings very well.

This proposal does not come without risk; evidence of HD signals interfering with other stations is already well-known, especially on the AM side, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has completed a study that adds new information to the body of knowledge regarding FM-HD interference. Unfortunately, the results of this study have not yet been made public, though notably National Public Radio itself has not taken a position on whether or not increasing the digital output of FM stations is a good idea.

In the FM environment, increasing the power of digital sidebands contains two main risks: the first is increased interference to nearby stations on the FM dial, and the second is increased interference between the analog and digital signals of an HD-capable radio station.

Whereas a digital FM-HD signal broadcasts at just 1/100th the power of its parent analog station, the relative power differential of the potentially-interfering digital signal to adjacent stations is large enough that any interference is, for now, very localized and not very noticeable. Allowing stations to broadcast a digital signal at 1/10th the power of its analog counterpart is a very different matter.

For example, my community radio station, WEFT, typically broadcasts a 10,000-watt analog signal. Under current FCC rules, WEFT could broadcast a 100-watt digital signal in its sidebands. Under the proposed rule change, that digital signal's power could be increased to 1,000 watts. You can't get around the physics: if you increase output energy in the sidebands, you risk the potential to interfere at a greater magnitude to nearby stations. So far, this proposal to increase the FM-HD sideband power has only been tested in the lab, not the real world (sound familiar?).

Secondly, because the digital portion of an FM-HD signal, by design, encroaches on bandwidth reserved for analog broadcasting, increasing the power of the digital sidebands also contains the potential for increased interference between a station's analog and digital signals. This typically manifests itself as a "hissing noise" or "grunge" heard when listening to an FM-HD station's analog signal. Again, there is no real-world evidence to suggest that this potential parasitic interference will not increase if FM stations raise their digital sideband power levels.

Why would radio stations would take the risk of degrading the quality of their existing analog service in order to pimp a flawed technology which nobody's listening to? It's almost as if the strategy of the HD Radio Alliance is to degrade analog radio service in order to force digital adoption - kind of a variant on the "we had to destroy the village to save it" rationale.

Even though it supports this proposal, the National Association of Broadcasters is candid enough to admit that raising the power of FM-HD sidebands "may create new instances of interference in certain situations." In the same breath, however, the NAB says it's confident that the already-overworked FCC Enforcement Bureau can handle new interference complaints on a case-by-case basis as they arise, and concludes that "the benefits to be gained for FM broadcasters and FM listeners will far outweigh the limited additional interference predicted by iBiquity’s studies."

It's anyone's guess as to when the FCC will consider this proposal, but if the history of the entire HD Radio rulemaking is any indication, the power increase will be rubber-stamped, and we will suffer the consequences as they unfold.