The Associated Press reported Oct. 19 that the U.S. government will require registration of some publicly available radio-controlled drone aircraft. After a number of close calls and problems with drones and airports, forest fires, and sensitive government sites, government action was expected. Airport sightings of drones went from a handful last year, to hundreds in 2015, according to the Federal Aiviation Authority. Transportation secretary Anthony Foxx said, “Finding the drone has not been as much of a problem as finding the person who was using the drone.” The FAA and the Transportation Department will create a 25- to 30-member taskforce to set the parameters of the tracking system, with toys and small drones likely exempt. The Consumer Electronics Association has forecast that 700,000 drones will be sold this holiday season, the Associated Press reported.

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Current magazine reports that the average–quarter-hour listening during National Public Radio's morning drive time has dropped 11 percent in the past five years, and the afternoon audience is down 6 percent. Young people are listening even less, and the only age bracket with a listening increase is 65-plus. The "Morning Edition" show has 20 percent fewer listeners under 55 since 2010, Nielsen data shared by NPR. "All Things Considered" had a slight gain among listeners ages 12-24 and 55-64 and larger growth among 65-plus listeners. NPR is now guessing that in 2020, 30 percent of its audience will be 44-year-old or younger, a figure that was almost double in 1985. NPR's podcast downloads rose 75 percent last year, and NPR.org grew nearly 35 percent, so there is some hope for the future.

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About 15 percent of U.S. adults do not use the internet, a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data reports. In the year 2000 almost half of Americans did not use the internet, but that rate of conversion has slowed the past three years, the survey reports. A 2013 Pew survey found three reasons people do not use the internet: no interest, too difficult to use, and too expensive. Younger americans, and those that live in urban areas, are more likely to use the internet, the survey found.

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The digital age and the do-it-yourself movement often conflict, as hacking electronics are sometimes banned or made difficult. The ARRL, the National Association for Amateur Radio, is asking the FCC to clear up if Amateur Radio licensees may modify non-amateur equipment for use on amateur radio frequencies. In March, 2014 the FCC updated requirements for U-NII devices using 5 Ghz bandwidth that includes many Wi-Fi devices and routers with regulatory language that might not allow altering the devices. In an Oct. 8 comment on a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) in ET Docket 15-170 and RM-11673 the ARRL wrote, “The Commission should clarify…that the ability of licensed radio amateurs to modify and adapt non-amateur equipment for use in the Amateur Service is beneficial, is permitted, and is not restricted by any rule of general applicability adopted in this proceeding.” The ARRL also asked the FCC not to apply any limitations proposed for Software Defined Radios, and addressed the problem of marijuana grow lights and AM and amateur radio interference. The FCC is overhauling the process where any device that might emit radio waves has to be approved to get that little FCC sticker. Electronic ballasts used in 1000W high pressure sodium or metal halide lamps have interfered with certain radio signals, with a few police officers using AM radios in their vehicle radios to locate illegal indoor marijuana growing operations by listening for interference. The ARRL said, “the only opportunity to preclude widespread sale and deployment of non-compliant RF devices, including unintentional emitters, is via the equipment authorization process.”

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James Careless in Radio World has a long story about longwave radio, and its inevitable demise in England. Longwave, as the name suggests, are large waves, near AM on the dial, and in the UK largely in the 148.5–253 kHz range. Like AM radio, transmitting requires a large antenna to create that big wave, and the sound quality means broadcasting music does not work. Recently, Irish state broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann announced it would end its longwave Radio 1 service to Britain Jan. 1, but the same Radio 1 programming would still be available on the Web and via the Freesat satellite TV service. Longwave loyalists, many of them Irish who listened for Irish news from in England, though, successfully protested and petitioned and persuaded the government to postpone RTÉ’s longwave closure until Jan. 1, 2017. It was the third attempt to end longwave in England that was put off. Eventually, though, the transmissions will end. The BBC has bought up the entire world supply of specially-crafted one-meter tall glass valves, but they will run out in a few years. “We have purchased whatever parts we can find, but the truth is that when our current longwave transmission equipment becomes irreparable, our long-wave service will be off-air for good,” Denis Nowlan, network manager for BBC Radio 4, said. “The BBC has committed to continue to sustain the medium for as long as the current infrastructure is viable, but that’s it.” You can read the full story at Radio World.

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Wired reports about the FireChat app from the company Open Garden. FireChat, and the similar Serval Project, build mesh networks by connecting smartphones via the device’s Bluetooth or peer-to-peer Wi-Fi. Every smartphone with FireChat then becomes a node that can carry and deliver text messages. People can build their own decentralized networks without any corporate or governmental interference. “In a sense it’s like a blind postman,” says Christophe Daligault, Open Garden’s chief marketing officer. FireChat launched in the spring of 2014, and it has been used during protests in Iraq, France, and Ecuador, and also in natural disasters. During student protests in Hong Kong recently, more than 500,000 people downloaded the app over a couple days. "FireChat works on phones as long as they’re less than 200 feet apart, but in times when the density is spotty, the company will use a GreenStone, a little plastic module that stores messages and uses Bluetooth to extend the network," Wired reports. The company hopes that enough people will use the app that they can turn it into a totally free mobile carrier that could replace one's paid phone service. “I don’t know when we’ll cross the chasm so that this technology will become ubiquitous enough that everyone can benefit from it,” says Daligault from Open Garden.

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The New York Times reported Oct. 10 that Apple disabled its news app in China. The new app debuted in June in the U.S., with testing in England and Australia. Users find it works overseas but not in China, with instead an error message: “Can’t refresh right now. News isn’t supported in your current region.” Larry Salibra, who founded software testing service Pay4Bugs, said on Reddit last week, “They’re censoring news content that I downloaded and stored on my device purchased in the USA, before I even enter China just because my phone happens to connect to a Chinese signal floating over the border.” Salibra proved Apple isn’t using location tracking and geofencing to shut down the News App, but is basing shutdowns on the mobile network where the phone is connected. Apple also disables the Apple Maps this way in favor of a Beijing-approved map service. Salibra says the concern here is that is if Apple is using watching real-time cell network data to make changes to a device even if location services are disabled in their privacy settings.

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Kevin Goldberg reports in the Communications Law Blog that webcasting rates for 2016-2020 may be set soon, and he writes webcasters have reasons for optimism. The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is concluding its Webcasting IV proceeding, and has issued two orders so far, and the Register of Copyrights has issued a separate ruling. The CRB has adopted a settlement agreement between SoundExchange and College Broadcasters, Inc. (CBI) with approved terms applying to “Noncommercial Educational Webcasters." That agreement comes with one exception that works in webcasters favor. The CRB has also adopted a partial settlement, negotiated by both SoundExchange and National Public Radio, for public radio broadcasters. Commercial webcasters lack the lobby power of the other groups, and have not made and settlement with the CRB yet. But the Register of Copyrights recently issued a memorandum saying direct licensing agreements between webcasters and record labels can be entered into evidence and considered by the CRB to decide rates. "I’m guessing that CRB’s final decision won’t appear until mid-December," Goldberg writes, basing his prediction on when the CRB acted in 2010. Read complete details about the agreements so far at the Comm Law Blog.

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David Oxenford in the Broadcast Law Blog reports that industry representatives and FCC officials keep saying that the only way to fix AM radio is by broadcasting AM signals on FM radio. FCC commissioners with fond memories of growing up with AM radio want to help bring back the format, a fool's errand since AM's sonic limitations don't make it of much use for music programming. But if AM owners could just broadcast on FM, then AM would be saved, is the logic from Washington D.C. these days. The latest proposal would allow AM station licensees to buy FM translators located as far as 250 miles away from the AM station, and then move the translator to an area where the station can be rebroadcast on FM. So buying a translator station gives that licensee the right to file for a vacant frequency in its market on a first-come, first-served basis. Class C and D AM stations may get first shot at the translator stations if word about the plan is correct.

Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian reports that the U.S. Justice Department has not contacted Edward Snowden about a plea deal, the whistleblower said in an interview BBC interview. “We are still waiting for them to call us back,” he said. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently said Snowden’s revelations had, “spurred a necessary debate.” But former National Security Administration head Michael Hayden was asked by the BBC what should happen to Snowden for leaking national security information said, “If you’re asking me my opinion, he’s going to die in Moscow. He’s not coming home.” Snowden says, “I’ve volunteered to go to prison with the government many times. What I won’t do is I won’t serve as a deterrent to people trying to do the right thing in difficult situations.” Snowden, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, Brazilian privacy activist David Miranda and others recently proposed an International Treaty on the Right to Privacy, Protection Against Improper Surveillance and Protection of Whistleblowers that would require states to ban mass data collection and implement public oversight of national security programs.

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Matthew Lasar at Radio Survivor reports that BBC World Service is accepting scripts for its 25th international radio play competition. “Anyone over 18, living outside the UK – whether you’re a new or established writer" can send a 53-minute-long radio script that includes no more than six central characters, plus a synopsis no longer than 400 words. Scripts compete for an English as a first language prize, English as a second language prize, and the Georgi Markov prize for scripts that show “outstanding potential.” The BBC is the most widely distributed audio platform on Earth, so this is a chance to reach a truly global audience, with a January 31, 2016 deadline. Click here for prize information and rules.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/1DM9W7gGSVkjsg38mJHrzpm/the-prizes-and-the-rules-for-the-25th-international-play-writing-competition-2016

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The Federal Communications Commission recently approved the new "Citizens Broadband Radio Service," a sort of digital version of the CB radios that became a fad in the mid-1970s, and are still used by truck drivers. The CBRS takes over frequencies between 3.5-3.7 GHz that have traditionally been reserved for military radar and satellite uplinks. Now the FCC will attempt to set up a system that automatically assigns users to open frequencies with a control database mechanism known as the Spectrum Access System. Instead of U.S. military radar taking valuable spectrum whether it was using it or not, this new system allows much more public access to its own airwaves. Much of the anticipated use of the new system is expected to be from unlicensed wireless, allowing experiments with small-scale mesh networks. Eight groups or companies have petitioned the FCC, asking for adjustments to the new systems. These include petitions from CTIA – The Wireless Association; Verizon; Motorola Solutions, Inc.,; Nokia Networks; The Satellite Industry Association; The National Association of Broadcasters; and Jon M. Peha, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (and a former FCC Chief Technologist). The Communications Law Blog outlines each requested change and links to the petitions, and reports that the public can comment on any (or all) of the petitions until Oct. 19, 2015 at FCC.gov.

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The Federal Communications Commission will vote Oct. 22 on whether to limit rates and fees for phone calls made by prison and jail inmates. The proposal would cap rates at:
• 11 cents/minute for debit/prepaid calls, in state or federal prisons.

• 14 cents/minute for debit/prepaid calls in jails with 1,000 or more inmates.

• 16 cents /minute for debit/prepaid calls in jails with 350-999 inmates.

• 22 cents /minute for debit/prepaid calls in jails of up to 349 inmates.

Rates for collect calls will be slightly higher in the first year under the plan, and will be phased down to these caps after a two-year transition period. The New York Times reports phone calls from jails and prisons can cost as much as $14 a minute, with service fees often adding another 40 percent. The FCC will vote on the measure at its Oct. 22 open meeting, which includes a live webcast. See the full proposal at the FCC website.

[caption width="300" align="alignleft"] Folkways LP.[/caption]Click here to play or download an audio version of this report.

This week tune in to a little of the life of Henry Jacobs (October 9, 1924 - September 25, 2015), who was an American sound artist and humorist. Known for his early electronic collages of tapes, sometimes of "everyday" sounds. Jacobs worked with Pacifica radio station KPFA in Berkeley and recorded the "Radio Program No. 1" Folkways disk. He later met Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Alan Ginsberg, comedian Lenny Bruce, and percussionist Mongo Santamaría, and worked with Ken Nordine, "the father of word jazz", and Alan Watts, a radio talker. Also, headlines from the world of radio including: FCC Commissioner O'Rielly shouts about pirate radio again; FCC router regulation may hurt mesh networks; Nonprofit creates Pocket FM and Syrian radio network; Apple won't sell app that reports radio-controlled drone hits. Hosted by Tom Roe from Wave Farm in New York.

[caption width="600" align="alignleft"] From Nieman Labs website.[/caption]Shan Wang at the Nieman Foundation reports that the Berlin-based nonprofit Media in Cooperation and Transition in collaboration with design firm IXDS have created Pocket FM, "a portable FM transmitter the size of a shoebox that starts working as soon as it’s connected to a small antenna, a power source, and an audio signal." Pocket FM looks like a radio receiver more than a transmitter, and can reach a radius of about six kilometers. A Raspberry Pi mini-computer drives the transmitter, and is being used by the Media in Cooperation and Transition group worked with the German Federal Foreign Office to set up an independent Syrian radio network called the "Syrian Radio Network," or "Syrnet," with stations within Syria and outside sharing programming. “The challenge in Syria is that it can be scary, in some areas, to set up big FM transmitters, because they are easy to detect, easy to destroy, and expensive to run,” said Klaas Glenewinkel, MiCT’s co-founder and director. “We had the idea of bringing in many small ones and creating a mesh of radio transmitters so people can access local information where TV and other means have failed.” Larger transmitters could be stolen, or taken over, while anyone can easily walk away with the Pocket FM at the first sign of trouble. The transmitter can also find new open frequencies when broadcasts are jammed, and can send listeners text messages. Now developers are trying to add the ability to turn off the transmitter remotely by mobile phone, a solar panel, GPS, and Internet connectivity, all for a $2,000 cost. Read the full story at the Nieman Lab website.

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The march of broadband all over the world continues forward, but it is a battle of wins and losses. Let's take India in the past week, for example. Google announced a plan last week to bring Wi-Fi signals to 10 million rail passengers a day there. The broadband will be free at first, and available in 400 train stations across India. But while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Google in California for that announcement, he was being criticized back home for cutting off the internet. Radio Survivor reports that India has been blocking Internet service in Jammu and Kashmir and New Delhi Television quotes Kashmir’s Inspector General of Police calling the ban on Internet services a “precautionary measure” in light of “communal tensions.” That internet jamming comes as Radio Maej Kasheer, a Kashmiri radio station, launched its online webstream.

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FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly, the leading critic of the commission's recent decision to cut back spending on the enforcement division, and someone who is very close with the National Association of Broadcasters lobbyists, sounded another warning about the microradio menace with the Sept. 24 release of "A Draft Pirate Radio Policy and Enforcement Statement." The statement lacks any specifics, and instead restates the need for FCC action on the issue.

The Commission reiterates our firm position, as articulated in the Communications Act and Commission rules, that unauthorized broadcast operations within the FM and AM radio broadcast bands – often referred to as pirate radio broadcasting – is strictly prohibited and subject to enforcement measures. Violations are not to be taken lightly, as the harmful interference caused by pirate operations sabotages licensed broadcasters serving their communities and puts the valuable public safety contributions of these stations in jeopardy to the detriment of the American people who count on them, including diverse and underserved populations.

Further, the Commission makes clear that it intends to enact a vigorous campaign of enforcement activities to disrupt and permanently terminate all pirate radio stations that are in operation today and prevent those that may attempt to come online in the future. We will collaborate with federal and state law enforcement authorities, as needed, to enhance and complement our enforcement operations. Our effort will include an education component for those entities that may knowingly or unknowingly assist pirate radio operations in any capacity, including building owners and managers, national and local campaigns for political office, media advertisers, radio programming suppliers, concert promoters and venue operators, and equipment manufacturers and importers. All interested parties should be on notice that facilitating pirate radio broadcasting will not be tolerated, and may be subject to enforcement or legal actions, as permitted under law. Accordingly, we seek full cooperation by anyone who may have relevant information to help identify, locate, and take action against the operators and owners of pirate radio stations.

Michael Marcus, a spectrum tech and policy consultant who used to work in the FCC's enforcement bureau on rules for Wi-Fi and 60 GHz policy, replied to O'Rielly's post saying that if the FCC is going to cut staff in the enforcement bureau, it should at least adequately fund the part of the office that improves productivity through technology. "Specialized equipment can improve the efficiency of monitory for intermittent signals such as pirate broadcasting and intentional interference to other services by collecting data 24/7 for later analysis that can be used to refine location and operating details. E[nforcement ]B[ureau]'s field staff has been notoriously underfunded in technical equipment - as has the OET Lab. The FCC 2016 budget proposal has $167,132 for EB tech equipment and $121,920 for OET's Lab. EB's Equipment Development Group in Powder Springs, GA will shrink from 10 positions to 7 under the present plan." That sounds like specific criticism that might be useful in shaping policy.

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pic.twitter.com/4jEnFbQgAT

— Dronestream (@dronestream) September 27, 2015

The current United States political landscape is roly-poly, upside-down. One American presidential candidate this week, Carly Fiorina, bragged that she sold the National Security Agency the servers used to spy on Americans' metadata. American politicians are supposed to be optimistic, freedom-extollers, not dystopian McCarthyites. And Apple, seller of fart apps and a zillion other "offensive" products, and about as good a representative of American capitalism as there is, would seem to be an unlikely censor of news apps. But this week the Apple app store kept the fart apps but shut down the Metadata+ app that reports to users when America kills someone by radio-controlled drones. Apple has a history with this app, turning down artist and writer Josh Begley five times for the app version of his Twitter account @Dronestream, calling it “not useful or entertaining enough” and too narrow in focus. They accepted Metadata+ with its new name, until Sept. 27, when they said, "Apple has removed Metadata+ due to 'excessively crude or objectionable content.'" The app does not show corpses rotting in deserts with vultures circling overhead; it re-reports news already available in all sorts of apps in the Apple store. All it does it tell folks when America has killed someone with a radio-controlled drone. Apple apparently does not want anyone to contemplate the United States' current drone war in aggregate.

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Kyle Wiens reports at Wired that mesh networks in communities all over the world may be in danger from an unnoticed line of regulations from the Federal Communications Commission. In March, 2014 the FCC updated requirements for U-NII devices using 5 Ghz bandwidth that includes many Wi-Fi devices and routers. It took over a year for anyone to notice a bit of regulatory language that might affect the open source community:

“Manufacturers must implement security features in any digitally modulated devices capable of operating in any of the U-NII bands, so that third parties are not able to reprogram the device to operate outside the parameters for which the device was certified.”

The rule is meant to target movies theaters turning radio waves into a white noise generator that blocked Wi-Fi/Bluetooth within a 1500 foot radius, and others acting in bad faith. But this March the FCC published guidelines to help manufacturers stay within the law, with another worrying line: “Describe in detail how the device is protected from “flashing” and the installation of third-party firmware such as DD-WRT.” DD-WRT is free, Linux-based firmware for wireless routers, used in those community mesh networks that allow cheap access to broadband. But the FCC told TechDirt’s Karl Bode that modifications and open source software are fine, “as long as they do not add the functionality to modify the underlying operating characteristics of the RF parameters.” But Weins worries that chip manufacturers will say, "the easiest thing for us to do is lock down all the middleware rather than worry about where to draw the line." That means that folks experimenting, tinkering, and changing electronic devices that use software defined radio signals will have a tougher time innovating. “In at least the last 5 years, Amateur Radio operators have found new and inventive ways to use these inexpensive devices to build broadband networks in support of community events, and to prepare for deployment of these devices for emergency incidents,” wrote ham radio operator James Kinter, Jr. “…Third party software is the basis for many of the Amateur Radio projects, that we then expand and customise for our own projects to easily allow us to build these projects without reinventing the wheel.”

Incompetent @RichLowry lost it tonight on @FoxNews. He should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2015

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Running for the Republican nomination for president, so far Donald Trump has made very few policy proposals, and almost none having to do with communications policy. But on Sept. 23, Trump made a proposal that would change the Federal Communications Commission in a major way. His proposal was for the FCC to regulate speech on cable television. Currently, the FCC regulates speech over the airwaves, with vulgar language relegated to "safe harbor" between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when children are asleep. But cable television does not use the public airwaves directly to get signals to the public. So the FCC did not tell Comedy Central to bleep Jon Stewart's profanity, they did that (sometimes) on their own, so advertisers would not be upset. Of course, Trump's proposal didn't come in a speech announcing a new idea, but in a veiled threat on Twitter. Trump is currently boycotting Fox News, and Sept. 23 National Review editor Rich Lowry appeared on the channel and, saying how candidate Carly Fiorina beat up on Trump at last week's Republican presidential debate said, "Let's be honest: Carly cut his balls off with the precision of a surgeon — and he knows it," on "The Kelly File." Trump fired back soon after on Twitter with, "Incompetent @RichLowry lost it tonight on @FoxNews. He should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him!" So, perhaps it was not a policy proposal, but the off-the-cuff ramblings of someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. We report, you decide.