AFF Presents Pirate Radio USA - Win Tickets!

We love pretty much every type of pirate, from the "Avast Me Hearties!" variety to the "selling one-dollar copies of The Departed on the streets of Shanghai" kind. Sure they "steal" things, but they also provide hours of entertainment - either through their rousing sea shanty sing-alongs or their reasonably priced new releases.

Tomorrow night, the Austin Film Festival presents a documentary about a lesser-known, but equally awesome class of pirates: Radio Pirates. Pirate Radio USA tells the story of low-frequency airwave bandits who use DIY broadcasting rigs to operate illegal radio stations all over the country. The film takes you inside the world of underground broadcasting, profiling a variety of outlaw DJs and the organizations bent on shutting them down.

As an added bonus, some Austin radio pirates are scheduled to attend and host a Q&A after the film.

Want to win tickets? Fill out ye form!
The contest is now closed. Thank you to all who entered.

AFF Presents Pirate Radio USA
Thursday, March 1st
Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek
7:30pm. $4 / Free for Austin Film Festival members

Contact the author of this article or email tips@austinist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By math in Arts & Entertainment on February 27, 2007 7:17 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Stew

OK, my point was made a little unclear. What I meant is that other than they are not regulated by the FCC, there is nothing illegal about most pirate radio stations (i.e. they do not broadcast copyrighted music or talk). Radio Free Austin plays broadcasts of mainly two networks who are fully aware of this or have given blanket permission to do so. In other cities, local musicians are played on pirate radio stations in order to gain exposure they normally wouldn't obtain on commercial/regulated radio stations.

Other than the programming I love how Radio Free Austin will broadcast action alerts on potentionally harming state or local legislation, anti-(blank) protests, speaking engagements etc. I honestly don't expect and do not recieve this valuable info from any mainstream source (Statesman, Chronicle, Local TV/Radio stations).

I am sad to see that Radio Free Austin is currently in jeopardy of being raided and seeing that I haven't had a functioning radio in my car for a while, I'm not even sure if they are currently on air.

Math

Stew - Firstly, the FCC does regulate all non-government use of the radio spectrum (thanks, Wikipedia!). And though there are pieces of the spectrum that don't require a license to operate on (like the ones used by your wireless router, for example), most pirate radio stations operate on commercial areas of the dial, and very much fall under the jurisdiction of the FCC. They're "dubbed illegal" because they're often actually illegal. Otherwise, they sent Christian Slater to jail for nothing.

Secondly, I agree that governmental regulation of the radio spectrum is lame, and that pirate radio operators are awesome. I'm excited to see this movie.

Stew

The only reason Pirate Radio stations are dubbed "illegal" is because the FCC doesn't regulate it. Pirate Radio stations don't steal anybodies material. I think its a brave form of patriotism.

RADIO FREE AUSTIN