Software-defined radio and the broader embracing paradigm of cognitive radio are still topics of active research on fundamental issues and they are both built out of the practice of negotiation among participants in a communication about the means of communication (what part of spectrum to use and what encoding mainly).
They were in part motivated by desire to work around existing fixed uses of spectrum (like FM audio broadcasts) in a non-interfering way, but wouldn't really be useful to transmit to existing receivers that can't participate in the negotiations they involve.
Good stuff to build into a mesh architecture but heavy-duty to implement or even play with without hardware and software tools that are currently mostly ad-hoc and specialized and usually fairly obscure and expensive. This may be changing a lot fairly soon because imminent generations of cell phones are due to incorporate pretty good software-defined radio, I recall hearing somewhere.
The only simple hack along the same lines I can think of is to choose a frequency to transmit FM audio on, detect interference from other transmitters on that frequency, and stop transmitting in that case. I don't see the usefulness of doing that in this context though.


On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Eddan Katz <eddan@sudoroom.tv> wrote:
I've read about software-defined radio making interference problems negligible (can't find anything in particular at the moment - but most coming from the IEEE publications).

I'd be interested whether others (a) understood if this is true; (b) knew of affordable SDR equipment; and/or (c) thought this would solve the problem.


Sidenote: While streaming-only radio stations do not have to deal with spectrum licensing issues, their Internet presence make broadcasting anyone else's copyrighted content a complicated and either expensive or risky endeavor.


sent from eddan.com



On 2013-11-04 12:52, Hol Gaskill wrote:
it does seem philosophically better to provide content on an opt-in
basis via existing RF links than to simply radiate it in every
direction and block that portion of the spectrum from other uses

on Nov 04, 2013, ANTHONY DI FRANCO <di.franco@gmail.com> wrote:

This sounds a lot like the mesh networking projects, which move away
from broadcasting as fundamental and rebase broadcasting in a
peer-to-peer context, and are already oriented the right ways
technically and with respect to regulations for those goals.
On Nov 4, 2013 11:31 AM, "David Keenan" <dkeenan44@gmail.com [23]>
wrote:

I find myself most sympathetic to Naomi's position - although I do
still think FM as a medium has some romance and cool left in it, I
don't know that it's actually worth it, given the cost and effort.


Completely naiive riffing follows, but -- since decentralizing
information and the means of production are (for me) integral to
freeing information / culture.. if one wanted to recolonize the
airwaves, I wonder if it might be possible to simply distribute
LPFM?

Ie, give people a small appliance that transceives internet radio
into LPFM or way lower-power radio, ie just for their block /
neighborhood / whathaveyou.. A device that doesn't take a whole
lot of power, that is innately not geographically bounded, and can
become a diaspora of signal. And not necessarily legal but
decentralized and dispersed.. if enough folks did this in
aggregate in a given neighborhood or community, could that
collectively function coverage-wise as a single relatively strong
broadcast / antenna?

Has anyone tried anything similar, or does this even make sense..?


dreamin'

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Hol Gaskill <hol@gaskill.com
[20]> wrote:

agree on not having transmitter co-located with hq. dropping
repeaters nearby can also prevent pinpointing by birds overhead.

on Nov 03, 2013, NAOMI MOST <pnaomi@gmail.com [17]> wrote:

Dudes I was THERE managing tech for Pirate Cat went that all
went
down. See also:






http://nthmost.com/2011/04/radio-valencia-the-little-radio-station-that-could/
[1]


The major difference here to what was suggested above is that
Pirate
Cat hosted its antenna in many many different places over the
years.
We moved it every 3 months or so. And 95% of the membership
didn't
know where it was.

My point was to ask the question WHY put up the antenna at
all.

The return on investment for putting up an antenna --
particularly,
one physically located at the locus of control as opposed to
offsite
somewhere like in a van or something -- is pretty abysmal.
Listenership to the airwaves continues to drop.

If you decided to jam some corporate radio station, you'd be
implicating Sudo Room and the feds would come down on it
sooner or
later.

If you just wanted to squat some frequency in the lower band,
you'd
have an abysmal listenership at the cost of the power of
operating the
antenna.

It's just not that compelling an exercise for the amount of
risk.
Not for me, anyway. I guess a lot of people still feel that
the
airwaves are somehow inherently exciting.

--Naomi

On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Gregg Horton
<greggahorton@gmail.com [2]> wrote:
> We agree on absolutely nothing so I abstain

On Nov 3, 2013 5:17 PM, "GtwoG PublicOhOne"
<g2g-public01@att.net [3]> wrote:

>>
If someone or a group wants to propose or operate a radio
station in an
act of peaceful civil disobedience, they should research
the regs, laws,
and potential penalties, and talk with an attorney who has
represented
>> clients who have engaged in similar acts in the past. That
would be a
project for a group that is not formally identical with SR.

The most successful peaceful civil disobedience actions in
the past
>> fifty years have been conducted by people who were not
only
well-grounded in principles, but also had trained
themselves in how to
interact in a peaceful and effective manner with all of the
people they
>> would come into contact with, including law enforcement
and government
officials. The civil rights movement and the Clamshell
Alliance
anti-nuclear group are excellent examples to study, and
much of their
>> material can be found online.

All of that said, online/internet radio is still the
fastest way to
reach an audience with no geographic limits or regulatory
risks, and
spreading the word is easy. Linkage with other online
broadcasters can
>> build up a seamless network with 24/7/365 coverage.

To challenge the existing AM/FM broadcast status-quo, will
inevitably
require challenging station licenses in order to re-capture
spectrum.
>> And the best place to start is by challenging the crowding
of spectrum
by multiple redundant right-wing religious broadcasters.
The case for
it is clear and obvious in any area with strong cultural
diversity, and
>> a win is a victory on multiple fronts.

Under-thinking, rather than over-thinking, is the risk for
failure.
Reaction is not action.

-G


>> =====


On 13-11-03-Sun 4:39 PM, Jake wrote:
>>> Just put a big fucking antenna on the roof and start
broadcasting, if
>>> you don't, i will, god damnit.
>> >>>
>>> Stop overthinking things and do it.
>>
>> Why? So you can inflict a $20,000 fine on Sudo Room as
quickly as
>> humanly possible?
>> >
> it takes a long time and a lot of work and listeners
before you even
> get the ten-day warning, let alone an unenforcable fine.
Don't forget
> that Berkeley Liberation Radio has been broadcasting for
almost ten
>> > years now, interrupted more often by their own failures
than by two
> FCC raids where the FCC basically snatched their
equipment and fled
> like cowards.
>
> No one at BLR has ever been successfully "fined", and
even the NAL
>> > (Notice of Apparent Liability) filed against Stephen
Dunifer of FRB
> before them has just sat uncollected, like almost all
NALs against
> pirates, for twenty years now. Stephen's very public
response to the
>> > Notice of Apparent Liability was "Apparently not."
>
> The FCC's fine enforcement mechanism is to threaten to
revoke your
> stations lisence. This works when they fine lisenced
broadcasters for
>> > the seven deadly words or whatever, but filed against an
unlisenced
> person it's a joke. Witness the fine against Daniel
Robert of Pirate
> Cat Radio, which is an example of a person who put his
full name all
>> > over everything and even corresponded with the FCC in
the mail, making
> it personal. They haven't even collected anything from
him.
>
> here's the story of pirate cat's fine:
>> >
>





http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/10/fcc-fines-monkey-man-radio-pirate-10k-war-continues/
[4]

>> >
>
> The point is, if sudoroom decides as a group to broadcast
a signal
> from the roof or wherever (we can stream over the
internet you know)
> then sudoroom can decide for itself whether it wants to
keep going
>> > after getting a "ten day notice to cease broadcasting"
If that EVER
> happens.
>
>

http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-264276A1.html
[5]

>> >
> and if a broadcast is not coming from the building where
sudoroom is,
> then it is not even a matter for sudoroom to have to
decide on.
> Sudoroom can continue to have an internet streaming radio
station and
>> > leave it at that.
>
> _______________________________________________
> sudo-discuss mailing list
> sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org [6]
>> > http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss [7]
>

_______________________________________________
>> sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org [8]
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss [9]
>

_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org [10]
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss [11]
>

--
Naomi Theora Most
naomi@nthmost.com [12]
+1-415-728-7490 [13]

skype: nthmost

http://twitter.com/nthmost [14]
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org [15]
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss [16]

_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org [18]
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss [19]

_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org [21]
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss [22]

-------------------------

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Links:
------
[1]

http://nthmost.com/2011/04/radio-valencia-the-little-radio-station-that-could/
[2] mailto:greggahorton@gmail.com
[3] mailto:g2g-public01@att.net
[4]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/10/fcc-fines-monkey-man-radio-pirate-10k-war-continues/
[5] http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-264276A1.html
[6] mailto:sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org
[7] http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
[8] mailto:sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org
[9] http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
[10] mailto:sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org
[11] http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
[12] mailto:naomi@nthmost.com
[13] http://tel%2B1-415-728-7490
[14] http://twitter.com/nthmost
[15] mailto:sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org
[16] http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
[17] mailto:pnaomi@gmail.com
[18] mailto:sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org
[19] http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
[20] mailto:hol@gaskill.com
[21] mailto:sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org
[22] http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
[23] mailto:dkeenan44@gmail.com
[24] mailto:sudo-discuss@lists.sudoroom.org
[25] http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss