Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The file sharers, I believe.
The term "piracy" to refer to something that's unauthorised goes back a long time, at least 50-odd years to the days of "pirate radio stations" in the late 1950s. Did you have those in the US? Here in Europe, they were ships which anchored in international waters, and broadcast pop music, without getting permission from the countries to which they were broadcasting to use the radio frequencies in that way. Hence the "nautical connection".
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We didn't have the issues you guys in England had about the government trying to control what was being broadcast. Mainly, the government was concerned about regulating signal strength. There was some concern for trying to have some diversity of stations, but not much. Back in the late 50s, you could pick up stations from all over the country at night, when a lot of stations went off the air & the big ones could rachet up the signal strength. I used to listen to WLS in Chicago way down in south Alabama, with a Hitachi transistor radio my dad gave me.
In the early 60s, when we were stationed in West Germany, Radio Luxembourg was my primary source of rock & roll. I have a vague recollection of hearing Radio Caroline during that same time frame, but I might just have heard
about it.
Apparently we do have the equivalent of pirate radio stations these days, in a sort of underground of very weak signal radio stations that operate in urban areas without licenses. Don't know much about them, though.