I wasn't aware of it, but the entire film industry, as we know it today, started in a way very similar to how we're operating today as unlicensed FM broadcasters. It seems the 'owner' of the equipment that made and showed movies at the time had a monopoly that he actively enforced. This man was, interestingly, Thomas Edison.
Here's an excerpt from a book I'm reading by Lawrence Lessig called Free Culture (how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity). It's fairly short and extremely telling:
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Chapter four: "Pirates"
"If "piracy" means using the creative property of others without their permission, if "if value, then right" is true, then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of 'big media' today, film, records, radio and cable TV, was born of a kind of piracy so defined. The sonsistent sotry is how l...
Media Freedom, Pirate Radio & The Digital Revolution. Now a place where I'll post articles about subjects I find interesting. Originally a blog about running a Pirate Radio Station in Boulder Colorado, USA from early 2000 to early 2005 when the FCC finally shut Boulder Free Radio (KBFR) down.