COURAGE, TRUTH & BOOTY:

KBFR Mission and Policies Our Mission: Boulder Free Radio is an act of civil disobedience aimed at taking back the public resource called Radio. It is an action and a protest against the selling off of the limited public resource of radio spectrum to the highest bidder. It is an action designed to support our community with a democratic media that will give the average citizen access to the airwaves and provide exposure to new and local music, under-represented ideas, opinions, news and information on local goings on and to do so with an understanding that we are responsible to the community and it’s wishes about content and the balance between free speech and the use of profanity. We commit that we will give fair access to all citizens on all sides of a community, state, regional, national or global issue. At our core, we believe in the community supported use of free speech and access to new music, ideas, opinions and news. We understand that being a member of KBFR is a privilege,

We started last week. We are uploading all of our studio free shows from 5 years of Pirate Radio broadcasting here in Boulder. We looked at all the online web services based Podcasting services and the big three (Clickcaster, Odeo and PodOMatic) all provided great stuff. We played with all of them for a few weeks, and we've finally settled on Clickcaster ( www.clickcaster.com ). We like em cause their local to us, to start with. But, after using all three, they're also the best of the lot. Here's why we like them: -Really (like, REALLY) easy to use -Support huge file uploads (some of our studio free shows are 500MB) -No limit on total space used in your account (PodOmatic, for instance, limits you to 250MB total, that won't hold even one of some of our shows) -Everything happens on your machine. When you're recording a show, it saves it locally to your hard drive (the other guys stream it to their servers). Try doing this on a wireless connection to your home

We did some random broadcasting the other day. Worked up a nice little mobile setup that you can plug in and put together in about 10 minutes in a garage. Nice little case, a laptop with WiFi, a tripod and an antenna. Just throw it up in someone's living room, set the tripod up on the deck and plug it in. Worked great. A signal check had us covering pretty all of town very nicely (helps to be up high on a hill, if you can swing it). I think this is how to do it. Totally mobile setup. Fixed for a single session in someone's house, a few hours, an evening maybe. Then, down for, however long, then, back up again when everyone's in the mood. It's good, I like it. M

It occurred to me today that there's a powerful intersect between this podcasting thing and pirate radio. In particular, it would insanely easy for one guy to create a great pirate radio station, with awesome content, by just using podcasts. I mean, that's what a podcast IS right? A pirate radio recording for the internet. It's a sort of citizen journalism and it's uncensored and unedited by a regular person putting his or her thoughts into audio form and putting it out there for anyone to hear. Sounds one hell of a lot like pirate radio to me. Now, take a 160GB hard disk and FILL it with podcasts that you've downloaded from the net. Music podcasts, current affairs, politics, what have you. Put that disk on a computer, hook up the computer to a transmitter and antenna and you've got some GREAT radio. When you feel like doing a show, head over to the transmitter site and do one. When you don't feel like it, let all that great citizen jouranlist generated

Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio Pirate Radio LIVES! We're going up. We're not gonna do any of that fancy remote transmitter shit. We're going to set up, put the antenna on the roof, and lock the door. When they come, they'll have to have a warrant to get in. Soon!

Well, it's been awhile since they shut down Boulder Free Radio. Jan. of this year. The FCC went after a couple of people that were relatively unrelated to the station (for reasons we don't fully understand..). Most likely they had these two guys names and they were, several times removed, related to us. One was a part time DJ, the other was a roommate of the original Monk who started KBFR. The original Monk. Might as well come out with it. There have been several Monk's since KBFR started. I'm the 4th. The guy who owns this blog is the current 'monk'. TheMonk. Monkterific. Monkifier. Monkonator. Monk. There's still a large group of people in the Boulder and Denver area that want to do Pirate radio, undergroundradio, microradio, whatever you want to call it. There's also alot of gear floating around in different peoples storage spaces and garages just waitin to be hooked up and turned on. And it'll happen. When and where, we don't really know. But

Don't install it! Google Talk (or GoogleTalk) the new instant message client from Google will KILL your gmail account. For some reason, Gmail doesn't like it. A friend of mine had his Gmail account LOCKED OUT when he installed it. Google, of course, doesn't respond (other than auto response emails with no information) to his pleas to turn back on his gmail. So, again, DO NOT INSTALL GOOGLE TALK and you should think long and hard about depending on Gmail, considering how they promptly shut off his email and won't turn it on for 24 hours (or so they say... he's still offline 14 hours later). M

Normally I don't write about things that aren't related to pirate and underground radio, but this one just cry's out. And it sure as hell has alot to do with media freedom. Google has 'blacklisted' CNET for writing a story about how Googles reach might be a little long these days. To illustrate the point, they found a bunch of information on the companies CEO, Eric Schmidt, and published it. They found it, of course, ON Google. Now why the hell would a company that has as it's main principle "Do No Evil" do something so amazingly stupid? I mean, come on. This is one of the few times that the word stupid and Google really belong together in a sentence. And I've got to give them this: when they decide to be stupid, they get REALLY stupid. I just switched my startup page to Yahoo.com. I'm boycotting Google until they stop boycotting a reporting for doing what is simply his job: Telling the truth. Monk

As I watch Apple take over the online music world, I can't help but wonder if much of what they're doing isn't akin to what Microsoft does to hold on to it's control over whatever domain it targets. But in many ways, it's worse. Apple's OS is built on top of BSD Unix, and open and free OS. They take it, 'extend' it to be the Mac OS, wrap it in sophisticated copy protection scheme (called the Macintosh Computer) and sell it at a premium. We're starting to see the same thing in their iPod business. With the recent release of iTunes 4.9, we see the addition of podcasting, but, in a closed mannor. There's no 'sharing with the community' happening here. It's all about aggregating as much control as possible into the Apple view of the audio world. I can see Steve now: "What if we go all these podcaster dudes to put their crap into iTunes and we added advertising? Hmmm... lots of people doing that, or trying to. But we

Slowly but surely, we lose freedoms, access and choice. The latest decisions by the US Supreme Court, one making P2P software 'questionable', even though it's legitimate uses are well documented and freeing cable companies from sharing their lines with competitors.. killing choice and choking off all the little ISP's in the country. Congrats judges. Another blow to freedom and choice.

Remember that Apple Computer commercial in 1984 announcing the Macintosh? Remember the evil world dictator up on the screen? Take a look at this picture: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2005/screen_20050604134834_127.bmp Doesn't Rummy look exactly like that evil world dictator in this picture? Maybe I'm just seeing things, but I don't think so. spooky Monk

This is really hot stuff. I've come to the conclusion that podcasting really is internet pirate radio with timeshifting. These guys over at ClickCaster are doing some interesting things. I found their secret development site (wasn't that hard... alltheweb.com had it at the top when you search on clickcaster) and it seems to be working. It's at: http://monkey.realpublicmedia.com What's cool is they have a simple Java applett that lets you create a podcast with a button click. You do have to have Java 1.5 or later installed (just to to this link: http://www.java.com/en/download/windows_automatic.jsp and it'll do an autodownload for you). You log into their server and click on create an account (yea.. it works) and you go to my studio and click on their 'create a clickcast' button. Up comes the recorder. Very slick. Click record... talk talk talk, rant, talk... Click stop. Play it back, click 'upload' and it throws it up on your account. You

Here's my email for those interested. picture format to keep those damn web crawlers from sticking me on their spam lists. 

www.rprn.org... home of KBFR's recorded studio free shows and many recorded DJ shows. 

Lot's going on in this area. The Real Public Radio Network guys are up and running at www.rprn.org. The Open Media Network is in beta (http://www.omn.org/) And the podcasting world is taking over. Podcasting is as close to pirate radio on the internet as anything I've seen or heard of. A local company called clickcaster (www.clickcaster.com) is developing software for this. Adam Curry's making it real with www.podshow.com and a company called Odeo (www.odeo.com) is making something as off in Silicon Valley. There's even a station (AM) in San Fransisco that's going to do all podcasts submitted by listeners. Now THAT'S Pirate radio, with a license. They're calling them selves 'KYOURradio - Open Source Radio at: www.kyourradio.com The world is a changing folks. A transmitter isn't even required anymore to have a voice. Of course, it would be nice, but, no longer required.

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Been a long couple of months. Everything is gone. We're OK. Heard some rumors about FCC harrassment of old roommates. Not sure though, can't get hold of anyone to verify. No one in the BURG group has had any contact from the feds since the Jan. bust. Everythings shut down, sold, dispersed, gone, dead, ashes to ashes dust to dust. Man, how depressing. Everything's gone dark. But it was time. m

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FINAL UPDATE.... Welcome to Fascist America. KBFR is gone. We are done. We are simple folk with simple dreams who just wanted a voice in our community. KBFR: RIP monk@kbfr.org

The station was shut down, again, yesterday in the late afternoon. One year, to the day (Jan 11th) from the last FCC visit. Apparently the host (who was understandly upset at FCC agents at the front door) didn't get any kind of written warning. First time. This feels somehow different than other FCC visits. monk@kbfr.org