The first FM pirate raided under the new Telecom Agency policy, has been fined . 'Club AA' from Gramsbergen was fined nearly € 10,000, reported the pirate site etherpiraten.com
Since 1 November the pirate no longer gets a warning. And so a pirate who is raided can expect a letter after a few weeks .
In a recent judgment, the court endorsed the new policy of Telecom Agency, so the chances of success for a pirate when challenging his fine is not very good.
Until a year and a half ago the popular pirate frequencies 97.0 and 94.5 MHz from the north eastern provinces of Overijssel and Drenthe had almost permanently ( 7 days a week , 24 hours a day) extremely powerful pirates on air, with huge heavy transmitters and towers which caused serious interference to the reception of legal Dutch and German stations.Powerful Twente pirates with high masts which used a frequency 97.0, meant the reception of the 3FM station Lopik ( 96.8 ) and that of Radio NL Zwolle ( 97.2 ) and the broadcast station in the German Nordhorn Deutschland, Radio Kultur on 97.1 were made completely unusable .
Now it has become clear that Radiocommunications Agency is serious this time it is virtually silent on the pirate front. Pirates teams with powerful FM transmitters and high masts, which until recently were on air, are nowhere to be seen.
If there a fixed transmitter, then the (minimal ) fine is € 2,500. When using mobile transmission equipment ( eg a mobile phone mast) the basic fine is € 5,000 .
The maximum fine that a pirate can get is € 45,000 .In the case of Club AA Gramsbergen the calculation of the fine was € 9,928. This pirate was raided on Saturday, November 9, so after the new policy Telecom Agency. Two and a half weeks later the letter with intention to impose the penalty was sent .
(Radio.nl translated into English by Google Translate)
Read the original in Dutch at http://radio.nl/785146/eerste-piratenboete-onder-nieuwe-beleid-bekend
See also: http://shortwavedx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/dutch-telecom-agency-to-get-tough-with.html
A sad story. As I understand it, the Dutch authorities are going after FM pirate stations with this new policy, and remain relatively indifferent towards AM and Shortwave free radio hobby operators.
ReplyDeleteI am told that the FM pirate scene in Holland is much larger than that in the UK: the nearest we have ever got to their set up was in the "rave" music boom of 1988-95 when land-based FM pirates from tower blocks were in many cities putting out several hundred watts and linked to the free party scene / rave scene that was cracked down on in the much contested Criminal Justice Act of 1994.
The Dutch radio authorities seem to have a bit of a inconsistent attitude towards unlicensed broadcasting. They tolerated the offshore stations like Radio Veronica for many years, but mounted savage, illegal armed raids on Radio Noordzee (1964), Radio Paradijs (1981) and Radio Caroline / Radio 819 (1989). It will be interesting to see how their approach to landbased FM and AM free radio pans out.
Time will tell how this will affect the Dutch AM stations on medium wave and shortwave.
ReplyDeleteCertainly there does not seem to have been a decline in activity although stations I've spoken to in the Pirate Chat say they are more careful and more likely to switch off if they hear of AT activity in their neighbourhood.