Free The Pirate Organization: Lessons From the Fringes of Capitalism by Rodolphe Durand, Jean-Philippe Vergne

Fight Against Pirate Radio
     
    The BBC was founded in 1922 as a government monopoly. But Britain’s grip on this partially uncharted territory did not please everyone. Starting in 1928, pirate radio stations transmitted radio broadcasts from makeshift ships. They made sure to moor their ships far enough from the British coast to elude legal prosecution. Most pirate radio stations believed that radio broadcasting as imposed by the monopolistic BBC was unacceptable. Why not allow several stations to broadcast on different wavelengths so that people could choose their own program? Why impose an educational goal when radio could be highly entertaining, make people think, allow listeners to express themselves, to dance with friends in the middle of the living room? Why only broadcast classical music when you could also offer bebop, swing, and later rock and roll? The BBC would come up against hordes of pirate radio stations, which continued to push the limits of radio broadcasting for another forty years.
    In 1930, pirates created the International Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) to contest the BBC’s model. The IBC forged partnerships with many pirate radio stations throughout Europe in order to propose alternative programming rights under the noses of BBC representatives. The IBC proposed a radically different model that favored varied programming and contemporary music. In this model, the best programs on sister pirate radio stations were compiled and rebroadcast. They were tailored to a specific audience using relay antennas. The programs were picked based on location and adapted to the sociological traits of each city and suburb. In contrast with the BBC, which was always live, the IBC prerecorded parts of programs, which were combined and rebroadcast in a number of geographic markets. The IBC was funded by advertising, and it enabled its founder, Leonard Plugge, to get rich quick given the success of its programs.
    Pirate radio stations that popped up after World War II fine-tuned their methods for evading standards and regulations. For example, Radio Mercur, founded in the 1950s, broadcast from a ship located in international waters, but the ship itself was registered in Panama, was funded with Swiss money, and was rented to a company established in Liechtenstein. It was almost impossible for authorities to take legal action against radio pirates of this type.
    The BBC and its defenders were adamant in their belief that broadcasting beyond the borders of the sovereign state should be banned. Such a ban eliminated any possibility of broadcasting a program outside the country in which it was produced. Obviously, this prohibition made no sense, since radio waves, by their very nature, cross the physical boundaries of countries and technically cannot be stopped by force. Moreover, the British Crown, famously, bent its own rule when it ordered pirate stations to broadcast anti-Nazi propaganda outside the United Kingdom at the outset of World War II. This is how the IBC was recruited by the BBC in the 1940s, when British secret services were discretely buying up airtime on Radio Luxembourg, the main pirate radio station in the mid-twentieth century to broadcast Chamberlain’s speech on the German airwaves. This kind of practice did not occur only during wartime: in 1962, Radio Mercur was dissolved by the Danish government, which at the same time had recruited a large number of its speakers to host programs within the national broadcasting association. Therefore, radio also had its corsairs.
    In addition to the protection of the sovereignty of the national territory, the BBC used another argument to justify its fight against pirate radio: the defense of intellectual property. It’s true that pirate radio stations broadcast music without paying all record company royalties. But for most innovative record companies that invested in rock and roll, pirate radio was the only means to reach a larger audience, since the BBC