Editing Pirate radio (section)

===United States===
In the US, the [[Radio Act of 1912| 1912 "Act to Regulate Radio Communication"]] assigned amateurs and experimenters their own frequency spectrum, and introduced licensing and [[Call sign|call-signs]]. A federal agency, the [[Federal Radio Commission]], was formed in 1927 and succeeded in 1934 by the [[Federal Communications Commission]]. These agencies would enforce rules on call-signs, assigned frequencies, licensing, and acceptable content for broadcast.

The Radio Act of 1912 gave the president legal permission to shut down radio stations "in time of war". During the first two and a half years of [[World War I]], before US entry, [[Woodrow Wilson|President Wilson]] tasked the US Navy with monitoring US radio stations, nominally to "ensure neutrality." The US was divided into two civilian radio "districts" with corresponding call-signs, beginning with "K" in the west and "W" in the east. The Navy was assigned call-signs beginning with "N". The Navy used this authority to shut down amateur radio in the western part of the US. When Wilson declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, he also issued an [[executive order]] closing most radio stations not needed by the US government. The Navy took it a step further and declared it was illegal to listen to radio or possess a receiver or transmitter in the US, but there were doubts they had the authority to issue such an order even in war time. The ban on radio was lifted in the US in late 1919.<ref>{{cite web| url=https://earlyradiohistory.us/index.html |title=Thomas H. White. "United States Early Radio History" |publisher=Earlyradiohistory.us |access-date=2011-06-16}}</ref>

In 1924, New York City station [[WEPN (AM)|WHN]] was accused by the [[American Telephone and Telegraph Company]] (AT&T) of being an "outlaw station" for violating trade licenses which permitted only AT&T stations to sell [[Air time (broadcasting)|airtime]] on their transmitters. As a result of the AT&T interpretation, a landmark case was heard in court, which even prompted comments from [[Secretary of Commerce]] [[Herbert Hoover]] when he took a public stand in the station's defense. Although AT&T won its case, the furor created was such that those restrictive provisions of the transmitter license were never enforced.{{proveit|date=August 2024}}

[[File:Radio station WJAZ, Chicago, 'wave pirates' publicity photograph (1926).jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|right|In 1926 [[WJAZ (Chicago)|WJAZ]] in [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]], challenged the U.S. government's authority to specify operating frequencies and was charged with being a "wave pirate". The station responded with this February 1926 publicity photograph of its engineering staff dressed as "wave pirates".<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015080135463&view=1up&seq=92 |title=WJAZ "wave pirates" publicity photograph |work=Popular Radio |date=May 1926 |page=90}}</ref>]]
In 1926, [[WJAZ (Chicago)|WJAZ]] in Chicago changed its frequency to one previously reserved for Canadian stations without getting permission to make the change, and was charged by the federal government with "wave piracy". The resulting legal battle found that the Radio Act of 1912 did not allow the US government to require stations to operate on specific frequencies, and the result was the passage of the [[Radio Act of 1927]] to strengthen the government's regulatory authority.{{proveit|date=August 2024}}

While [[Mexico]] issued radio station [[XHRF-FM|XERF]] with a license to broadcast, the power of its 250 [[watt|kW]] transmitter was far greater than the maximum of 50 kW authorized for commercial use by the government of the United States of America. Consequently, XERF and many other radio stations in Mexico, which sold their broadcasting time to sponsors of English-language commercial and religious programs, were labelled as "[[border blaster]]s", but not "pirate radio stations", even though the content of many of their programs could not have been aired by a US-regulated broadcaster. Predecessors to XERF, for instance, had originally broadcast in [[Kansas]], advocating "[[John R. Brinkley|goat-gland surgery]]" for improved masculinity, but moved to Mexico to evade US laws about advertising medical treatments, particularly unproven ones.{{proveit|date=August 2024}}