Sure Quality Radio
Sure Quality Internet Radio (SQR) was an online radio station that served boylove community. Started in March 2001 by owner Jeffrey Gold, it broadcast nearly continuously until its demise in August 2006. Its slogan was "YOUR Boylove PRIDE Station!"
Overview
The stated goals of Sure Quality Radio were
- To reach out to the community, and build bridges between different communities (those of boylovers, non-boylovers, girllovers, and gays).
- To motivate boylovers to action by building a sense of pride, fraternity, and community.
- To help organize and guide the boylove community through various activist exercises.
Despite these somewhat serious-minded goals, the station generally had a fun and relaxed tone, although each DJ's show had its own character.
The station's main studio was located in Florida, USA, but DJs broadcasted from wherever they were in the world. Listeners were encouraged to join the chat room (hosted on IRC and linked from the home page), where they could chat with each other and the current DJ.
SQR was mainly funded out of the pockets of its founder, but monetary donations were accepted, and there were occasional pledge drives. The money went into new equipment and other costs relating directly to needs which arose within the station. For instance, after the listening base increased sharply following the introduction of the station to the BoyChat community in March 2005, its broadcast servers were overwhelmed and required an upgrade.
Security concerns
There were a number of concerns over the legality, security, and privacy policies of Sure Quality Radio.
- That the live DJ could see listeners' IP addresses left listeners potentially vulnerable to IP harvesting by the DJ.
- The Brett interview caused a great deal of controversy on BoyChat. There were concerns that some of the sexual descriptions broadcast may be illegal in Canada, though the administrators of Sure Quality Radio disputed this claim.
- The IRC chat room was a security concern for many, due to the insecure nature of IRC. Some used proxies, like Tor, to strengthen their anonymity.
History
Sure Quality Radio began in March of 2001 broadcasting from a 486 computer with a 56k modem. Sometimes live shows were run, but an automated playlist of music ran when there was no DJ on air. The audience was modest, and it was advertised on smaller BL forums. At some point, listeners began congregating in an IRC channel on a public server. SQR maintained a small but steady following until it was advertised on BoyChat in March 2005. This created a flurry of interest that the station owners were unprepared to deal with. There were complaints that the "Auto DJ" music selection was poor, and security concerns about the promotion of the IRC channel without any acknowledgement of the potential security risks. Skylark, who was in charge of station security, was dismissive of feedback, which created a stigma of insecurity that stuck with the station for the last year and a half of its life. The common claim from Skylark was in the form of 'we're aware there is a security issue, but it is not dangerous because we are working on fixing it.'
BoyChat posters Dylan Thomas, Appy, and Fleetwood began hosting their own talk shows, and this brought a lot of listeners to the station. Listener numbers surged and the hosting facilities had to be upgraded to handle the traffic. Near the end of March, there had been an administrative dispute between Jeffrey Gold and Skylark, and Skylark redirected the domain name to point to a new radio station he created. After a couple weeks, Skylark's radio station had disappeared, and Skylark stopped posting on BoyChat until he reappeared as the security manager for Boy Talk Radio in January 2006.
The increased attention also brought other trouble. A couple listeners were using the IRC channel to trade illegal images in private and first one and then another IRC network banned the channels. Because of this, Jeffrey Gold decided to host his own chat room, to attempt to offer an official, secure, and moderated chat room for the station's listeners. Hínandil donated his time to set up a temporary IRC server that offered anonymity but had no banning facilities. After a week, a new station security manager to replace Skylark was appointed, and he replaced the IRC server with an unsecure one again. Around this time it was also brought up on BoyChat that live DJs could see the IP addresses of the current listeners. Slowly, work was undertaken by station volunteers to improve anonymity, although hiding IP addresses from DJs was eventually abandoned because it made listening statistics unavailable.
As the station gained in popularity, Jeffrey Gold began using a hosted ShoutCast server that allowed for song royalties to be automatically calculated and paid. By winter 2005, he had begun to make comments that he wanted Sure Quality Radio to last, and cited Free Spirits as an example of an organization with policies that would ensure longevity. In January 2006, Boy Talk Radio started up and drew disillusioned listeners away from SQR. Finding DJs who could keep to a regular schedule continued to be difficult for the station, and internal communication between staff were vague and infrequent. Ratings started a gentle decline.
In early August 2006, Jeffrey Gold and Divinaw (who had since left the staton) were arrested on charges which were unrelated to the online radio station. News of the arrest didn't surface immediately, and other DJs stepped in to keep the station running when the Auto DJ stream stopped. Fleetwood's Garage was the last show broadcast on 12 August 2006. The station continued broadcasting until 14 August, at which time station staff decided to stop broadcasting and disband the station because there was no way to maintain the website or broadcast server. An official statement was made on 19 August 2006 regarding Gold and Divinaw's arrests. Its webpage remained accessible until 10 September 2006.
