The CGC Communicator Newsletter Web Posting

SHOULD CALIFORNIA ENACT ANTI-PIRATE LEGISLATION?

RE: California Anti-Pirate radio legislation mentioned in CGC #888


When the Florida anti-pirate law (Florida Statute 877.27) was enacted back in 2005, pirate radio in Florida was out of control.  FCC only had two agents in their Miami office and a few more in Tampa.  They couldn't keep up.

Remember the biggest enforcement hammer the FCC Enforcement Bureau has is the authority to issue civil fines of $10,000 to unlicensed operators, and the U.S Attorney is not all that excited about collecting those fines.  It's not like the IRS or DEA where the govenrment agents can go in and arrest the operators, sieze the transmitter as evidence, and later have the judge forfeit it to the state as part of the sentence or plea deal.

So, the Florida law has actually been an experiment in how local justice can deal with simple radio problems more expediently than the FCC Enforcement Bureau, and it has actually worked pretty well.  Even though the Miami FCC Office has now been expanded to four agents, it still does almost 100% pirates, in a loose coodination with local law enforcement.

Could this work in California?  Probably.  If such a law was enacted here, Free Radio Santa Cruz would be a good test case.  The downside is that the Florida law is arguably on shaky legal ground.  In fact, when it was enacted, the ARRL feared it would be used against Amateurs and asked the FCC to intervene.  See:

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/03/01/4/FloridaRFIStatuteDeclaratoryRuling.pdf

Since California is so much larger than Florida, enacting anti-pirate legislation here might move the FCC to intervene.  There is only one way to find out.

An anonymous FCC source

Posted by Steve Blodgett
Earthsignals.com