Despite FCC's Promise To Take Aggressive Action To Stamp Out Radio Pirates, Illegal Stations Are Flourishing (newyorker.com)

Last year, when Donald Trump appointed Ajit Pai chairman of the F.C.C., Pai promised to "take aggressive action" to stamp out pirates. In early May, the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement, or PIRATE, Act was introduced in Congress; it would increase fines from a maximum of a hundred and forty-four thousand dollars to two million dollars. But the stations aren't going away, The New Yorker reports. From the article: Transmission equipment has only become cheaper and more sophisticated. "The problem, as I see it, is that the technology has gone beyond what the law has been able to do," said David Goren, a local resident who works as a producer on licensed radio shows. Between 87.9 and 92.1 FM, Goren counted eleven illegal stations, whose hosts mainly spoke Creole or accented English. Pirates, he said, "offer a kind of programming that their audiences depend on. Spiritual sustenance, news, immigration information, music created at home or in the new home, here."

Comments

Re:Pro-regulation conservatives

[Anonymous Coward]

The public airwaves are not a free market and never have been. They've always been tightly regulated.

Re:Mostly Harmless

[jbmartin6]

They did this already for the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical ranges that the various 802.11 standards use.

Re:Spin Vs. Reality....

[v1]

That was the original job of the FCC. To make sure your transmitter was operating correctly.

Well, that and to prevent stations from accidentally (or deliberately) interfering with each other.

I recal a story from many years ago where several stations had promised live coverage of a (baseball?) game and there were several station trucks at the statdium trying to provide live scores. Things escalated, until they basically were all just belting out full power broad spectrum so that "if my report can't get through to the station, neither can yours", and as a result nobody was able to provide live coverage and reports had to be made to the stations by runners.

That's the big thing they started to deal with, and to some degree that's what their core work still is. Their #1 goal right now from what I can tell is to prevent disruption of important and emergency communications. They go after individuals that disrupt police/ambulance/fire dispatch for example, or that try to jam TV station satellite links. They also dedicate some of their limited resources into radio and tv station licensing, mainly to coordinate frequency allocation and prevent nearby stations from interfering with each other by limiting their power and adjusting their antenna coverage patterns.

More recently they've had to start dealing with cell phone and wifi jammers, mostly in venues where businesses are selling or restricting wireless internet access. (they also insure 9-1-1 access, as we've seen a big carrier recently get the smack-down for dropping for 5 hrs in a region)

They just don't have the time, manpower, or finances to do much else nowadays. Even the kilowatt CB stations are mostly being ignored. The only time they're going to bother with that is if they are interfering with something local. The FCC publishes their enforcements online (sorry I foet where) and I've browsed them a few times. The handful of CB stations they've gone after have indeed been the high powered stations, but only when they were interfering with a sheriff or ambulance dispatcher's repeater etc.