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FCC liability for radio pirates operating on your property
- nativeit 2y ago> The PIRATE Act [2020, HR583] permits the FCC to fine both pirate radio operators and the property owners/landlords who permit pirate radio activity on their property. The risk for property owners is substantial, with maximum fines of $119,555 per day, capped at a statutory maximum of $2,391,097.
- basil-rash 2y agoWild. How soon until the standard housing lease boilerplate contains clauses like “you may not transmit any electromagnetic radiation at all under any circumstances whatsoever” as a means of landlords trying to cover their booties? More seriously, I’d be mighty concerned if I were a landlord and saw someone putting up a ham antenna, regardless of whatever licensing they claimed to have. It’s a bad day for public radio.
- techjamie 2y agoGeneral license HAM operator here. The good thing is that HAM licenses are trivially auditable as the FCC provides a direct lookup on anyone licensed so anyone at all can verify their status. HAM bands are typically enforced by fellow operators who will work to triangulate and locate people who shouldn't be on it. There are even organized competitions where they practice locating devices.
- grendelt 2y ago(Just ham not HAM)
- fortran77 2y agoUs real hams (20 wpm extra since 1977) know how to spell it. I'm always amazed how "ham" became "HAM"
- evilduck 2y agoI think the habit arises from people assuming ham was also short for something like AM and FM is, or in computers, since PC was an initialism, Mac should get the same treatment too.
- buescher 2y agoif you really want to get them riled, spell it H.A.M.
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago—7.3—
- csunbird 2y agoMost of the contracts should already mention “No illegal activities”, which should cover this, right?
- qwertox 2y ago"How could I know this is illegal, if it was sold on Amazon and had great reviews?"
- nkrisc 2y agoIf that’s your defense in court, good luck.
- imchillyb 2y agoThe same way you would know that flying a drone, today, without a license is illegal in the USA. We are required, in our society, to keep ourselves informed. Ignorance is no excuse for breaking laws in the US.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kstrauser 2y ago"Your honor, I'd like to enter as evidence for the prosecution exhibits A, "Ueber das Gesetz der Energieverteilung im Normalspectrum" by Max Planck; B, a Wi-Fi router; C, this cheap crappy USB charger; and D, their kitchen lamp.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoAnd as Exhibit E, their housecat.
- ssl-3 2y agoSuch a clause would eliminate 99.999%+ of potential tenants: Almost everyone has a cell phone, and also a microwave oven, and all of these things deliberately transmit electromagnetic radiation. (And then we have the countless unintentional radiators to contend with.)
- ldoughty 2y agoIt also rules out people who use any form of light in their household... including candles. But I do believe the author was jokingly referencing landlords adding generic catch-all clauses without understanding the issue, and understood it went to such lengths, and found that funny. (I did)
- exe34 2y agothese rules aren't there to rule you out, they want you to pay their mortgage after all. the rule is to get rid of you by terminating the contract if you cause more headaches than your rent money is worth.
- akira2501 2y agoWhat they don't want is absentee or paid off landlords affording pirates an additional layer of protection. The article even points this out, if the building owners cooperate, and help the FCC end the broadcasts, it's highly unlikely the issue would be perused to that level.
- grendelt 2y ago> the Notices require each property owner to respond within ten days with evidence that the property owner is no longer permitting pirate radio broadcasting to occur on its property. So, like, post a sign "no pirate radio broadcasting plz"? Or show how it's in the lease agreement that it's against the rules?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago> Importantly, the Act also extended the FCC’s enforcement authority to property owners deemed to be willfully and knowingly permitting pirate radio activity on their property. Sounds like it. I’ve never broadcast over radio so I’m not sure how easy it would be to hide but that seems to be an important factor. It might come down to surprise inspections but those still usually have minimum 24 hours’ notice, at least where I live.
- mystified5016 2y agoYou pretty much can't hide a transmitter. If you're broadcasting with illegal power levels, it's pretty trivial to walk around with a directional antenna and triangulate the source transmitter. If you're curious, look up "radio foxhunting". Some people do it as a hobby. Your only hope is to set up an unattended transmitter, connect to it through the internet, and spend your effort obscuring that connection. Creating an untraceable connection through the internet is a lot simpler. Aside: you could actually obscure the location of your transmitter by building multiple of them and doing some tricks with phase and frequency. Ultimately you're still trying to hide a guy in a crowd screaming into a megaphone. They'll find you eventually, you can only make it harder for them.
- kstrauser 2y agoThis is all exactly right. A reasonable analogy is to think of the antenna as a lightbulb that either changes color quickly or changes brightness quickly to send a signal. If you find yourself bathed in, say, green light, it's pretty easy to look around until you see the green lightbulb. It's very nearly the same here except that radio waves are at a much lower frequency than visible light. If you see a signal at 14.313 MHz, you can swing an antenna around and walk in the strongest direction until you get to the source, modulo reflections and whatnot.
- ProllyInfamous 2y agoI broadcast my Pandora/iTunes via FM to my local devices... presumably there are wattage limitations, under which one is presumed to be operating for personal use (similar to the "car adapters" which "plug in" via FM broadcast)?
- grendelt 2y agoRight. Those are covered under "Part 15" as unlicensed devices. They cannot interfere with other services and must accept any interference.
- ProllyInfamous 2y agoThanks for giving direction; I went ahead and read snippets of "Part 15" and ultimately it seems my unmodified Amazon-special FM-antenna is probably "too strong," far exceeding the ~200ft broadcast limitation. We'll see if anybody directionfinds me =D —73
- autoexecbat 2y ago> and must accept any interference. What does it mean to not accept interference?
- TheRealPomax 2y agoUsually dynamic signal boosting to drown out interference when it's detected. Big no-no.
- tingletech 2y agocomplain to the FCC
- ooterness 2y agoIf you're the licensed user of a given radio band, you can sue people who cause interference. If you're an unlicensed user, you just have to live with it.
- grvbck 2y ago
- themagician 2y agoThey are gone now, but during COVID there were a bunch of relatively cheap, and what seemed to be pretty decent quality, 50-150W FM transmitters on Amazon.com. I thought that was odd. They were there for about 6-8 months. Probably not related to this but who knows. I remember looking them up from time to time thinking about how cool it would be to have a pirate radio station in the secluded area I lived in at the time.
- 6d6b73 2y agoSomeone should put a hidden radio station on one of the properties owned by the FCC, or better yet commissioner of that agency and see if they fine themselves
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Carrok 2y agoAs someone who has extensive experience broadcasting on "pirate" radio, it is great fun, and typically harms no one. In fact, during some natural disasters, these pirate stations became a great source of up to date crowd sourced information on what was going on, even helping coordinate first responders. Obviously letting everyone broadcast radio-station strength FM signals willy-nilly is a bad idea, but going after someone in a neighborhood occupying an unused swath of spectrum is not, in my opinion, the best use of anyone's resources.
- byteknight 2y agoAgreed - But if everyone followed this philosophy we would have reason to enforce it. Perhaps the thinking is then, therefore, enforce before it becomes a problem?
- Carrok 2y agoI don’t think “everyone” has the interest, know how, equipment, and time to operate a radio station. But I would personally very much like to see what it would look like at “problematic” levels. That amount of independent media would be truly a thing to behold.
- akira2501 2y ago> and typically harms no one How would you know? If your equipment was operating improperly or out of specification, how would anyone contact you to let you know? > these pirate stations became a great source of up to date crowd sourced information This is a fantastic claim that should come with solid evidence. I know licensed HAM and other operators do practice and work to provide these services, but I've never seen them legitimately attributed to pirate stations anywhere. > but going after someone in a neighborhood occupying an unused swath of spectrum It's complaints based. The FCC does not "scout around" looking for pirates. If you step on my signal, I will record it, and I will report it to the FCC. If your station has been found and is being shut down then your actions rose to this level of notice. > the best use of anyone's resources. I agree. The airwaves are _everyones_ resources though. It's those who abuse the system that create the waste.
- jfoutz 2y agoI'm not in any sense a lawyer. I don't have the time or inclination to read all of title 47. I wonder how well the FCC will stand up after Chevron. The AM bits I glanced at look really solid, this is a band, this is a channel this is the maximum rate of amplitude change, tidy technical details spelled out by congress. But like, the PIRATE act is pretty explicit, 100,000 per day 2 mil max. Perhaps there's some other law that allows the FCC to adjust for inflation. but the bill, as I the non-lawyer reads it, doesn't say anything about inflation. Seems like they could lower the fine a bit, at least.
- CodeWriter23 2y agoIANAL either but I doubt Chevron will impact this because it is Legislation. Chevron gives litigants the opportunity to smack back regulations that come through the non-legislative Rule Making process. What we have here is the result of the 2020 PIRATE Act.
- jfoutz 2y agoI'd think the inflation adjustment is regulation. but perhaps the law exists somewhere.
- johnea 2y agoHaving been very loosely associated with some pirate FM in San Diego years ago, my experience was that they created no interference for other operating stations. From wikipedia: "After the FCC complied with the provisions of the Radio Broadcasting Act of 2000 by commissioning the MITRE Report to test if there was significant interference from LPFM stations on the full-power stations, the study showed that the interference of LPFM is minimal and would not have a significant effect on other stations." This is all about the FCC acting as guard dog for 99% spam spewing stations. The power limits and operating conditions for low power FM should be relaxed, to allow the radio spectrum to be utilized by the citizenry.