Landowners Warned of Potential Liability of Up to $2,000,000 for Pirate Radio Operations on Their Property

The FCC yesterday created community four letters to landowners warning them that there were unlicensed FM radio functions coming from their homes and warning that, if the transmissions ongoing earlier the 10-business working day reaction time period, the landowners could be held liable for penalties up to $2,000,000 for the unlicensed functions coming from their qualities.  The letters had been despatched to landowners in Summerville, Oregon Baltimore, Maryland Kissimmee, Florida and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

These actions comply with the 2020 enactment of the federal PIRATE Act which enhanced prospective fines on operators of unlicensed radio stations to up to $100,000 per working day, and up to $2,000,000 in the mixture.  The act licensed fines not only on pirate radio operators themselves, but also on everyone who “knowingly does or results in or suffers to be accomplished any pirate radio broadcasting,” which seemingly authorizes the styles of fines threatened in yesterday’s notices directed to the landowners the place pirate radio stations run.  As operators may well be difficult to recognize, the potential to seek out penalties against landlords, who are easily identifiable from nearby land information, provides the FCC a significantly stronger device with which to fight pirate radio operators.  We very last wrote about FCC actions against pirate radio in relationship with settlements with operators in mid-2020, so these steps may possibly signal that the FCC is once again hunting to enforce the prohibitions towards unlicensed functions.