Uncle Sam slaps San Francisco radio pirate with $10k fine
The world of online music is evolving at a global breakneck pace. Millions of people are Pandoring, Turntabling, and Spotifying away. They're sharing their music choices on their mobiles via Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm. Users, developers, and entrepreneurs are redefining the very nature of broadcasting for the foreseeable future.
But over at the Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau, it's as if this revolution isn't even happening. In the spirit of Javert, the obsessed police inspector in Les Misérables, the law must be enforced. And the law doesn't focus on reigning in the waves of deep packet inspection that ISPs still deploy throughout the United States. It's about fining unlicensed radio stations like the one run by Dan "Monkey Man" Roberts called "Pirate Cat," a radio cafe operation that ran a "broadcast station without a license issued by the FCC on 87.9 MHz in San Francisco, California," according to the agency's Forfeiture Order.
The fine is $10,000, but that money may never show up at the US Treasury, according to pirate radio enforcement expert John Anderson speaking to Jennifer Waits, who follows the ongoing Pirate Cat drama over at the Radio Survivor blog. The agency's overall forfeiture collection rate "is pretty abysmal," Anderson explained. The last time the Commission even bothered to check its success rate, it clocked in at about 25 percent. And after five years of stalking a "recalcitrant pirate" who won't pay up, the FCC has to file a civil lawsuit for judgment.
