A little success for the FCC in its never-ending battle to beat back the pirates. The Commission says it has reached settlements with two Boston-area pirates, Acerome Jean Charles and Gerlens Cesar. Charles and Cesar have agreed to pay monetary penalties, admit to what they did, agree not to broadcast illegaly for 20 years and surrender all of their equipment.
In December, the Commission issued two Notices of Apparent Liability to Acerome Jean Charles and Gerlens Cesar for their apparent unlicensed operations of broadcast radio stations—Radio Concorde and Radio TeleBoston, respectively—in the Boston-area.
Cesar has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $5,000, and agreed to pay a further penalty of $225,000 if he violates section 301 of the Act or violates the terms of the Consent Decree.
Charles has agreed to pay a penalty of $4,000, and to pay a further penalty of $75,000 if he violates section 301 of the Act or violates the terms of the Consent Decree.
Call me a fossil, but I have never figured out what happened to the hard-hitting way the FCC once handled pirates — back in the 1960s, for example. As soon as the inspectors figured out where the pirate operation was transmitting from, they showed up with a truck, immediately confiscated all the equipment, loaded it up and usually destroyed it right away. The perpetrators were charged with various violations of federal law and regulations, subjecting them to criminal and civil penalties. And, because of the near certain consequences, there were very few pirates. What’s all this with reaching “settlements” with pirates and negotiating consent decrees? I don’t get it. If they don’t have licenses, their operations are illegal, and it should take a few hours, not years, to shut them down. Or did the FCC’s authority to stomp out pirates get watered down somewhere along the way?
Unfortunately pirates of this breed give sincere broadcast enthusiast and radio hobbyist a bad name. Not all of “us” that work with the equipment and run short transmissions have the intent to cause trouble nor dare the FCC. These guys are obviously trying to run it as a business unlicensed and in such crammed in areas of the country. They go online and buy cheap Chinese transmitters that are not FCC type accepted and they have no modulation control. Throwing a compressor ahead of them does not control modulation. They also have no filtering and spurs all over the place. It’s the same concept as speeding down a major highway with cops all over the place. You will get stopped and fined. Yet the same act on some outlaying country road you won’t likely be bothered. On the flip side of this, they should had been smart enough to cool it when first busted. The last thing of stupidity is even wasting time negotiating the fine. There is no life altering penalty of not paying it especially if the funds don’t exist. They may try to call you or send papers but being arrested and jailed from the FCC just doesn’t happen for failures to pay. They can make life rough for a licensed facility such as revoking licenses. But not much they can do to a civilian other then try to scare you to death. Move away, ignore it and it will eventually go away. More pirates have not paid then paid.~An old Engineer.