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Pirate Letters Were Sent to 41 Properties Last Year

FCC releases latest PIRATE Act report

The FCC has released details regarding the fifth year of its PIRATE Act enforcement.

As mandated by the law’s 2020 passage, the commission must submit an annual report to the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce regarding PIRATE Act outcomes within the last fiscal year. 

The act requires the commission to conduct annual enforcement sweeps of pirate radio in the five markets with the most complaints, which typically includes New York City and Boston. 

The report said PIRATE Act funding enabled the FCC to acquire monitoring equipment, including six mobile direction-finding vehicles for enforcement activities. These vehicles complement the commission’s existing customized mobile direction-finding fleet.

The PIRATE Act granted the FCC the authority to take action against property owners and managers who continue to allow pirate broadcasts to take place after receiving commission notice. It issued 41 notices in FY2024, including 22 related to pirate sweeps.

[Related: “FCC Hits 13 Landlords in NYC Metro Area With Pirate Letters”]

That compares to 45 such notices, including 25 related to pirate sweeps, in FY2023.

As of December, the FCC had proposed a total of about $14.5 million in fines against alleged pirates and imposed $5.5 million in fines since January 2021. It has not reported whether any of it has been collected.

The commission also filed updates in the following categories:

Operator fines

Pirate Radio Enforcement Actions by State, since Jan. 2020, from the FCC's Pirate Radio database.
Pirate Radio Enforcement Actions by State, since Jan. 2020, from the FCC’s Pirate Radio database.

The FCC issued six forfeiture orders and 18 notices of apparent liability for forfeitures regarding pirate broadcasting in FY2024.

They include:

Pirate radio station database

The passage of the act requires the commission to build and maintain a database of pirate radio stations. 

The database has been updated as of Dec. 31. It originally deployed the site in January 2023.

(View the FCC’s Pirate Radio Enforcement Database.)

Staffing

As part of the plan it implemented for the act, the commission has hired additional staff members, with an emphasis on hiring field agents in or near offices where sweeps occur.

The commission said it hired two full-time employees during the past fiscal year and said it is in the process of hiring additional full-time staff members. In total, the FCC has hired six full-time staff members related to the PIRATE Act. 

The passage of the act increased the maximum penalties for pirate radio operators. As of December these were about $120,000 per day, with a maximum of just under $2.4 million.

[Read more stories about pirate radio enforcement]

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