FCC Cracking Down on Property Owners From Which Pirate Broadcasters Operate

I believe that the mandate actually specifies that the administration of the communications act be officially amended that in the case of radio piracy that the FCC will no longer issue any Notice of Non Compliance but instead skip that formal little diddy . Instead of escalating to the next level, they are to instead issue a Notice of Liability. I am unsure exactly where and if the Order to Show Cause is thrown in there....But they ramp it up without the precursor in the case of "Pirate Broadcasting".
My biggest question is why dont they just already enforce the laws and rules that they already have on the books already??? If the rule and laws are so inadequate, they really should repeal the whole deal and institute a new complete revision.
How many laws and rules are still on the books that inadvertently are broken everyday and possibly make criminals of all of us?
Clearly this is a problem but nobody seems to have any common sense way to deal with enforcement? At least in the spirit of the law?
The Feds really need to spend some more money on hiring objective outside consultants to address and report on how to improve their public image, and hire another think tank to formulate an objective to correct public policy. The lawmakers can form an action committee that can mandate a plan to institute a change in the various Federal Agencies that budgets enough resources that they actually appear to be of service and doing something that is of usefulness to the individual populace...... DOH!!!!!!!
Ahhhh its just so simple isnt it?
As our International readers might often say "Ahhhhhh Whadda Country!"
Uh yeah why doesnt the FCC just grab the US Marshall Service and/or Homeland Security, march right into the Pirates Den and gaff up the offender and drag his ass straight to the first avail Magistrate along with the evidence and documentation of their investigation and let the judge decide if the bailiff gets to drag the dunbass to club fed for a little vay-cay! then the landlord can properly evict with no opposition or challenges to unlawful detainer?
What ever happened to all those little trick black vans full of the highest tech radio goodies and electronic eavesdropping devices go? Did the FCC lose it all to some other three letter federal agencies black budget? Maybe we should loan some NSA staff to the FCC budget along with DHS, FBI, and all those others??? Damn we are still a young nation too! DOH!
That is likely another contributing factor in why we have the highest Covid Cases and death rates too....No single responsibility or single authority to definitively act and no obvious common sense amongst any entire entity! Bureaucracy of one sort or another at its finest isnt it?

 

AMen!

 

Regulating airwaves that have no political geographical boundries certainly doesnt seem too right, but more power to them as I am all for the Sovereignty of the States.....

 

YES! Why cant they enforce the laws that are present already?

 

Yeah and what is to be said as for the spirit of the law as opposed legal tactics, legalities, technicalities , loopholes and for matters of case law? One extreme or the other will push the balance one way or the other and take advantage, Its all become a game of cops and robbers and the line gets blurred on which is which in many instances. too many mandates become ripe for abuse or at least lend themselves to appear questionable and sets the stage for a question of inpropriety.

 

Within the Amateur community it is becoming common knowledge the the FCC’s enforcement division was reduced circa 2015 because of budget reductions. The FCC’s ability to perform enforcement is much weaker than it was 10 years ago. This weakness reduces the probability that low-power Pirate radio stations will be issued notices; further it means that fewer FCC employees are available to investigate reports of such stations. ARRL followers are aware that the ARRL was quite aware of this reduction of FCC resources and the ARRL OO (official observer) program was overhauled and became the Volunteer Monitor Program (VM) and that a memorandum of understanding was created between the FCC and the ARRL to formalize this relationship. More about this is here:

— http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-thanks-official-observers-as-volunteer-monitor-program-is-set-to-debut

Simply put; the FCC’s ability to enforce extant regulations has become more limited and they needed to identify what they could do to enhance their abilities with enforcement and obtain help with making those changes. Congress provided some assistance.


This law may help the FCC to empower landlords. A landlord upon receipt of notification will now have demonstrable legal standing to initiate an eviction. And this will motivate landlords to give notice to tenants to cease and desist their criminal activity.


Landlords will incur out of pocket costs for legal expenses related to their responding to an FCC notification; this is clear to me. So there is an aspect of coercion being applied to landlords. However some landlords may benefit from being granted enhanced legal-standing because the greater standing may reduce the total cost of evicting the tenants which pose a threat to their bottom line.


I suspect that many operators of Pirate radio stations are tenants which are not inherently bad tenants in other ways; many such tenants will pay their rent with diligence and will not intentionally cause damage to or vandalize the property they reside in. They may set up the Pirate station as a hobby and have the disposable income to indulge their radio whim and are otherwise tenants in good standing with their landlords. Until the landlords became liable to incur fines for their tenants radio station; the landlords were not motivated to take any action against a tenant that was not doing harm to the building and that was paying rent regularly.


Looking at this in the bigger-picture; this law may make landlords even more wary of accommodating Amateur Radio operators desire to put up antennas because as a landlord; they know that any antenna which they allow to be installed in a superior location like a roof or outdoors has the potential to increase the landlords level of liability in the event that any of those antennas ever were used for illegal activities. This elevation of awareness that radio operations legal or illegal on their properties increases the landlords liability will probably make things harder on Amateur Radio operators that do not have the luxury which comes with a single family home on 10-plus acres of non-HOA restricted space to install antennas. It may also make it more difficult for Amateur groups to obtain easements which will allow them to install and maintain repeaters.

 

yep this is so true.. here in colorado they condem your house if you have a tennant that cooks meth so if a landlord finds meth evidence they throw it away and hide because the law will punish you for truning it in.. it is not worth owning investment property anymore.. government seriously has become so dirty

 

HOA's discriminate against hams and now the FCC gives the green light to landlords a reason to discriminate.

Remember Roger Dangerfield? House catches on fire last week and Mom says; quite children, you will wake your father!

 

So once you get busted for something you were unaware of, the bad guys can come in and buy your house and then start a lab or grow operation.

 

I read the words.

I find myself understanding how landlords will be notified and what the FCC are now able to threaten landlords with. Even after reading all of this I have no idea what will meet the legal definition of taking “appropriate actions to stop the illegal activity” when a landlord receives a letter from the FCC? I doubt that most landlords will be able to reach a clearer understanding of what they need to do to meet the standard of “appropriate actions.”

What re the precedents and case-law which applies here. How will any landlord be able to navigate this maze?

I understand that such a letter indicates that someone has determined that spectrum was used in a manner which does not fall within the parameters set forth by the FCC from a particular location.

As a licensed Amateur I am interested in the FCC being able to enforce their regulations and to be able to protect spectrum from being misused.

It is not clear to many of us what the FCC anticipates that landlords can do to curtail the illegal usage of broadcast band spectrum.

 

My understanding of the condemnation laws is that they mean what they say on the tin. Remediating a house for safe habitation after having been used by a serious meth lab is prohibitively expensive / impossible. The house must be torn down.

 

You were at the dock but missed the boat The FCC does not take your property and in most cases does not get your money even if they win in court. The $$ go to a central government slush pile and are meted out as necessary. Which means if they do get an $$ from the pile, it's budget dust. It's the law enforcement agencies, local, state and federal that actually seize property and $$. Example: you get busted for a tenant unknowingly running a pirate radio station on your property. The FCC gets the pirate off the air and keeps their sugar daddy big broadcasters happy by patching a revenue hole. Your property can then be auctioned off to a low baller at the local court house.

 

Yeah and don't forget the realtors talking house gizmo.

 

Maybe the FCC should do the CB thing for pirate radio and just throw up their hands and say as long as you stay under x# watts and can be heard no more than 50 miles then go ahead and broadcast.