Jesse Walker recently wrote a nice treatise on the anti-pirate laws in Florida and New Jersey (albeit in dubious trappings, but you can read around that). Inspired, I decided to drop a line to the two Democrat FCC commissioners, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, both of whom are supposedly somewhat accessible via e-mail. They got this:
Since 2004 the state of Florida has asserted jurisdiction over the broadcast airwaves, something the FCC has historically worked very hard to keep within its exclusive domain. Last year, the state of New Jersey followed suit. Both states have essentially criminalized the act of unlicensed broadcasting, punishable as a felony involving jail sentences and multi-thousand dollar fines.
Both state laws are so loosely-written and poorly-worded so as to potentially snag anyone who creates interference to a licensed radio facility. This has particularly alarmed amateur radio operators, who fear they may find themselves unwittingly caught up as violators of the laws for intermittent and/or unintentional interference to a neighbor’s radio or television set.
Perspectives differ on the actual harm unlicensed broadcasters may cause in the interference context. Personally, I feel these potential risks are far outweighed by the service these stations provide to underserved communities. Their existence is also partially due to the FCC’s overly-restrictive allocational rules.
Irrespective of these points, the FCC has historically been very adamant about maintaining exclusive jurisdiction over the broadcast airwaves. Just because an anemic field presence cannot cope with the number of unlicensed stations on the air in a particular state does not mean the FCC should cede its jurisdiction there. To me it would seem that allowing this to continue opens up the potential for fundamental challenge to your jurisdiction in other contexts. Is the compromise worth the implications?
On February 25, 2005, the American Radio Relay League filed a Request for Declaratory Ruling asking the FCC to reassert its exclusive jurisdiction over the radiofrequency spectrum and thus preempt the new state laws. The Request was assigned to the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, where it has not been heard from since.
Might you be able to inquire on the status of this important issue?
I’ll let you know if I hear anything.
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