Virus, Lack of Funding Limit Pirate Act, FCC EB Tells Congress
The COVID-19 pandemic and lack of funding limited FCC implementation of the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement (Pirate) Act, said the Enforcement Bureau in the agency’s first report to Congress under the statute (see 2012170060). Pirate radio investigations require…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
field agents to “engage in significant, in-person activities to gather evidence,” and the agency has limited such investigations, the report said. It lists four enforcement actions against pirates in 2020. Implementing the act would also cost $11 million, which wasn’t appropriated, and the law didn’t exist when the FCC’s 2021 budget was created, EB reported. The act requires the FCC to do “sweeps” of markets with the most pirate activity and create a public database of licensed stations, but neither was done, it said. The agency has begun studying which markets the sweeps should cover, but doing them and developing the database won’t happen until funds are appropriated, EB said.