OAKLAND, California -- When a federal judge denied a group of broadcasting enthusiasts the right to an impromptu public forum on the importance of pirate radio on Friday, a group of the rebuffed DJs staged a small protest to air their concerns.
After arriving in front of the federal building to the trumpeting of a conch shell, California micro-radio activist Stephen Dunifer spelled out his concerns before about 30 people.
"The National Association of Broadcasters and the [Federal Communications Commission] are guilty of grand theft larceny -- stealing the public airwaves," declared Dunifer.
"They're making us ask for a diminishing slice of the pie -- that's ridiculous," he said. "It's time we took the whole pie shop back -- and the rest of the bakery too."
Dunifer and his supporters were protesting an injunction against his 50-watt FM station, Radio Free Berkeley. Such a signal is powerful enough to be heard by listeners about 10 to 15 miles away.
In June, Oakland US District Court Judge Claudia Wilken dismissed Dunifer's challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's restrictions against micro-broadcasters -- stations that operate with fewer than 100 watts of power.
Friday was to be Dunifer's day in court to formally challenge Wilken's decision. Both the FCC and Dunifer were scheduled to present oral arguments supporting their respective positions.
But Wilken announced last week that she would issue a written response based on the written briefs that had already been submitted by both sides. Dunifer said that the judge had thus denied him and his supporters the chance to make their protests known in an official public forum.
The FCC claims that unlicensed micro-broadcasters are a threat to public safety.
"There are only so many spots on the radio spectrum, and they have to be monitored," said David Fisk, an FCC spokesman. "One major problem is interference with air traffic controllers."
But Dunifer and his supporters said that the FCC has taken things too far.
Dunifer said that FCC agents, along with campus police from the University of California at Berkeley, attempted a raid in the wee hours of 2 August 1997 on a pirate radio operation known as the Covert Broadcasting Services in the Berkeley hills.
Until the agents showed up on the raid that morning, broadcasters DJ Lucy and DJ Peanuts had been broadcasting on the 104.1 FM frequency. Dunifer said that the authorities chased the broadcasters through the woods with spotlights for about an hour but failed to catch them. The FCC then seized the pirate broadcaster's equipment, Dunifer said.
Neither the FCC nor campus police could be reached to confirm or refute Dunifer's recounting of the events of that evening.
On a subsequent day, said Dunifer, campus police passed word that the broadcasters could come by the police office to retrieve their seized property. Fearing arrest, the DJs sent attorney Larry Hildes in their place. Hildes said he was surprised by FCC agents at the arranged meeting.
"I was not told that they would be there," said Hildes. "They obviously thought they were going to surprise the DJs and arrest them."
Hildes gave them a letter authorizing him as an agent on behalf of "Ed Sullivan," of the Covert Broadcasting Service, or CBS. The alias was named for the deceased TV show host.
But the FCC did not get the joke, said Hildes, and wrote back a very serious letter to one Ed Sullivan of CBS, threatening him and his colleagues with a potential two years in jail and US$250,000 fine if they continued their broadcasting hobby.
Pirate radio operators do not have much support from either government or industry. The National Association of Broadcasters said they are against pirate broadcasters simply because they are illegal.
"We're against them because they have no license to operate -- it's against the law. It's just an issue of illegality," said Anne Marie Cumming of the broadcasters association.
But Hildes claims that the association and mainstream radio broadcasters are threatened by the presence of pirate radio broadcasters.
"Mainstream, corporate-owned radio is afraid of losing their audience -- and their advertising dollars -- to micro-broadcasters," Hildes said.
