The “Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement Act” or “PIRATE Act” was signed into law today rapidly increasing the maximum fines potentially issued to illegal broadcasters.
The bill raised the maximum fines to $100,000 per day of operation with a maximum fine of $2 million. The FCC will be required to run biannual “enforcement sweeps” in the top five markets to work towards “identifying, locating, and taking enforcement actions designed to terminate such operations” with a follow-up monitoring sweep within six months. The agency will no longer have to send Notices of Unlicensed Operation and can go straight to issuing Notices of Apparent Liability with fines attached.
All efforts to combat pirate operations and enforcement will need to be reported to Congress annually as well as be logged in a database that identifies all entities that have “received a notice of unlicensed operation, notice of apparent liability, or forfeiture order issued by the commission” as well as all licensed stations.
The full version of the act as passed by the Senate can be read here.
nick 
AnyHuman
I’m glad that I shut down my pirate station after less than a year on the air. I was 16 when I built it.
Meanwhile the large commercial radio operations continue to broadcast the same 50 songs over and over with the same syndicated formats in each city.