Judge Backs FCC Shutdown of Radio Microbroadcaster

A federal judge allowed the government on Tuesday to shut down “Free Radio Berkeley,” run by an unlicensed low-power broadcaster who has fought a five-year guerrilla war against the way federal authorities regulate the airwaves.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken declined to rule on most of Stephen Dunifer’s free-speech challenges to Federal Communications Commission restrictions because Dunifer never applied for an FCC license. She rejected Dunifer’s argument that federal law fails to set standards for the FCC’s decisions on licensing so-called microbroadcasters.

Dunifer, who founded his 50-watt FM station in 1993, says the station is “part of an ever-growing micropower broadcasting movement to liberate the airwaves and break the corporate broadcast media’s stranglehold on the free flow of news, information, ideas, cultural and artistic creativity.”

He has sold hundreds of inexpensive kits that enable fellow radio rebels to transmit in a radius of five to 15 miles. Dunifer and his colleagues say the tens of thousands of dollars needed for a license application, and the hundreds of thousands needed to open a station, excludes all but the rich.

FCC officials consider such operations an invitation to chaos on the airwaves. They first tried to shut down Dunifer in 1995. Until now, Wilken had let him stay on the air while she considered his claims that the government was violating free speech and exceeding its legal authority to regulate in the public interest.

But in Tuesday’s ruling, Wilken said Dunifer was not entitled to challenge the FCC’s regulations on licensing low-power broadcasters because he had never applied for a license or a waiver from licensing requirements.

Dunifer could not be reached for comment. Alan Korn, one of his lawyers, declined to comment, saying he had not seen the ruling.