Defiant Pirates Ply the Radio Airwaves

The nerve center of a nationwide and rapidly growing renegade radio broadcasting movement lies here, in the cluttered and dimly lit home of a frail, soft-spoken radio technician.

Stephen Dunifer, founder of Free Radio Berkeley, is regarded by many micro-broadcasters as the primary technical and inspirational force behind a movement that is defying the federal government’s regulation of the airwaves.

But Federal Communications Commission officials say that Dunifer is a pirate, leading a movement that poses a threat to public safety.

For three years, the FCC has been trying to silence Dunifer in a legal battle that micro-broadcasters are watching closely. The agency also has cracked down on other micro-broadcasters, raiding the homes and stations of some, pressing criminal and civil charges against others.

At stake, says FCC Chairman William Kennard, is the smooth functioning of a decades-old broadcast system that permits the orderly functioning of commercial stations, air traffic control and emergency services.

“We can’t have a situation where people are creating confusion and cacophony over the airwaves, we just can’t have it,” Kennard says.

A federal judge in Oakland, however, refused the agency’s request for an injunction against Dunifer’s station in November, and ruled that the court has jurisdiction to decide the constitutional issues he raised. A trial is expected later this year.

Dunifer says that he cannot wait for a trial on the free speech issues he and other broadcasters say are inherent in their battle with the FCC.

“People have come to the conclusion that they don’t have a voice,” says Dunifer, 46, whose radical roots date to the antiwar movement of the 1960s. “They know that corporations have a stranglehold on the free flow of information.

“There is an incredible contextual framework for this movement. I put it in the historical context of various struggles for liberation and self-determination.”

Micro-broadcasters generally use 1 watt to 95 watts of power to air their FM signals. The FCC will not license any station below 100 watts, and it can cost more than $100,000 for a broadcast license for a 100-watt station. Broadcasting without an FCC license is a violation of federal law. Still, the FCC estimates that there are 300 to 1,000 unlicensed stations broadcasting everything from Christian sermons to rock ‘n’ roll in towns and cities nationwide.

Kennard concedes that micro-broadcasters have a point when they complain that it is hard for community broadcasters to get on the air.

“Someone like Stephen Dunifer is doing an unlawful thing,” he said. “But I am sympathetic for the need to have more expression on the airwaves. That is a compelling point that some of these pirates make. We just want them to work in a lawful way to change the system.”

The FCC, Kennard says, is considering changing its rules to allow the licensing of 1-watt broadcasting stations. But micro-broadcasters say that they should be allowed to have stations more powerful than a single watt. Besides, they complain, the FCC’s process to revise its rules could drag on for years. They want to broadcast now.

Many micro-broadcasters also seem to relish their outlaw posture. Dunifer never applied for an FCC license, arguing that it would be futile because his 45-watt station falls below the FCC’s 100-watt minimum. He and many other micro-broadcasters remain on the air even after they are hit with fines or warnings.

Dunifer’s Free Radio Berkeley appeared on the FM band in this most radical of American towns in April 1993. He started broadcasting from his home, then put his equipment in a backpack and headed for the Berkeley Hills when FCC enforcement officers moved in on the signal. Every night, his small band of volunteers broadcast from a different spot, trying to elude the FCC. Eventually, he was tracked down and slapped with a $20,000 fine that remains unpaid.

Today, Dunifer and 95 volunteers broadcast a mix of far-left commentary, interviews and alternative music 24 hours a day on 104.1 FM. Their station--protected, for the moment, by his court fight--is located in a Berkeley radio studio.

Dunifer also operates a radio transmitter factory--in his home. He has built and sold hundreds of low-cost broadcasting kits and trained dozens of other micro-broadcasters.

Dunifer says micro-broadcasters pose no public safety threat because they broadcast below the range that air traffic control towers use to talk to airplanes. And he says equipment used by most micro-broadcasters is good enough to avoid interference with big stations.

Kennard says the stations interfere with the signals of licensed broadcasters, confuse listeners and sometimes pose a threat to air traffic control and other emergency broadcast services. The FCC recently closed a pirate station in Puerto Rico, the agency says, because the station’s signal nearly forced an airport to stop operating.

Kennard says he thinks micro-broadcasting has exploded in popularity in the last five years as a backlash against the consolidation of station ownership spurred by the 1996 federal communications law. The movement, he says, has been fed by the Internet.

“The Internet has created a way for them to communicate with one another in ways that are pretty powerful,” he says. “They are able . . . to learn how to become a pirate.”

At the same time, the cost of transmission equipment keeps falling, and the equipment is getting easier to operate. Many micro-broadcasters credit Dunifer with these last two developments.

A technical whiz, Dunifer has trained apprentices to build his easy-to-operate, mail order kits, which sell for $500 to $2,000. He also puts on an annual micro-broadcasting national conference and hosts a weekly talk show and co-edited a book called “Seize the Airwaves.”

“Without Stephen Dunifer’s help, we would never have gotten on the air,” says Richard Edmondson, who runs San Francisco Liberation Radio from his cramped apartment in San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood. “We worked day and night under Stephen’s tutelage.”

Edmondson first broadcast from a rusting camper truck, reading Zapatista communiques over the air by candlelight. In 1993, an FCC enforcement official tracked him down during a broadcast from San Francisco’s Potrero Hill. Edmondson has not paid a $10,000 FCC fine for illegal broadcasting and the FCC has not yet taken him to court.

Instead, he moved his 40-watt station into his living room. From there, he broadcasts a nightly mix of blues and jazz, leftist political commentary and interviews with the homeless. “If every community in America had its own micro-radio station, we could have a fundamental impact on political life in America,” he says.

But Dunifer’s attorney, Alan Hopper, says he worries that his client might not be around to see that fundamental shift occur, or even to see the outcome of his legal struggle. The activist suffers from a debilitating, degenerative form of arthritis that makes even the simplest movements difficult.

The joints of his fingers are painfully swollen, making it nearly impossible for Dunifer to put together his kits. Even tying his shoes is an effort, and friends sometimes have to carry him to his second-floor apartment.

A vegetarian who spurns traditional medicine, Dunifer refuses to take immunosuppressant drugs that would control his disease.

“We are worried about him,” says Hopper, one of a team of National Lawyers Guild attorneys who are representing Dunifer pro bono against the FCC. “Without Stephen, the micro-broadcasting movement would be in trouble. He is tireless, and he has done so much organizing, so much speaking.”

The lawyers guild is determined to press Dunifer’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

“This is the kind of case that I went to law school to do,” says Hopper, a San Francisco criminal defense attorney. Control of the radio airwaves “is one of the most serious issues that we face in terms of trying to live in a democracy. To have a functioning, vital democracy, you’ve got to have people informed about their communities and the world.”

But Dunifer’s court victory in November--when the federal judge refused to grant the FCC an injunction--has been a rare bright spot for micro-broadcasters.

That same month the FCC raided the Florida home of Doug Brewer, one of the movement’s best-known broadcasters.

Brewer says that he and his wife were awakened by gun-toting U.S. marshals who handcuffed him and held them both for hours as officers removed thousands of dollars of broadcasting equipment. Brewer had been on the air for several years as the “Party Pirate.” His station specialized in sexual banter and rock ‘n’ roll.

“I have absolutely no political agenda--at least I didn’t until they came in here with guns,” Brewer says. “I just thought that Tampa radio sucked and we had to do something to improve it.”

Last week, the FCC won its criminal case against Arthur Kobres, another Florida micro-broadcaster. A jury found Kobres guilty on 14 counts of illegal broadcasting. He faces up to 28 years in prison and a $3.8-million fine. It is the first time in years that the government has brought criminal charges against an illegal broadcaster.

Pamera Hairston, head of compliance for the FCC, says that the agency resorts to criminal charges or seizing equipment only when all else fails.

“Ninety illegal broadcasters have [been] shut down in the past year with no more action than sending letters or visiting them and delivering warnings,” Hairston says. “Still, we do want to get across to the public that this is a serious matter, and what the consequences are to the public safety and to the broadcasters themselves.”