Pirate Cat Radio gets $10k fine

Remember all the furore back then that Napster created, not to mention all the other copycats that supported downloading music and other files from multiple sources at once? Well, I guess the digital music scene is never quite far from controversy at all times, where the FCC has just decided to slap a $10,000 fine on unlicensed radio station Pirate Cat which is run by Dan “Monkey Man” Roberts. It seems that this radio cafe operation ran a “broadcast station without a license issued by the FCC on 87.9 MHz in San Francisco, California,” at least according to the FCC’s Forfeiture Order.

$10,000 is by no means a rather large amount of money, but it might never make its way to the Uncle Sam’s pockets since pirate radio enforcement expert John Anderson claims that the FCC’s overall forfeiture collection rate “is pretty abysmal” with a success rate of around 25%.

Do you think it is futile to track down stations such as Pirate Cat Radio and take legal action against them? It really is a matter of legality and morality all rolled into one, and the lines can get blur pretty quickly. How do you see the entire situation?