Skip to content

Title 47 — Telecommunications

Chapter 5 — Wire or Radio Communication

§ 501. General penalty

Statutory text

Any person who willfully and knowingly does or causes or suffers to be done any act, matter, or thing, in this chapter prohibited or declared to be unlawful, or who willfully and knowingly omits or fails to do any act, matter, or thing in this chapter required to be done, or willfully and knowingly causes or suffers such omission or failure, shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished for such offense, for which no penalty (other than a forfeiture) is provided in this chapter, by a fine of not more than $10,000 or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, or both; except that any person, having been once convicted of an offense punishable under this section, who is subsequently convicted of violating any provision of this chapter punishable under this section, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both.

Legislative history

Reconstructed from this section’s Code source credit and amendment notes, resolved against the local Statutes at Large. Editorial notes are evidence, not the law that made the change.

  1. Pub. L. 73–652 · 48 Stat. 1064

    Enacted · 47 U.S.C. § 501

    June 19, 1934, ch. 652, title V, § 501, 48 Stat. 1100

    Source evidence

    Code source credit
    June 19, 1934, ch. 652, title V, § 501, 48 Stat. 1100

0 of 1 references resolved to an enrolled provision · 1 partial

Editorial Notes

References in Text

This chapter, referred to in text, was in the original “this Act”, meaning act June 19, 1934, ch. 652, 48 Stat. 1064, known as the Communications Act of 1934, which is classified principally to this chapter. For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see section 609 of this title and Tables.

Amendments

1954—Act , provided that any offense punishable hereunder, except a second or subsequent offense, should constitute a misdemeanor rather than a felony, as those terms are defined in section 1 of Title 18, Crimes and Criminal Procedure.

Credits

1934–1954 · 2 acts
  1. 1934June 19, 1934, ch. 652, title V, § 501, 48 Stat. 1100
  2. 1954Mar. 23, 1954, ch. 104, 68 Stat. 30.
Show as published

(June 19, 1934, ch. 652, title V, § 501, 48 Stat. 1100; Mar. 23, 1954, ch. 104, 68 Stat. 30.)

Parsed from the official OLRC USLM XML in data/usc_all/usc47.xml · release point 119-108 · OLRC build 2026-09-09

USLM identifier /us/usc/t47/s501