Major Networks Suing To Stop Free Streaming

AstroPhilosopher writes "In a move similar to Hollywood's attempt to have the Supreme Court ban VCRs back in the 80's, ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and Univision are set to appear in court next month to urge a New York federal judge to block Aereo. 'Aereo lets those in New York who want to watch on their iPad what they can pull down for free from the public airwaves to their TV with an antenna.' The networks, however, say Aereo will cause irreparable harm to their business. Aereo's conduct apparently causes them to 'lose control over the dissemination of their copyrighted programming, disrupts their relationships with licensed distributors and viewers and usurps their right to decide how and on what terms to make available and license content over new internet distribution media.'"

Comments

First? If the public airwaves are free already

[Cutting_Crew]

then what difference does it make where you get it from? Maybe someone can make it clear for me exactly what their lawsuit is saying here.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[hodet]

I assume the place shifting thing is a problem. The article mentions you rent antennas from Aero which to me would mean that you could get local area streams no matter where you live. I can already stream my own local area OTA with a Slingbox, not sure if that is also a problem for the Networks. But this seems to take it a bit far. I admit I read this quickly and may be missing something here.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[iamhassi]

then what difference does it make where you get it from? Maybe someone can make it clear for me exactly what their lawsuit is saying here.

Good luck with that studios. Worked great for the music companies.... oh wait, no it didn't, they're owned by Apple now because Apple sells most of their music and the music companies could not survive without Apple.

So sue away... until another Apple ends up owning you because you flatly refused to give customers what we're begging for and willing to pay for, an easy way to watch every TV ever created on every media device we own.

If it wasn't for the stupidity of the music companies trying to sue napster and everyone there would have been no iPod, iTunes, iPhone or Android, because had the music companies made their own store and sold music then Apple would have never made billions off iTunes

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[dmomo]

The Networks make deals based on the assumption that those airwaves are only accessible from in certain areas. Advertisers may or may not pay different fees based on the "market" their commercial would reach. It's a legitimate concern.

A lot of these slow-changing old companies are trying to shoe-horn the world to fit their aging business models. They really should be adapting to the new realities of Technology in the Modern World. The market is shifting, and clinging to old revenue streams is merely going to put them behind.

Lawsuit or no, their real concern should be the viability of their business model in a quickly evolving World.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[cforciea]

I think they have a couple of reasons for this lawsuit. First, they don't want any precedents set. A portion of this lawsuit is actually about how it is being streamed; specifically, there is a 1:1 ratio of antennas and users, and Aereo claims they are protected because they are just a long wire between the antenna and the user. If that argument holds for free over-the-air programming, it might be used later to protect streaming of something that is not quite so free. Also, they are probably worried about losing out on revenue from selling people the programming if they don't see it for free over the air when it broadcasts (or via DVR). They want additional advertising value to go to re-runs rather than disappearing into this system, and they are possibly scared it will hurt things like DVD/iTunes sales. They want to be in control as much as possible of any format swapping you do.

Personally, I think they are shooting themselves in the foot, in that I bet they could negotiate advertising revenue by leveraging these additional live viewers, and this adds to the ever-increasing perception that the old school broadcasters are unfriendly to viewers because they can't keep up with the times, but those are of course the typical mistakes these people make anyway, so it isn't surprising.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[Gideon Wells]

'lose control over the dissemination of their copyrighted programming, disrupts their relationships with licensed distributors and viewers and usurps their right to decide how and on what terms to make available and license content over new internet distribution media.'"

That is the key sentence, I believe. Back when TNN, I think it was them?, tried streaming their cable services to iPads there were comments from the industry that this was causing an up roar. Some being so blatantly honest to admit they were fast nearing the point of no longer even knowing what qualified as a "television". How much of the industry is built around a dumb box which displays images they send to it?

What does it do to the industry now that televisions are increasingly becoming glorified computer monitors for watered-down/specialized computers? How much more is the line blurred when you can get television easily on your computer devices? This sounds like they are trying to halt the coming computer/television singularity by keeping television away from clearly computer devices.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally speaking, if someone is rebroadcasting content, they have to pay a licensing fee. A Slingbox is okay because it's your own device rebroadcasting to you--fair use. The issue against Aero is that it's Aero's device rebroadcasting to you. However, since Aero has dedicated antennas for each user, it's essentially a remote Slingbox system for freely available broadcast. Hopefully the courts will see it as such and Aero doesn't go bankrupt from fighting this.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[Savage-Rabbit]

Hopefully the courts will see it as such and Aero doesn't go bankrupt from fighting this.

I think Aero going bankrupt from this is the general idea behind the lawsuit.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[icebike]

You have to ask if their transmission constitutes a broadcast.

After all, with AEREO you rent an antenna in NYC, and send it by TCP/IP over the internet. Its not that much different than sending it from the roof to your basement lair over a wire. You just have a really long antenna lead. Its exactly the same thins as a Slingbox hooked up to your roof antenna.

Big media doesn't care about this as long as Aereo stays in one market, but they know that the internet gives Aereo a long antenna lead to anyplace.

So yeah, its market control, but really its the fact that someone else found a way to make money off of the OTA feed. We can't have that now can we?

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I've always found it ironic that cable TV got its start rebroadcasting OTA feeds to places with lousy reception(much against the preferences of the OTA broadcasters); but once it received government sanction and came into some money of its own, swiftly re-positioned itself as a crusading champion of the absolute dominion of broadcasters...

These Aereo chaps are virtually identical, in terms of business model, to the original cable guys(except that they are bending over backwards to accommodate the absurdities of the law by having an individual antenna in a huge array for each subscriber...

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I get the impression that Team Content wishes to operate under the legal theory that anything that happens to their precious content without their permission is illegal, period.

They'd probably still be upset if somebody were using a clever arrangement of metallized balloons to bounce the RF from the New York broadcast region to wherever they wanted it... The fact that the filthy, filthy, internet, with its pernicious pirates is involved just drives them into a blind rage.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I believe it is a legitimate concern IF and ONLY IF people that stream from the iPads even watch commercials to begin with. What are the studios going to do next? Sue all the people that don't watch advertisements?

As saith Jamie Kellner, Chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting: "[Ad skips are] theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."

People who living outside of Jamie's delusional universe don't actually remember signing any contracts, much less any that meet the requirements of hundreds of years of contract law precedent, to watch OTA broadcasts; but it isn't a big secret that the broadcasters would love to...

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Any outcome is possible, it seems, in these cases; but if I were the broadcasters I'd be worried about my chances of winning this one by anything other than burying Aereo in paper until they run out of money and stop twitching...

The Cablevision case, a few years back, over their 'cloud DVR' system was decided in Cablevision's favor(despite the long-distance transmission) because of the argument that, since Cablevision physically stored an individual copy of the recorded show, per subscriber recording it, the service simply amounted to Cablevision running a 'DVR colo' service.(I don't think that the case decided exactly what a one needed to do to demonstrate a unique copy. Does it have to exist at the disk level? Is it OK if the filesystem sees two copies but the SAN is silently deduplicating blocks in the background? Does a 'single' copy at the FS level stored on a raid volume count as slightly more than one copy, depending on the level of redundancy?); but there would seem to be a clear analogy between the, now vindicated in court, DVR-across-the-network concept and the antenna-across-the-network one.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[MightyYar]

A Slingbox is okay because it's your own device rebroadcasting to you--fair use.

Isn't this just a slingbox that I am renting?

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[nine-times]

Yeah, I don't know about this case, since it does seem to be a case of rebroadcasting. However, I think you're right to draw a comparison between the music industry of 10 years ago and the TV industry today.

We all know the story: in the late 90s, once people had been exposed to Napster, most people knew where music distribution was going. People had been exposed to a system where they could search online for essentially any song ever, and then download it. Contrary to the way we sometimes talk about it, the revolutionary thing about Napster was not that it allowed piracy, but that it enabled people to easily fetch whatever song they wanted without leaving the house. It was perhaps the first exposure the masses had to the idea of a highly available massive online media library, and people loved the idea.

If the record companies had been smart, they would have taken one look at this setup and said, "We need to make this happen. This needs to happen, and it will happen whether we like it or not, so let's get ahead of this thing. Let's figure out how to make money off of this thing immediately so we can be the first business into this market."

Instead they stonewalled. They dragged their feet. The people running the record companies not only expressed that they weren't happy with online distribution, but they were even unhappy selling CDs and wanted to go back to vinyl. They tried to kill online services. When they made online services, they focused on preventing piracy, and they focused on creating synergistic marketing campaigns that would maximize shareholder value with a high ROI. What they didn't focus on, however, was making these services good.

And then Apple came along, leveraged some industry connections and a popular music player, and Apple drank their milkshake. Too bad, so sad.

Now the TV industry is doing the same thing. A growing number of people are asking, "Why can't I just have Netflix, but with all the TV shows and movies that I want to watch?" The people in the industry are dragging their feet, stonewalling, trying to prevent piracy, and engaging in bullshit marketing deals. They are not focused on making a good service that will make their customers happy. The only question is, will it be Apple drinking their milkshake again, or will it be someone else this time?

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[Lumpy]

Cable companies also lobbied hard to get the rebroadcast fees into law. That way it made all community TV antenna systems that were their biggest competition illegal.

IT was common for a city block or subdivision to have one large tower and several antennas picking up the TV stations and then running coax to all the homes rolled int othe association fees. Apartment complexes also used to do this before it was railroaded into being illegal by the cable tv industry.

Re:First? If the public airwaves are free already

[sjames]

The detail YOU missed is that when the cable companies were at the same point in development that Aero is now, they had no agreement either AND didn't even try to accommodate the absurdities. Of course, the legal landscape was a little less absurd at that time.

They need a lobbyist

[binkless]

I hear Hilary Rosen is available

Wait - isn't this time/place shifting?

[NeutronCowboy]

I thought this battle had been fought and won in the VCR times.

You know what - I'm trying really hard to be a law-abiding copyright user. But I'm getting to the point where I really don't care anymore. Fuck the content providers. I can always send artists a check, support companies via kickstarter, or directly contribute in other ways. But I know how to rip, I know how to store, and I can create a darknet for friends and family. I have most of the hardware and software in place, and I expect that over the next few years, I'll actually have a nice library of movies (thank you, library), music (thank you, friends) and books that is sitting on my personal storage server, and freely available to anyone I give access to. The server is sitting behind a firewall, and nobody knows about it unless I tell them the secret knock.

Have fun, MPAA/RIAA. Welcome to your worst nightmare.

Re:Wait - isn't this time/place shifting?

[hawguy]

I thought this battle had been fought and won in the VCR times.

Since they are rebroadcasting from a central location, this isn't quite the same as the VCR case (as much as Aereo tries to make it so). This would be more like if a company was recording shows off the air onto VCR tapes and mailing them to subscribers. Which is quite a bit different than a user recording shows at home for later viewing.

Derp, Meet Herp

[girlintraining]

The networks, however, say Aereo will cause irreparable harm to their business. Aereo's conduct apparently causes them to 'lose control over the dissemination of their copyrighted programming, disrupts their relationships with licensed distributors and viewers and usurps their right to decide how and on what terms to make available and license content over new internet distribution media.'

That's the exact same argument they used against VCRs. "They'll be able to bypass the advertisement! Share with their friends! Our business model will be in jeopardy." The only thing that's changed between then and now is that back then, the justices didn't support state-sponsored capitalism; That is, the privatization of profits and the socialization of costs.

Which, actually, probably means even more citizens now will be taking the approach of "If a law is stupid, ignore it." -- Which is not healthy for a society, but unavoidable when the justice system has departed so far from the actual values and morals of the general population so as to have lost relevance.

Re:Derp, Meet Herp

[betterunixthanunix]

more citizens now will be taking the approach of "If a law is stupid, ignore it." -- Which is not healthy for a society

Sometimes it is absolutely necessary for the health of society. Remember Rosa Parks? Fugitive slave laws? Laws that made the teaching of the theory of evolution illegal? Sometimes bad laws need to be ignored before they can be struck down by courts; sometimes governments need to be reminded that their power is not handed down by God.

There is nothing holy about the law. If a law is so far out of touch with the realities that face the people it is supposed to govern, then it needs to be repealed and it will be ignored. The right wing of Ameircan politics (which is basically all of American politics at this point) has managed to convince people that the power of the government is absolute, and that the letter of the law is the only thing that matters. You need not look any further than this to see how wrong these fascists are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

Re:Derp, Meet Herp

[dkleinsc]

I'm very surprised you haven't made mention of the guy who best articulated the importance of breaking unjust laws:
Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience

To give you an idea as to how important that essay was, it was specifically cited by Mohandes Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. And of course the title has lent its name to most non-violent resistance movements.

Let's not jump the gun.

[TheSpoom]

To understand the latest legal jockeying, substitute the term VCR with Aereo. The upstart, Aereo, opened for business last month and supplies internet streams and a DVR service for over-the-air broadcasts to its New York customers. In other words, Aereo lets those in New York who want to watch on their iPad what they can pull down for free from the public airwaves to their TV with an antenna. For the moment, the service is free, but will soon charge $12 monthly.

This suggests to me the following:

1. Aereo receives television signals over the public airwaves.
2. Aereo rebroadcasts the signals through their internet distribution network.
3. Aereo soon plans to charge for this service.

If I was a TV station, I would have serious problems with steps 2 and 3, and I believe copyright law would agree (with the usual disclaimer that I am not a lawyer and you should not take legal advice from me).

Just because it's broadcast over the public airwaves does not make the broadcast public domain. It's still copyrighted, and by redistributing the signal, it seems to be clear copyright infringement to me. If they want this to be legal, they appear to need new laws.

This is not like a VCR because with a VCR, the distribution of video still happens directly from the copyright owner or their agent. This would be like a company renting a single movie, making copies, then charging for access to the copies, without compensating the original distributor.

By the way, if this practice were legal, what's to prevent Aereo from charging even more to remove the commercials from their rebroadcasts entirely?

Re:Let's not jump the gun.

[cpu6502]

If your read the end of the article, what Aereo is doing may be legal.

QUOTE: "The idea is to rely, in part, on a 2008 federal appeals court ruling known as Cablevision. That ruling, which the Supreme Court declined to review, said Cablevision Systemsâ(TM) cloud-based DVR service was legal only because each user who ordered Cablevision to make a copy of last Thursdayâ(TM)s Seinfeld got their own individual copy in their own folder in the companyâ(TM)s data center.

"Hollywood claimed Cablevisionâ(TM)s service directly infringed its exclusive rights to both reproduce and to publicly perform their copyrighted works. In a highly complex and nuanced ruling, the court said individual consumers, not Cablevision, were copying and acquiring the material at their own discretion, which amounted to fair use.

"That leaves some hope for Aereo. And the companyâ(TM)s got another thing going for it â" a deep-pocketed investor who appears willing to fund an expensive and lengthy court fight. Barry Diller, the chairman of internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp, has invested $20.5 million of the companyâ(TM)s money in Aereo. Ironically, Diller founded Fox Broadcasting in 1986, which is one of the plaintiffâ(TM)s suing Aereo."

You can't rebroadcast Public airwaves

[cpu6502]

Over the years the FCC has granted to local stations the right to charge for their product. Cable companies pay about 1 cent per station (per household)* for the rights to rebroadcast local stations over their wires. This "Aereo" service may have to abide by the same rules.

*
*Yet another reason I use a CM4228 antenna; I get the locals free without charge.