Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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:
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?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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.
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.
'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.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
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.
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.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
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...
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?
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.