Broadcasters Petition US Supreme Court In Fight Against Aereo

First time accepted submitter wasteoid writes "Aereo provides live-streaming and cloud-based DVR capability for Over-The-Air (OTA) broadcasts to their paying customers. Broadcasters object to this functionality, with Fox claiming about Aereo, 'Make no mistake, Aereo is stealing our broadcast signal.' The focus appears to be the ability of Aereo to provide streaming and DVR capabilities that traditional broadcasters have not delivered. The litigious broadcasters are fighting against "Aereo's illegal disruption of their business model.""

Comments

Rights?

[AK Marc]

So we have no rights to the content beamed into our homes, but they have the Right to Profit, even with a bad business model.

Re:Rights?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

That argument would apply to television sets themselves. Doesn't hold water.

'Business Model' is not a protected class

[RandomFactor]

What the station owners fear more than Aereo is the possibility that cable and satellite providers, emboldened by Aereo, will set up their own antenna arrays to avoid paying retransmission fees.

This is exactly WHY this should be allowed. If it is cheaper to setup your own antennas than pay someone else to do it then consumers are being overcharged for the service. Competition should be protected, not the opposite of it.

This is nothing more...

[unitron]

...than a case of how far away from your TV your DVR is allowed to be located.

Which is to say the broadcasters are trying to use smoke and mirrors to cover up rent seeking.

So thats how long it takes...

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember before there was FOX network.

When they came along the big 3 had such a hissyfit at them for daring to do something different.

And now here we are.. Fox is having the fit for someone else daring to do something different.

Didn't take very long at all. 27 years to turn you into a stick up the ass 'we demand profits forever for doing the same thing' greedmonster.

Re:Hmmm I wonder...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I wonder if this isn't a big deal because Aereo isn't rebroadcasting. Broadcasting is transmitting to a wider audience. Aereo has a single antenna distributing to a single person. Obviously this is what Aereo thinks is the case, the stream from my DVR to my TV is not a "rebroadcast." Contrast this with the cable TV operators, who receive the signal once, often through specialized equipment, and send it to all of their local subscribers.

That's the essence of Aereo's legal position(founded on the 'Cablevision Case', where CableVision's 'cloud DVR product, with a similar 'one tuner and storage allocation per user, controlled by the user' was upheld as licit).

Team Broadcast is apparently shitting themselves for some combination of (A) reactionary stupidity and (B) fear that cable companies that currently pay absurd fees to retransmit OTA programming will find it cheaper to set up these goofy antenna-array things than to pay off the broadcasters(which is a pretty good sign that the broadcasters are currently overpaid, if such a silly mechanism actually saves money; but they obviously like being overpaid...)

Re:Why isn't this libel?

[drinkypoo]

Why is it not illegal for Fox to make this fraudulent claim in a public forum?

Because some of us believe in free speech rights.

It is already illegal to knowingly make false claims, especially of a legal nature, in the public eye — specifically, with the intent to cause harm, which this clearly represents. It is a deliberate attempt to mislead for financial gain and other purposes.