Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court To Hear Aereo Case
schwit1 writes "The Supreme Court will hear broadcasters' challenge to the legality of startup Aereo, in a case that may not only determine the future of digital streaming of station signals but of network television itself. Without comment, the justices on Friday agreed to accept ABC Television Stations vs. Aereo, in which the television networks are seeking to halt the Barry Diller-backed venture, contending that its offering of streams of station signals in New York and other markets violates the public performance provisions of the Copyright Act. Justice Samuel Alito took no part in the consideration of the petition, the court said, without elaborating. Typically such recusals are for a potential conflict of interest, and Alito has previously said that his family owned stock in the Walt Disney Co."
...and I'm sure my opinion will be torn to shreds for it.
I firmly believe that what Aereo does is, strictly speaking, legal, but hardly fair play.
Broadcast television got a pretty sweetheart deal: All of this spectrum is yours, just give us a little public interest news every day. The TV broadcasters use their ownership of the airwaves to produce content that'll get us to watch their sponsor's commercials.
While there are obviously other ways to time and location-shift television, Aereo is essentially a leech on the system. They give nothing back to the content producers. It's hard to root for them unless your only goal is the collapse of broadcast television.
Aereo is an online streaming service - among its offering, it enables people who stay very far away from NYC (for example, Sydney Australia) to watch TV stations from NYC.
The argument from the teevee stations is that by allowing the streaming of their broadcast content, Aereo is violating the "copyright".
I dunno about you, but I find this argument utterly preposterous !
Legally speaking, true, the way the copyright laws has been stipulated by those "legal experts" is that a copy of whatever copyrighted content (be it sound, image, book, or the combination of any form) can only be used one time, in one place.
But c'mon !
People living in Sydney Australia don't get to watch teevee station beaming from NYC anyway - and by allowing them to watch it via online streaming, how the fuck this going to make the NYC teevee station losing money ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I live within the broadcast range of Boston but due to a hill I'm on (and weather) I only get one or two channels at best. I like to watch American football and having the signal drop in the middle of a play just stinks. Aereo allows me to watch (and pause/record) shows I would normally get fed up with and just not watch. It's a great service to mesh with Netflix/Amazon Streaming/etc. since you get sports and live news. We really like it.
As to why the broadcasters are against Aereo I guess there could be concern about timeshifting, etc. But if I did get solid reception OTA I could just use any DVR to do pause and recording, or even a VCR (ok not a VCR, no TV is worth using one of those again).
Overall I see Aereo, Netflix, etc. as the future. Much like mp3s and digital streaming are the media for music. It would probably be best for the broadcasters to try and figure out how to best make it all work. I still don't understand why a broadcaster would not want Aereo to 'repeat' their signal, w/o it I would not be able to watch the shows, hence not view the commercials.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
ABC does not own the content that it broadcasts: it licenses it from the original authors/producers. That license permits it to distribute the content over the airwaves with the payment of a fee.
Think about it this way. Suppose I wrote a play. I would have both (1) a right to prevent others from copying my written work (the script) and (2) a right to prevent others from performing that play if they got a copy of the script. If I permit a playhouse to perform the play, that playhouse can limit the viewing of the licensed performance to those inside the building. Here, ABC is broadcasting its content to the public: it's like a playhouse that has no walls that anyone from the street can enjoy. The playhouse's recourse is to perform the play inside an enclosed building, and ABC's recourse is arguably to distribute its content to those under contract, which it cannot do over the public airwaves.
Now, if ABC owns the original rights in what it broadcasts, the story is different. In that case it can sue as the holder as the copyright, rather than the holder of merely a license. Even then, arguably ABC has granted everyone with access to broadcasted content an implied license to view it, and forward the content to another location as apparently Aereo does. What Aereo would then be doing is merely a "fair use" of that broadcasted content, which is specifically permitted by the copyright statutes.
These lawsuits against Aereo are about money, and really not even about getting money from Aereo but from cable operators. Networks and their affiliate stations pull in huge amounts of cash from rebroadcast deals. The Aereo model threatens to cut that cash flow off. Several cable companies are already looking to copy Aereo and do a one-antenna-per-customer model to provide local stations, and avoid paying carriage fees. That's billions of dollars the networks could lose. That is why they want to kill this model dead and quickly.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
If you read the plaintiff's pleading before the court (quoted here):
They are explicitly saying "our business is changing and we want the courts to stop things because creative destruction is unfair." They are not even pretending that they are trying to do something in the public's interest; they are nakedly asking the court to save the entrenched interest. Pathetic assholes.
The point is that not everyone in the viewing area can put up an antenna and get decent reception.
ABC does not own the content that it broadcasts: it licenses it from the original authors/producers.
Come again? The rule requiring broadcast networks to license all prime-time programming from third parties was abolished two decades ago.
Now, if ABC owns the original rights in what it broadcasts, the story is different. In that case it can sue as the holder as the copyright, rather than the holder of merely a license.
In practice, as I understand it, the exclusive licensee of a work in a particular market has remedies under the law very close to those of the owner of copyright.
Here's my report on the actual ruling which is being reviewed: 2nd Circuit affirms denial of plaintiffs' preliminary injunction motion in WNET v Aereo
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Convenience. You can do it all yourself (and maintain it) or you can pay someone that does it in bulk a small fee to do it for you, and since they have economy of scale they can keep costs low enough to make it attractive as a convenience.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The thing is, broadcasters aren't bringing this case over lost advertising revenue. And they're not bringing it over increasing the size of the broadcast area.
They're bringing this case because if Aereo-like services lets people access the broadcasts within the broadcast area in more convenient ways, that means the broadcasters can't make as much money from selling more-convenient access to their content (e.g. by charging cable-TV retransmission fees, or making a deal with Time-Warner Cable to let subscribers visit special subscriber-only webpages or install subscriber-only apps to stream content).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.