Supreme Court Rules Against Aereo Streaming Service

New submitter Last_Available_Usern (756093) writes that the Aereo saga is likely over. "The U.S. Supreme Court today dealt a potentially fatal blow to Aereo, an Internet service that allows customers to watch broadcast TV programs on mobile devices by renting a small DVR and antennas (in supported cities) to record and then retransmit local programming on-demand over the internet." Ruling (PDF). Aereo was found to be publicly transmitting, according to SCOTUSBlog "The essence of the Aereo ruling is that Aereo is equivalent to a cable company, not merely an equipment provider."

Comments

One disturbing bit:

[Penguinisto]

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, stressed that it was a limited decision that will not “discourage the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies.”

...and he's certain of that - how?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he's a Supreme and you are... sitting in your mom's basement?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Thanshin]

Three options :
A - By divine revelation.
B - By using his time machine.
C - He isn't certain, but doesn't care.

I've personally decided to believe B because I'm a optimistic atheist.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[eclectro]

...and he's certain of that - how?

Transistors keep getting smaller and technology will get better as time goes on. Even if it is not the form Aereo envisioned here.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Beeftopia]

He's not: "As Stephen Breyer, one of the Supreme Court justices, said in this week’s hearing, “What disturbs me is I don’t understand what the decision for you or against you is going to do to all kinds of other technologies.”

It seems to me that judges should be ruling based on the law, not perceived ancillary social influences. That's why we have three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. Legislative makes the law, and judicial merely determines if actions are legal or not legal? Quaint, no?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[DarkOx]

D - The court actually does mean for the ruling to be narrow; does not see this case as setting a strong precedent and will grant certiorari for what might otherwise be seen as similar media delivery technology cases

Re:One disturbing bit:

[hendrips]

He almost certainly means that from a strictly legal standpoint, rather than as a general statement. It's somewhat common for the Supreme Court to put a disclaimer in an opinion stating that the opinion was so narrowly focused that it shouldn't be used as a precedent in other seemingly analogous cases. Presumably, this comment is more of a command to the lower courts, rather than a prediction of the future.

So, if Company X wants to start a business that is similar to, but not exactly the same as, Aereo's business, any legal challenge against Company X would still have to be upheld on its own merit. Challengers couldn't cite this Aereo decision as legally relevant.

Now, whether this ruling will have chilling effects, other than its legal precedent, is a different question.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Thanshin]

I was trying to stick to options within the realm of probability, albeit thinly.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[bluefoxlucid]

The supreme court is different. They're supposed to look at issues and decide if this is how our country was supposed to work. If certain actions criminalize a religion without just cause (i.e. the criminalized set of acts is representative of a harmless behavior, or a set of non-criminal acts that only happen under this religion in this way), the Supreme Court may interpret not only that religion is a shield (i.e. Peyote for shaman religions), but also that the law has no other reasonable purpose and is thus wholly invalid so it can fuck off.

That doesn't mean they always do a good job of it; I only intend that the supreme court is tasked with interpreting the standing of the law itself as well as the standing of the law against a person.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[pushing-robot]

And SCOTUS 2: Justices In Time was a pretty good movie.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jedidiah]

His black robe doesn't allow him to alter the natural laws of the universe or the basic principle that a rule once made applies to EVERYONE.

Declaring that a file transferred to a single person constitutes a "public performance" applies to EVERYONE.

That's the way the law works.

That's what Aereo was depending on. They exploited the rules created by another SCOTUS precedent. They abided by those rules.

The lower courts will apply this rule. It will have to be litigated all the way to the supremes before they can declare that some rule doesn't apply to a particular person.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Anonymous Coward]

See the for profit health care system? Waaaay the hell more than 10,000+ deaths. Yep

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Beeftopia]

If certain actions criminalize a religion without just cause (i.e. the criminalized set of acts is representative of a harmless behavior, or a set of non-criminal acts that only happen under this religion in this way)

It seems to me that if a reasonable interpretation of a law leads to negative unintended consequences, it then becomes the legislative branch's duty to rectify it, not the judicial branch's. Creating an incoherent ruling merely to achieve a desired social outcome severely undercuts the separation of powers, it seems to me.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[ducomputergeek]

It has nothing to do with the technology. And the law governing copyright and broadcast rights has been pretty clear for a long time. It would be no different than my neighbor on the hill that gets great OTA reception capturing those broadcasts, running a cable down to my house and charging me to "watch" signals he captured. He wouldn't have the rights to transmit that copyrighted broadcast/telecast unless he went to the networks and got a written agreement.

Or let's say he has a big radio antenna and can get radio broadcasts from say KMOX, then retransmits that signal to an FM frequency of his choosing. (Yes I know FCC licensing and all that, but let's ignore that and just look at the fact that the technology doesn't matter) He'd need a license from KMOX to retransmit their copyrighted broadcasts. Ever listen to a baseball game, especially on the Radio? Somewhere around the 5th to 7th inning I grew up with Jack Buck or Mike Shannon saying: "This broadcast is presented by the authority of Major League Baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. Accounts and descriptions of the game may not be retransmitted or broadcast without prior written consent of the St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. And there is a such thing as the "Cardinals Radio Network" in which smaller stations away from KMOX retransmit KMOX's broadcast of the game on their local FM or AM frequency. But they have a license to do so.

Aereo is no different. You are just replacing radio waves with the internet. Technology for delivery is different, but the legalities are the same. That's why the Justice is saying that it shouldn't have a chilling effect on technology. If Aereo had a license or got a license from the broadcasters to carry their stream over the internet, then no harm no foul.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Beeftopia]

Also, it seems to me that making rulings in order to achieve desired social outcomes rather than based on reasonable interpretations of the law undermines the rule of law.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what you will about the VA, it still overall gets the best results for its patients for the lowest cost of _ANY_ healthcare provider arrangement in the U.S.
The only reason it's got such problems right now is because the Republicans have cut or frozen its funding whenever possible, pushing the VA toward their fantasy that the government can't get anything done properly. Nobody can without proper resources.

And you missed a chance at a deeper sophmoric pot-shot, the V.A. is not only single-payer it is flat-out socialist. The government owns all the VA facilities and the VA staff are government employees.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Varka]

What if your neighbor let you put an antenna up on his property, and run a cable from YOUR antenna to YOUR receiver?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[SydShamino]

When our Constitution has social wording in it ("cruel and unusual" come to mind, but there are many other examples) and the SCOTUS' job is to interpret laws relative to the Constitution (so says them + history), then of course they have to look at social effects.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[SydShamino]

Dinah's The Hopper is similar to, but not exactly the same as, this service. The equipment is still owned centrally and rented to each user; it just resides in distributed houses rather than one central location, and is streamed over the user's personal bandwidth instead of a company's. That is, unless The Hopper is installed in an office.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[SydShamino]

On the other hand, if you contracted with your neighbor to rent a patch of his land, and you ran your own antenna up there so you could get the OTA signals yourself separately from his reception, that should be A-ok. That's even true if he already had a spare antenna installed and you just rent it from him.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[sjbe]

It seems to me that judges should be ruling based on the law, not perceived ancillary social influences.

For lower courts that is (largely) true but for SCOTUS it is not. The Constitution is not 100% black and white and many aspects of it are open to interpretation. The job of SCOTUS (and lower federal courts to some extent) is to provide that interpretation when there is a disagreement. This interpretation effectively is identical to making legislation. Furthermore interpretations over time tend to reflect the morals and social influences of the day. Cases like Dred Scott v Sandford once upheld interpretations of the law that today would be considered reprehensible. At some level the decisions that SCOTUS judges make reflects their belief systems, particularly on hot button topics like abortion where decisions are based more on personal morality than objective evidence. That's why we have 9 judges instead of just one.

Legislative makes the law, and judicial merely determines if actions are legal or not legal? Quaint, no?

Each branch of the government makes certain types of laws. The Legislative branch makes statues, the Executive branch makes regulations and the Judiciary makes case law. All three are necessary and proper to the functioning of civil society. All three are laws in every sense that matters. If any branch of the government was unable to make laws then that branch of government would be powerless against the other branches. Checks and balances only work if you can make laws.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[JeanPaulBob]

It seems to me that judges should be ruling based on the law, not perceived ancillary social influences.

The supreme court is different. They're supposed to look at issues and decide if this is how our country was supposed to work.

Only to the extent that "how our country was supposed to work" shows up in the Constitution.

In other words, either: (1) your comment was implicitly limited to applying the overriding Constitutional laws to the laws passed by the Legislature (thus you turn out to be agreeing with the grandparent), or (2) you did intend your comment to apply more broadly, in which case (AFAICS) you're mistaken.

If you meant it broadly, what's your basis for saying they're supposed to "decide if this is how our country was supposed to work" in areas where they're not applying the Constitution (or possibly common law)?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Tran]

Your first example is not really what is happening, is it though? More apt is what is going on is that I buy an antenna and give it my neighbor to mount on his roof, and then run a cable from that antenna to my house.
For the access of having him put an antenna on his roof, I pay him a little fee.
Why should I not be able to do this, whatever my motivation (poor or signal at my house, no good place to mount an antenna at my house, etc)?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[bluefoxlucid]

In America, there is a higher law governing the rule of law. The Supreme Court is the only court authorized to address that. Each State also has their own constitution, which provides their State Supreme Court the power to decide if a law is faulty and should be excepted or wholly stricken.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[bluefoxlucid]

The rule set comes from somewhere. Even the legislative branch has rules to follow regarding what laws they can bring into existence. The court is wholly able to resolve conflicts in law by ejecting stupid laws which fail to correct other laws, for example a law commanding taxation on a tax-exempt account would have that taxation eliminated (and potentially the entire law, if the law was nonsense with the stricken section removed) unless it specifically amended the blocking law.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[MrLint]

As long as the trailer and voiceover bits are done by Nina Totenberg

Re:One disturbing bit:

[GameMaster]

The same way, if I remember correctly, that he was "sure" that the Citizen's United ruling wouldn't lead to a massive increase in private/corporate money influencing the US election system...

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Solandri]

I haven't read through the ruling, but I suspect they just applied the "quacks like a duck" rule. Regardless of the technical nuances, Aereo operates like a rebroadcaster (takes services subscriptions, forwards broadcast transmissions to them). Therefore it must be a rebroadcaster.

I suspect the ruling may have been different if Aereo had required customers to buy their own antennas, and only charged an installation fee to host the antenna and monthly hardware insurance fee to replace broken ones. To draw from the analogy someone posted below, that'd be like you buying your own antenna and asking to place it on your neighbor's property because he sits on top of the hill blocking your house. Dynamically assigning a micro-antenna to a subscriber on-demand just blurs the line. (The fact that all this is technically stupid when you could just use a single antenna is simply a consequence of Copyright law creating artificial scarcity and giving content producers a monopoly on distribution.)

Re:One disturbing bit:

[TemporalBeing]

No, he's basically saying that they issued a very limited ruling that really applies to Aero and extremely similar cases and not ruling the general case that affects everyone. The wording is making that clear to lower courts.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jratcliffe]

Except that you're not "buying" the antenna. He's renting you the use of an antenna (different one every time, pretty much), combined with the use of the wire that gets the signal to your house.

If this were a case where you did own the antenna and the connecting wire, and just paid your neighbor to mount it on his roof, then it'd be a very different story.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jratcliffe]

You don't remember correctly. Breyer voted against Citizens United.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Shadow99_1]

Having read both majority and dissenting opinions even the other dissenting justices feel this was not anywhere near 'narrow and specific' and that was the primary reason they refused to accept the majority opinion. If 3 of 9 Justices don't even think it's all that narrow or specific why the hell should we?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Salgat]

Exactly, people have to remember that the constitution was purposely kept vague enough to be interpreted differently based on the times and culture (which is why rulings can change over a long enough time period).

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Shadow99_1]

Actually with Aereo they make a point of renting you a 'specific' antenna, not some random antenna (unless you cancel your service and then activate it again)...

Re:One disturbing bit:

[nabsltd]

Somewhere around the 5th to 7th inning I grew up with Jack Buck or Mike Shannon saying: "This broadcast is presented by the authority of Major League Baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. Accounts and descriptions of the game may not be retransmitted or broadcast without prior written consent of the St. Louis Cardinals, LLC.

Regardless of Jack Buck's credentials as a broadcaster, that doesn't make this statement of supposed copyright law accurate.

There are many exceptions that would allow complete re-transmission (like listening over bluetooth headphones). In addition, there are many fair use ways to copy the broadcast that don't require written permission.

The problem with this ruling is that technically, bluetooth headphones are covered by it. So would receiving the broadcast using a radio connected to your PC, then streaming it to your phone over the Internet. Even if only you can access the stream (which is exactly what Aereo was selling...the hardware and software that let you do something you could do for yourself if you wanted to), it's infringement according to this ruling. And, it's a really bad ruling since there is no higher court, and we know that a Congress that gets a lot of money from cable companies won't amend the law to say that the length of the wire on a private stream doesn't matter.

Yes, SCOTUS claims this doesn't apply to Amazon letting you stream music you own a copy of without ever having to upload that copy, but you can bet some lawyer is going to try and use it as a precedent.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[TemporalBeing]

Legislative makes the law, and judicial merely determines if actions are legal or not legal? Quaint, no?

Each branch of the government makes certain types of laws. The Legislative branch makes statues, the Executive branch makes regulations and the Judiciary makes case law. All three are necessary and proper to the functioning of civil society. All three are laws in every sense that matters. If any branch of the government was unable to make laws then that branch of government would be powerless against the other branches. Checks and balances only work if you can make laws.

The Legislative branch does make statuatory laws; regulations are not really law but the how the law is applied. Likewise Case Law is merely the judicial precedence set by the interpretation of the statuatory laws and their regulatory applications. Both Case Law and Regulations can be changed by even minor detail changes in Statuatory Law. In the end, Regulations and Case Law are not really law, simply treated as such as they are derivatives of law.

For example, FCC sets the regulations for its field; those regulations must be within the bounds of the statuatory law set by Congress that outlines what the FCC is allowed to do. That is why, for example, a judge said the FCC did not have the authority to implement Net Neutrality as a regulation since they did not have the authority under statuatory law to regulate information systems (under which they classified the Internet) while pointing out they could if the FCC reclassified ISPs as common carrier utilities that they did have statuatory authority to regulate.

SImilarly the is also why SCOTUS will sometimes issue recommendations to Congress with respect to its rulings telling Congress how they can change the Statuatory law to achieve what the State was trying to do. Other times they simply rule that the Constitution does not give the government the authority to do what is being sought - a clue that they have to amend the Constitution to achieve it (as with the Prohibition Amendment and its later repeal).

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Monoman]

Exactly because his property gets better reception.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jhecht]

Because they are on one wing of the Supreme Court and they think they have to dissent with almost anything the other wing prevails on.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[sexconker]

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, stressed that it was a limited decision that will not “discourage the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies.”

...and he's certain of that - how?

Because other kinds of technologies will be backed by corporations that know to hand off hookers, blow, and cold hard cash before going to court.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Ichijo]

What if he put in a signal amplifier like you might put on your own antenna. It modifies the signal and makes it go farther, so does this qualify as retransmitting?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[DerekLyons]

It seems to me that if a reasonable interpretation of a law leads to negative unintended consequences, it then becomes the legislative branch's duty to rectify it, not the judicial branch's.

Rectifying and clarifying the interpretation of the law is basically the job description of the judicial branch as what constitutes reasonable is not only not black and white, but changes over time as technology and social expectations change. That's what makes the whole system of checks and balances work in the first place.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jratcliffe]

Actually, no, they don't. They acknowledged in oral argument that, while _some_ of the antennas are statically assigned, some are also dynamically assigned. See the transcript, bottom of page 32.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/or...

Re:One disturbing bit:

[AthanasiusKircher]

It's not just the Supremes, all courts were originally supposed to take such a broad view, and sometimes do. But more typically, they will make what they see as a legally conservative ruling even when they can clearly see it is wrong, and rationalize that it is the higher courts job to reverse them.

Sort of. The U.S. legal system is a bit of a hybrid system, with roots both in the English "common law" tradition but also having some fundamental aspects of "civil law" under Constitutional constraints.

In the common law tradition, courts effectively got to make up the law whenever there was no clear precedent on point, judging cases on the basis of broad principles of fairness. In civil law traditions, on the other hand, the legislative law plays a stronger role, and if there's no law on the topic, courts have fewer remedies at their disposal.

In the U.S., the idea of court precedent (stare decisis) governs similar sets of cases (as in common law traditions), but judges do have discretion to make a broader ruling when there's no precedent on point. But they can't just take a "broad view" on principle and directly contradict what superior courts have ruled in the past, even if it's a "fair" solution. The only time they can do this is when there's some aspect of codified law (e.g., a Constitutional principle) at stake, which appears to override any relevant precedent.

Inferior courts that randomly disregard precedent will simply have their rulings overturned, which isn't a good use of anyone's time. Both the Constitution (and laws that flow from it) and binding precedent from superior courts are effectively "settled law," and lower courts are expected to abide by it... that really hasn't changed much since the early days of the U.S. When you say that a ruling is clearly "wrong," from a legal standpoint that requires there to be some legal dispute which is not "settled law" (or, occasionally, something that used to be "settled" but recent trends have led to more challenges).

Re:One disturbing bit:

[AthanasiusKircher]

To draw from the analogy someone posted below, that'd be like you buying your own antenna and asking to place it on your neighbor's property because he sits on top of the hill blocking your house. Dynamically assigning a micro-antenna to a subscriber on-demand just blurs the line. (The fact that all this is technically stupid when you could just use a single antenna is simply a consequence of Copyright law creating artificial scarcity and giving content producers a monopoly on distribution.)

What's often forgotten about all of this is that Aereo's model is extremely similar to how cable television companies themselves got started. From what is arguably the first cable company:

The [Service Electric] company was started in 1948 in Mahanoy City by John Walson, who owned a General Electric appliance store. At the time, the surrounding mountains in Schuylkill County made over-the-air reception from Philadelphia television stations difficult. Walson, who was interested in selling television sets through his store, solved the problem by building an antenna on top of the mountain overlooking the town. He initially ran a cable to his warehouse and then to his appliance store, using boosters to enhance the signal. Along the way, he hooked up neighbors to the antenna system. Although there are others who have laid claim to the honor, Walson is often recognized for having built the first cable TV system in the United States.

So, actually I imagine part of the reason you couldn't use a single antenna is because arguably that was the origin of the entire business of cable companies to begin with. Aereo was just replicating the original cable business model, except with a subtle tweak to "personalize" the antennas just a bit. Thus, it doesn't surprise me at all that they lost.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[GWBasic]

Aereo's implementation doesn't feel like watching live TV. It buffers for about 60 seconds; channel surfing is impossible...

What I wonder is how "Aereo-specific" this ruling is? What if I rented a room in Boson and let you mail me a tiny device that I'd plug into a power supply and ethernet port?

Re: One disturbing bit:

[matthewd]

It is not a matter of whether a future company's business model and technology is similar to Aereo's, if is whether it is similar enough to cable that is what is important going forward. And what this ruling effectively does is require the future technology and business models to be evaluated by the courts to see if the retransmission fees meant for cable companies should be applied. I dont think it provides any clarity for future innovators other than guidance to make their systems as unlike cable as possible to avoid "guilt by resemblance".

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Obfuscant]

In America, there is a higher law governing the rule of law. The Supreme Court is the only court authorized to address that.

So all those circuit courts that keep coming up with claims that this or that are unconstitutional are, what, imposters? Perhaps unconstitutional themselves? An interesting argument.

Re: One disturbing bit:

[imuffin]

"Descriptions of the game ... may not be broadcast"

I've heard this before. Do I misunderstand or are they claiming a legal prohibition on me transmitting a description of the game? Is there actually a law that prevents me from describing what I see?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Tran]

Does it really matter if I own the antenna or rent/lease one?
As long as the number of antennas provided exceed the number of users I see no difference.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[lgw]

The Constitution is the primary law for the rule of law in the US. When the SCOTUS rules based on some desired social outcome or any other extra-constitutional principle (they're clever guys, they can always invent a line of reasoning), they subvert and ultimately destroy the rule of law. When they rule based on a close interpretation of the Constitution, followed by the text of the laws in question, they bolster the rule of law.

Re: One disturbing bit:

[lgw]

Oh, the guidance is clear: don't trust the SCOTUS to have your back regardless of the written law; instead bribe your lawmakers early and often to establish clear legal allowance for what you're doing.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[bluefoxlucid]

I don't recall a circuit court ever actually invalidating a law.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[gangien]

we have not had anything close to a free market solution on health care in my lifetime.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Obfuscant]

I don't recall a circuit court ever actually invalidating a law.

Google is your friend.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Hognoxious]

As a limey, neither have we.

And we don't want one.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[TechyImmigrant]

So he's saying Aereo gets a special, more stringent law applied to them, but everyone else benefits from what the courts said previously?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[TechyImmigrant]

Do not say that name. It exists only on my drive home and at no other time or place in the universe.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[cavreader]

There are states where the courts have invalidated or at least stayed the application of a law pending further appeals. The gay rights issue is probably the most recent as well as the immigration laws and statutes passed in Arizona.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[almechist]

To draw from the analogy someone posted below, that'd be like you buying your own antenna and asking to place it on your neighbor's property because he sits on top of the hill blocking your house. Dynamically assigning a micro-antenna to a subscriber on-demand just blurs the line. (The fact that all this is technically stupid when you could just use a single antenna is simply a consequence of Copyright law creating artificial scarcity and giving content producers a monopoly on distribution.)

What's often forgotten about all of this is that Aereo's model is extremely similar to how cable television companies themselves got started. From what is arguably the first cable company:

The [Service Electric] company was started in 1948 in Mahanoy City by John Walson, who owned a General Electric appliance store. At the time, the surrounding mountains in Schuylkill County made over-the-air reception from Philadelphia television stations difficult. Walson, who was interested in selling television sets through his store, solved the problem by building an antenna on top of the mountain overlooking the town. He initially ran a cable to his warehouse and then to his appliance store, using boosters to enhance the signal. Along the way, he hooked up neighbors to the antenna system. Although there are others who have laid claim to the honor, Walson is often recognized for having built the first cable TV system in the United States.

So, actually I imagine part of the reason you couldn't use a single antenna is because arguably that was the origin of the entire business of cable companies to begin with. Aereo was just replicating the original cable business model, except with a subtle tweak to "personalize" the antennas just a bit. Thus, it doesn't surprise me at all that they lost.

I'm confused. You are saying that one reason this is illegal is because it's identical to how cable got started, but your description of that first cable system doesn't include any copyright concerns, the guy just went ahead and did it... Because, after all, it was a free and freely broadcast over-the-air signal, intended for viewing by anyone living within reach of the transmission (note that Aereo's model also requires the recipient live within broadcast range), and Walson was just helping the signal get to its intended audience. But so is Aereo! So the analogy to me would indicate the exact opposite of what you are saying. Early cable systems in fact did NOT pay copyright fees, those were negotiated later. So by analogy Aereo's business model is completely legal, as legal as those early cable attempts. Or so it would appear from your description, I didn't research it myself.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Virtucon]

Which one is he? Diana? Mary? or Florence?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Quirkz]

It may be that her pieces are usually interesting because Supreme Court decisions are almost always important material, but I'm always genuinely enthusiastic every time Nina Totenberg has air time. She does a great job of distilling the information. As I was reading this article today I was looking forward to my drive home and the segment that will surely air.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Spazmania]

I suspect the ruling may have been different if Aereo had required customers to buy their own antennas, and only charged an installation fee to host the antenna and monthly hardware insurance fee to replace broken ones.

That's how the raw milk people do it. You buy a share of the cow and get milk from that cow.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[bill_mcgonigle]

I only intend that the supreme court is tasked with interpreting the standing of the law itself as well as the standing of the law against a person.

The curiosity there is that the Constitution doesn't give them this power (they only 'discovered' it in Marbury v. Madison) yet they hold themselves as interpreters of the Constitution.

Infinite recursion, bus error.

What we should have is a clear decision on the facts of the law, and if the law is unclear, it should be cancelled and sent back to Congress, stamped Void for Vagueness.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[IgnitusBoyone]

You post this bias argument in the week of two unanimous decisions?

Its a group of 9 highly educated thinkers who decide the fate of law interpretation for us all with no recourse aside from writing new laws. I doubt anyone wants them to be yes men who always agree.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[AK Marc]

Yup, like ruling that pi = 3, but only in Indiana.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Forever Wondering]

Engineers' Guide to the Supreme Court: They're not smart ...

Re:One disturbing bit:

[chuckugly]

What if the landlord puts an antenna on the roof of the 4-plex and distributes the signal to all 4 tenants?

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jfengel]

I guess the real question is going to be "how similar is similar?" Aereo won't want to pack up and go home; they're going to want to tweak their business model to see if they can get it just different enough to be not "extremely similar".

If they were a big company, I suspect they'd just make some trivial change and wait to be sued (and wait even longer while it works its way up to SCOTUS again). "Narrow rulings" tend to favor those with the power to claim that they don't apply. And I find it kind of annoying that SCOTUS never seems to recognize that: they pretend they're not laying down general rules, but since it takes so long to get them to issue specific rulings it acts like a general rule anyway.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[MrLint]

So if I go "Totenberg,Totenberg,Totenberg" it will summon her into existence form inside of radio space:)

Re:One disturbing bit:

[The New Guy 2.0]

What they're essentially saying is that Aereo didn't have the contracts it took to run its service, therefore it's in copyright trouble. This doesn't ban the technology, it just says that Aereo's implementation under law wasn't quite right.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[The New Guy 2.0]

"As Stephen Breyer, one of the Supreme Court justices, said in this week’s hearing, “What disturbs me is I don’t understand what the decision for you or against you is going to do to all kinds of other technologies.” [economist.com]

Well, to interpret that correctly, it seems that Aereo brought an invalid argument to the SCotUS... shutting down Aereo doesn't end the technology, it just says they've gotta pay more and therefore charge more.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[TechyImmigrant]

Try it and see.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Darinbob]

I'd watch it.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[AK Marc]

The curiosity there is that the Constitution doesn't give them this power

Common Law gives them this power, and the US uses common law, not civil law, as do most places founded by the English.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Darinbob]

But in practice the antenna was not being used in Aereo's case, instead that antenna was just there to prove that you could receive the legal broadcasts over the air, while you actually went to streamed the show from a remote DVR. So it's more like you're running a cable to your neighbor's DVR but having your own local antenna on the roof in case the BBC van drives by.

The Aereo model makes a lot of sense. Pretend to be a DVR with respect to local broadcast signals but you're actually streaming. Because when you cut the cord to cable/satellite you often lose access to time shifting of local free broadcast channels. If you had a DVR with the cable company then it stops working if you cut the cord, so you either buy a new expensive DVR, give up on time shifting, or give up on your local TV and major broadcast networks (which is what I did).

Because seriously, the cable providers and networks want you to pay for the free over the air broadcasts. They only way they're happy for you to get it for free is if you sit through the advertisements. They're still hopping mad about losing the whole time shifting battle, and they're not at all happy about DVRs unless it's their own model that comes with a monthly fee and has a bad UI design.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[AK Marc]

More like the teabaggers. Rather than just accepting it as an inconsequential error, the Bible thumpers insist the literal word, some evern going so far as to say pi=3, like the teabaggers who printed "official" materials with "teabagger" on them insisting that the name came only from people insulting them, and they never used it.

Reality trumps ideology.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[BonThomme]

9?

Clarence Thomas

Re:One disturbing bit:

[pepty]

So when does it become copyright infringement/ public performance?

1. Neighbor lets you rent antenna on his roof, you and he run a coax cable from it to your TV

2. Same but more neighbors/antennas.

3. Same but digitally encoded.

4. Same but using internet connections as opposed to a cable between the houses.

5. Same but also includes a cloud based DVR.

6. Aereo.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jabuzz]

Then all Aereo need to do is statically assign aerials to individual customers. Sure it will put their costs up a bit but it would side step the current judgement.

Personally I think they where daft thinking they could get away with dynamically assigning the aerials and had always presumed that you got your own personal aerial.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[TemporalBeing]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

You mean this. Sorry, but no comparison. That didn't even make it out of the state legislature.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Yebyen]

I think the judges are applying a little-known standard called "do you have any wires"

The legislation that causes cable companies to need to pay broadcasters to re-distribute their broadcasts should apply equally to businesses that "don't have any wires" connecting them directly to their customers.

Just because you don't have any wires that belong to you and connect you directly with some customers ("the last mile"),

even if you can't pull a Comcast and charge Netflix for the privilege of reaching your customers who pay to receive "The Internet" which Netflix is a part of,

doesn't mean you shouldn't be responsible for bearing some of the cost of funding broadcast activities that you derive your business from. Sure they are broadcast signals, and "anyone" can get them for free, but if you take them away, you don't have a business... then the court says you have to pay for them.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[TemporalBeing]

I think the judges are applying a little-known standard called "do you have any wires"

The legislation that causes cable companies to need to pay broadcasters to re-distribute their broadcasts should apply equally to businesses that "don't have any wires" connecting them directly to their customers.

Just because you don't have any wires that belong to you and connect you directly with some customers ("the last mile"),

even if you can't pull a Comcast and charge Netflix for the privilege of reaching your customers who pay to receive "The Internet" which Netflix is a part of,

doesn't mean you shouldn't be responsible for bearing some of the cost of funding broadcast activities that you derive your business from. Sure they are broadcast signals, and "anyone" can get them for free, but if you take them away, you don't have a business... then the court says you have to pay for them.

So anything transmitted over the air (OTA) is considered public information. This is one reason why you can legally have a police scanner and listen in - though you are not allowed to necessarily transmit on the same bands you can listen on. OTA transmission is heavily regulated by the FCC, but OTA receipt is not.

Further, if the OTA information is "in the clear", as it is with TV signals (even the digital TV signals), then you can pretty much do what you want with it - record it, replay it, etc. This is allowed since you are within the receiving range for the signal.

The problem for Aero is that they were not simply enabling their customers to view their own TV stations remotely, but they were using what their customers recorded to provided that same content to other customers, who were not necessarily in the receiving range for the signal. This transforms the business into something more; and while I have not read the opinion (yet) and IANAL, this is likely why the judges went the way they did. Aero for all intents and purposes operated like a cable company, which does license the content, while trying to avoid paying for the content.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jwhitener]

I haven't read through the ruling, but I suspect they just applied the "quacks like a duck" rule.

Yeah, the 1976 amendment to the Copyright act was specifically mentioned. No matter what technique you use, if the end result is basically acting like a cable company, you have to abide by copyright rules / pay rebroadcast fees.

I suspect the ruling may have been different if Aereo had required customers to buy their own antennas

I doubt it. Just skimming comments about the 1976 amendment to Copyright, it seems that scotus may be 50% to blame here, but congress is easily 50% to blame itself. 'quack like a duck' applies if the duck is a robot, a human dressed like a duck, an image of a duck... etc...

http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/06/symposium-a-win-though-a-narrow-one-thanks-to-breyer-j-for-copyright-owners/

Re:One disturbing bit:

[jwhitener]

It seems to me that judges should be ruling based on the law

They do. But law has wording like "if a reasonable person", or "if the entity acts like a CATV company".

So a judge has to make a judgement call about the definition of 'reasonable' in a given situation. Or make a judgement call about if a service is "acting like a cable company" (1976 amendment to Copyright act).

If law could be followed like an equation, we wouldn't need judges or juries.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Zynder]

The best kind: Nacho!

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Virtucon]

I was thinking Burrito too.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[stealth_finger]

In America, there is a higher law governing the rule of law. The Supreme Court is the only court authorized to address that. Each State also has their own constitution, which provides their State Supreme Court the power to decide if a law is faulty and should be excepted or wholly stricken.

What is the point of being one country when all states act like their own countries, have their own laws and pretty much duplicate everything except change the word president to governor.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[bluefoxlucid]

Power grab, economic coupling (i.e. like in Europe, where if Greece or Italy has a shitty day the whole European economy collapses), and the moral impetus to force what you think is good for people on more people--both by having Federal power over many small states and by having a massive fucking continent to support your military power.

Political ideals are an infectious disease. Democracy spreads like a plague, as does capitalism. So did socialism and its ilk, and fascism to a lesser extent (Italy, Germany, circa 1940). People think their ideals are right for everyone, and they feel it's their duty to pound those ideals onto everyone.

For example: Japan doesn't have an open market for 13 year old porn anymore: Europe and the North Americas decided you should be 18 to be in porn, and quietly pressured Japan to raise the lower limit on their porn industry--the Japanese, at the time, considered post-pubescent, sexually mature people as... well... sexually mature, and fair game. Putting this through your own lens, I'm sure you get that feeling of mild panic inside, the one that tells you something *must* be done to stop this sort of thing: we can't have middle school girls in porn! Well, with a half a continent as your military and trade embargo power, you can stop whatever you want and force your righteous values on countries as far away as Japan.

That's the point. The bigger and stronger we are, the more we can shape the world. That's why we have the UN. That's why the EU exists. The UN pushes human rights, economic policies, war policies, and so on. The EU tells all the countries in Europe what they're allowed to tax and how businesses are allowed to behave, and so on. If we decide that Poland's health care system isn't up to EU standards, we can force them to be more like Germany under the threat of invading their country, sanctioning their trade, or administratively fining their government into the poor house.

Wait until I push a proper UBI system through in America. That'll be a hell of a battle, but it's worth it: I've worked out all the right parameters to create a self-stabilizing system that solves poverty. People will be like, "Let's do this in Africa!", except most of the African countries are incredibly poor, and a UBI wouldn't work at all, and what many of those states need is Feudalism. Capitalism comes at a high cost--you keep 9% or less of your productivity, versus 25%-70% in Feudalism--but brings high amounts of flexibility and personal freedom. But we liken serfs to slaves--which is a baffling leap of logic, considering serfs arguably had better rights than we have in America in practice--and don't care about economics so much as forcing a system to fit an image we like.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Lorien_the_first_one]

I think it's pretty fair to say that we assume that the judges understand the technology at hand. I'm not sure they do.

Re:One disturbing bit:

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Seems like a maintenance plan would help cover the cost of upkeep.

Wrong decision

[ArcadeMan]

If it requires a login/password and a user account, how is that "publicly transmitting"?

Would the judge also declare that when I'm watching Netflix via wi-fi, I'm also "publicly transmitting"?

Re:Wrong decision

[DewDude]

A judge ruled...over a year ago, that it wasn't. However, the TV networks didn't agree with that; they didn't want it to exist AT ALL. So, they used their clout to get it declared illegal. This wasn't a "decision" by the Supreme Court....there was no reason for this. The networks didn't want it; they got it stopped; so they did.

Re:Wrong decision

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Netflix is publically transmitting, which is why they need (and have) retransmission licenses. Aereo wanted to dodge paying for those licenses using a legal argument slightly less specious than "I am not a citizen of the US, I am a citizen of Ohio, and also one of the signatures on the 16th Amendment has a smudge on it, so income tax is unconstitutional!"

Re:Wrong decision

[gnupun]

If it requires a login/password and a user account, how is that "publicly transmitting"?

Aren't Aereo antennas storing TV signal content on servers and retransmitting/uploading that content to multiple members of the public? That's what's prohibited by copyright law, according to the broadcasters.

Would the judge also declare that when I'm watching Netflix via wi-fi, I'm also "publicly transmitting"?

What if the content were encrypted so only you can watch it? Would it still be public transmission? Cable TV shows are being broadcast to all cable subscribers, but you get to view the channel only if have subscribed (and paid for) it.

Re:Wrong decision

[compro01]

Blame Congress.

Re:Wrong decision

[denis-The-menace]

Wouldn't the ruling also make cable boxes illegal, too?

The cable network is a public network in the sense that hundreds or thousands of people are on that network.

Re:Wrong decision

[Anonymous Coward]

over a year ago

Try "over decades ago"

CATV got its start by installing antennas on mountains and running wires down into the valley so Communities that couldn't get a signal had Access to TeleVision. Laws got passed specifically covering "operating an antenna for other people". Surprise surprise, these laws apply when Aereo operates an antenna for other people "on the internet".

Re:Wrong decision

[sunking2]

My understanding was 1 antennae per customer.

Re:Wrong decision

[Bartles]

That must be why Scalia, Thomas, and Alito dissented.

Re:Wrong decision

[ducomputergeek]

Yes, but your cable company has a license from the content providers to transmit those channels to you. My understanding is that Aereo did not.

Re:Wrong decision

[ducomputergeek]

More at the Cable companies have agreed to pay the broadcasters for a per subscriber fee to license those broadcasts. Apparently Aereo was not. Netflix has reached an agreement with content providers to provider broadcast over the internet and has the rights to do so.

Aereo apparently did not.

Now if you stream netflix to your computer, then say put a webcam in front to record and then stream to people via a 3rd party site, then you'd be publically broadcasting.

When you watch netflix on your device over wifi you are simply consuming...

Re:Wrong decision

[bobbied]

Wouldn't the ruling also make cable boxes illegal, too?

The cable network is a public network in the sense that hundreds or thousands of people are on that network.

Uh, no... The ruling simply says Areo is operating a cable service and is thus required to obtain rights to retransmit the material (by paying fees). The cable company has already obtained retransmit rights (and paid the necessary fees) and thus can place their box in your home.

In short, Areo is governed by the SAME laws and rules as the cable company.

Re:Wrong decision

[RealGene]

Scalia agrees with you:

"Unlike video-on-demand services, Aereo does not provide a prearranged assortment of movies and television shows. Rather, it assigns each subscriber an antenna that — like a library card — can be used to obtain whatever broadcasts are freely available. Some of those broadcasts are copyrighted; others are in the public domain. The key point is that subscribers call all the shots: Aereo’s automated system does not relay any program, copyrighted or not, until a subscriber selects the program and tells Aereo to relay it."

Re:Wrong decision

[Bartles]

If your Dish Network receiver requires a decryption key card, how is that publicly transmitting?

Re:Wrong decision

[bluefoxlucid]

Imagine you rent an apartment in San Francisco, hook your DVR up to the antenna, and set up Internet to watch it from New York.

Now imagine you rent that DVR from an electronics rental company.

Now imagine you also get an account with LogMeIn as your access method to your DVR.

Now imagine the landlord, the electronics rental company, and LogMeIn are all the same company.

That's Aereo.

Re:Wrong decision

[MobyDisk]

Are all the decryption key cards the same?

Re:Wrong decision

[Megane]

Netflix isn't "publicly transmitting" broadcast television, which is what Aereo did. Cable TV companies have to pay for the right to carry local TV channels that are otherwise freely available over-the-air to individuals with antennas.

Re:Wrong decision

[Anonymous Psychopath]

If it requires a login/password and a user account, how is that "publicly transmitting"?

Public meaning anyone can sign up to and access the service.

Would the judge also declare that when I'm watching Netflix via wi-fi, I'm also "publicly transmitting"?

Probably yes, whether it's wifi or two tin cans and a string. But, unlike Aereo, Netflix has purchased licenses to allow them to do so.

Re:Wrong decision

[Charliemopps]

If it requires a login/password and a user account, how is that "publicly transmitting"?

Would the judge also declare that when I'm watching Netflix via wi-fi, I'm also "publicly transmitting"?

And that's exactly why Aereo lost. They claimed that the copyright law didn't cover them because they were just an equipment provider. But they weren't... you could log into their service, you could store data there... etc... they were like a cable TV provider and therefor covered by the law. SCOTUS made it very clear their ruling applies directly to Aereo, and it wasn't a broad ruling against the entire concept.

Re:Wrong decision

[Anubis IV]

Here's the actual decision text: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-461_l537.pdf

It's "publicly transmitting" inasmuch as the people it is transmitted to are "unrelated and unknown to each other", to quote the actual decision. Netflix very likely would be considered to be publicly transmitting as well, but because they've worked out licenses with the content owners, they're not running into any of these problems.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting by any means that I agree with the decision. I'm merely providing it.

Disclaimer: IANAL.

Re:Wrong decision

[Ungrounded Lightning]

If it requires a login/password and a user account, how is that "publicly transmitting"?

The same way as when cable TV required a physical cable run to your home (back in the days when all a cable-TV hookup carried was TV).

Re:Wrong decision

[Joe_Dragon]

Aereo has Regional locks so you can't get out of market NFL games with out Sunday ticket.

Re:Wrong decision

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Then they'd be in violation of the law.

Unless I can sleep in Aereo's data center, Aereo's not renting me space that I'm using to live(and watch TV in). It then becomes commercial use the rest of the way down the chain. Which is a huge legal no no.

I'm all for copyright and IP reform, but tell me how exactly that's fair. The way I see it, Aereo doesn't have to invest in creating content, they can just profit by selling everyone else's content over the internet. They have to invest in the infrastructure, but they don't have to invest in the content itself.

Re:Wrong decision

[bluefoxlucid]

So what i described above was more than Aereo offers.

Re:Wrong decision

[stdarg]

Now if you stream netflix to your computer, then say put a webcam in front to record and then stream to people via a 3rd party site, then you'd be publically broadcasting.

What about if you stream it to yourself? Like you're on vacation, and you want to watch something on your cell phone. That doesn't seem like a public broadcast.

That's what Aereo is doing.

When you watch netflix on your device over wifi you are simply consuming...

Wifi is literally broadcasting it to everyone within range. Wifi is obviously a public performance because the signal goes to the public.

Re:Wrong decision

[Bartles]

Nope, they are unique to the receiver.

Re:Wrong decision

[Joe_Dragon]

while breaking more laws

Re:Wrong decision

[d0rp]

But essentially all that Aereo is doing is providing a "cloud" (or "remote") version of the DVR box that many people have in their homes.

I have a computer in my apartment that I have set up as a dedicated DVR with a TV tuner card and a digital antenna connected to it. I use that to record the shows I am interested in from the broadcast channels, and watch them at a later date. I also use the network cables in my apartment to "stream" that video to my xbox and watch the show on my TV in the living room (the DVR and antenna are in the bedroom).

Is my setup illegal too? Am I required to license the ability to "re-transmit" the content to myself? The only functional difference is that Aereo is providing the same thing as a service so that people don't have to setup their own antennas and computers.

Re:Wrong decision

[Ken D]

Broadcast Television is by definition broadcast to all who can receive it. Just because cable companies pay to rebroadcast it to their customers doesn't change the primary fact. You do not have to pay to watch broadcast TV. It is not a violation of copyright to do so.

So. Given that, what are your options to watch that free Broadcast TV when the reception where you live happens to be poor? and by 'free' I specifically mean without a dime of your cash being given to the TV station.

If your position is that there is no way for a company to charge for something in order to somehow provide you with broadcast TV without paying a TV station, then what is to stop the TV stations from transmitting the most craptastic signal that they can possibly get away with so that it isn't really possible for anyone to receive a decent signal via antenna? Why then they'd be able to monetize those airwaves in more profitable endeavors. Talk about win-win for the TV stations.

Re:Wrong decision

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Broadcast Television is by definition broadcast to all who can receive it. Just because cable companies pay to rebroadcast it to their customers doesn't change the primary fact. You do not have to pay to watch broadcast TV. It is not a violation of copyright to do so.

Quite right.

So. Given that, what are your options to watch that free Broadcast TV when the reception where you live happens to be poor? and by 'free' I specifically mean without a dime of your cash being given to the TV station.

Get a better antenna. Or sign up for a service that does have rebroadcast agreements with the local TV stations. Most satellite providers will do this.

If your position is that there is no way for a company to charge for something in order to somehow provide you with broadcast TV without paying a TV station, then what is to stop the TV stations from transmitting the most craptastic signal that they can possibly get away with so that it isn't really possible for anyone to receive a decent signal via antenna? Why then they'd be able to monetize those airwaves in more profitable endeavors. Talk about win-win for the TV stations.

Not everyone has cable TV, and the ability to get OTA broadcasts is probably part of their agreements with sponsors.

Plus, this *does* happen with UHF and really awful FM radio stations. Low power, poor broadcast quality... They also happen to have the worst advertising on the public airwaves because no one can get the signal.

(I only know this because there was a paranoid conspiracy theory radio show I'd listen to on the way to work for the lulz, I'd periodically check in on them during the day. Same with UHF TV.)

Re:Wrong decision

[gnupun]

1 antenna per user, but what about other equipment that is shared?

antenna -> video decoder -> server -> internet upload service -> client

In the ascii diagram above, only the antenna and client device is owned by the customer. The remaining equipment is shared by multiple customers, making it very similar to a video site like youtube or a cable tv service.

Re:Wrong decision

[MobyDisk]

Then I think, based on ArcadeMan's definition of "public transmitting" they are not. I think your example illustrates his point quite well. The definition of "public transmitting" is based on a dated definition of "public." Based on what another poster said in another thread, it is based on the fact that anyone from the public can purchase it. Not based on whether the stream is specific to an individual.

Re:Wrong decision

[nabsltd]

Yes, but the each is still only encrypted once, so that all copies of HGTV (for example) transmitted by Dish use the same encryption. The unique part of the card is the part that controls whether that card is allowed to be used to decrypt a particular stream.

Aereo stored and encrypted your personal copy of a broadcast separately and differently from somebody else's copy.

Re:Wrong decision

[gnupun]

I'm all for copyright and IP reform, but tell me how exactly that's fair.

Aereo has no intention of being fair. I think I read somewhere that they're just exploiting a loophole in the broadcast law that states something like "one antenna per customer to prevent copyright infringement." They're just exploiting an antiquated law that has not been updated for the Internet. So they have one antenna per customer to satisfy that law, but the rest of its broadcast equipment is shared by all users.

Re:Wrong decision

[jandrese]

Aren't Aereo antennas storing TV signal content on servers and retransmitting/uploading that content to multiple members of the public? That's what's prohibited by copyright law, according to the broadcasters.

No. When you activate the Aereo service, you are assigned a dedicated (not shared) antenna and the video is streamed from that antenna to your device. There is no storing or sharing of anything.

IMHO, this ruling was not surprising. The justices were openly hostile to Aereo and saw it as basically someone setting up a cable company without following the rules set up for cable companies--mostly the part where cable companies pay local stations for the content they rebroadcast. The thousands of tiny antennas did not impress the judges.

Re:Wrong decision

[Nexzus]

Consider my setup:

HDHomeRun UDP unicast -> HTTP Stream from a Raspberry PI, which is then available over my (open) Wi-Fi and wired network to all other devices.

Am I broadcasting?

Re:Wrong decision

[gnupun]

No. When you activate the Aereo service, you are assigned a dedicated (not shared) antenna and the video is streamed from that antenna to your device. There is no storing or sharing of anything.

LOL, antennas can't convert TV signal into an internet video stream. You need a computer with a video decoder and a shared internet service to transmit the video stream to your millions of customers. Unless they have a also have a dedicated DVR per user, a dedicated internet connection for each user, and the user owns all the above equipment and services, they are renting out a TV show transmitting service which is similar to cable TV service.

The justices were openly hostile to Aereo and saw it as basically someone setting up a cable company without following the rules set up for cable companies

That's your opinion, but others may say Aereo wants something (TV shows) for nothing, which is same as stealing/copyright infringement. Aereo and many of its customers have no problem giving the financial shaft to the owners and creators of the TV shows, but without profit, no one is going to create more quality TV shows.

Re:Wrong decision

[Bartles]

I agree with some of your points. Aereo differs from Dish Network in that every customer is served from a unique streamed file. The files are also created when the customer demands it rather than being served from a common stored file like you would see in on demand service with the cable company.

Re:Wrong decision

[praxis]

The same way as when cable TV required a physical cable run to your home

Cable TV today does not require a physical cable run to your home? I was under the impression that Cable TV today still used cables. (I haven't had cable for over a decade so I might be behind the times but Google around didn't net me any over-the-air cable TV.)

Re:Wrong decision

[DaHat]

It's only that last step which is illegal... hence why Slingbox is legal and will remain so... because it's something you can do yourself... like putting an antenna on the top of a building and running a cable line to your home... the moment you do so for others though... then you are breaking the law.

Re:Wrong decision

[DaHat]

Dish Network also has the permission of those whose signals they retransmit to do so... had Aereo done the same, this case would not have gone to court.

Re:Wrong decision

[guytoronto]

And because of all that, the Supreme Court ruled it's a violation of copyright law. Aside from the copyright issues, OTA broadcasters make their money via local advertising revenue. Local advertising doesn't mean much if the programming is being sent to the other side of the country. If you really want to access OTA TV through your web browsers, buy an OTA TV tuner + antenna + Slingbox.

Re:Wrong decision

[jandrese]

If you want to be pedantic they were also sharing the same power source and signal on the air. Aereo doesn't use DVRs either, each antenna has its own dedicated encoder that spits out compressed video packets to the end user. If you want to start arguing that they're sharing internet access, I'll just point out that you're either wrong (you are because they don't pack multiple customers data into individual packets) or all video streaming on the internet is illegal.

But mostly you're violently agreeing with me. Aereo was ruled to be a cable service, and must be shut down. Well, I guess technically they could negotiate internet broadcast rights with the channels, but it will be a cold day in hell before they agree to that. Aereo is fucked, big corporations win again, potential threats to obsolete business models are averted. Good job Supreme Court.

Re:Wrong decision

[omnichad]

The cloud DVR is relatively insignificant in all this. The simple retransmission is exactly what is at issue.

Re:Wrong decision

[gnupun]

You are broadcasting through open Wi-Fi to other people. However, I'm not sure anyone cares as only a small number of people can access your Wi-Fi signal and they can probably get a better reception using their own antenna/devices instead of snooping on your network traffic.

Re:Wrong decision

[Bartles]

My point is that if Aereo is correct and the SC is wrong, then Dish might not need broadcast licenses. Moot at this point.

Re:Wrong decision

[wiggles]

All those TVs and the antenna are owned by you.

That's the difference.

In 1976, Congress updated the telecommunications act to specify that communal antennas were essentially 'retransmissions' under the act. SCOTUS was merely pulling Aereo in line with that existing law.

Re:Wrong decision

[ahaweb]

Apparently, it's only illegal if there is not a sufficient delay: "Justice Breyer stressed that the decision said nothing about downloading a TV program in order to recover it and keep it on hand for somewhat later viewing."

Re:Wrong decision

[BadgerRush]

So it is ilegal to watch TV at my office because I can't sleep in my office?

And a person living in a basement (you know, like the tipical slashdoter), can never legaly get aerial TV because that would entail puting an antena and running a wire on other person's roof?

They didn't "profit by selling everyone else's content", they profited by selling access to publicly available content to which the clients already had the right to watch but didn't have the tecnical means do do so. They where just a antena renting service.

The TV channels decided to distribute their content for free, it shouldn't be ilegal to provide means for people to reach this content. If a drive-in theater decides to screen films for free that doesn't make it ilegal for taxis and buses to charge to ferry people to the theater.

Re:Wrong decision

[butchersong]

You'd basically be arguing then that it is impossible to legally do this over the internet or in fact to store anything for a user that they have a right to on the net. It's not like anyone allocates a unique physical machine anymore. Everything is virtualized and of course they have multiple users using the same switches and the packets are traveling over shared fiber and wire... Aereo transcoded every customer's stream separately though I imagine the same hardware handled the transcoding of all those streams. If you say that isn't legal though then what about Amazon Web Services ( http://aws.amazon.com/elastict... )? They are a cloud solution that is used for transcoding in the same way.

Re:Wrong decision

[omnichad]

Broadcast Television is by definition broadcast to all who can receive it. Just because cable companies pay to rebroadcast it to their customers doesn't change the primary fact. You do not have to pay to watch broadcast TV. It is not a violation of copyright to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

It wasn't a violation to do so. As of 1992, it is. They are for all intents and purposes a cable company under this law.

Re:Wrong decision

[omnichad]

The law was about the commercial retransmitting. You can try to construe it as renting equipment, but you aren't - you're hiring a service to run that equipment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Re:Wrong decision

[omnichad]

SEC. 6. RETRANSMISSION CONSENT FOR CABLE SYSTEM.
Section 325 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C.
325) is amended-
(1) by redesignating subsections (b) and (c) as subsections
(c) and (d), respectively; and
(2) by inserting immediately after subsection (a) the following
new subsection:
(bXl)() Following the date that is one year after the date of
enactment of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition
Act of 1992, no cable system or other multichannel video
programming distributor shall retransmit the signal of a broadcastmg
station, or any part thereof, excepti(
A) with the express authority of the originating station;
or
"(B) pursuant to section 614, in the case of a station electing,
in accordance with this subsection, to assert the right
to carriage under such section.
"(2) The provisions of this subsection shall not apply to-
'(A) retransmission of the signal of a noncommercial broadcasting
station;
(B) retransmission directly to a home satellite antenna
of the signal of a broadcasting station that is not owned or
operated by, or affiliated with, a broadcasting network, if such
signal was retransmitted by a satellite carrier on May 1, 1991;
i(C) retransmission of the signal of a broadcasting station
that is owned or operated by, or affiliated with, a broadcasting
network directly to a home satellite antenna, if the household
receiving the signal is an unserved household; or
"(D) retransmission by a cable operator or other multichannel
video programming distributor of the signal of a
superstation if such signal was obtained from a satellite carrier
and the originating station was a superstation on May 1, 1991.
For purposes of this paragraph, the terms 'satellite carrier',
'superstation', and 'unserved household' have the meanings given
those terms, respectively, in section 119(d) of title 17, United States
Code, as in effect on the date of enactment of the Cable Television
Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992.

It's specifically about hiring a service for retransmitting. Not personal.

Re:Wrong decision

[msauve]

Thanks. If the submitter is going to put (PDF) next to a link (and the editor approves the submission), it damn well should point to a PDF, and not a web page.

Re:Wrong decision

[Miamicanes]

In this specific case, the "turn key" (one-click install) nature of the service played a major role in the decision against Aereo itself.

If a New York server colo facility allowed customers to ship them arbitrary PCIe cards & installed them in leased servers on their behalf, supplied the servers with a generic Linux install, and left it 100% up to the customers to get the card working and set up the network streaming on their own, they'd probably be OK under this ruling. However, if a customer in Miami used his TV server in New York to watch NY NBC from anywhere that's "out of market" and lacks a "viable" affiliate signal (or outside the US altogether), the customer himself could probably be sued for infringement by his local NBC affiliate. Whether his local affiliate would *bother* (or even have any way of finding out) is debatable, but if he did it openly & somehow caught their attention, they'd have a fairly open & shut case against him that he'd be almost guaranteed to lose if it ever went to trial.

Re:Wrong decision

[msauve]

"over-the-air cable TV"

There's a patent, or marketing opportunity, or something to be had there!

Re:Wrong decision

[david_thornley]

On the principle that a lot of individual antennas are a communal antenna, it would seem.

Re:Wrong decision

[westlake]

And a person living in a basement can never legaly get aerial TV because that would entail puting an antena and running a wire on other person's roof?

You're good to go so long as you aren't reselling the off-air signal as a CATV (community antenna) service.

Re:Wrong decision

[The New Guy 2.0]

Yep... Aereo's model was "community antenna" which is a legal model that worked in the 70s, but eventually got converted into the satellite-fed service that we now call cable. I'm a subscriber to their Boston area service... but I guess this one was too good to be true.

Re:Wrong decision

[The New Guy 2.0]

Uhm, that "landlord" will get the veil pierced... they also need to provide mail delivery and space in which to live in. Sorry, that argument doesn't work.

Re:Wrong decision

[The New Guy 2.0]

You can't capture an over-the-air signal and relay it without permission. This is the legal mess Slingbox is in... they have to pay copyright holders in advance in order to exist, and that's part of what makes their devices expensive.

Re:Wrong decision

[The New Guy 2.0]

Yep, that's their problem... even if they had the license from the local channels, the networks are claiming the local affiliates don't have the right to give that license.

Re:Wrong decision

[The New Guy 2.0]

Yep, a 6-3 ruling means that 1/3 of the court thought Aereo was okay... this one may need to be looked into. At this hour, Aereo is still online in Boston....

Re:Wrong decision

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Yeah but you live and work in your office, contrary to the analogy presented earlier(Parent? Grand Parent? GGP?), it's not similar to Aereo "renting" you an apartment and then renting you a DVR, then renting you access to a remote desktop setup.

They're selling access to someone else's content in no uncertain terms. Everything in their marketing was designed to tell the consumer, "Subscribe to our product, get OTA TV." That's illegal.

Re:Wrong decision

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

If I spent $X Million financing and producing Y TV show, then sell the ads to pay for it, and you come along and rebroadcast that same signal at 5 dollar/pound/euro/etc a month, you've profited off of my copyrighted work.

That's the problem. It's not so much losing money, it's that Aereo is taking for free what cost some network a ton of cash to produce. That's not right.

That's like if I took all of your slashdot posts, compiled them into a book and sold it with out giving you any of the cut.

Re:Wrong decision

[evilviper]

Disclaimer: IANAL.

Looks like /code may have stripped some of your HTML. Allow me to help:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/i...

Re:Wrong decision

[mythosaz]

Each person does not rent their own antenna, except by a very narrow definition.

There is a pool of antennas roughly larger than their maximum concurrent usage numbers. When you turn on NBC, a tuner is taken out of the pool and assigned to you for your temporary exclusive use. Later when you stop watching NBC, a different user may start watching NBC and get the same physical antenna that you previously used.

Your antenna is exclusive to you when you're actually watching something - when you're not, it's in a pool.

Re:Wrong decision

[mythosaz]

Your cable company has an agreement, which they pay for, and pass that cost along to you -- so, uh, yes.

Re:Wrong decision

[AK Marc]

So TV is prostitution? Legal if you do it yourself, but illegal to pay someone else to do for you?

Re:Wrong decision

[Darinbob]

Well, the customers don't want old style broadcast TV. That means you have to be home at 7:00 to watch Jeopardy, 5:00 or 11:00 to watch the news, 8:00(?) every Thursday to catch Big Bang Theory, etc. But we have invented devices to help overcome that problem. First we had video tape recorders and the big networks disapproved, but the courts allowed that time shifting was fair and did not violate copyright. Then we had DVRs but major cable companies didn't like them attached to their networks so they came up with an expensive and inconvenient adapter for third party DVRs but they would rent you their own low quality DVRs. As well, they sued ReplayTV over the "commercial skip" feature.

Modern customers want DVR/VCR like features with broadcast TV, only they can not get that unless they remain a cable subscriber or buy a new non-cable DVR with an antenna. If the customer wants to use a streaming service there is no straight forward method at all today to get broadcast TV in that manner. Yes you can do it in some manner, and there are tuner/dvr/streaming devices but the cost may be high if you just want one or two otherwise free shows.

Re:Wrong decision

[Darinbob]

I don't think they set it up that way. It would be inefficient. Instead if the broadcast market has 5-10 channels then they record all of it on a few servers locally, the stream directly from that. Each customer does not get their own DVR. They may have one antenna per customer but not all those antennas are hooked up and active and they were there as a way to try to comply with the letter of the law.

However since such a service makes it easier to cut the cord with cable companies, they are naturally against the whole idea.

Technically the customer could do all of this, but a lot of people would rather rent than buy. If you buy a local DVR/tuner system and you use it 3 hours a week, then it's wasted the rest of the week. But Aereo can share and multiplex the systems making it cheaper to operate.

Re:Wrong decision

[Darinbob]

Not what Aereo is doing. Your model sounds more like slingbox. Aereo streams to any subscriber, they do not have one tuner/DVR combo purchased per user, and as well you and Aereo are separate people.

Yes, wifi might be public performance. Please don't point this out to the supreme court.

Re:Wrong decision

[Darinbob]

Except that you rent only a fraction of that DVR, which is shared with many users. Aereo did not buy a new DVR for every customer, they only bought a basic simple antenna for every customer (most of which I presume just stay in the boxes). They record the programs and retransmit to you.

Whereas in your first imagining, you are recording and retransmitting to yourself. You are allowed to retransmit to yourself all you want.

Re:Wrong decision

[Darinbob]

I think the idea is great and I wish it were legal. However I think there's a bit of San Francisco logic going on when people keep trying to defend it. As in, parking sucks, taxis suck, someone has some apps to solve that, I'm an app loving hipster, therefore it should all be legal.

I can see arguments for it though. The broadcast channels are on the air for FREE, if only you could pick them up and if only you could shift them around in time to match your own schedule. Even better if you can do it via $8/month streaming instead of a $50-$100/month cable bill plus $10/month DVR fee. It's free broadcast TV, so why should we have to pay so much money for it? (answer, it's only free because they want us to watch all the advertisements and watch it at only the approved time slots)

Re:Wrong decision

[bobbied]

Current copyright laws are fairly clear and serve their purpose quite well. Are they perfect? What law is? But I shudder to think what things would be like without copyright laws, even given their arcane implementation which doesn't fit well in today's technology.

Look, I'm not defending the Supreme court here or voicing an opinion about the ruling they handed down. I'm simply trying to explain what it means to Aereo and businesses who would try to do things like that. Obviously Aereo's reliance on their novel technical solution, while clever, wasn't enough to win the day.

Re:Wrong decision

[archer, the]

Yes, Netflix is public transmitting, but from a licensed archive. Aereo is only transmitting the channel that the customer has requested be transmitted. A customer who joined Aereo this year could not request the 2010 Fall Broadcast Season Premieres, since those premieres (probably) haven't been broadcast this year. Netflix has many of those premieres available to customers who sign up today. Aereo is one antenna, one customer, while Netflix is one copy, many customers.

If Aereo were to edit out the commercials in the broadcasts, then I would side with the plaintiffs.

Re:Wrong decision

[Ken D]

Don't change the subject.

It is not a violation for you and I as individuals to receive broadcast TV for free over the air. I and many others have legal antennas and do so.

I'm surprised to find that I'm on the side of the SC Justices I most abhor, but there has to be a place where your legal antenna is not attached to your house. Where is that place?

I can put an antenna on my TV, I can put it in my attic, I can put it on my roof, I can put it on a mast in my yard....

I can lease a spot in my neighbors yard and erect a mast..
I can lease a spot on top of a nearby hill and use a microwave link back to my house...
I can erect an antenna across town and back haul the signal on the internet...

Where is this magical place where you become a CATV provider? Aereo offered no other programming than what your leased antenna brought in.

The SC screwed up and I'm on the side with the dissenters (whom I almost always disagree with)

Re:Wrong decision

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

"San Francisco logic" I'm going to use this next time I explain to someone why having a business where an Internet startup selling 10 dollars worth of quarters for 15 bucks is a STUPID STUPID STUPID idea.

The real answer is that it's not *free* it's free *to you* in exchange for some of your peers giving up their demographic information to advertisers. Sound familiar? It's not free for the local CableCo to rebroadcast. It'd be like putting together an app that interfaces with Facebook, down to the private APIs, better than Facebook's own website or app and charging 5 bucks for it.

Re:Wrong decision

[BonThomme]

by your reasoning, OTA would never exist.

Re:Wrong decision

[Areyoukiddingme]

Yep, a 6-3 ruling means that 1/3 of the court thought Aereo was okay... this one may need to be looked into. At this hour, Aereo is still online in Boston....

They'd better be. They need the revenue. They're about to get handed a whopping bill for licensing.

Re:Wrong decision

[gnupun]

I can erect an antenna across town and back haul the signal on the internet...

Except in this case, you're not erecting the antenna and hauling equipment (decoders and servers), Aereo is. You are renting their equipment to watch TV. Once the TV signal leaves "your" Aereo antenna and enters shared equipment like decoders and servers, it becomes content on just another video site like youtube. Face it, Aereo is like a cable company delivering video via the internet. It doesn't have equipment to deliver dedicated internet connection per user, rather it uses a big upload pipe (just like a video website), to deliver copyrighted content to the user.

Re:Wrong decision

[Ken D]

So your position is that using Slingbox or a DVR over the Internet (a shared non dedicated connection per user) makes you a CATV company and a copyright infringer as well?

If not, why not? What makes a "dedicated internet connection per user"? Some condos and apartment buildings aggregate their per unit connections before they enter the ISP equipment. WiFi at a public hotspot is certainly shared accessed. People in neighboring apartments often share internet access over WiFI. Is any transmission of video in these shared setups a "CATV company"? and infringing copyright due to a public performance?

It's all well and good to say that CATV companies had to pay because of "shared access", now the SC has made nebulous what exactly can't be shared. Access is by nature shared these days and more shared every day. Aereo gave everyone a dedicated antenna, what more would they have needed to not have "shared access"?

Re:Wrong decision

[omnichad]

Forget even the "per-user" aspect of it. Because you're not doing the work yourself, but are hiring that labor out to Aereo, that makes them a TV service provider. If they rented a 4 foot cube apartment to you and you were able to go visit and put your equipment in and set it up and plug it in to your rented ethernet port, you'd be fine. Instead, they're doing it. That takes it from personal and equipment rental to service provider.

Re:Wrong decision

[bluefoxlucid]

The point is you're renting time, space, and equipment.

Look, it's this simple: bits of data are zeros and ones, right? The bytes, the gigabytes, they're made of bits, which are zero and one. It's the same bits of data.

Now, you can either walk your ass all the way over here, rent an apartment, rent a DVR, plug into the shared line from the antenna that goes into all 6 units in the building, and get these bits; or you can pay someone else who already has that space set up to rent their DVR and give you access to the same bits. In both cases, you're renting space, you're renting equipment, and you're receiving legal broadcasts for personal use.

The lawyers want to argue that renting space and equipment in this way gets you green bits, and renting it in that way gets you blue bits, and that you're only legally allowed to have green bits. I can understand if the landlord is making a copy of the broadcast and the retransmitting it to people who want it, since he's taking from the air and then redistributing; but the landlord is providing you access to equipment for your own personal use, with a fancy interface, by which you can say, "Schedule a recording of this in the future," and then transport that recording that you made to yourself.

Because the landlord provided you better access to the equipment--not a library of shit to download, but access to a programmable recording timer on a VCR--the bits are now blue, and the landlord is in trouble. It's like the UN getting all pissy at you for selling the Iraqis a nuclear bomb, and telling you you have to sell them the plutonium, the C4, the casing, the detonation mechanism, and a 15 minute instructional DVD on assembly of the nuclear payload. THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE A NUKE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES.

The short of this ruling is the destruction of wealth. Rather than providing a valuable service, the court has ruled that you must ignore comparative advantage and expend excess labor and money to rent all the pieces and put them together yourself TO PRODUCE THE SAME RESULT. The court didn't rule that you have to pay NBC more money to get NBC programming; it ruled that you have to pay everyone else more money to get NBC programming.

Re:Wrong decision

[Ken D]

That still doesn't help. I've lived in apartment buildings with an antenna on the roof and a coax jack coming out the wall. Not my wire, not my antenna, no cost.

People rent equipment all the time, that doesn't make the company you rented it from a provider of the service you get out of the equipment.

And this was EXACTLY the argument about why this case affects cloud computing. So I use AWS to stream video, now Amazon is a TV service provider because I hired that labor out to Amazon? If not explain the damn difference and stop waving your hands that aereo is just illegal without explaining where the magic is.

Re:Wrong decision

[Ken D]

See bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Scalia has it right, they wanted aereo to be illegal and they waved their hands to make it so. Cloud computing is at risk as a result of the ruling.

Breyer's attitude of "if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it doesn't matter if its a robot" is idiotic. If technologic details didn't matter we wouldn't spend so much money designing around existing patents.

Re:Wrong decision

[omnichad]

Why make me do all your reading for you? Just read here:
http://transition.fcc.gov/Bure...

Read section 6 on page 5.

Re:Wrong decision

[gnupun]

So your position is that using Slingbox or a DVR over the Internet (a shared non dedicated connection per user) makes you a CATV company and a copyright infringer as well?

Retransmitting copyrighted content, like a tv show, without permission, over the internet, is copyright infringement. However, viewing a show from your slingbox is allowed as fair use.

However, if your slingbox retransmits tv shows to your multiple friends, that's copyright infringement. Aereo is kinda like an antenna connected to a slingbox which in turn transmits content to many viewers. That's redistribution of copyrighted content, which is illegal without permission.

Re:Wrong decision

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The same way as when cable TV required a physical cable run to your home

Cable TV today does not require a physical cable run to your home?

B-)

The "when" referred to "... the days when all a cable-TV hookup carried was TV". That was when the original Community Antenna TV decisions and legislation - leading up to THIS case - took place.

misunderstanding of the internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why justices should have a personal understanding, at least on a cursory level, of modern day tech. I've read what aereo does. It's in no way a retransmission of anything. They maintain equipment and make sure you have access to it and they work as a dvr service, period.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[TWX]

Or perhaps the defendant should have hired an attorney that's best able to explain the nature of the technology.

I'm thinking that the definition of "retransmit" isn't so much to do with UHF/VHF, as it is to record someone else's copyrighted content and to then play it back.

What I find most annoying is that it would cost a whole lot less for centralized storage of content instead of putting full DVRs in everyones' homes, and instead using what amounts to a thin-client to display that content. Granted, this means that control of the content is somewhat taken away from subscribers, but since the overwhelming majority of users of DVRs get them from their cable providers anyway and already really have very little control over the DVRs, the only real difference would be that the same TV programs wouldn't be stored millions of times, they'd be stored only a handful of times.

Some day maybe I'll get that mythtv box running, so then I can store locally and can control what I record/save, but on the other hand, maybe it's just better to turn off the TV and go do something else.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[Shakrai]

It's in no way a retransmission of anything

What else do you call saving a copy of a television show then sending it to me via the internet? My TiVo doesn't retransmit, it saves a local copy of the television show, recorded from the antenna that I maintain. I'm hard pressed to see how the argument that Aereo doesn't retransmit flies from a technical or legal standpoint.

My reaction to this ruling was to breathe a sigh of relief, because the likely consequence to an Aereo victory was the continued erosion of original content on OTA. That business model is hard enough to maintain as is with ad revenue. In the long term I think it's quite probably going to fail, and we'll be left with PBS and re-runs, but I'd prefer that it at least have a fighting chance without freeloaders reselling it for profit.

You want OTA? Put up a bloody antenna. It's not that hard.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[heezer7]

So storing it and resending it over IP is different than storing it and resending it over HDMI?

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[bobbied]

You want OTA? Put up a bloody antenna. It's not that hard.

Can I put one up at your house and then just stream it over the internet to mine? Oh wait...

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[Shakrai]

Bad analogy. A better one would be running an HDMI cable to your neighbor's house, charging him a fee for the privilege, then rinse and repeating until you had a nationwide for-profit business. Nobody gives a shit what you do with the received signal within the confines of your own home. They care when you start trying to profit off it.

You'll note that TiVo hasn't successfully been sued, so it's not as though there isn't a way to make money designing products that interface with OTA TV.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[ducomputergeek]

"retransmit" means exactly that. Previously it was via radio waves, but now it's through the internet. Technology changed, but the spirit of the law did not. Whether it goes through the air or over a "series of tubes" is irrelevant: it's still retransmitting without a license from the copyright holders.

Cable companies pay a license per subscriber. Netflix pays a license for streaming rights as does Amazon. That's why they are allowed to show copyrighted materials. Aereo apparently did not.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[psm321]

My reaction to this ruling was to breathe a sigh of relief, because the likely consequence to an Aereo victory was the continued erosion of original content on OTA. That business model is hard enough to maintain as is with ad revenue.

Just like all the content companies were going to stop putting anything on the air without mandatory enforcement of the broadcast flag, right?

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[jedidiah]

No. A better analogy would be transmitting a recording from one Tivo in your house to another.

This ruling potentially makes a whole-home PVR illegal.

Forget about streaming from that Tivo to your tablet while you're on the road. That will likely be "very illegal".

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[TWX]

I never looked into Aereo enough to know if they were relying on the I-drive approach (ie, one user uploads a file, that creates the original file, and when future uploads of the same file are made, if they're found to be the same file then they're just links pointing to the original as opposed to wholly separate files) or if Aereo itself was recording everything and then allowing its users to access the sum of recorded content as if it were a library.

Honestly I'd like to see us migrate to the library model once the initial "broadcast" in the form of release-date/time is fulfilled, but copyright holders apparently aren't ready to make that leap.

Which is why I still maintain a library of physical media instead of subscribing to a service.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[Shakrai]

Spare me the FUD, because that's all you're offering. Please, show me just one example of someone who has been sued for retransmission done for personal use. Just one.

BTW: TiVo has had software to copy recordings to other devices since the very beginning. They've yet to be sued over it. Furthermore, it's child's play to take recordings off TiVo, strip the "DRM" out of them, and watch them on any device capable of playing MPEG2. You can do it with a web browser and open source software, you don't even need the software from TiVo.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[heezer7]

What if you bought a OTA DVR and hosted it in a data center and streamed from it? Now, what if you rented a OTA DVR and hosted it in a data center and streamed from it? Where is the line? The ownership? What service the money is being sent specifically for? Where the box is located?

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[Bryan Ischo]

Obviously you can construct any complex scenario closer and closer to the imaginary line separating legal from illegal, for pretty much any law. As you get closer to that line, each such concocted scenario gets harder and harder to argue about because the issues become more and more subtle. All you're doing is trying to define that line exactly, when typically laws cannot be defined so exactly. Getting closer to the line just means you are "more likely" to be found guilty. There is never a perfect line that can be drawn, on one side being 100% guilty and the other side being 100% innocent.

The best answer to your question is that scenarios that close to the line are typically going to be decided on a case by case basis. Who knows what the decision would be until a court actually decides it, and we're not going to be able to go through all of the arguments and predict what the outcome would be here.

However, if you enjoy speculation, the I'd say the scenario you described is probably legal because you own the device in question, and are not profiting from using it in the way you describe. Profiting from your actions tends to bring your actions into much closer scrutiny because of the implication that your profit may represent illegal gains at the expense of whoever is losing profit because of your actions.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[Rakarra]

What if you bought a OTA DVR and hosted it in a data center and streamed from it?

That might be a grey area.

Now, what if you rented a OTA DVR and hosted it in a data center and streamed from it?

Where is the line? The ownership? What service the money is being sent specifically for? Where the box is located?

It seems the line is: who does the work. The end result can be the same, but who does the work and who owns the equipment and network seems to be of paramount importance.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[stdarg]

Please, show me just one example of someone who has been sued for retransmission done for personal use. Just one.

Umm. Aereo.

People paid to have a signal retransmitted for their personal use. Not for broadcast, not for a public performance, just so they could personally use a signal that they already have a right to use. Only they substituted the internet for one of the many cables and retransmitting products that are already along the signal path to their eyes in a conventional setup.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[Hamsterdan]

And if I set up an antenna, a DVR, I don't have to pay any license fees. Aereo is renting me an antenna and a DVR, I don't see why they should have to license free OTA programming.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[BadgerRush]

With this broad definition of "retransmit", the most normal aerial setup is completely illegal because: the antenna captures the signal and then "retransmit" it trough a cable to a circuit inside the TV which then "retransmits" it to several other internal circuits before reaching the screen which then "retransmits" it again as light to my eyes.

With a "retransmit" definition as broad as the one used in this decision, just watching anything makes you a felon because your eyes are capturing the light signal and "retransmitting" it trough the optical nerve to the brain. It is clear that from now on every one of us needs either a broadcasting license or to close our illegal retransmitting setup (a.k. eyes).

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[omnichad]

Aereo != Slingbox

Slingbox is personal use. Aereo is a service provider. It all comes down to the fact that someone is installing and maintaining and substantially operating that equipment for you.

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[david_thornley]

Huh? I can receive broadcast TV for free, by putting up an antenna. Presumably, the TV company gets something out of my viewership, and in practice programs are judged largely on their viewership. Therefore, if more people can get broadcast TV, the TV companies should get more benefit from it. If they need the cable fees in addition, why the heck are they broadcasting?

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[mythosaz]

As a renter, you can put up an antenna as long as you've got a point of exclusive access -- a window or balcony. If you're in a coffin somewhere, YMMV.

If your landlord tells you otherwise, they're lying.

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/over...

Re:misunderstanding of the internet?

[Shakrai]

People paid to have a signal retransmitted for their personal use.

The second word in this sentence is the relevant one.

Well that sucks!

[CountZer0]

Assuming this means Aereo will have to shut down now. That, or raise their rates if they have to start paying some sort of cable access fee.

As a cord-cutter, Aereo was a nice way to have access to some live broadcasts (sports, voting shows where the voting closes after the show airs, etc). Most of our consumption is delayed, so alternative downloading and a large NAS handles 95% of our needs.

Guess I'll have to figure out a way to get OTA reception, but from all the research I've done, where I live the signal's aren't very strong / reliable.

Re:Well that sucks!

[The New Guy 2.0]

This is a major problem with television... there used to be 9-inch portable TVs for wireless TV, but the protocols for ATSC don't allow you to move your antenna so that doesn't work. There's an attempt to change the encoding to handle missed packets, but that hasn't been implemented. Come on, can somebody use or add a chip in my iPhone to get broadcasting?

Re:Well that sucks!

[WillAdams]

Building the right antenna helps a lot for OTA TV:

http://makezine.com/2009/01/12...

I had to build one when the local PBS affiliate reduced their power output when the other stations went digital --- also location, had to run a cable upstairs and put the antenna behind the sofa (have to move it to the window when the weather is bad --- my wife won't let me hang it on the wall).

Re:Well that sucks!

[CountZer0]

where I live the signal's aren't very strong / reliable.

Isn't that why cable was invented in the first place?

Absolutely, and if I could order a package from my local provider that provided me with only the channels available OTA in my market I would. Oh, and they have to provide it without charging me a rental fee on a set-top box to decode the signal as well.

Since no cable providers are willing to provide such a service, I guess I'm SOL :(

Re:Well that sucks!

[Hamsterdan]

And you're doing *exactly* what Aereo is doing. It is *free* TV, you're not depriving anyone of anything. In fact, you're one more set of eyeballs for advertisers, so they should welcome this

Re:Well that sucks!

[Hamsterdan]

Any way to get it without a set top box and budled crappy channels?

Re:Well that sucks!

[omnichad]

You can rent an antenna. You cannot hire a company to manage and operate it (substantially) for you.

Re:Well that sucks!

[omnichad]

Aereo might continue to offer public broadcasting if they still have enough money to continue. Non-commercial stations are exempt from the retransmission fee rules.

Re:Well that sucks!

[Miamicanes]

They probably DO have the service available for a fairly low monthly fee... but they don't necessarily advertise it, and don't necessarily have to even volunteer details about its existence if you ask.

For a few years, AT&T had a program for dirt-cheap DSL (like, $9.97-14.99/month for 768k/128k ADSL) in their former BellSouth markets that they offered as a condition of FCC approval of their acquisition by AT&T. The catch was, unless you read the official Tariff filed with the state public utility regulators, knew the (unadvertised) phone number you had to call, and the precise ordering code for the service, you'd never have known it existed, and they wouldn't have told you about it if you asked. You had to order it as a blind act of faith (they'd confirm nothing, besides "the service you are ordering is being offered in accordance with their official Tariffs"), but towards the last year or two, a bunch of people found out about it when magazines & newspapers started to tell people about it and how to subscribe.

Re:Well that sucks!

[The New Guy 2.0]

Yeah, the problem here is that ATSC's module for mobile correction information doesn't exist on broadcast systems at this point. It's written, it's part of the spec, it just isn't being transmitted. If this was done right, Aereo could be obsoleted by an ATSC chip in most phones.

Re:Well that sucks!

[evilviper]

Assuming this means Aereo will have to shut down now.

Actually, it may just mean live streaming of TV is off the table, but DVRing is okay.

Or it could mean you'll have to buy (or rent) an actual DVR and antenna which will be hosted in the data center on your behalf. On the plus side, this could mean the elimination of the geographic restrictions they currently have on the service...

Guess I'll have to figure out a way to get OTA reception, but from all the research I've done, where I live the signal's aren't very strong / reliable.

There are very few places in the US where that's a problem, and I bet Aereo hasn't covered any of them.

The most common problem is people living in multi-story apartments where the landlord can forbid you from installing a rooftop antenna, where reception will be best. Still, if you're above ground level, and have a balcony or just a window facing roughly in the same direction, you've got a hell of a good chance of being able to receive a good TV signal with a proper antenna.

TV Fool is invaluable for finding out if you'll be able to get decent reception:

http://www.tvfool.com/index.ph...

If it reports signal strength greater than -110dBn at your location and at the height you'll be installing the antenna, there's an extremely good chance a relatively inexpensive antenna system like a Winegard 8800 (UHF) will offer you a good signal with minimal drop-outs.

UHF is easier in some ways, while VHF needs a large antenna that might not fit too well in a high-rise apartment, unless it can be attic or ceiling mounted out of the way, but still doable.

Just realize tvfool and my advice is general is NOT perfect. Co-channel interference can knock some channels out of contention, when they would otherwise be strong enough.

Re:Well that sucks!

[Obfuscant]

You can rent an antenna. You cannot hire a company to manage and operate it (substantially) for you.

Of course you can. It is done ALL THE TIME in the commercial radio industry. There are commercial radio shops that manage land mobile radio systems (including antennas) for their customers every day. You don't think that the local police department has someone on staff to go maintain and install the radio systems they use, do you?

What the company cannot do is sell you access to the copyrighted material that the antenna receives and not admit that they're in the business of selling access to that material.

Re:Well that sucks!

[omnichad]

I should have been more specific - you can't do it for television. The 1992 Cable Act specifically calls out retransmission of broadcast TV as a service and declares that as something that must be licensed. Before that, it was ruled legal by the Supreme Court and not an infringement of copyright at all.

Re:This now requires

[compro01]

No, nothing about this ruling was based on the constitution. It was ruling whether or not Aereo fell under the provisions of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, specifically the provisions requiring cable TV system operators to pay broadcasters to carry those channels.

Fixing this would simply require an amendment to that act.

Predictable

[jythie]

While not the verdict I would have liked, this is not terribly surprising. Tech people often like latching on to literal interpretations, loopholes in language, or novel technological work arounds. However judges take into account the 'spirt' of the law, and are often interested in how something behaves or what it actually does as opposed to the technological implementation.

Regardless of the clever implementation, Aereo behaved like a subscription cable service. How it collected and stored programming was not relevant to this.

Re:Predictable

[am 2k]

So, why is the spirit of the law ignored when it comes to tax code? Why are there so many companies with their seat in places like the Cayman Islands or San Marino, while 99% of the work force is in other countries like the US or somewhere in the EU? They still don't have to pay any taxes.

Re:Predictable

[Vellmont]

I'd agree with you, except for two things.

1. The court agreed to hear the case. They don't agree to hear cases where the law is clear.
2. 3 justices dissented from the majority opinion. So they must have believed the spirit of the law rather than loopholes and literal interpretations gave some leeway to Aero. I didn't see any links to minority opinions, but reporting on Surpreme Court decisions is normally absolutely terrible. Hell, they didn't even report who dissented, which tells you a lot about the politics involved.

Re:Predictable

[Hodr]

Oh come on now, if there is one place where "technically correct is the best kind of correct" it's the Federal court system.

Re:Predictable

[Beeftopia]

Regardless of the clever implementation, Aereo behaved like a subscription cable service. How it collected and stored programming was not relevant to this.

Appearances can deceive: The elephant bird may have looked like an ostrich but it's not related to ostriches. It's actually related to kiwis.

From the article: "Launched a year ago in New York and then extended to 10 other U.S. cities, it allows customers to watch over-the-air TV programs on a smartphone, tablet, or computer for as little as $8 a month."

Here's how Aereo [works | worked]. Redirecting a free over-the-air product over the web is a clever idea. It would seem to me that it would give advertisers a broader reach.

I don't think this tech is going to go away. This ruling merely consolidates the power of the existing media companies over the broadcast medium. Which, in my opinion, is regrettable. They already have too much power IMO.

Re:Predictable

[Anubis IV]

How is what they do any different than renting a DVR and antenna and installing them in your own home? Aereo offered an individual antenna for each customer, as well as data that was kept separate for each customer. The only thing different about it than standard equipment rentals was that they kept the devices at their location, rather than at yours, so the cable connecting you to your rented devices was a bit longer.

We already accept that equipment rentals are perfectly legal. Making the cable longer shouldn't magically make them illegal. That isn't a legal loophole or trying to rely on a literal interpretation. That's just common sense.

Re:Predictable

[taustin]

We're taught by television and movies that the law is composed entirely and solely of loopholes, and that everything we want in life it free if we can only find the right loophole.

Television and the movies are stupid. As are most of the people who watch either (and yes, that includes me).

Re:Predictable

[QuasiSteve]

"the demands of the highest bidding lobbyist".

If we truly believe that - and I'm not saying there's reason not to - then why don't people unite and form their own lobbying group?

Hollywood (well, TV/Movies/Music industry) spent ~$110M in 2013 on lobbying (figures may vary depending on source - all hover around the $110M mark). At least the above-the-table stuff.

People are fine with paying $10/month for, say, Netflix.
Q4 2013 Netflix subscribers (U.S. only): 33.1M.

That's $331,000,000 every month or $3,972,000,000 every year. That's ~4 BILLION. Not just this year. Next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, etc.

Now, what do you imagine $4B/year in lobbying politicians can do for you? Buy some laws that make it legal to download movies? Buy some laws that make it illegal to add DRM? Sway the spirit of existing laws to make remote-DVR type setups (such as Aereo and the ill-fated Zediva) legal?

The people would be the highest bidding lobbyist - by a huge margin. If one truly believes that the highest bidding lobbyist is who forms the laws or at least sways the spirit of the laws, then the logical thing for people to do would be to band together.

But that requires far more effort than scrolling to the latest recording of one's favorite show on Netflix / HBO.

Re:Predictable

[jedidiah]

...and who determines what this "spirit" is exactly?

Is the "spirit" of copyright law to enable abusive monopolies or is it to be fodder for the young starving artist?

The really sad part here is that the victim was going out of it's way to abide by a previous SCOTUS ruling. The idea that you can't cater your business to recent judicial findings is an especially troubling one. It destroys the entire basis for commerce.

Re:Predictable

[Thanshin]

Because it's very hard to unite people.

If it wasn't, corporate lobbying would be the least of the problems humanity could resolve.

e.g.: If 99% of the population believes the imbalance between the ultra rich and everyone else is orders of magnitude beyond an ideal world, why don't we unite and simply decide to change the system?

Re:Predictable

[PaddyM]

But this inadvertently prevents people from renting very small apartments (i.e. the size of an antenna is too small to be an apartment). Apparently an apartment must be over a certain size to be allowed to watch TV without violating copyright. The next loophole would be to rent cheap apartments in the cheap areas in town (an apartment that fits a bed and a TV and a DVR). I'm not sure if this could be done for $8/month, but maybe it could. If I rent an apartment in some city for $8/month that happens to receive OTA broadcasts and I have a DVR and set it up, would I be in trouble then? If not, does that outlaw renting apartments? I can rent apartments, but I can't provide a DVR or cable TV as terms of the rent?

Re:Predictable

[stdarg]

Tech people often like latching on to literal interpretations, loopholes in language, or novel technological work arounds. However judges take into account the 'spirt' of the law

That's ridiculous, that's the opposite of this Aereo case. The "spirit" of what's going on is that Aereo lets you substitute the Internet for a cable from an antenna to your TV. That should be totally legal. Instead, the COURT jumped through hoops to try to paint it as a public performance, when in reality it's no different from a long cable.

These idiot justices see the world "internet" and are like "Oh shit, Napster! Illegal! Alert!" and just assume it's public, it's a broadcast for anybody who knows the URL, it's piracy, etc.

Re:Predictable

[Hamsterdan]

Bullshit. Judges obey the lobbies, not the law. The *law* is for ordinary people, it does not apply to corporations or rich people.

Re:Predictable

[TechyImmigrant]

My taxes are $10/month?

Re:Predictable

[AthanasiusKircher]

How is what they do any different than renting a DVR and antenna and installing them in your own home?

Because you're not renting them and installing them in your own home?

Aereo offered an individual antenna for each customer, as well as data that was kept separate for each customer.

Not quite. Aereo has admitted that many of its antennas are dynamically assigned, so it was more like you "rented" the antenna for very specific windows of time, then "unrented" it again, then "rented" it again whenever a particular program came on.

The only thing different about it than standard equipment rentals was that they kept the devices at their location, rather than at yours, so the cable connecting you to your rented devices was a bit longer.

Actually, there are quite a few things that are different here. It's not only that the "rented" equipment never leaves the possession of the company "renting" it. Also, the equipment is never directly under the customer's control or direct management (the equipment is only accessed by the customer by using the service of the company). Also, the equipment "magically" is "unrented" and "rerented" at the company's convenience.

We already accept that equipment rentals are perfectly legal. Making the cable longer shouldn't magically make them illegal.

But that's NOT what's happening here. We haven't just made the "cable longer." Instead, the "rental" never actually looks anything like a normal "rental." The customer never takes possession of the device, the customer never has any direct contact with the device except through the company that provides the device and is always in possession of it, and the company dynamically "revokes the rental" at will when it accords with their business model.

That's not "renting" according to any number of standard definitions.

Normally, when a business does something like this, it's called "providing a service." How exactly they allocate the equipment to provide that service is irrelevant. For example, if you pay for a service to get computational time on some server somewhere, it's sort of like "renting" it, but it isn't actually "renting" in any tangible sense. Whether a company has one supercompter somewhere where it does all the computation or lots of individual computers with lesser processors dynamically allocated to individual customers shouldn't necessarily change the way it is regulated. If a company has a giant antenna and rebroadcasts television shows to others, it is a cable company -- by definition, since that's how the earliest cable companies operated. Should that necessarily change just because the company chooses a less efficient strategy for creating equipment?

Imagine if this sort of legal argument actually made significant headway -- any business could become exempt from regulation if it provided sufficiently "personalized" equipment or maybe even "personalized" service.

"Sorry, federal government, I know we're supposedly a 'bank,' but we're not really a bank. See, we're just a courier service. It's perfectly legal for someone to store his money in a safe on his property. And it's perfectly legal to rent a space on another property to put a safe, and to pay someone to transport the money to and from that safe. And it's also perfectly legal for an individual person to make a personal loan to another person. And it's perfectly legal to pay someone to transport goods between two people. SO, what we really are is a courier service -- and we can prove it because we actually require individual persons (whom we call 'tellers') to transport money between locations... heck, we even 'dynamically assign' an 'individual' teller to each customer -- ONE AT A TIME! How could you possibly think we are a 'bank'? No way should we be subject to government regulation!"

That isn't a legal loophole or trying to rely on a literal in

Re:Predictable

[omnichad]

They have to pay taxes...when the money comes back to the U.S. Those that do it are legally a multinational corporation. So the profits can't really be used as profits, but they can be used to cover unprofitable years tax-free.

Re:Predictable

[omnichad]

If Aereo let you into their facility to set up the hardware, then you would have a point. They don't do that - you're paying for a service.

Re:Predictable

[omnichad]

In that case, you would actually be renting the space and not paying for a service. That's the key difference. Aereo does not give you physical access and you do not configure the equipment.

Re:Predictable

[mythosaz]

Antennas aren't 1:1

You get exclusive use of an individual antenna while watching TV, but it belongs to a shared pool.

Re:Predictable

[QuasiSteve]

Sorry, AC, but unfortunately that's not how it works.

You basically pay taxes on line items. Those line items get there through politicians. Those politicians get there through voting.

The paying taxes part? That brings no sway. I mean, you can try to pay less taxes arguing against certain line items - and undoubtedly just find yourself paying even more taxes or getting incarcerated - but that's not going to help.

You voting for politicians can help - but I realize that this choice is fairly limited. Simplifying that choice a bit further, you've got candidates A, B, and C. A is pro-DRM, B is on the fence, and C is anti-DRM but also doesn't stand a snowflake's chance in hell of actually getting voted in.

And that's where lobbying comes in. Lobbying can sway candidate B either which way. More lobbying can even make candidate A change their mind.

That's how you get line items changed, and thus change where taxes are going.

Zediva all over again.

[Deathlizard]

Figured this was going to be the outcome after Zediva Lost a few years back.

So apparently, if I VPN into my network using my cellphone, and watch my HDHomerun Prime I'm breaking the law.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[gstoddart]

So apparently, if I VPN into my network using my cellphone, and watch my HDHomerun Prime I'm breaking the law.

I take this to mean that the cable companies have decided any means of distribution they don't control is illegal.

I'm sure the cable company would make the argument, but since you're not a commercial service, their chance of knowing about it is slim to none.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[Hodr]

If you were renting that HDHomerun and antenna from a 3rd party.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not. Specifically, they ruled that it's a public performance because their business model was providing services to the general public, and they were not an analog of a equipment rental service, but a cloud service provider.

You using your own equipment to access your personal hardware and recording is permissable. Providing those recordings to the general public is not.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[Megane]

As someone else analogized it, Aereo was "operating an antenna for other people", which is what a cable company does. (it used to be all they did, before there were cable-only networks) Nobody else is providing you with the antenna to record broadcast TV. (Unless you're recording off of cable/sat, in which case the networks have already been paid off by your cable/sat company.)

Re:Zediva all over again.

[AcidPenguin9873]

No. If your neighbor charges you to VPN into his network and "rent" his HDHomerun and storage system, then he is breaking the law. If it's all your own equipment, you're not.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[jedidiah]

Cable companies operate a single antenna for a large group of people.

Thus you have something resembling a public performance.

Aereo didn't do this. They operated single antennas for single individuals. They rented a single piece of hardware to a single individual. There are older cases with DVD rental setups that are very analogous. Those were protected as not being public performances because they weren't really.

Now potentially any file transfer on the web is a public performance.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

But advertised their service as, "Get OTA content anywhere."

They're rebroadcasting to the public, for a fee.

The fee's the important part because they're, in essence, making money on the promise of getting other people's content.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[Rockoon]

I take this to mean that the cable companies have decided any means of distribution they don't control is illegal.

br> Wrong. Cable companies were in full support of Aereo.

Why is it that you people feel so compelled to give your opinion on subjects where you dont even know who the principal actors are? Seriously.... why? You knew that your opinion wasn't informed.

Cable companies were rooting for Aereo because they too would like to set up antenna arrays and individually deliver local content that way instead of paying the broadcasters a retransmission fee.

Now STFU about shit that at even the most trivial and basic level you are completely uniformed about.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[gstoddart]

Wrong. Cable companies were in full support of Aereo.

Horseshit.

From TFA:

Shortly after the service was launched, the nation's major broadcast networks filed a lawsuit claiming that Aereo illegally retransmited their programs without paying for them.

From later in TFA:

But the broadcasters said the test of the copyright law was "whether an alleged infringer is transmitting a performance to the public, not whether multiple people are capable of receiving each transmission."

You're completely wrong. This was the cable companies (most of which are owned by content providers) challenging this.

Now STFU about shit that at even the most trivial and basic level you are completely uniformed about.

I suggest you do the same, RTFA, and then go STFU your own damned self.

You're wrong, apparently you're an idiot, and you obviously feel compelled to act like an ass about it.

You're full of shit, but loudly proclaiming it tastes like mint. But don't accuse me of having an unformed opinion when you're clearly clueless on the subject.

The cable companies were very very opposed to this being legal. They sure as hell weren't in favor of it.

So, please, take your stupid elsewhere.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[AcidPenguin9873]

What if he sets up HDHomerun and storage system for himself, and then sets up another one for me that he never uses? That's what Aereo was doing. Each customer rented their own receiver and their own storage.

If you own the equipment, you can do this without paying the licensing fee. If you don't own the equipment, you need to pay the licensing fee.

Why on Earth would it be illegal for me to rent an antenna (that only I use) from someone else who gets better reception?

Because that someone is acting as a retransmission agent, and there are licensing fees that apply to such retransmission agents such as cable/telco companies, and now Aereo.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[stdarg]

If you own the equipment, you can do this without paying the licensing fee.

So if Aereo changes their model to "You buy the equipment and pay to store it here" (aka a signup fee) then it becomes legal? That seems too easy.

Because that someone is acting as a retransmission agent

I don't know if you're right, but if that's the logic behind this decision it's even worse than I imagined. By your logic, if you rent a TV, then since the TV takes a signal and retransmits it as visible-spectrum light, the rental company is acting as a retransmission agent and you have to pay extra licensing fees. But of course that's ridiculous.. isn't it?

Re:Zediva all over again.

[AcidPenguin9873]

So if Aereo changes their model to "You buy the equipment and pay to store it here" (aka a signup fee) then it becomes legal? That seems too easy.

Yes, I think it might be that easy. SlingBox comes to mind, so if you wanted to buy a SlingBox and an antenna and rent space at Aereo's location, that would probably be legal. Practically though, that wouldn't be very profitable for Aereo because the equipment would be too big, and for the end customer it's probably cheaper to just pay the cable/telco company for basic cable and DVR service.

I don't know if you're right, but if that's the logic behind this decision it's even worse than I imagined. By your logic, if you rent a TV, then since the TV takes a signal and retransmits it as visible-spectrum light, the rental company is acting as a retransmission agent and you have to pay extra licensing fees. But of course that's ridiculous.. isn't it?

Simply displaying a picture on a TV isn't a retransmission, so the TV rental company is off the hook.

The other piece of this, which others have pointed out, is that it is being offered to the general public. If you rent a TV and show some content to the general public for a fee, I believe that constitutes a "public performance" or something like that and you would need some sort of license to show it. Bars, for example, subscribe to a different type of cable or satellite service that allows them to do this.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[ahaweb]

But your logic does not explain why the length of the delay makes a crucial difference: "Justice Breyer stressed that the decision said nothing about downloading a TV program in order to recover it and keep it on hand for somewhat later viewing."

Re:Zediva all over again.

[stdarg]

Practically though, that wouldn't be very profitable for Aereo because the equipment would be too big

If you read the decision, they said remote DVR and cloud storage could be okay, i.e. this decision should not be read to constrain them. So most of the Aereo equipment is fine. I hope Aereo does re-launch with the "antenna ownership" feature, just so this idiot Breyer has to say "Yeah, well, I didn't really mean that.."

Simply displaying a picture on a TV isn't a retransmission, so the TV rental company is off the hook.

If that's not retransmitting, then what is? It's jumping mediums (wire to air), it's transforming the signal (compressed ATSC stream to discrete RGB values to signals to the LCD or whatever).

If you rent a TV and show some content to the general public for a fee, I believe that constitutes a "public performance" or something like that and you would need some sort of license to show it. Bars, for example, subscribe to a different type of cable or satellite service that allows them to do this.

Yeah, Breyer goes into that at length in the decision, and offers that a performance to your family and immediate social circle is not a public performance. A bar would be.

And yet, he doesn't give a satisfying justification about why Aereo is a public performance, despite their concerted effort to keep it private by having dedicated antennas per subscriber, and no sharing of stored data, and no multicast transmissions.

Scalia's dissent says:

The Networks sued Aereo for several forms of copyright
infringement, but we are here concerned with a single
claim: that Aereo violates the Networks’ “exclusive righ[t]”
to “perform” their programs “publicly.” 17 U. S. C.
106(4). That claim fails at the very outset because Aereo
does not “perform” at all. The Court manages to reach the
opposite conclusion only by disregarding widely accepted
rules for service-provider liability and adopting in their
place an improvised standard (“looks-like-cable-TV”) that
will sow confusion for years to come.

I totally agree with that and wonder how anybody could think like Breyer did unless they just don't understand that a point-to-point TCP/IP connection, even if it's going over a "public" network like the internet, isn't really public. And since Breyer goes through pains to say "Oh but don't worry, remote DVR and cloud storage are still fine" he obviously is talking out his ass, since those would operate in *the exact same way* when it comes to public vs private. Otherwise perhaps you can explain how sending a copy of a TV show from your remote DVR hosted on Amazon's cloud is private, whereas a copy of a TV show from Aereo's cloud is public? It doesn't make sense.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[suutar]

It's not illegal for you to do those things. It's illegal for him to accept money for it if he doesn't have a license pass you the data that his equipment has captured.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[gstoddart]

"Broadcasters" != "cable companies"

Comcast is owned by NBC. Comcast is in the middle of buying Time Warner.

Those two combined means most of the US.

Like it or not, the broadcasters own the cable companies in most markets.

They are no longer separate entities.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[AcidPenguin9873]

If that's not retransmitting, then what is? It's jumping mediums (wire to air), it's transforming the signal (compressed ATSC stream to discrete RGB values to signals to the LCD or whatever).

You've got to be kidding, right? A TV decodes the transmission but doesn't re-encode it for subsequent retransmission. You would need a camera and a microphone for that. As for the "it's a performance" aspect, the TV itself doesn't consider where it is and who is watching it, i.e. the private home vs. bar example we have been discussing. The party responsible for considering the context in which the performance is happening would be the bar owner or homeowner/renter, not the TV rental company.

And yet, he doesn't give a satisfying justification about why Aereo is a public performance, despite their concerted effort to keep it private by having dedicated antennas per subscriber, and no sharing of stored data, and no multicast transmissions.

It's because while it's not that by the letter of the law, that's what it is in spirit. Aereo is providing cable TV service, just without having to pay for the content. The entire point of Aereo's microantenna setup is to use a technicality to get around the "public performance" wording of the law that made (multicast, retransmit) cable providers have to pay the networks. I think one of the justices asked this at the trial (although he said that even if it was, that may not mean it's illegal). I don't know what Aereo's response was.

Now let's go to the dissent:

That claim fails at the very outset because Aereo does not “perform” at all.

I agree completely.

The Court manages to reach the opposite conclusion only by disregarding widely accepted rules for service-provider liability and adopting in their place an improvised standard (“looks-like-cable-TV”) that will sow confusion for years to come.

I think something like this is necessary. Maybe it's improvised, but we need it. Someone has to pay for content to be produced, and it's no longer (completely) covered by advertisers alone. They let people watch for free via OTA because the percentage of people watching that way is low enough that their costs are still covered.

I totally agree with that and wonder how anybody could think like Breyer did unless they just don't understand that a point-to-point TCP/IP connection, even if it's going over a "public" network like the internet, isn't really public.

I don't think Breyer's opinion is what you think it is. Scalito said it explicitly - Breyer made up a new "looks like cable TV" standard and is judging Aereo by that standard. You don't have to like it, but don't misrepresent it.

And since Breyer goes through pains to say "Oh but don't worry, remote DVR and cloud storage are still fine" he obviously is talking out his ass, since those would operate in *the exact same way* when it comes to public vs private. Otherwise perhaps you can explain how sending a copy of a TV show from your remote DVR hosted on Amazon's cloud is private, whereas a copy of a TV show from Aereo's cloud is public? It doesn't make sense.

How did you acquire the TV show that is hosted on your private storage in Amazon's cloud? The cloud storage piece assumes you acquired that content some other legal way. For remote DVR, I don't think he's going to have to go back on what he said at all. He's using a "this looks like cable TV" standard. If it's just cloud storage for shows you already have, that doesn't look like cable TV. If it's remote DVR for cable TV service and you pay for the remote DVR service, that service will be subject to the same "must pay the networks" standard as Aereo and the cable TV networks. Or you could separately pay for just the remote DVR service and have that be linked to a cable/telco/satellite/Netflix subscription as well if you want to decouple DVR from service provider.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[stdarg]

A TV decodes the transmission but doesn't re-encode it for subsequent retransmission

Yes it does.. it takes a sequence of a few bits, does its MPEG4 decoding or whatever, then looks at a particular pixel value like (0, 0, 255) and says "Oh, turn that into an electrical signal that tells this LCD sub-pixel to open fully, and these others to close fully." It then shines a light through the LCD and literally transmits that value to your eye. How is that not re-transmission?

As for the "it's a performance" aspect, the TV itself doesn't consider where it is and who is watching it, i.e. the private home vs. bar example we have been discussing.

That's right, and your antenna also doesn't know who is watching it. And the cable leading from the antenna to the TV doesn't know who is watching it. And if we make that cable 80 miles long, and put the antenna in Aereo's building, it still doesn't know. And Aereo, the landlord, doesn't know. And if we replace the cable with a fiber optic cable going to an internet backbone, it doesn't know, and the routers don't know, and the ISPs involved don't know. I think we can agree that the minutia of how often, and by what device, a broadcast signal is retransmitted, translated to different media, routed around by wires, etc, it doesn't matter. What matters is the end effect.

And if it ultimately ends up being shown to one guy and his family sitting in his living room, then all is well. That's a private performance.

I think something like this is necessary. Maybe it's improvised, but we need it. Someone has to pay for content to be produced, and it's no longer (completely) covered by advertisers alone.

I can understand why the networks feel like this is needed, but honestly the Supreme Court's job isn't to prop up obsolete business models. And there's no evidence that this would have a widespread enough impact to affect the networks... I mean you can already get this exact same content for free by setting up your own antenna. People aren't doing it enough to make a difference. That's why this is so mind boggling... Aereo isn't giving you access to something you can't already get for free (as opposed to someone rebroadcasting a cable TV channel for instance). They're just making it easier for you.

If in the unlikely scenario comes to pass and a bunch of people canceled cable and made do with 95% fewer channels, well, I guess advertising on those channels would rightly become more valuable and more expensive, so the fantasy problem of networks going broke most likely wouldn't happen.

If cable companies implement Aereo-like technology so they could stop paying rebroadcast fees, then networks would have a problem. So let them go off-air and become cable-only like HBO or something. Good for them if they can make more money doing that. Then the airwaves will be freed up for people with fresh ideas and lower overhead. Or maybe not.. maybe we could reallocate the TV spectrum to enable more unlicensed Wifi. That would be an excellent trade in my opinion. Well worth the loss of quality ABC shows like "The Chew" and "General Hospital..."

I don't think Breyer's opinion is what you think it is. Scalito said it explicitly - Breyer made up a new "looks like cable TV" standard and is judging Aereo by that standard. You don't have to like it, but don't misrepresent it.

Perhaps not. I don't think Aereo resembles a cable TV company in business model or technology, unless you think of the Internet as the cable network and the signal as being broadcast to everyone.

How did you acquire the TV show that is hosted on your private storage in Amazon's cloud? The cloud storage piece assumes you acquired that content some other legal way.

Presumably this would work with OTA transmissions, which you legally received with an antenna.

If it's remote DVR for cable TV service and you pay

Re:Zediva all over again.

[AcidPenguin9873]

How is that not re-transmission?

Oh my god, please stop. No, you haven't won.

That's a private performance.

Absolutely, I agree with you 100%.

the Supreme Court's job isn't to prop up obsolete business models.

How is their business model obsolete? Producing desirable content and charging for it? The thing that's obsolete is providing free OTA transmission of this content, because the content costs more to produce than the networks recoup from advertising alone.

I mean you can already get this exact same content for free by setting up your own antenna. People aren't doing it enough to make a difference.

If Aereo becomes legal, a whole shitload of people (or, rather, their cable/telco/satellite provider) will do it and that business model (free OTA transmission) will indeed become obsolete very, very quickly.

If cable companies implement Aereo-like technology so they could stop paying rebroadcast fees, then networks would have a problem. So let them go off-air and become cable-only like HBO or something. Good for them if they can make more money doing that. Then the airwaves will be freed up for people with fresh ideas and lower overhead. Or maybe not.. maybe we could reallocate the TV spectrum to enable more unlicensed Wifi. That would be an excellent trade in my opinion. Well worth the loss of quality ABC shows like "The Chew" and "General Hospital..."

This is absolutely the most likely scenario. I'm glad you at least acknowledged it. I feel terrible for you that your TV show preferences aren't matched by 100% of the shows that ABC airs.

Presumably this would work with OTA transmissions, which you legally received with an antenna.

Exactly, provided that you own the antenna and some sort of recording device. I'm glad we agree on this.

That's a big assumption, and it's pretty shitty considering you can legally record shows that you receive over the air and watch them later, and have been able to do that since the Supreme Court ruled that VCRs are legal.

On a VCR that you own.

This Supreme Court decision, and the hypothetical you're proposing, take away consumer rights that have been around for decades,

On equipment that they own.

Are you seeing the common theme? If you own the equipment, it's legal. (And this will only continue to work if the cost of owning the equipment makes it not worth bothering for most people.) If you rent this stuff from someone else, it's tantamount to a cable company and thus that company is required to pay the licensing fee. If you want it changed, go complain to your local politician that everyone deserves ad-supported TV for free. Maybe the laws will change and these companies will become taxpayer-subsidized like the BBC.

prevent innovative businesses

How is Aereo innovative? It provides exactly the same service as cable+DVR, which has been around for over a decade. The only innovative thing is the lack of content cost for Aereo, which is unsustainable.

that consumers want

Of course consumers want it, who wouldn't want something that's much cheaper by virtue of having almost none of the cost structure required to deliver the service because the cost is being borne by other companies?

Re:Zediva all over again.

[AcidPenguin9873]

If you own the equipment, it's legal.

Replying to myself, this is obviously an incorrect statement. You could rent a VCR or DVR or whatever and an antenna from someone, bring it back to your house, and record stuff there, and that would be legal. It's the combination of the entire service together, with the equipment rental and delivery system over the internet, that makes it "substantially like a cable company" which makes it subject to Breyer's standard. I'm sorry that this doesn't agree with how Slashdotters like to interpret the letter of the law, but that's precisely what the courts are there to do - consider intent, consider grey areas, draw arbitrary lines.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[jwhitener]

Figured this was going to be the outcome after Zediva Lost a few years back.

So apparently, if I VPN into my network using my cellphone, and watch my HDHomerun Prime I'm breaking the law.

No, you wouldn't be breaking the the law. If you charged thousands of people a monthly fee to log into your network and watch TV shows, then you would be in violation of copyright law.

The law that was used to justify banning Aereo's model, unfortunately, is pretty broad. The 1976 amendment to the Copyright Act basically says "if you act like a cable company, you are a cable company". It doesn't matter what technical trickery you use, if the end result is a product that appears (to a judge) to be like a cable company, you are out of luck.

So a lot of the blame has to do with Congress. SCOTUS had to go back to 1976 to find law that might apply here. And the law they found was very broad. If Congress were functioning, and keeping law in pace with technology (and not bought by lobbyists), the ruling may have been a better one.

Re:Zediva all over again.

[stdarg]

How is their business model obsolete? Producing desirable content and charging for it? The thing that's obsolete is providing free OTA transmission of this content, because the content costs more to produce than the networks recoup from advertising alone.

[...]

If Aereo becomes legal, a whole shitload of people (or, rather, their cable/telco/satellite provider) will do it and that business model (free OTA transmission) will indeed become obsolete very, very quickly.

It's obsolete in that the revenue stream the networks are depending on from cable is a result of people finding it inconvenient to access the content with their own antenna, and as a result of Aereo that's changing.

If you rent this stuff from someone else, it's tantamount to a cable company and thus that company is required to pay the licensing fee.

That's the key point, and it's where I disagree. (The retransmission stuff was a red herring, because retransmission is obviously okay to do in and of itself.)

A cable company exercises selection and control over the content they retransmit. For example, I know that my local Time Warner Cable antenna that picks up Fox, ABC, etc can also pick up MeTV and ION TV, because MY antenna picks up those channels and my antenna sucks.

But guess what, they don't offer MeTV and ION TV in their "local broadcast stations" package. And that's a huge difference between them an Aereo. Aereo offers dumb access to an antenna and whatever it receives. It's antenna rental. The cable company takes stewardship of the service and customizes it based on their own product offering. Perhaps they have a cable channel that shows old TV shows, so they don't want to offer MeTV on the cheap package. And that's their right... AS A CABLE COMPANY. Because they are in charge of the content.

Aereo is not.

This was also noted in the dissent, though without a specific example.

(from your other comment):

with the equipment rental and delivery system over the internet

And again, to me that means the court doesn't understand the technology. A point to point connection over the internet is still point to point. It's equivalent to a long wire from a single antenna to a single house (in Aereo's case). Perhaps Breyer says "Oh, a big network of cables, it's so similar to a cable company" but that's just wrong.

I'm sorry that this doesn't agree with how Slashdotters like to interpret the letter of the law, but that's precisely what the courts are there to do - consider intent, consider grey areas, draw arbitrary lines.

I agree with you, but courts occasionally make poor decisions and that's what I'm complaining about. I think this is a bad decision, you apparently don't. I can't fathom how Aereo is a cable company, you apparently see it plain as day. That's all... it doesn't mean I don't think courts should be allowed to interpret, if that's what you're implying. That's clearly their job.

Furthermore, when I first started complaining about this decision (on a CNN comment feed, not here) I was open to the idea that there was some deep principle in the decision that would make sense. There sometimes is, even with a decision I initially disagree about, because the Supreme Court judges are very smart and usually do a good job of distilling things down to fairly simple principles. Nobody was able to shed light on what I'm not seeing, they just keep regurgitating lines from the decision. Aereo is a cable company, so it's obvious! Well, except it's not. They took a BIG leap that is not intuitive at all. Nobody can bridge that gap and elaborate on their argument because it's a leap of faith. You either agree that Aereo is a cable company, or not. As Scalia noted in the dissent, it's a really stupid thing to just assert "it looks like a cable company so we'll regulate it like a cable company" without being able to justify WHY it looks like a cable company, because eve

DAR.fm vs Aereo

[nonsecurity]

It is interesting that DAR.fm (an online radio recording service) has survived legal challenges, but Aereo is now in jeopardy for a providing similar service for TV even though it uses antennas at customers' locations.

Re:DAR.fm vs Aereo

[Megane]

That's because this is based on a law specifically targeted at cable TV companies, created at the request of the TV networks. In the US, at least, local TV stations have a sort of limited monopoly over the right to broadcast their network's signal. Otherwise cable companies (and especially satellite TV companies!) might just pull down the network feed without inserts or news, or even a channel from the next big city over, leaving the local station blowing in the wind. Not that all or even many of the cable companies would do stuff like this, but there were probably enough problems starting to happen that the law was pushed through.

It's not entirely unlike the problems Tesla has been having with dealership laws. The local dealers want the laws that keep the manufacturers from competing with them, whether or not it would actually be a problem. The manufacturers are likely to just decide it's not worth the trouble when there's already a good dealer around. But if there's a bad dealer, too bad. And also with Uber/Lyft vs. cab companies... there are so many bad cabbies who have no motivation to get better because they already have the limited monopoly licenses that keep good competition out.

Re:This doesn't necessarly shut it down

[DewDude]

No. In order to do it now, Aereo will have to pay retransmission fees to the broadcasters. Broadcasters can either a) make this an insane amount they can't afford or b) refuse to negotiate. If they wanted to, as of right now; they could effectively force Aereo to turn the service off and to never return.

Bloody Content Providers

[parallel_prankster]

I fail to understand how this is a violation of copyright if really what Aereo is doing is capture OTA signals and recording them for their users. I mean anyone can do that for their own personal use anyway! The signals are free right? Its not like they were unscrambling and distributing TWC or Comcast signals.

Re:Bloody Content Providers

[bobbied]

The signals are free right?

Free to receive and view, but not free as in you can do anything you want with the material. The copyright holder still owns and controls the material so you cannot consider it yours and distribute it for anything beyond acceptable personal use, "fair use" or the other legal exceptions.

So as I read this, if you personally want to watch OTA signals captured from equipment you own and operate over the internet, fine, you just cannot do it for somebody else and certainly cannot charge anybody if you did.

Re:Bloody Content Providers

[Megane]

Except that TWC and Comcast have to pay to rebroadcast local TV signals. Yes, the same ones you can receive freely with an antenna. Every now and again when the contracts are up for renegotiation, they start spamming TV and radio ads about how YOU COULD LOSE YOUR FOX TV!, but somehow it always gets resolved in time. (or maybe after 2 or 3 days of a cable channel gone black)

Re:Bloody Content Providers

[Yunzil]

I mean anyone can do that for their own personal use anyway!
For homework I want you to analyze this sentence and find the key phrase that makes it different from what Aereo is doing.

Re:Bloody Content Providers

[tepples]

I wonder why some of these cable companies don't just include an antenna and a preamp inside the cable box for use as a backup when retransmission consent negotiations fail.

Remind my why they are being sued

[MobyDisk]

I've never understood why anyone would want to sue Aereo. They increase the transmission range of local broadcasts. They don't strip the ads, so the advertisers still profit. The stations get increased viewership, which they could as a selling point to advertises. "Hey, not only do we reach 50,000 people in this area, but Aereo increases that by another 10,000 people!" Why would a TV station complain if someone could increase their broadcast range without charging them anything for it? If the station wanted to do that themselves, they would have to buy towers, increase power, deal with FCC regs, etc. Aereo does it for free!

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[IMarvinTPA]

Because they were able to successfully extort cable companies for doing the same thing 50 years ago.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[Nom du Keyboard]

Because when (I think it was) CBS was in a dispute with the cable companies they didn't let their content be carried over the cable as leverage for insanely higher re-transmission fees. Some desirable sports are only shown on CBS. People got around the CBS action by receiving over-the-air broadcasts. Aereo let everybody in the country who wanted to put it to CBS. CBS didn't like that.

Re: Remind my why they are being sued

[VTBlue]

Most people think broadcasters still operate under an ad revenue model. This not true today. Cable retransmission deals is where the real money is. If broadcasters were limited to the old ad revenue model, the industry would implode.

Personally I think we should have the UK model with a TV license. The programming is far superior and enriching to the minds of the citizenry.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[Hodr]

You cant understand why CABLE companies might want to sue a company that increases the value and marketshare of OTA Networks?

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[JTsyo]

Currently cable companies pay the broadcasters to carry their channel. If Aereo was allowed people might cut out the cable company and just receive the programming for free. This would be lost revenue for the cable company and broadcasters. So instead of providing a competing product, they sue to keep their monopoly.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[UnknowingFool]

The problem is permission. Copyrighted content can be publicly distributed only with permission of the holder. The local TV affiliates have copyright on their content and permission to broadcast other content like movies through licensing. This licensing applies to everyone from Hulu to Netflix. Aereo did not obtain any license. It does not matter if they increase the range or the number of viewers of the station. They didn't have permission to do so.

The question that SCOTUS had to determine is whether Aereo was privately or publicly broadcasting. Private recording is okay (Betamax). Private streaming is okay (Sling). SCOTUS has determined that Aereo was publicly broadcasting. I haven't read the full decision yet but that's what they decided.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[MobyDisk]

ahhhh! So just let me restate this so I undertsand.

CBS intentionally does not want their transmissions covering a certain area because the lack of content is leverage they can use against cable companies. So by Aereo solving that problem, they lose their bargaining chip.

I posted a big thing about advertising, but I see VTBlue's reply saying that they don't make enough money off the ads any longer. So that explains the licensing fees thing.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[bobbied]

Aereo does it for free!

Actually the CHARGE for this service, but no matter. The ISSUE is that cable companies are required by law to pay for doing this, Aereo is trying to do an end run around having to pay. Because of how Aereo did it, the issue was murky enough so the courts had to sort it out.

It was a noble try there guys.... Next time, we are going to have to get the law changed instead of depending on dodgy technicalities in how you do it.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[Megane]

Because for one thing, the "transmission range" is how their local ads are based. If you watched a local NYC station via Aereo from LA, those used car dealer ads wouldn't be very useful. Also, you'd be in the range of another local station on the same network, which pays the network for the right to be exclusive in their area. And they didn't even get into all the content black-out rules.

Not only that, but there are even fringe-area stations that rebroadcast on very weak transmitters located in the transmitter antenna farm (weak as in 75 watts, yes, as in a light bulb) for the sole purpose of being received by the local cable company(s), cha-ching! I have a pretty good antenna, but at 15 miles I have no chance to pick up one of those baby translator signals, as long as I refuse to support the cable-industrial complex. Or maybe eventually those stations will finally clue in to the new trend of declining cable subscribers, and add a few watts. (In comparison, I can pick up the local university's student-run low power TV station, ten miles farther away, quite easily with a good antenna.)

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[Himmy32]

Regional Lockouts, licensing agreements, and localized advertising. All has to do with the money.

Re: Remind my why they are being sued

[hendrips]

As a non-UK citizen, all I ever hear about anyone watching in the UK is Hollyoaks, Eastenders, Doctor Who, Top Gear, Midsomer Murders, and Sherlock. I'll grant you Doctor Who is pretty good, but the rest just seems to be roughly the same mix of shows the U.S. has.

Of course, if this is just a problem with my perceptions, I'd be happy to have someone from the UK correct me.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[Rockoon]

You arent INFORMED enough to know that it was the BROADCASTERS and not the CABLE COMPANIES that went after Aereo?

Re: Remind my why they are being sued

[Anonymous Coward]

"Personally I think we should have the UK model with a TV license. The programming is far superior and enriching to the minds of the citizenry."

I think people across the pond get a skewed idea of television programming in the UK because they essentially see the greatest hits (Doctor Who, Sherlock, Shameless, Skins, Misfits, Abbey, BBC News, etc.) along with whatever PBS decides is valuable to re-air on Masterpiece Theater. However, this ignores:

1. Most of the content is pretty bad design-by-committee drivel, with the airways filled with reality content.

2. More than one of the shows mentioned above actually airs on non-BBC premium channels and hence isn't affected by it. Yes, it turns out a huge amount of the population doesn't care for the BBC programming and pays for other channels.

Basically, if you were in another country and only saw PBS Newshour, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Vikings, Rome, Mad Men, Halt & Catch Fire, Penny Dreadful, etc. you'd decide the American model is the way to go. And, as it turns out, so do the people of Britain based upon their not watching the BBC channels, and the fact that a few of the series I just listed were joint productions between premium cable channels in the USA and the UK.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[MobyDisk]

Actually the CHARGE for this service

I was talking from the viewpoint of the broadcaster. They don't charge the broadcaster.

But yes, I see your point.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[MobyDisk]

Aereo doesn't sell outside of the broadcast range. So people from LA cannot use Aereo to watch a NY broadcast.

Re: Remind my why they are being sued

[VTBlue]

I lived in the UK as an expat for 3 years. My boss who recruited me at the time mentioned often how she could never stand to watch the TV in America. I didn't understand what it was until I started watching UK TV. At first it was really annoying because advertising was limited to mostly insurance ads, and a few household goods. Then it dawned on my how little diversity there was. I had probably gone 6 months without ever having seen a movie trailer or annoying news promos shouting at the viewer. In general, watching UK TV was either a calming or relaxed experience. The volumes were lower, the banter more intelligent, and though I gag at saying this, "it warmed the soul." Fast forward three years later coming back to the US. TV is loud, obnoxious, alarming, and basically rile up the viewers. I even learned to the cook decently simply by watching shows by Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver. CNN International was a joy to watch. I can't tell you all the amazing Ricky Gervais material we are missing here in the States. The kicker is that they still have all the best US shows!

Some aspects are very subtle, others are clearly apparent. An example of this watching the news. Compare Canadian or UK news with what we call news in the US. It's truly laughable here with respect to tv news.

I'll take UK TV over US broadcasting anyday.

Re: Remind my why they are being sued

[westlake]

Personally I think we should have the UK model with a TV license. The programming is far superior and enriching to the minds of the citizenry.

How many of those wonderfully enriching UK shows are co-productions for European or global distribution?

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[bws111]

I think you need to re-examine who needs to offer a competing product. Complete this sentence: without Aereo, broadcasters and cable companies deliver programming - without broadcasters, Aereo delivers ________

You can't go into a store, steal a bunch of stuff, sell it on the street, and seriously claim that the stores should offer 'competing product'.

Re: Remind my why they are being sued

[VTBlue]

Not sure I follow. TV is not only about shows that speak to a global audience. Games shows, news, serials, sitcoms, dramas, ads, and documentaries collectively help to shape and educate society. How the institution of public television is architected has public purpose implications.

Re: Remind my why they are being sued

[evilviper]

Personally I think we should have the UK model with a TV license. The programming is far superior and enriching to the minds of the citizenry.

PBS provides vastly superior content to anything you'll find in the UK. Frontline is probably the most "enriching" show available to anyone, anywhere in the world. Throw in Nova, American Experience, Secrets of the Dead, Nature, This Old House, Charlie Rose, History Detectives, etc., etc. Not to mention the absolute inundation of educational childrens programming, from the venerable Sesame Street to the more recent hours of educational cartoon shows.

You don't NEED commercial television, and can get your entire viewing time filled by PBS. So if you want the UK model so badly, why aren't you watching PBS? The answer will no-doubt be why the UK model won't work so well in the US. And that's not to mention that the UK is quickly adopting the US model with for-pay satellite television becoming pervasive.

The 30 minute nightly world news reports on the big 3 networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) are far superior to BBC or anything else, with BBC News having the standards of a tabloid, by comparison.

And don't get me started on all the TV license collection horror stories.

Re:Remind my why they are being sued

[jwhitener]

Or more like, over the air broadcast coverage is already everywhere. And Aereo was only adding people that were already in that same over the air broadcast area. People in state X where not able to watch over the air tv coming from state Y using Aereo.

So Aereo wasn't adding eyeballs. Except if you count cable cutters who were not receiving OTA signals, which are a small number. Given that, I think the OTA people felt that even if the viewership went up a small percent, it was not enough to offset TV advertising that was dependent on time slots. DVR's/VCR's in general are always fought be the OTA people, because time sensitive, and location specific advertising is much more effective.. meaning they can charge more for it.

Simple example: a local car dealership will pay for advertising during the local news time slot on abc/cbs/nbc, for Wed., Thu, and Friday night, because they have a sale going on that weekend. They won't pay if they know that 99% of the OTA customers time shift and are not likely to see their advertising until their sale is over with already.

I think we will eventually have 100% on-demand, time shifted, internet TV someday. But you'll likely have ads popping up right in the middle of shows, injected at runtime, and the ads will be different depending on when you play the show (so local sales and/or time specific ads count again).

Re: Remind my why they are being sued

[jwhitener]

Do you have a source for that? I was under the assumption that one of the major reasons why OTA companies have always fought any VCR/DVR/Time Shifting technology, is that it diminishes their ad revenue, which they do still depend on.

This is especially true for local broadcasters. The car dealership having the weekend sale. They want the advertising done Wed.Thu.Friday. If someone time shifts and watches on Monday, that ad is worthless.

And also, the big live shows, like American Idol, have huge ad revenues (I thought). Most of America still watches that show live. So time and location specific advertising is very much worth it to big companies, and the OTA broadcasters make $$$ during those seasons.

I've never found a specific breakdown of Ads vs Rebroadcaster fees for total revenue.

Re:Yeesh.

[Bartles]

At least Scalia, Thomas, and Alito got it right.

Aereo is 1-to-1

[Nom du Keyboard]

Cable is a one-to-many system.
Aereo is 1-to-1.
That is a Major difference.
It's not "streaming" to download your own data across the Internet.
The Supreme Court are a bunch of technologically backward morons!

Re:Aereo is 1-to-1

[jratcliffe]

Regarding 1-to-1 vs. one-to-many, the ruling deals with this issue explicitly. See page 14.

Regarding it not being streaming to download your own data across the Internet, the ruling discusses this issue as well, see page 15.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/op...

Is It Retransmission...?

[Nom du Keyboard]

Is it illegal retransmission for my stepson in New York to VCR a program and mail me the tape?
If no, then Aereo should be completely legal.

Re:Is It Retransmission...?

[MobyDisk]

No, that is not a retransmission. But it is a copyright violation.

Re:Is It Retransmission...?

[AcidPenguin9873]

Is your stepson charging for this service? And more importantly, is he making his for-pay service available to the general public? If the answer to both questions is yes, then yes it's illegal.

Words don't mean anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Individual SSL connections are publicly transmitting. Plaintext wifi which can be picked up by any passing van, is private.

Re:Yeesh.

[93 Escort Wagon]

At least Scalia, Thomas, and Alito got it right.

Sure, but they're unpopular politically.

Re:This doesn't necessarly shut it down

[JTsyo]

People that could receive OTA would not bother paying Aereo unless they wanted the option to watch elsewhere. Having the antennas somewhere with good reception was a huge plus, and the main reason I considered Aereo.

Re:This now requires

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And "cable TV" suddenly somehow means "any moving pictures transmitted over any metallic wiring?

Re:This now requires

[jratcliffe]

Actually, it was more based on the amendments the Congress made to the Copyright Act in 1976, to overturn two previous Supreme Court decisions (Fortnightly and Teleprompter). The Court had ruled that CATV (Community Antenna Television, which is exactly what it sounds like, put up one big antenna, and run coax from there to people's houses; it was used to get signal to areas that couldn't get good broadcast quality) was outside the scope of the Copyright Act, and Congress changed the law to clarify that it was.

In Aereo, the Court ruled that Aereo was largely similar to those CATV operators - it took the broadcast signal off the air and distributed it to multiple viewers, essentially simultaneous.y.

Re:The leave me NO choice

[jratcliffe]

No, they don't.

Re:The leave me NO choice

[jratcliffe]

You certainly do have a choice. If you want the content live, Directv, Dish, your local cable company, or (depending on where you are) your local telco will happily provide it to you. You can also put up an antenna, and watch it for free. If you're OK with slightly delayed, then Hulu+ should get you a lot of what you're looking for. You have lots of choices.

Re:Yeesh.

[taustin]

They understand the internet perfectly. A lot of freeloaders want free stuff, and are willing to take it - and even sell it - for free, whether they owner is willing to give it to them or not.

I would have ruled the same way, but...

[sirwired]

The Supreme Court was (rightfully, IMHO) unimpressed by a technical loophole allowing Aereo to essentially run their own cable provider without paying the fees cable and satellite providers must pay. But...

Personally, I don't think the retransmission fees should be legal. If a user is within the service area of a broadcast station, anybody should be able to use whatever means necessary to obtain that station; this seems to be a logical extension of the broadcaster's license to use the radio spectrum to service a certain area. After all, somebody with poor reception, but still within the service area, is still excluded from using that spectrum for other uses. (Outside the broadcaster's licensed service area, retransmission fees make a whole lot of sense...)

But since the fees ARE legal, Aereo's workaround creates an inherently inequitable situation where cable and satellite providers must pay retransmission fees, but Aereo avoided them.

Re:I would have ruled the same way, but...

[Just Some Guy]

a technical loophole

Also known as "the law, as written". The concept that obeying the written law isn't enough and that you need to predict what a judge might like on a future date is kind of horrifying.

Re:I would have ruled the same way, but...

[david_thornley]

Except that cable and satellite providers have a good deal of value-added stuff, while Aereo simply passed on broadcast TV. The cases are similar, but not identical, and I can make an argument that cable and satellite providers should be treated differently from Aereo. The Supreme Court disagreed with this argument, of course, but it isn't a bad one.

Re:I would have ruled the same way, but...

[evilviper]

Aereo's workaround creates an inherently inequitable situation where cable and satellite providers must pay retransmission fees, but Aereo avoided them.

No, Cable companies could use their "OnDemand" capabilities to copy, precisely, what Aereo is doing. It just wouldn't be "Channel 7" on the dial anymore... Which really doesn't matter as most cable providers have switched to encrypted QAM, so older TVs can't receive it without a cable box in any case.

Hell, cable providers could even just include DOCSIS capabilities in their set-top boxes, and perform EXACTLY like Aereo, over the network.

Satellite providers have some technical limitations which would prevent doing the same thing as Aereo or cable, but they still have the right to negotiate pricing, and might be better off if local channel refused to offer them a decent license, and they just took local channels off the table, like they tried to do in the beginning before the Clinton-era government forced them to carry local channels.

Re:This now requires

[Anonymous Psychopath]

The Court seems to think it's likely that the Legislative/Executive branches would have modified the law in a way that clearly included what Aereo doing to circumvent it. They're probably right, but what they should have done is refuse to hear the case and let the correct branches of government do their jobs. Many parts of the government are overreaching their authority in ways that are really troubling.

FCC "rules" that jailbreaking is legal. Yeah FCC!
FCC "rules" that Net Neutrality is dead. Boo FCC!

SCOTUS rules that cops need a warrant to search your mobile. Yeah SCOTUS!
SCOTUS rules that Congress meant to include Aereo in a law made before anyone had any idea that technology would make something like Aereo possible. Boo SCOTUS!

Executive says they won't enforce federal drug laws regarding pot. Yeah POTUS!
Executive says it's kosher to kidnap or even kill citizens without due process, as long as they're pretty sure they're bad guys and are physically in some other country at the time. Boo POTUS!

Where the hell are the lawmakers? Oh, that's right, They're busy dicking around spending all their time trying to make the other team look bad.

Re:The leave me NO choice

[AcidPenguin9873]

No, Aereo can still exist and provide the service, they just want Aereo to pay retransmission license fees like any other streaming TV provider. It might cost more, but you said you were eager to pay to watch what you like when you want to, so maybe it will still be worth it to you even with the increased cost.

Re:Cut that cable, cut it now!

[Shakrai]

Heaven forbid the big 3 Luddite networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC go out of business, so people have to keep paying ridiculous fees for garbage channels?

You do realize all three of those "Luddite" networks, along with FOX, the WB, the CW, etc., make their programming available for free to anyone willing to put up an antenna, right? If you want to argue in favor of cutting the cord you shouldn't be cheering on a company that was essentially freeloading off this ecosystem. The law already has mechanisms in place for companies that wish to retransmit OTA signals for profit. Cable companies have been doing it for decades and paying for the privilege of doing so. They tried to do it for free. Congress said no, clear back in the 1970s. Something you would have known if you had read the ruling before you posted.

Take heart, there's nothing stopping you from putting up an antenna. The investment in time and money will vary from "ridiculously easy" (rabbit ears) to "royal pain in the ass" (massive outdoor antenna with in-line amplifiers), but it's possible throughout the majority of CONUS. My set up cost me <$60, for one of these, a two-way splitter, a box of twist on connectors, and some RG6 I already had lying around the house (irony points: It was left here by a Time Warner tech, thanks for the free cable TWC!)

For that small investment in time and money I've got nine HD channels. For an additional recurring fee (~$15/mo) I have the best DVR ever made, which doubles as a STB that brings Netflix, Amazin, Hulu, etc. to my television, to complement the OTA offerings. The last part is optional of course, but it sure enhances the value of the setup. I've quite literally always got something to watch, because TiVo hunts for things I like 24/7.

Re:This doesn't necessarly shut it down

[Megane]

Woosh! Your reply may be right, but you clearly didn't read what you were replying to, which is pretty much taking a Tivo or Sling Box, and putting it ON THE CLOUD!!!... OUD... oud... oud...

Re:Yeesh.

[disposable60]

Stopped clocks, as it were.

Re:This now requires

[Ungrounded Lightning]

In Aereo, the Court ruled that Aereo was largely similar to those CATV operators - it took the broadcast signal off the air and distributed it to multiple viewers, essentially simultaneous.y.

And that receiving and carrying it separately for each customer (using a separte tiny antenna and cheap-in-quantity integrated circuit digital radio receiver) was a transparent workaround that attempted to use an interpretation of the letter of the law to violate its intent).

What difference at this point does it make?

[WaffleMonster]

As more people leave insanely overpriced and content deprived cable service behind in total disgust I invite the entire industry to enjoy it's victory and go back to sleep.

Re:Yeesh.

[Shakrai]

Heller. McDonald. Kelo v. New London. Citizens United.

The key distinction in the ruling

[cpt kangarooski]

This case boiled down to one major issue: Whether the allegedly infringing conduct in this case was engaged in by either Aereo, or by its users. Don't get hung up on the public performance v. private performance issue; it was really certain that if Aereo was liable, that the performance was public; if it were the users, it would be private.

J. Scalia's dissent does a good job of explaining the issue:

There are two types of liability for copyright infringement: direct and secondary. As its name suggests, the former applies when an actor personally engages in infringing conduct. Secondary liability, by contrast, is a means of holding defendants responsible for infringement by third parties, even when the defendants âoehave not themselves engaged in the infringing activity.â It applies when a defendant âoeintentionally induc[es] or encourag[es]â infringing acts by others or profits from such acts âoewhile declining to exer- cise a right to stop or limit [them].â

Most suits against equipment manufacturers and service providers involve secondary-liability claims. For example, when movie studios sued to block the sale of Sonyâ(TM)s Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR), they argued that Sony was liable because its customers were making unauthorized copies. Record labels and movie studios relied on a similar theory when they sued Grokster and StreamCast, two providers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software.

This suit, or rather the portion of it before us here, is fundamentally different. The Networks claim that Aereo directly infringes their public-performance right. Accordingly, the Networks must prove that Aereo âoeperform[s]â copyrighted works, Â106(4), when its subscribers log in, select a channel, and push the âoewatchâ button. That process undoubtedly results in a performance; the question is who does the performing. If Aereoâ(TM)s subscribers perform but Aereo does not, the claim necessarily fails.
The Networksâ(TM) claim is governed by a simple but profoundly important rule: A defendant may be held directly liable only if it has engaged in volitional conduct that violates the Act. ...

A comparison between copy shops and video-on-demand services illustrates the point. A copy shop rents out photocopiers on a per-use basis. One customer might copy his 10-year-oldâ(TM)s drawingsâ"a perfectly lawful thing to doâ" while another might duplicate a famous artistâ(TM)s copyrighted photographsâ"a use clearly prohibited by Â106(1). Either way, the customer chooses the content and activates the copying function; the photocopier does nothing except in response to the customerâ(TM)s commands. Because the shop plays no role in selecting the content, it cannot be held directly liable when a customer makes an infringing copy.

Video-on-demand services, like photocopiers, respond automatically to user input, but they differ in one crucial respect: They choose the content. When a user signs in to Netflix, for example, âoethousands of . . . movies [and] TV episodesâ carefully curated by Netflix are âoeavailable to watch instantly.â That selection and arrangement by the service provider constitutes a volitional act directed to specific copyrighted works and thus serves as a basis for direct liability.

The distinction between direct and secondary liability would collapse if there were not a clear rule for determining whether the defendant committed the infringing act. The volitional-conduct requirement supplies that rule; its purpose is not to excuse defendants from accountability, but to channel the claims against them into the correct analytical track. Thus, in the example given above, the fact that the copy shop does not choose the content simply means that its culpability will be assessed using secondary-liability rules rather than direct-liability rules.

So which is Aereo: the copy shop or the video-on-demand service? In truth, i

Re:The key distinction in the ruling

[slinches]

This is a good summary, but for the tl;dr crowd the opinion of the Court is essentially relying on the duck test. e.g. "if it looks like CATV and acts like CATV it is CATV"

The dissent clearly shows the flaws in this reasoning.

Re:The key distinction in the ruling

[cpt kangarooski]

Yes. Sorry about the fucked up apostrophes, quotation marks, etc. I just copied and pasted from the opinion without previewing the post, like everyone does. I can't believe it's 2014 and this sort of thing still isn't automatically handled properly.

Re:The key distinction in the ruling

[cpt kangarooski]

So basically, if they just shift from LIVE to a TIME DELAYED model, they could go right on transmitting and not be considered "performing" under the current act.

As J. Scalia points out, the 'standard' the Court has chosen is unclear. Maybe that would be legal, maybe it wouldn't be. We'll never know until either 1) Congress amends the law to be clear about that; 2) Someone tries it and the Court reverses this opinion in a useful way; or 3) Someone tries it and the Court rules squarely on that in light of this opinion.

One thing is for sure: Only someone with lots of resources and a lot of daring will even attempt to find out by actually trying it.

Re:The key distinction in the ruling

[david_thornley]

Never thought I'd agree so strongly with Scalia.

Re:This now requires

[jratcliffe]

Yup, exactly.

non SDV cable systems don't have bandwidth for tha

[Joe_Dragon]

non SDV cable systems don't have bandwidth for that. As you can max out local nodes vs local DVR's that don't need that many slots

Never understood the problem

[in10se]

Let's say you lived in a valley and couldn't pick up any OTA TV broadcasts. You have a neighbor who lives on a hill who can. Aereo is like your neighbor allowing you to put an antenna on their property (and charging a few bucks for their trouble and the use of their land). I don't understand the problem.

Re:Never understood the problem

[slinches]

The problem is that Congress made that illegal specifically to address community antenna television (CATV) operators who did almost exactly what you describe.

Re:Never understood the problem

[mythosaz]

You can't expect posters to read the "plain English" headnote of the SCOTUS opinion before addressing the most basic points of it, can you?

Re:Never understood the problem

[ikhider]

Keep in mind, slinches is part of the problem.

Re:Yeesh.

[Bartles]

It been said many times by people who can think rationally and don't let themselves be led around by the ring through their nose.

Re:Yeesh.

[Bartles]

Hissss for Kelo. That is one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in my lifetime.

Re:Yeesh.

[Bartles]

Maybe in your world.

Re:This now requires

[Totenglocke]

Of course. The youngest member of SCOTUS is 59 years old. If they can't program a VCR, do you honestly expect them to understand what "cable" means? To them, a computer is a magic box just like a TV is a magic box. The will always rule against new technologies because they do not understand them.

Aereo's Public Statement

[SenatorPerry]

http://blog.aereo.com/2014/06/statement-aereo-ceo-founder-chet-kanojia-united-states-supreme-court-decision/

SlingBox

[fulldecent]

How is this different than SlingBox?

Re:SlingBox

[guytoronto]

With SlingBox, you are your own cable company. Within your own household, it really wouldn't be considered public rebroadcasting. If you gave your neighbor access to your SlingBox, now you are rebroadcasting to the public, and as per this ruling, you are the same as a cable company and have to pay the appropriate fees to the original broadcaster.

Predictable

[d0rp]

However judges take into account the 'spirt' of the law, and are often interested in how something behaves or what it actually does as opposed to the technological implementation

While that does make sense, by the same logic wouldn't anyone who has an antenna connected to a computer/DVR and then connected that to their TV be doing the same thing and also be illegal?

Re:This now requires

[anolisporcatus]

How does Slingbox work if this isn't allowed? I am under the impression at the moment that they are basically the same.

What I think the broadcasters will do next

[Applehu Akbar]

Watch for them to "close the antenna hole" in TV transmission so that a cable subscription will be required of ALL viewers.

But no, your cable company still won't be on the "Verify your provider" list that all the online viewing options come with now. Is there any hope for a SCOTUS case that will force that to happen?

Re:This now requires

[jeIlomizer]

Fixing this would simply require an amendment to that act.

But the constitution is significantly harder to change. If we just get rid of copyright through a constitutional amendment, I suspect they'll have trouble pushing through any more nonsensical protectionist laws.

Re: Oh, please

[Anonymous Coward]

The votes were counted and certified, twice, according to standards and procedures established by Florida state law. SCOTUS intervened simply to prevent SCOFL from ordering a third count using newly invented standards, because a) they didn't have the authority to do so and b) it was in the best interest of the country that the transition not be delayed any longer.

And when the newspapers went into Florida afterwards to do their own counts, Bush still.

The fact that you're still grinding on this 14 years later just proves you're a partisan hack with no fucking clue.

Quid pro quo

[tepples]

It seems to me that if a reasonable interpretation of a law leads to negative unintended consequences, it then becomes the legislative branch's duty to rectify it

The legislative branch has lately seemed to ignore likely "negative unintended consequences" if a vocal minority with a disproportionate amount of campaign money supports a bill.

Re:Quid pro quo

[rsborg]

It seems to me that if a reasonable interpretation of a law leads to negative unintended consequences, it then becomes the legislative branch's duty to rectify it

The legislative branch has lately seemed to ignore likely "negative unintended consequences" if a vocal minority with a disproportionate amount of campaign money supports a bill.

To take it a step further - it seems as if those negative consequences are not at all unintended and designed simply to throw a wrench in the works. No refinement here, no distillation of legal intent - the extremists in Congress are very interested in putting sugar in the gas tank of American society.

Re:Yeesh.

[Shakrai]

It's probably the worst one in my lifetime. I cited it as an example of the Justices that are usually loathed around these parts coming down on the popular (again, around these parts) side of opinion, while the Justices that are usually lauded ruled in favor of Big Money.

Definition of publicly

[tepples]

What if your neighbor let you put an antenna up on his property, and run a cable from YOUR antenna to YOUR receiver?

That might depend on whether the antenna wire passes "a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances" (17 USC 101).

Re:Definition of publicly

[GTRacer]

Googled the code, read link; still confused. Aereo's conceit was that each antenna / paid stream was a single performance to a single person. I don't see what your line regarding the antenna wire passing any number of anybodies has to do with it.

I'm no Supreme, but I saw it like this. Am I allowed to receive OTA broadcasts in my market? YES. Am I allowed to time (see Betamax) and place shift (see Cablevision) my reception? YES.

Is the real issue that Aereo made money off this rather than me personally finding a nice rooftop and willing landlord to put my own antenna on? I'm so disappointed by this...

Re:Cut that cable, cut it now!

[Shakrai]

i would have loved the opportunity to pay someone to "host" MY antenna for me in a place with good reception.

It's called CATV. By law they have to offer the local channels at something approaching cost. This package ranges from $4.95/mo to $14.95/mo in my experience and comes with 7 to 20 channels. It's not advertised but it's there if you ask for it.

Re:This now requires

[Adrian Lopez]

And that receiving and carrying it separately for each customer (using a separte tiny antenna and cheap-in-quantity integrated circuit digital radio receiver) was a transparent workaround that attempted to use an interpretation of the letter of the law to violate its intent).

In other words, you're saying they broke the law by complying with the law.

Re:This now requires

[DaHat]

Nay, Slingbox is where you do it for yourself... something you've always been able to do, just like climbing a mountain, sticking an antenna on it and running the cable back to your home for your own use.

What this court ruling said... similar to what was legislated in the 70's... is more or less that by doing so for others as a service (without permission of the copyright holders)... it is a public performance and thus illegal.

Re:Cut that cable, cut it now!

[praxis]

I get terrible reception with rabbit ears, and live in an apartment where i cannot use a massive outdoor antenna. i would have loved the opportunity to pay someone to "host" MY antenna for me in a place with good reception.

How about asking the landlord to allow you to place an antenna on the roof? Or how about mounting an antenna outside a window?

No; "the law, as mis-interpreted"

[sirwired]

Judges resolve ambiguities in law all the time (in this case, deciding Aereo fit the definition of a re-broadcaster); in fact, that's almosts all the Supreme Court does. So yes, you do need to predict how a judge will rule; Aereo gambled, and lost.

The intent of the law, as written, was quite clear. The Supreme court, long ago, issued a decision that Aereo could have hidden behind. Congress clearly overrode that ruling via a subsequent law, which required those that re-transmit broadcast content to obtain a license. Aereo tried to get around that law with pretending that "But... Internet! And... Cloud!" was a magic wand that would let them get around that law. This ruling is consistent with last week's patent exclusion, which held that "But... Computer!" was also not a magic way around patent law...

Re:Yeesh.

[stdarg]

Oh yeah totally nailed it, except for where people are paying, and the product is freely available to them anyway.

You know why? Because they're paying for the convenience of having someone else set up the antenna and internet retransmission, rather than legally doing it themselves with something like the HDHomeRun.

Re:Oh, please

[chuckugly]

Well if you only count the votes for one candidate I guess the outcome is easy to predict.

orly?

[slashmydots]

Shocker. Aereo lost the famous court case of Areo vs a lot of $$$. Money wins cases in Washington.

Re:This now requires

[omnichad]

To be fair, programming a VCR is much harder than even x86 assembly.

Re:This now requires

[omnichad]

SCOTUS rules that Congress meant to include Aereo in a law made before anyone had any idea that technology would make something like Aereo possible. Boo SCOTUS!

They did. It's not great that the service can't thrive, but this law was specifically created because cable companies were retransmitting local channels without paying licensing fees. This just trades one copper wire for another, if even that.

Re:This now requires

[Wycliffe]

And that receiving and carrying it separately for each customer (using a separte tiny antenna and cheap-in-quantity integrated circuit digital radio receiver) was a transparent workaround that attempted to use an interpretation of the letter of the law to violate its intent).

In other words, you're saying they broke the law by complying with the law.

Too bad they can't apply the "attempted to use an interpretation of the letter of the law to violate its intent" to get all the
thousands of companies that do this daily (like google/apple/starbucks/etc... shell corporations to avoid taxes)
Fortune 500 companies have teams of lawyers to do just this. They try to figure out how to be legal while bypassing
the intent of the law.

Re:Yeesh.

[gnupun]

Oh yeah totally nailed it, except for where people are paying, and the product is freely available to them anyway.

They're paying a lot less than basic cable. What if Aereo had to pay retransmission fees to the copyright holders? Won't Aereo then jack up the monthly subscription fees to cover that cost?

Re:Yeesh.

[Bartles]

I never liked that saying, because a point in time is infinitely brief.

Re:Cut that cable, cut it now!

[Hamsterdan]

"By law they have to offer the local channels at something approaching cost"

And they're not doing it, since broadcast is free. and since they bundle channels nobody wants, it's not an antenna replacement. Aereo was.

  Aereo was renting you an antenna and DVR since some people can't erect antennas or have poor reception since the digital transition (UHF propagates poorly around obstacles compared to VHF)

Re:This now requires

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry. The cable act specifically refers to the word "retransmission" which is exactly what the Supreme Court has ruled what Aereo was doing. Just because something is retransmitted over the internet doesn't mean it magically falls under a new category of laws. Copyright law still applies even if you've invented a new technology to infringe it.

Re:This doesn't necessarly shut it down

[ahaweb]

Apparently what makes a crucial difference is the length of the delay: "Justice Breyer stressed that the decision said nothing about downloading a TV program in order to recover it and keep it on hand for somewhat later viewing."

Re:Cut that cable, cut it now!

[Shakrai]

And they're not doing it, since broadcast is free.

The law says broadcasters can ask for retransmission fees when you retransmit their signal. Take it up with Congress, it's not the job of the Supreme Court to nullify the law in order to protect someone's business model.

and since they bundle channels nobody wants, it's not an antenna replacement

You do know that CATV stands for Community Antenna TeleVision, right? In my market Time Warner Cable carries the exact same channels I can get with an antenna, for $4.95/mo. The only extra bundle is QVC (analog) alongside a handful of unencrypted QAM channels (QVC again, some weather feeds, and Time Warner's local news outlet).

Aereo was renting you an antenna and DVR

By retransmitting the signal, which they can't do without the appropriate licenses. Congress has decided that you can't retransmit the signals of third parties for profit. Write your United States Congressman and Senators if you feel this law needs to be changed.

have poor reception since the digital transition (UHF propagates poorly around obstacles compared to VHF)

The digital transition has nothing to do with it, except insofar as some channels may have moved from VHF to UHF. There's a handful of channels that moved in the other direction, going from UHF to VHF. In my market we went from one VHF and three UHF stations to two of each. Counting sub channels we get nine channels, as opposed to the old four, so digital was a unqualified win for us. Of course, this is all moot, because regardless of reception difficulties Aereo doesn't have the right to retransmit a third party signal for profit.

Re:The leave me NO choice

[Hamsterdan]

"1. If you had aereo, you were never paying content producers for the content."

The ads you watch pay for the content, same as with an antenna.

Simple solution

[Yakasha]

Aereo needs to separate the service providing part of the business from the hardware rental business so neither one is rebroadcasting.

1. Aereo Antenna Rental: you pay whatever fees they currently charge to rent an antenna & dvr; Additional $5/ month to be allowed to take it off their property (so you can set it up at home if you really want to)
2. Aereo Antenna Management: You pay them to manage your antenna... like a long-distance mechanical-turk style remote control.

Then its just Rent-A-Center partnering with an SI/SP to set your junk up.

Re:Yeesh.

[butchersong]

They're also paying a lot more than the cost of a cheap antenna. What's your point?

Re:The leave me NO choice

[Triklyn]

because they would be counted right?

Re:This now requires

[david_thornley]

What's the difference between an attempt to work around the law and an attempt to comply with the law?

Re:Yeesh.

[david_thornley]

Yeah. Damn those freeloaders, downloading Linux distros and other stuff that's deliberately put where it will be downloaded!

Good as dead.

[westlake]

They just have to change their model where the equipment including antenna goes to your house, then stored on local dvr or uploaded from there to their servers

HD reception can demand an expensive roof-top antenna installation. Ladder work.

Yes, and...?

[sirwired]

Ok, cable companies can Betamax (as in the court case) their way to OnDemand capabilty and/or delivering TV over the network. (And delivering TV over an IP stream is actually what VIOS/U-Verse do.) What, exactly, is your point?

Aereo thought that because they were pulling the feed off of an individual broadcast antenna, they didn't have to pay the same fees somebody pulling a single licensed feed for everybody from the station would.

They were wrong.

End of story.

Re:Yes, and...?

[evilviper]

What, exactly, is your point?

You said: "cable and satellite providers must pay retransmission fees, but Aereo avoided them."

Cable providers can avoid them in the same way Aereo did.

Aereo thought that because they were pulling the feed off of an individual broadcast antenna, they didn't have to pay the same fees

Aereo thought that following the law would keep them safe from the millions of dollars in lawyers the broadcasters would throw at them. Their legal interpretation remains sound. But under enough pressure and money, the courts will make anything legal, or illegal, to suit major multinational corporations, at the expense of startups.

If I was an advertiser ....

[PPH]

... I'd drag the broadcasters into court for cutting off a potential group of customers from my content.

The broadcaster want it all their way: Tell the networks and producers that they don't have the viewers so they can hold the price down on content. And then collect fees from people who come up with schemes to increase the viewer base. Meanwhile, sell ad time to local businesses based on the largest viewer base estimate possible.

I have a Gray Hoverman UHF antenna on my house. I can pick up stations as far away as 75 miles. And I've installed a few of these for some friends. Broadcasters should be lining up to sue me and keep me from increasing their viewer base.

Network DVR?

[joshio]

So, here is my question: if I had an antenna and a transcoder at my residence, could someone still act as a Network-based DVR? I'm a bit unclear at which part of their service is considered a public transmission... If I'm providing the content (as in my theory here) and then playing it back for myself, would this still be a no-no in accordance with this ruling? Network-based DVR would still be permitted, right? Or am I misreading/misunderstanding the ruling?

Re:This now requires

[Ungrounded Lightning]

In other words, you're saying they broke the law by complying with the law.

Close.

I'm saying the court majority said that. I'm with Scalia and most techies on this: It's up to the legislature to write it so it's clear, and the courts to enforce it the way it's written, "technicalities" and all. If there's any ambiguity giving wiggle room, the courts should ALWAYS use the interpretation that is most favorable to the defendant.

Aereo was wrong. Full stop.

[sirwired]

Firstly, let me re-state that I think that the law itself is wrong and unjust. But that's different from saying the Supreme Court interpreted the law incorrectly. I don't see why it should matter how a customer receives a broadcast within the service area of that broadcaster. However, given that legislation for this sort of situation exists, I think the Supreme Court reasonably interpreted the law.

Aereo thought that their setup with individual antennas was a workaround for retransmission fees. Turns out it's not. When the law has any ambiguity, the courts (and certainly the Supreme Court) gets to decide what the law is. Which means their legal interpretation may have been plausible (I think it wasn't) but the losing side in a Supreme Court case is, by definition, in the wrong (until the law changes, anyway.) That means cable providers can't avoid fees the way Aereo did; because Aereo was blowing smoke.

The law (written in the 70's by Congress) said that taking the signal and retransmitting it was a "performance" requiring the licensing of the content. It originally was written in response to "community antennas" that filled in gaps in broadcast reception, but over the years, it also applied to Cable TV systems, satellite providers, and IP-TV providers like VIOS and U-Verse. The court decided that capturing the signal remotely and packaging it up over the internet qualifies as a retransmission, no matter how many antennas you use. This is not an unreasonable decision here. Frankly, I'm not sure why Aereo thought that an array of tiny antennas was a "magic wand" to let them avoid fees that a provider like VIOS or U-Verse, (which produce the same end-result (an individual video stream of a broadcast over the internet)) must pay. Courts generally don't like the "magic wand" way of resolving legal responsibilities; they frown on cumbersome things that make no sense outside circumvention of a legal requirement. (In a similar vein, a tax shelter must have a genuine economic purpose to be ruled valid; otherwise it's tax evasion. And it's still money-laundering if a bank sees a depositor split up payments to each be $1 below reporting thresholds.)

(As a side-note, that law in the 70's was written in response to a specific court case where the court said re-transmission wasn't a "performance" under copyright law. So Aereo would have been correct prior to that law being written, but they were bitten by the clear intent of the law.)

This decision reminds me of the shop a few years ago that thought they could set up a Video-on-Demand service by plugging up an array of physical DVD drives in their data center, thinking they could get around continual performance royalties through the one-time purchase of a DVD. They lost too. Again, the court frowned on a cumbersome setup that made utterly no technical sense put in place just to try and avoid the law.

And the court was careful to narrowly scope the decision to prevent it from being used to stop people from doing things like backing up their music collection to Dropbox.

Ranting about bought and paid-for law isn't really relevant here. Since they are Supreme Court justices, they can utterly ignore political and corporate pressure and rule any way they damn well please. That doesn't mean justices are always right, but criticisms that might normally apply to Congress and elected justices aren't really relevant to judges with lifetime appointments.

Re:Aereo was wrong. Full stop.

[evilviper]

Frankly, I'm not sure why Aereo thought that an array of tiny antennas was a "magic wand" to let them avoid fees

Arguing on a subject you are ignorant of, isn't a good way to go. Read the law, it specifically talks about shared antennas.

Since they are Supreme Court justices, they can utterly ignore political and corporate pressure and rule any way they damn well please

In theory, everyone else can, too. Reality is that they don't, though, because they all have something to gain. Supreme court justices routinely accept money, accommodations, and gifts from big organizations.

Re:Yeesh.

[gnupun]

My point is Aereo is cable tv like service that is using the internet instead of the older cable technology to deliver TV shows. Therefore, they should be treated in the same manner as a cable tv service. Simply changing the transmission layer (whether it's cable, satellite or internet) does not change the fundamental business model. Legally, you can't redistribute copyrighted content to multiple users and not pay the licensing fees for the content.

Real world power

[sjbe]

The Legislative branch does make statuatory laws; regulations are not really law but the how the law is applied.

You seem to believe that statutory laws are fully formed when written. They aren't. Regulations ARE a form of lawmaking. The statutes generally provide the framework but limited detail, the regulations provide the specific details of how to implement the framework and case law settles any disputes about the interpretation of the statute or the regulation. The executive branch typically has vast flexibility in implementing regulations because statutes are rarely very detailed. Regulations carry the full weight of law unless overruled by a statute or case law, and even then it sometimes doesn't matter since the executive branch can often simply ignore or work around the dictates of the other branches. If you think regulations and their enforcement (or non-enforcement) is not lawmaking in every sense that matters then I think you really need to get clued in on how power actually works in the real world.

Re:Real world power

[TemporalBeing]

You are lumping Common Law into Statuatory Law. The two are not the same. Statuatory Law is the sum of the bills passed by the Legislative Branch. Common Law is what is common observed by the people.

And what you state about Regulation in no way negates what I said - they are simply a derivative of the Statuatory Law by which they are bound. And as I said, Regulations can only be enforced so long as they are within those bounds; challenging whether they are within bounds or not is a good way to get rid of the regulation - and is done often by interested parties.

If you want to make a case otherwise, please provide evidence/examples for it.

Dang right about PBS

[tepples]

Basically, if you were in another country and only saw PBS [...] you'd decide the American model is the way to go.

This is why my family supports our local PBS station.

"The law" discusses shared antennas? Where?

[sirwired]

The law which applies is 17 USC 101, 106 and 111. The word "antenna" (much less "shared antennas") appears in none of the three. So when you say "the law" "specifically talks about shared antennas", which part are you referring to? Not even the dissent refers to any statute about shared antennas.

101 has many of the the definitions for copyright law, including that for "performance" which was amended by the copyright act of '76, which was designed to stop the old "community antenna" cable systems, but it did so without using the word "antenna". Read the Aereo decision if you want the gory details on how the definition was amended.

106 says the copyright holder calls the shots for reproduction, performance, distribution, etc.

111 Defines "Cable Provider" and details the must-carry / compulsory license rules that apply to them. (f)1, 2, and 3 are the relevant sections in play.
1, details what a "primary transmission" is.
2, a "secondary transmission" what Aereo is accused of doing.
3 defines "cable system" which Aereo has now been judged to be. It would certainly seem to fit... to wit: "A “cable system” is a facility, located in any State, territory, trust territory, or possession of the United States, that in whole or in part receives signals transmitted or programs broadcast by one or more television broadcast stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, and makes secondary transmissions of such signals or programs by wires, cables, microwave, or other communications channels to subscribing members of the public who pay for such service.

Letter from Aereo

[skezix]

Aereo is temporarily throwing in the towel.

We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps. You will be able to access your cloud-based antenna and DVR only until 11:30 a.m. ET today. All of our users will be refunded their last paid month.

One hour's notice, at 8:30 on Saturday morning. Way to go, Aereo.

Re:The leave me NO choice

[Hamsterdan]

easier in fact. Aereo could simply tell the broadcasters *exactly* how many people watch theirs shows.

Headline wrong

[jhylkema]

Should read, "Supreme Court sides with corporate establishment Yet Again."