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:

[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:

[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:

[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:

[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]

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:

[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]

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

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:

[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:

[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.

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

[compro01]

Blame Congress.

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

[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

[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

[Joe_Dragon]

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

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

[david_thornley]

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

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!

[Hamsterdan]

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

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

[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.

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.

[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]

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: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.

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

[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

[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: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: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...

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.

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:Is It Retransmission...?

[MobyDisk]

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

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: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).

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: 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.

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.