Aereo Embraces Ruling, Tries To Re-Classify Itself As Cable Company

An anonymous reader writes Rather than completely shuttering its TV-over-the-internet business, Aereo has decided to embrace the Supreme Court's recent decision against it. In a letter to the lower court overseeing the litigation between the company and network broadcasters, Aereo asks to be considered a cable company and to be allowed to pay royalties as such. Cable companies pay royalties to obtain a copyright statutory license under the Copyright Act to retransmit over-the-air programming, and the royalties are set by the government, not the broadcasters. The broadcasters are not happy with this move, of course, claiming that Aereo should not be allowed to flip-flop on how it defines itself.

Comments

Re:It's only fair

[Mr D from 63]

If they are considered a cable company, then they won't need all those antennas. That should reduce their operating cost, and maybe offset some of the new re-transmission costs.

What about the ads

[jandrese]

As I understand it, if they get classified as a cable company Aero will be legally allowed to put their own ads into the stream, overwriting the ads the original broadcaster put in there or maybe removing them entirely if they still want to be an entirely subscription driven service. They could really seriously piss off some OTA broadcasters with this approach.

Re: What about the ads

[Anonymous Coward]

You understood wrong. Multichannel providers pay the local stations who wish to be paid, and don't pay the ones who request their must-carry rights. Never does a cable company insert their own programming over a local station (except in the case of sports blackouts, and this is often done by literally blacking out the station instead of replacing it with other programming).

Re:It's only fair

[DarkOx]

Yet don't you dare encrypt anything in an amateur radio band!