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Court Rejects Fox's Attempt to Use Aereo Ruling Against Dish's Hopper

Posted by Unknown on from the spacetime-shifting-is-not-a-crime dept.

Fox and Dish have been locking horns over Dish over its streaming and PVR services for a while now, and immediately after the Aereo ruling Fox sought an injunction against Dish's services. The court rejected the request. From the article: Fox pointed out the Supremes had reflected Aereo's argument (which it said was Dish's as well) that a performance was not public under the Copyright Act if each sub watches a unique stream. Fox's lawyer, Richard Stone, argued that Aereo was also essentially about attaching a Slingbox to a DVR. But that got some pushback. One judge countered that it was "completely different technology" and said that while that was the argument, "the Supreme court has all sorts of caveats in the opinion about how this was about Aereo and nothing else and a lot of the 'nothing elses' seem to be pretty similar to Slingbox." The underlying case will continue moving forward (going to trial in early 2015).

12 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Need a EULA for video by paiute · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The networks want to be paid every time a consumer watches a program, live, recorded, restreamed, or whatever. I am surprised that they do not insert a screen before every show reading something along the lines of 'I agree not to redirect the following content.' If the user does not agree with that, they are instructed to stop the program at that point.

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    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
    1. Re:Need a EULA for video by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      " insert a screen before every show"

      Don't be silly. They'd insert the screen right over the damned show.

  2. Can't use duck test and rational argument by duckgod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is complete bullshit. The argument for Aereo was always that if I can rent an apartment in the same city, hook a slingbox up to an antenna, and stream the tv to my second apartment is legal then so is Aereo. This is what I believe to be a solid legal argument. The Supreme Court decided to go with a walk like a cable company, quack like a cable company than follow the rules of a cable company. Judge Scalia had it right in the dissent "It is not the role of this Court to identify and plug loopholes. It is the role of good lawyers to identify and exploit them, and the role of Congress to eliminate them if it wishes,". This was a loophole around a bullshit law. But it was definitely logically legal loophole.

    Now the Fox Lawyers are trying to use this bullshit duck test ruling backwards towards slingbox. Good for the court to quickly reject this Monty Python and the Holy Grail witch logic.

    1. Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Your Aero argument is indeed solid...except for one thing. Congress deliberately mucked it up by preventing cable companies from being able to rebroadcast local broadcast channels, implementing this must-carry-for-free-or-negotiate-for-dollars, tv station decides.

      Congress did it! However, Fox has no leg to stand on, with the the Aero ruling, anyway. You have your signal and shows already and are just using slingbox to transmit it around for you. This doesn't fall afoul of Congress' strange law for must-carry.

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      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    2. Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Also, Fox is one of the most fucking restrictive content providers in that they require that you not be allowed to skip past their bullshit advertising. This is probably one of their biggest issues with Dish's Hopper DVR. It got to the point that I stopped watching any Fox shows OnDemand anymore because I can't stand being forced to watch their fucking commercials. That and the fact that if I stop halfway through and don't pick it back up within something like 6 hours, I have to start all over again from the beginning and can't even fast forward to the fucking point where I stopped the last time. That's just consumer abuse!

    3. Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument by NotInHere · · Score: 2

      I'm actually happy about fox doing this, as it creates hatred for DRM and such.

    4. Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 2

      This seems to further re-affirm the court's position (agree with it or not) that Aereo is a cable company even though they use the internet for transfer. It will be interesting to see if this opens the door for others who want to do similar. It seems that it would be quite easy to put up a few antennas and servers and create your own local cable company with PC, android and IOS apps on the client end, no need for set top boxes. If enough of these ventures sprang up, they could eventually consolidate and offer some of their own channels/content. A step toward true Ala-cart.

    5. Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument by fuzznutz · · Score: 2

      You need to do like I do. Wait two hours after broadcast and pick up your cleaned up, commercial free, HD copy free of charge from the Pirate Bay.

      Is your local broadcast interrupted by bullshit - "it's raining outside" - emergency broadcasts?
      Is your local broadcast preempted by football or baseball games that run too long?
      Does your local broadcast shrink to half size to show the lottery results or other "important" information?

      No problem... Pirate bay has a clean copy.

    6. Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument by mark-t · · Score: 2

      The biggest argument against Aero, I think, lies in that the fact that they were doing it for commercial gain... As a general principle, they weren't actually doing anything that it isn't completely legal for a private person to do for their own purposes, but as soon as you throw making any money while doing it into the mix, any recordings that you make no longer qualify simply as "private home viewing" and are thus ineligible for copyright infringement exemption.

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      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    7. Re: Can't use duck test and rational argument by jd2112 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      One for the wife and one for the mistress?

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      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
    8. Re:Can't use duck test and rational argument by GTRacer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Slingbox is very different. It's a personal device that does nothing but forward a single channel from your own cable box (or DirectTV receiver) to your current location.

      Um, that's EXACTLY what Aereo was doing. A single antenna, tuned to a single broadcast, streamed to a single IN-MARKET user. My dad and I actually discussed this over the weekend. He sided with the broadcasters cos Aereo was for-profit. That was it. He agreed with me on the technical merits but disagreed Kanojia, Diller et. al. should be able to profit.

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      Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
  3. Re:"The Supremes"? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ever since it voted 2-1 to stop in the name of love...