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Aereo Gets OK From Bankruptcy Court To Auction Technology Assets
An anonymous reader writes Judge Sean Lane of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan gave permission to Aereo to sell its remaining assets to the highest bidder. The decision came after Aereo reached an agreement with the major broadcast networks that are suing the service. From the article: "Now a bankruptcy court in New York has granted Aereo permission to sell off its assets, with one big caveat: those angry broadcasters who shut them down in the first place? They get to approve any sales that go down. The auction will take place on February 24, at which point the broadcasters have two weeks to decide if they're okay with the highest bidder."
so this means the broadcasters can approve a lowballed sale from their own subsidiary and then offer the same service as the now defunct aereo. status quo will remain status quo
Okay i can see this going down a few ways 1 at 16:55 on feb 28 the broadcasters deny the highest bidder (thus allowing ongoing expenses to suck what little value there is left out) 2 the "highest bidder" is one of A secretly the broadcasters themselves B another company that just happens to share staff with the broadcasters 3 a sudden disaster takes out the Aria location with most of the actual assets In all cases the broadcasters will within 9 months offer a service that allows Aria type functions for an actually reasonable cost. so who wants to set ODDS??
No, they had one antenna per customer. They did this specifically to try to evade the existing law requiring royalty payments for CATV distributors, which originally started by putting an antenna on a mountaintop and running a cable down into the valley to sell the signal to the locals who couldn't otherwise get it through the mountain. After all, if each customer had their own personal antenna on the end of a wire then it's totally different than everyone sharing one antenna on the end of a wire, right? (oh, I forgot to add: on the internet!) The Supreme Court ruled that the number of antennas was not the deciding factor on whether you were a cable TV company or not.
I think it sounds like a good idea, and I'd be your first customer. Then again, I thought Aereo was a good idea too, and on solid legal ground as well. I'm dumbfounded the courts shut them down, but given that they did it seems pretty clear they will shut down whatever derivative or similar business model you come up with, on whatever technicality they can get to stick. It would seem that legality or common sense or "public benefit" doesnt play as much as a role as we would like to imagine.
Given that the bankruptcy is mostly due to the lawsuit demanding that Aereo pay them a bajillion dollars, they'd basically be paying that money to themselves. If they turn down a $1 billion dollar offer for the gear, then they don't get a billion dollars, because there's no other way they're going to get this money legit.
Personally I think the first post is the most insightful for once: they'll create a front company, put in an offer to buy the gear for $1 or whatever, reject everything else, kill off Aereo, then open CBSeo at ten times the price and half the features then when everyone quits they'll whine about piracy until the feds pass new laws giving the government more power. Wins all around! (except for us little people, but who cares about us little people?)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
"Alright, let's get this party started. Lot Number One... a pallet cube... we have a jumble of some sort of boxes of geegaw stuff, half have power cords. there are no manuals or labelling on the devices. let's start bidding at a dollar... one dollar dollar dollar, lot 1... still one dollar... do I hear 50 cents?"
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
But cbs owns content, they don't need aero (which was trying to distribute ota content legally, but without paying, note I think this should be legal without trickery, the content is in therory paid for with ads, more viewers is better).
I suspect a Canadian company may buy it, if memory serves correctly, rebroadcasting unaltered content is legal in Canada.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The idea was solid, but the laws are antiquated and the cable companies are greedy. Laws that would prevent me from re-broadcasting a cable signal to non-cable subscribers, or prevent me from streaming a signal over the internet to another region are what ultimately did this company in.
From any common sense I can possibly understand, there was no moral or legal reason to shut Aereo down. If anything, the Television companies would benefit by retaining viewers. Cable is nothing more than a utility that brings you the product, the definition of stealing cable doesn't apply, here. The backwards thing is that Cable cutters aren't just eliminating the utility, they're eliminating the product. Live Television doesn't matter anymore. Waiting for your favorite TV show to come on at 7:00PM every Wednesday has become a "Back in my day" story we tell our kids.
The cable companies own the networks and the networks are forced to participate in fast-declining business model. This is the reason why "television networks" may not be around in another 10 years.
Zediva. It was already tried and shut down by the courts a couple years ago.
https://gigaom.com/2012/03/19/zediva-liquidation-assets/
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Zediva launched [~Early 2011] with a unique proposition: The company offered to stream current-release DVD titles for $1.99 per movie – much less than customers would have to pay to VOD services like Amazon or iTunes. Zediva was able to achieve these low rates through a complex workaround: Instead of licensing the movies from Hollywood studios, it simply bought them on DVD, and then “rented” those DVDs to customers, who got to see a stream of the DVD as it played in one of Zediva’s many DVD players.
Hollywood took the company to court, and Zediva lost. The company agreed to pay the studios $1.8 million in damages and suspended its operations in August of 2011. Its website, which at the time stated that it hoped “to be back online soon,” has since been taken offline.
According to their explanation, Aereo used "tiny antennas" to connect each customer with their content. Wonder if those are going to be sold off...
Do we know who the creditors are?
I was under the impression that it was the networks. If that is the case, the primary goal won't be to extract as much cash from the corpse or (as the conspiracies in this thread suggest - which is where my post was pointed to) cheaply take over the company. Rather, it would be to drive a stake through Aereo's heart. Yes, the court is supposed to oversee the process for abuses – but somebody has to contest the issue. I just don't see anybody pushing the issue to hard.
If there are other actors other than the networks, then there would be somebody else to contest the issue.
The law isn't the problem. Judges are corrupt and willing to consider inappropriate things like "will this cause the profits of a corporation to suffer" rather than just applying the law. It was a well crafted bit of technical trickery meant to follow the letter of the law.
The court chose to ignore that. Lower courts then chose to ignore the mental gymnastics the higher court came up with.
They changed the rules and refused to allow Aereo to change to accommodate them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
mod parent up.
Rulings like those in Aareo and Zediva's cases almost make it seem like normal DVD rentals and TiVO's will be the next on the chopping block. Of course, they tried, but somehow (luckily) those won.
Why the hell Zediva got shut down is beyond me.
Aereo was actually more likely to be shut down than Zediva (it could be argued that Aereo put some load on the existing system to sell a rebroadcast to users that were not possible customers of said broadcasts which, while technically should have skirted the laws, was a fairly obvious attempt at getting something for nothing and charging for it while playing tricks to avoid the law). I still thought it was a good service, but it was obviously a kludge.
Ideally, at least in my view, the content owners, or those they've licensed to, would make all their content available at a reasonable rate over the internet. The aggregation and post processing should, IMO, happen at the customer premise. Just like TiVO, but pull the streams from various sources rather than requiring cable TV, satellite TV, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Vudu, etc etc etc. In addition, metadata should be free (ie. tv guide data) from anyone broadcasting anything over anything - I mean, why the hell not?
My prediction is that things will continue on what is now the obvious path. Re: see iTunes and mp3's. Essentially, some balance/semi-standard will be set for cost-per-show and cost-per-movie, and a handful of big companies will get access to nearly the entire library, and people will cut back on pirating and kludges such as aereo will no longer be profitable. And yes, dvd sales will drop as quickly as cd sales, and cable tv subscriptions will slowly decline, but that's all just the transport medium. Cut down on cable TV subscriptions, and cable may be able to be more competitive with FiOS for internet access :-)
As I understand the law from previous readings, it is legal to rent or buy an antenna and install it on land you rent or own, but it is not legal to rent or buy access to an antenna on land you neither rent nor own.
Think of the scenario of living at the bottom of a hill that blocks access to all the TV signals from the nearby town. If the guy who owns the top of the hill installs an antenna and runs a cable down to your property line, he can't sell you access to that cable. Likewise, you can't buy an antenna and install it on his property, and run your own cable to your property. (As I understand the law, stupid as it may be.)
What you might be able to do is rent 10 square feet of land on the top of the hill, and sign an access agreement to that land for you and your cable. Then you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with those ten square feet (subject to your rental agreement) including install an antenna. This wasn't aero's business model so it wasn't explored by this case. Of course, in a city there may be laws that limit where and how sub-parcels of land can be rented. I suspect someplace advertising themself as "roof top storage units with gigabit Ethernet connections) would be legal even if you happen to install an antenna and network-controlled DVR in them. Hard to know.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Zediva was shutdown because like Aero they tried to work around the laws to skip paying for a license from the content provider.
They were purchasing regular DVDs and renting them in violation of the DVD license. Rental DVDs require a totally different license.
Not that I agree with the licensing scheme, but just stating the reason.
You are a troll. DIAF and have a nice day.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.