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Locast, a Free App Streaming Network TV, Would Love to Get Sued (nytimes.com)
Want to watch the Super Bowl and other network TV for free? A start-up called Locast will let you, and (so far) the big broadcasters aren't trying to stop it. From a report: On the roof of a luxury building at the edge of Central Park, 585 feet above the concrete, a lawyer named David Goodfriend has attached a modest four-foot antenna that is a threat to the entire TV-industrial complex. The device is there to soak up TV signals coursing through the air -- content from NBC, ABC, Fox, PBS and CBS. Once plucked from the ether, the content is piped through the internet and assembled into an app called Locast. It's a streaming service, and it makes all of this network programming available to subscribers in ways that are more convenient than relying on a home antenna: It's viewable on almost any device, at any time, in pristine quality that doesn't cut in and out. It's also completely free.
If this sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Aereo, the Barry Diller-backed start-up that in 2012 threatened to upend the media industry by capturing over-the-air TV signals and streaming the content to subscribers for a fee -- while not paying broadcasters a dime. NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox banded together and sued, eventually convincing the Supreme Court that Aereo had violated copyright law. The clear implication for many: If you mess with the broadcasters, you'll file for bankruptcy and cost your investors more than $100 million.
Mr. Goodfriend took a different lesson. A former media executive with stints at the Federal Communications Commission and in the Clinton administration, he wondered if an Aereo-like offering that was structured as a noncommercial entity would remain within the law. Last January, he started Locast in New York. The service now has about 60,000 users in Houston, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas and Denver as well as New York, and will soon add more in Washington, D.C. Mr. Goodfriend, 50, said he hoped to cover the entire nation as quickly as possible. "I'm not stopping," he said. "I can't now." The comment is basically a dare to the networks to take legal action against him. By giving away TV, Mr. Goodfriend is undercutting the licensing fees that major broadcasters charge the cable and satellite companies -- a sum that will exceed $10 billion this year, according to the research firm Kagan S&P Global Market Intelligence. For cable customers, the traditional network channels typically add about $12 to a monthly bill.
If this sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Aereo, the Barry Diller-backed start-up that in 2012 threatened to upend the media industry by capturing over-the-air TV signals and streaming the content to subscribers for a fee -- while not paying broadcasters a dime. NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox banded together and sued, eventually convincing the Supreme Court that Aereo had violated copyright law. The clear implication for many: If you mess with the broadcasters, you'll file for bankruptcy and cost your investors more than $100 million.
Mr. Goodfriend took a different lesson. A former media executive with stints at the Federal Communications Commission and in the Clinton administration, he wondered if an Aereo-like offering that was structured as a noncommercial entity would remain within the law. Last January, he started Locast in New York. The service now has about 60,000 users in Houston, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas and Denver as well as New York, and will soon add more in Washington, D.C. Mr. Goodfriend, 50, said he hoped to cover the entire nation as quickly as possible. "I'm not stopping," he said. "I can't now." The comment is basically a dare to the networks to take legal action against him. By giving away TV, Mr. Goodfriend is undercutting the licensing fees that major broadcasters charge the cable and satellite companies -- a sum that will exceed $10 billion this year, according to the research firm Kagan S&P Global Market Intelligence. For cable customers, the traditional network channels typically add about $12 to a monthly bill.
wow, this is inspiring, thank you slashdot for telling me about this bodacious use of technology
How is the operation paying for itself? TANSTAFL.
Copyright law doesn't say commercial distribution is prohibited while free distribution is allowed. It says the copyright holder has complete authority over distribution of their work. In fact that's why Aereo lost. Aereo wasn't actually charging for the broadcast TV content. They were charging you to rent an antenna from them (they went so far as to give each user their own individual antenna with their own encoder to generate their own individual stream, instead of using the signal from a single antenna to encode a single video stream broadcast to all their users). They were technically providing the TV broadcasts for free; you were only paying for equipment rental.
The Supreme Court ruled against them because the copyright holder has ultimate say over how their content is distributed, paid or free.
Don't diss the NYT for spending real money on real journalists to do fact-checked real reporting. This real activities cost real money, and they are entitled to collect it any which way they want. I don't have a subscription, but I do admire them for their choices, when most of the "news" these days are half-assed bloggers, junk-ad filled "You won't believe what happened next" image click lists, or other time-wasting drivel.
How is NYT paywalling any different than charging $0.35 for the daily paper?