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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.
but the lawyers won't. Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.
wow, this is inspiring, thank you slashdot for telling me about this bodacious use of technology
Thanks.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
How is the operation paying for itself? TANSTAFL.
Each Aero subscriber had his own antenna. When buy I an antenna, no one complains about that. Why can't I rent one?
a VPN that shows its location as being in one of the target cities?
I'm all for sticking it to cable companies but if this makes a serious dent in content creator's revenue we're going to see a serious decline in the quality (well, what little quality exists) and quantity of new programming available for traditional TV. Locast's success would be its end.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Local people sharing would eliminate possible legal troubles that come from a centrally owned system. Having a multi-node system would also eliminate the problems with traffic throttling due to a single ISP. Just need the hardware and spare network bandwidth by volunteers. ... Re-reading this kind of sounds like TOR with a new front end.
Ah, somebody thinks that TPTB won't drag this guy through courts with bribed judges until they win or bankrupt him, or, failing that, just fucking kill him.
I like it when spellcheck turns text into naturalistic post-modern poetry.
You are welcome on my lawn.
While the story is being covered by the, often paywalled, New York Times...
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
You need to create an account to login via email or FB.
On the plus side it does not seem to care from where you are watching.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Article outlines that this is one of the precarious legal loopholes he's working it, you must be in the appropriate BTA or you cannot use the Locast from that area.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
...but it only serves places awash in local signals. When (as if) it serves places no signals reach, then it might be of some interest.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
If they relay the commercials too, what's the problem?
IcraveTV tried to do this back in 1999. I still have a business card from their compression engineer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Don't install Firefox, definitely don't install a location spoofer, don't even think of setting location to fixed/NYC. It appears to go by location services, not IP.
This could be really good. I've moved around the country a bit and it's always a hassle being a fan of sports teams in cities where I no longer live. I wouldn't mind being able to watch the Astros or Rockets or Bears or Blackhawks without having to invest in an expensive package.
I think I'm gonna try this locast. Plus, on a day like today, it would be fun to watch a local news broadcast from Chicago, where it's -8 F while wearing shorts and sitting on my porch.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Slight alteration. You must APPEAR to be in the appropriate BTA or you can not use the Locast from that area. Which will put the service at additional risk since it's trivial to change your apparent location on the Internet.
17 USC 111(a): "Certain Exempted. The secondary transmission of a performance or display of a work embodied in a primary transmission is not an infringement of copyright if... the secondary transmission is not made by a cable system but is made by a governmental body, or other nonprofit organization, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage, and without charge to the recipients of the secondary transmission other than assessments necessary to defray the actual and reasonable costs of maintaining and operating the secondary transmission service."
In other words, he probably isn't screwed.
I'm behind a small hill, just big enough to interfere with broadcast signals coming from Philly. After replacing a couple of small cable boxes with Roku sticks I found this and installed it. It's good enough. If my cable supplier starts charging for their streaming app, I'll drop their tv stuff and go all streaming.
Got it on my phone too...
Locast is a public service to Americans, providing local broadcast signals over the Internet in select cities. All you have to do is sign up online, provide your name and email address, and certify that you live in, and are logging on from, one of the select US cities (“Designated Market Area”). Then, you can select among local broadcasters and stream your favorite local station.
Locast.org is a “digital translator,” meaning that Locast.org operates just like a traditional broadcast translator service, except instead of using an over-the-air signal to boost a broadcaster’s reach, we stream the signal over the Internet to consumers located within select US cities.
Ever since the dawn of TV broadcasting in the mid-20th Century, non-profit organizations have provided “translator” TV stations as a public service. Where a primary broadcaster cannot reach a receiver with a strong enough signal, the translator amplifies that signal with another transmitter, allowing consumers who otherwise could not get the over-the-air signal to receive important programming, including local news, weather and of course, sports. Locast.org provides the same public service, except instead of an over-the-air signal transmitter, we provide the local broadcast signal via online streaming.
You need a broadband Internet connection for optimal performance. Using a laptop, smartphone, or computer connected to the Internet, point your browser to www.Locast.org to sign up. You then can choose which local broadcast station to watch from your Internet-enabled device.
This service is essentially no different, really, than what the earliest days of cable TV services were: a way for everyone in a market area to receive the television stations in that market area without having to have an antenna. I, myself, in the 70's and 80's in a housing tract where the HOA did not allow you to have an antenna on your roof; it was using the cable TV service or have an antenna in your attic or inside your house. We opted for cable TV. 'Locast' is, as it states, an internet-age updated version of that early 'antenna service'. So long as they can ensure within reasonable bounds that people outside the markets it's serving can't receive those stations, then I don't see a problem, really. They're not editing out commercials or inserting commercials, they're not recording content (if you don't count an AV data stream, even transcoded-on-the-fly, as 'recorded', that is) and they're not really 'selling' the signals themselves, they're selling a service to facilitate reception of stations within the market area to people who geographically-speaking should be able to receive it, but may not be able to do so for extenuating circumstances. So I can see why they'd want to be sued: if they win they create the legal precedent for services like this to be legally allowed.
I think broadcasters should welcome a service like this, if they want to save the OTA broadcast industry as a whole. I'm not saying they should ditch their megawatt transmitters and huge broadcast antennas, but they should allow services like this to exist as a supplement to OTA signals for the reason specified by Locast and companies like them: to fill in the gaps in signal coverage.
Are there going to be technically-inclined people who will find a way around technologically-enforced restrictions on who can stream what markets' stations? Yes, of course. But that will always be a minority; there's always going to be 'pilfering' of some kind with just about anything, and trying to stop 100% of it is an endless game of Whack-a-Mole, as the RIAA and MPAA damned well know, and as such it's not worth doing. There is a need for a service like this, which differs from 'streaming' services like Spotify or Hulu and their ilk, and I think it's time has come. The broadcast televsion industry would be wise to welcome it instead of fighting against it.
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.
17 USC 111(a): "Certain Exempted. The secondary transmission of a performance or display of a work embodied in a primary transmission is not an infringement of copyright if... the secondary transmission is not made by a cable system but is made by a governmental body, or other nonprofit organization, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage, and without charge to the recipients of the secondary transmission other than assessments necessary to defray the actual and reasonable costs of maintaining and operating the secondary transmission service."
Law says it's legal if it's non-profit.
Good luck to locast users watching the Superbowl. The playoffs were so laggy via Locast that I gave up watching them.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
The parent post is very informative, but won't be seen by a lot of people because it's AC and doesn't have its own subject line.
Quoting the AC:
17 USC 111(a): "Certain Exempted. The secondary transmission of a performance or display of a work embodied in a primary transmission is not an infringement of copyright if... the secondary transmission is not made by a cable system but is made by a governmental body, or other nonprofit organization, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage, and without charge to the recipients of the secondary transmission other than assessments necessary to defray the actual and reasonable costs of maintaining and operating the secondary transmission service."
So the law is re-transmitting the broadcast is okay if it's done by a non-profit.
Note this is only about re-transmitting *broadcast* TV, which was already being sent out to everyone for free.
he has collected $10,000 in donations so far, mostly in $5 increments. He took out a high-interest loan, at around 15 percent, to fund the operation, which to date has cost more than $700,000.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Just incase you want to learn more about it, load the developer console in chrome (right-click: inspect element), in the console, type sensors. Select "Show Sensors". The sensors drawer shows up on the bottom. In GeoLocation, enter the geo-location for whatever market you want to load. NY is 40.730610, -73.935242.
if the adverts are there.
I suppose the sports team are upset, but as a tax payer currently paying interest on bonds for 3 or 4 stadiums they can bite my shinny metal ass.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So I think they will get their wish. The MAFIAA thinks they have a right to royalties from all music, all video, forever. So yes, they will sue.
Corporatism != Free Market
The parent post is very informative, but won't be seen by a lot of people because it's AC and doesn't have its own subject line.
Quoting the AC:
17 USC 111(a): "Certain Exempted. The secondary transmission of a performance or display of a work embodied in a primary transmission is not an infringement of copyright if... the secondary transmission is not made by a cable system but is made by a governmental body, or other nonprofit organization, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage, and without charge to the recipients of the secondary transmission other than assessments necessary to defray the actual and reasonable costs of maintaining and operating the secondary transmission service."
So the law is re-transmitting the broadcast is okay if it's done by a non-profit.
Note this is only about re-transmitting *broadcast* TV, which was already being sent out to everyone for free.
So, a non-profit,in theory, could deliver broadcast TV only charging for the maintenance of the antennas/servers/internet used for delivery? Interesting...
Since OTA (over the air) TV is ad-supported, and since Locast does not alter or remove the ads, it would seem that the channels get broader ad exposure when they appear on Locast, and therefore could make a case that their ad time is more valuable. Therefore, I would think the broadcasters would be in favor of Locast.
Now, trouble would arise when the broadcaster secures the right to show a movie OTA, but then the rights holder of the movie objects to further broadcast beyond OTA. This equates to your 'intended distance' condition. Goodness knows how much legal wrangling is necessary just to secure the OTA permission. I can readily imagine that a similar legal effort would be required to secure permission for broadcast beyond OTA. I expect Locast could be in for trouble.
This is why the law normally narrowly defines terms like cable system
(3)A “cable system” is a facility, located in any State, territory, trust territory, or possession of the United States, that in whole or in part receives signals transmitted or programs broadcast by one or more television broadcast stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, and makes secondary transmissions of such signals or programs by wires, cables, microwave, or other communications channels to subscribing members of the public who pay for such service. For purposes of determining the royalty fee under subsection (d)(1), two or more cable systems in contiguous communities under common ownership or control or operating from one headend shall be considered as one system.
Since OTA (over the air) TV is ad-supported, and since Locast does not alter or remove the ads, it would seem that the channels get broader ad exposure when they appear on Locast, and therefore could make a case that their ad time is more valuable. Therefore, I would think the broadcasters would be in favor of Locast.
But it's the broadcaster not locast who gets to make that decision.
and to give an example of the hypothetical case you describe, In the case of sporting events there are commonly local blackout restrictions. these are copyrights not of the broadcaster but of the content owner. The broadcaster in turn must use copyright restrictions to enforce those.
thus it isn't just about ad revenue.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
All of this is nice but irrelevant. Congress specifically made rebroadcasting illegal so bars would have to pay to show broadcast TV games.
That's what tripped up the earlier company. It thought it could get around that by literally giving you your own antenna on their site and you paid them to transfer it through the Internet. But the same law requires cable companies to pay to carry it, too. The antenna being "yours" was not enough.
These guys are doing the same thing but are hoping that, by not charging, they can get around the law which may have something about how bars and cable companies get paid and so are showing for money.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Only if Locast makes it available to people in the area only. If they let someone from Los Angeles watch a New York stream, the ads are completely irrelevant and worthless.
Even worse, the ads are worth less - less in New York because out of area viewers see them, and less in Los Angeles because there are viewers of the broadcast who won't see those.
Why would a Budweiser ad in New York be irrelevant to a viewer in Los Angeles? They have Budweiser in both markets, and it's the same product in both markets.
Same logic goes for any other advertising for a national brand; by and large most television advertising is purchased by these national brands.
Your point stands for any local businesses buying the advertisements, unless they also sell via a web site.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
stick up some antennas and make an app is orders of magnitude easier than cutting through the red tape to bring in new internet to undeserved. I mean look, even Google basically gave up on it. if a Billion dollar company cant make it work ...
Typically broadcast TV has space for "national" and "local" commercials. Probably hard to notice in a major metro area, but in low population areas the low production quality of "local" commercials is a dead giveaway as to when in the break it switches. A commercial for Pepsi is typically in the national section (beginning of the break) and the commercial for your local Ford dealer / personal injury lawyer / county fair / nightly news will be in the local (end) section of the break.
I remember at the University I attended, I could get WPIX (then the NYC WB affiliate) and WSBK (then the Boston UPN affiliate) on their quasi-homegrown cable system, while getting the local affiliates over the antenna. During commercial breaks I would sometimes play around switching back and forth between the inputs to see this effect firsthand.
I notice in the website that they very clearly state that they are a not-for-profit service, which means they CAN make a profit (it's just not the goal of the enterprise), it does put limits to certain things (IANAL), but it's not as restrictive as a non-profit.
Admittedly I haven't read the actual article but if he is only allowing people in the city that he has an antenna in to access that stream and isn't altering the content in any way (e.g. isn't stripping the commercials from the feeds) then is there really anything the broadcasters have to be upset with? If the feeds are unaltered and limited to the area the antenna is in then it is the same signal anyone with an antenna could get. This just guarantees that there is a strong signal and the feed isn't getting interrupted (at the viewer's end). In fact it could actually be better since the system is actually guaranteeing the the commercials reach the viewer (i.e. the commercial could suffer interference if the viewer used their own antenna).
Since Locast isn't profiting from this I can't see the broadcasters having much to complain about.
Given that the guy running this is a lawyer, I suspect it's all just a strange sort of advertisement for himself. He figures the lawsuit will get his name in the news and attract some paying clients who want him to defend their equally obviously illegal activity.
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Lets hope for his sake that the definition of secondary transmission includes a streaming service instead of just rebroadcasting over the air.
I could bet lawmakers did not go into such details.
This could be a win for bradcasters
If the guy can provide vieweship & demographics numbers, the networks can ask for more ad revenue from their respective advertisers. I don't know at which point the additional ad revenue will make up for the lost cable fees but those may be lost already. People are cutting the cord. Networks could be losing out to netflix, amazon, etc but this way they can still show ads to the cordcutters. Maybe the long play for them
THe rationale for copyright is that by restricting acces it creates market place and thus actually more goods and services will be produced. Any one item will be reproduced less but the profit and creative control of the producer creates and environment we all benefit from. it doesn't matter that its free to copy. it harms the marketplace. so it is a stealing from the common good even if you are giving it away
No. The rationale for copyright is to advance learning. It was right in the first copyright act, which had the full title of,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And was also put in the American Constitution as,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Note that in 1789, language was slightly different and the Arts and Sciences basically covered all advanced learning.
The rational was pretty simple, give limited monopoly so that works are created and then those works go into the public domain to advance learning (the arts and sciences), not to lock it up for generations in a marketplace.
The marketplace was a means to an end, enriching society by having a large public domain, not an end to itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Actually, there's a bigger problem... AFAIK, when an ad agency licenses the rights to use a copyrighted song in a commercial, they pay a lower rate if it's only going to be shown in a regional TV market instead of nationwide. If an advertiser knowingly ran the ad (after paying 'regional' rates) on an affiliate who was known to make it readily available to viewers nationwide, the advertiser itself could be sued by the music's copyright holder.
That's why local affiliates who rebroadcast to viewers out of area usually/always black out the local ads entirely on their uplink feed.
So you accept everything at face value then?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Vote for Seattle; let's get some Locast broadcast TV access going in the Seattle area! I threw in $100 - what will you put in?
Yes, rereading your post, I may have taken it the wrong way at first. I will add that the balance of copyright has been broken with too much stress on the marketplace and little stress on the public domain, where works can do the most good in promoting advancement of learning. It is hard to judge how you meant that part as it seemed to me you were stressing the marketplace more then anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
you are right that there copyright is a drag on the system. Sometimes friction is good, sometimes it's bad. the tragedy of the commons is a well known case where making people pay to use common lands they collectively already own promotes healthier sustainable use of the land for everyone. But obviously if the rent is too high it also deoptimizes that objective too. In general light regulation enable markets to form. Markets are good. So regulation is good. But heavy regulation also is a toll too. There's always a balance. But without copyrights there would be very few markets in what we call copyrightable materials.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
They'd need to pay me to watch that.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
If I had mod points, dear AC, I would have voted it up.
I see that now, those who had mod points did vote it up after I posted.
I agree. Years of using on-demand streaming services has spoiled my appetite for scheduled, commercial-laden television.
So someone who likes to watch ads, and only can enjoy shows when they are broadcast at a particular time is the superior person.... RIIIIIIIGHT. Enjoy your TV cave, neanderthal man.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So when will we have a DVR version of this?
Then it would become truly useful.