No.... it's OTA. The content is being distributed freely over the air.
So, it's like gpl -- once in the air, it's becomes free to anyone who can read it? Well then, anyone should able to record it and sell DVDs of tv shows too, right?
Some viewers have difficulty receiving the OTA content over the air at the quality they want using their own equipment, or the investment is too much, or they lack the expertise to build large antenna structures and setup gateways to stream their content to themselves over the internet, so they are inclined to subscribe to a service to maintain equipment to receive over the air on their behalf and provide them the technical assistance to receive the freely available content in the manner the end user wants.
So why can't your service provider pay for the content it is rebroadcasting for a profit? Aereo thinks it should be able to profit from somebody else's content, but the content providers should not profit from their own content? The OTA broadcast is only for individual consumption -- rebroadcasting or commercial use requires a new license and fees.
The spectrum that the broadcasters use to transmit over the air programming belongs to the American public and we believe you should have a right to access that live programming whether your antenna sits on the roof of your home,
The spectrum may be public, but the public does not own the data in the spectrum, (just as roads may be public, but the public don't own the cars on the roads).
A little over three years ago, our team embarked on a journey to improve the consumer television experience, using technology to create a smart, cloud-based television antenna consumers could use to access live over the air broadcast television.
Why didn't you obtain retransmission rights for the copyrighted content? Was it to save your company a lot of money?
So your position is that using Slingbox or a DVR over the Internet (a shared non dedicated connection per user) makes you a CATV company and a copyright infringer as well?
Retransmitting copyrighted content, like a tv show, without permission, over the internet, is copyright infringement. However, viewing a show from your slingbox is allowed as fair use.
However, if your slingbox retransmits tv shows to your multiple friends, that's copyright infringement. Aereo is kinda like an antenna connected to a slingbox which in turn transmits content to many viewers. That's redistribution of copyrighted content, which is illegal without permission.
My point is Aereo is cable tv like service that is using the internet instead of the older cable technology to deliver TV shows. Therefore, they should be treated in the same manner as a cable tv service. Simply changing the transmission layer (whether it's cable, satellite or internet) does not change the fundamental business model. Legally, you can't redistribute copyrighted content to multiple users and not pay the licensing fees for the content.
I can erect an antenna across town and back haul the signal on the internet...
Except in this case, you're not erecting the antenna and hauling equipment (decoders and servers), Aereo is. You are renting their equipment to watch TV. Once the TV signal leaves "your" Aereo antenna and enters shared equipment like decoders and servers, it becomes content on just another video site like youtube.
Face it, Aereo is like a cable company delivering video via the internet. It doesn't have equipment to deliver dedicated internet connection per user, rather it uses a big upload pipe (just like a video website), to deliver copyrighted content to the user.
Oh yeah totally nailed it, except for where people are paying, and the product is freely available to them anyway.
They're paying a lot less than basic cable. What if Aereo had to pay retransmission fees to the copyright holders? Won't Aereo then jack up the monthly subscription fees to cover that cost?
You are broadcasting through open Wi-Fi to other people. However, I'm not sure anyone cares as only a small number of people can access your Wi-Fi signal and they can probably get a better reception using their own antenna/devices instead of snooping on your network traffic.
No. When you activate the Aereo service, you are assigned a dedicated (not shared) antenna and the video is streamed from that antenna to your device. There is no storing or sharing of anything.
LOL, antennas can't convert TV signal into an internet video stream. You need a computer with a video decoder and a shared internet service to transmit the video stream to your millions of customers. Unless they have a also have a dedicated DVR per user, a dedicated internet connection for each user, and the user owns all the above equipment and services, they are renting out a TV show transmitting service which is similar to cable TV service.
The justices were openly hostile to Aereo and saw it as basically someone setting up a cable company without following the rules set up for cable companies
That's your opinion, but others may say Aereo wants something (TV shows) for nothing, which is same as stealing/copyright infringement. Aereo and many of its customers have no problem giving the financial shaft to the owners and creators of the TV shows, but without profit, no one is going to create more quality TV shows.
I'm all for copyright and IP reform, but tell me how exactly that's fair.
Aereo has no intention of being fair. I think I read somewhere that they're just exploiting a loophole in the broadcast law that states something like "one antenna per customer to prevent copyright infringement." They're just exploiting an antiquated law that has not been updated for the Internet. So they have one antenna per customer to satisfy that law, but the rest of its broadcast equipment is shared by all users.
1 antenna per user, but what about other equipment that is shared?
antenna -> video decoder -> server -> internet upload service -> client
In the ascii diagram above, only the antenna and client device is owned by the customer. The remaining equipment is shared by multiple customers, making it very similar to a video site like youtube or a cable tv service.
If it requires a login/password and a user account, how is that "publicly transmitting"?
Aren't Aereo antennas storing TV signal content on servers and retransmitting/uploading that content to multiple members of the public? That's what's prohibited by copyright law, according to the broadcasters.
Would the judge also declare that when I'm watching Netflix via wi-fi, I'm also "publicly transmitting"?
What if the content were encrypted so only you can watch it? Would it still be public transmission? Cable TV shows are being broadcast to all cable subscribers, but you get to view the channel only if have subscribed (and paid for) it.
X is currently occupying a parking space. He plans to leave in 5 mins because his task in that area has been completed. Random stranger Y is close by and looking for a parking spot. Instead of Y getting it, X sells the spot using the phone app to Z, who is much farther away than Y. X then squats at the parking spot until Z arrives. X and Z are hogging the parking spot and holding it hostage by not allowing a person close to the parking spot, (such as Y) to use it.
So we shouldn't have kids in a vehicle or speak to the passengers then?
You could/should, because your awareness does not exit the car. Talking on the cellphone is like daydreaming, your mind's GPS location is not the same as your physical body's GPS location. So it takes more time to react to potentially dangerous traffic situations while using your phone.
If you were to compare the avg. lines of code generated by 100 programmers in age range 21 to 30 versus 100 programmers in age range 42 to 50, which one likely to win? The young ones probably, although their code quality may be inferior to the older group's code.
Programming can be compared to performance sports. You don't see many 50 year old swimmers, soccer players, or 100m sprinters. Programming is just the mental athletics version of these sports. If programmers above 50 years age, are not likely to get a decent job (other than management), they should receive a higher wage in their prime years, just like athletes, models/actors.
Managers and middle managers care a lot about output quantity and throughput for the least amount of dollars. Plus the older programmers are not skilled in the latest development tools/languages which change every 5-10 years. These factors are probably some of the reasons for the discrimination.
Why do researchers have to sacrifice an industry paycheck to do it? In other words, why won't industrial pharma hire more talented scientists. They seem instead to be more interested in hiring salespeople, lawyers and MBAs...
Perhaps, it has something to do with the high failure rate of such research. Would you pay a salary to 1000 employees, of which only one employee gives you solid results and the remaining fail? That's not very business friendly. This type of research is more feasible under govt. grants.
We are talking about software. And software is not the computer.
Yes, software is not the computer, but software is a part of the computer. When you see some output on the screen, do you (or a common consumer) know which part of that output is generated by hardware and which part by software? Obviously not.
Software is a number to be given the computer as input. Very different things.
Not all that different, really. Anything you can do in hardware, you can do in software and vice versa. Suppose you implement a machine X in software using say, Java and C. You can implement the same machine X in hardware using verilog (whose syntax greatly resembles C btw). The hardware solution will be a few orders of magnitude faster than the software version because it runs many things in parallel. But the hardware version will be much harder to create (more effort, time and money) and maintain than the software version. Therefore, most machines are implemented using software, unless the extra expense of creating the machine in hardware is really worth it.
An example where it is worth creating a machine in hardware is 3D graphics. 3D graphics can be implemented using pure software. The 3D Wolfenstein game is an example. But software 3D games suffer from poor resolution and frame rates. So they implemented the compute intensive portion of the 3D library in hardware giving an order of magnitude speed improvement in fps and polygons rendered.
Also sign up at Coursera. They have a course titled "Beginning Game Programming with C#" taught by the University of Colorado. The course also teaches basic C# syntax, so it's very beginner friendly. You just have to wait for it to be offered again before signing up.
Many video games also have some sort of gold coins. Can they be considered as money too? Bitcoins are mainly used for transferring money from one location to another using computer networks. So it's just an internet version of a credit card company. If so, why should be worth tens of billions of dollars?
The computer has no semantics, no concepts, it simply accepts numbers as inputs, performs mathematical operations based on that input, and sends numbers as output. Just exactly like the people that used to be employed as computers before someone figured out how to make a machine that could do it faster.
There are plenty of patented electronic (hardware) and mechanical machines that do what humans can do by hand. That doesn't make them unpatentable. Removing a human from a task often saves money, or the human can't do it fast enough. So such a machine benefits the user of the machine, and therefore some of the benefits should trickle up to the person who created said machine.
The point of patents isn't to reward them for inventing a new compression algorithm. They can do that by selling their compression software and keeping the algorithm secret (if they can keep it secret)
No, the point is to reward them, because of the major or minor benefit humanity enjoys because of that invention. It's not a freebie, but rather an exchange of benefits.
If the inventors keep it a secret, they risk being reverse engineered by a competitor, and suffering a minor or major financial loss in the marketplace depending on the marketing/financial power of his competitor. With patents, the secret is exposed, but competitors, who did not put any effort in creating the invention, don't get the right to sell it, and don't get to unjustly profit for someone else's work.
So you are using those examples to show why less regulation is okay? FYI, those madmen could have been uber drivers since it's less regulated.
That's retransmission for one person (you). Aereo was doing mass retransmission -- also known as redistribution.
So, it's like gpl -- once in the air, it's becomes free to anyone who can read it? Well then, anyone should able to record it and sell DVDs of tv shows too, right?
So why can't your service provider pay for the content it is rebroadcasting for a profit? Aereo thinks it should be able to profit from somebody else's content, but the content providers should not profit from their own content? The OTA broadcast is only for individual consumption -- rebroadcasting or commercial use requires a new license and fees.
How, so? The content is a product and the cable companies profit from that product, and should therefore pay the OTA broadcasters for its use.
The spectrum may be public, but the public does not own the data in the spectrum, (just as roads may be public, but the public don't own the cars on the roads).
Why didn't you obtain retransmission rights for the copyrighted content? Was it to save your company a lot of money?
Retransmitting copyrighted content, like a tv show, without permission, over the internet, is copyright infringement. However, viewing a show from your slingbox is allowed as fair use.
However, if your slingbox retransmits tv shows to your multiple friends, that's copyright infringement. Aereo is kinda like an antenna connected to a slingbox which in turn transmits content to many viewers. That's redistribution of copyrighted content, which is illegal without permission.
My point is Aereo is cable tv like service that is using the internet instead of the older cable technology to deliver TV shows. Therefore, they should be treated in the same manner as a cable tv service. Simply changing the transmission layer (whether it's cable, satellite or internet) does not change the fundamental business model. Legally, you can't redistribute copyrighted content to multiple users and not pay the licensing fees for the content.
Except in this case, you're not erecting the antenna and hauling equipment (decoders and servers), Aereo is. You are renting their equipment to watch TV. Once the TV signal leaves "your" Aereo antenna and enters shared equipment like decoders and servers, it becomes content on just another video site like youtube. Face it, Aereo is like a cable company delivering video via the internet. It doesn't have equipment to deliver dedicated internet connection per user, rather it uses a big upload pipe (just like a video website), to deliver copyrighted content to the user.
They're paying a lot less than basic cable. What if Aereo had to pay retransmission fees to the copyright holders? Won't Aereo then jack up the monthly subscription fees to cover that cost?
You are broadcasting through open Wi-Fi to other people. However, I'm not sure anyone cares as only a small number of people can access your Wi-Fi signal and they can probably get a better reception using their own antenna/devices instead of snooping on your network traffic.
LOL, antennas can't convert TV signal into an internet video stream. You need a computer with a video decoder and a shared internet service to transmit the video stream to your millions of customers. Unless they have a also have a dedicated DVR per user, a dedicated internet connection for each user, and the user owns all the above equipment and services, they are renting out a TV show transmitting service which is similar to cable TV service.
That's your opinion, but others may say Aereo wants something (TV shows) for nothing, which is same as stealing/copyright infringement. Aereo and many of its customers have no problem giving the financial shaft to the owners and creators of the TV shows, but without profit, no one is going to create more quality TV shows.
Aereo has no intention of being fair. I think I read somewhere that they're just exploiting a loophole in the broadcast law that states something like "one antenna per customer to prevent copyright infringement." They're just exploiting an antiquated law that has not been updated for the Internet. So they have one antenna per customer to satisfy that law, but the rest of its broadcast equipment is shared by all users.
In the ascii diagram above, only the antenna and client device is owned by the customer. The remaining equipment is shared by multiple customers, making it very similar to a video site like youtube or a cable tv service.
Aren't Aereo antennas storing TV signal content on servers and retransmitting/uploading that content to multiple members of the public? That's what's prohibited by copyright law, according to the broadcasters.
What if the content were encrypted so only you can watch it? Would it still be public transmission? Cable TV shows are being broadcast to all cable subscribers, but you get to view the channel only if have subscribed (and paid for) it.
X is currently occupying a parking space. He plans to leave in 5 mins because his task in that area has been completed. Random stranger Y is close by and looking for a parking spot. Instead of Y getting it, X sells the spot using the phone app to Z, who is much farther away than Y. X then squats at the parking spot until Z arrives. X and Z are hogging the parking spot and holding it hostage by not allowing a person close to the parking spot, (such as Y) to use it.
You could/should, because your awareness does not exit the car. Talking on the cellphone is like daydreaming, your mind's GPS location is not the same as your physical body's GPS location. So it takes more time to react to potentially dangerous traffic situations while using your phone.
If you were to compare the avg. lines of code generated by 100 programmers in age range 21 to 30 versus 100 programmers in age range 42 to 50, which one likely to win? The young ones probably, although their code quality may be inferior to the older group's code.
Programming can be compared to performance sports. You don't see many 50 year old swimmers, soccer players, or 100m sprinters. Programming is just the mental athletics version of these sports. If programmers above 50 years age, are not likely to get a decent job (other than management), they should receive a higher wage in their prime years, just like athletes, models/actors.
Managers and middle managers care a lot about output quantity and throughput for the least amount of dollars. Plus the older programmers are not skilled in the latest development tools/languages which change every 5-10 years. These factors are probably some of the reasons for the discrimination.
Perhaps, it has something to do with the high failure rate of such research. Would you pay a salary to 1000 employees, of which only one employee gives you solid results and the remaining fail? That's not very business friendly. This type of research is more feasible under govt. grants.
Gold has intrinsic value. Does bitcoin have any? No.
Real money is guaranteed by the govt. If bitcoin can be considered valid currency, anybody else should be able to create their own currency.
Credit card companies don't manufacture currency, they just transfer it. Bitcoins are manufactured in transactions.
Yes, software is not the computer, but software is a part of the computer. When you see some output on the screen, do you (or a common consumer) know which part of that output is generated by hardware and which part by software? Obviously not.
Not all that different, really. Anything you can do in hardware, you can do in software and vice versa. Suppose you implement a machine X in software using say, Java and C. You can implement the same machine X in hardware using verilog (whose syntax greatly resembles C btw). The hardware solution will be a few orders of magnitude faster than the software version because it runs many things in parallel. But the hardware version will be much harder to create (more effort, time and money) and maintain than the software version. Therefore, most machines are implemented using software, unless the extra expense of creating the machine in hardware is really worth it.
An example where it is worth creating a machine in hardware is 3D graphics. 3D graphics can be implemented using pure software. The 3D Wolfenstein game is an example. But software 3D games suffer from poor resolution and frame rates. So they implemented the compute intensive portion of the 3D library in hardware giving an order of magnitude speed improvement in fps and polygons rendered.
But won't they get the ARM source code in verilog (or VHDL), so they can spot any backdoors?
Also sign up at Coursera. They have a course titled "Beginning Game Programming with C#" taught by the University of Colorado. The course also teaches basic C# syntax, so it's very beginner friendly. You just have to wait for it to be offered again before signing up.
Many video games also have some sort of gold coins. Can they be considered as money too? Bitcoins are mainly used for transferring money from one location to another using computer networks. So it's just an internet version of a credit card company. If so, why should be worth tens of billions of dollars?
There are plenty of patented electronic (hardware) and mechanical machines that do what humans can do by hand. That doesn't make them unpatentable. Removing a human from a task often saves money, or the human can't do it fast enough. So such a machine benefits the user of the machine, and therefore some of the benefits should trickle up to the person who created said machine.
No, the point is to reward them, because of the major or minor benefit humanity enjoys because of that invention. It's not a freebie, but rather an exchange of benefits.
If the inventors keep it a secret, they risk being reverse engineered by a competitor, and suffering a minor or major financial loss in the marketplace depending on the marketing/financial power of his competitor. With patents, the secret is exposed, but competitors, who did not put any effort in creating the invention, don't get the right to sell it, and don't get to unjustly profit for someone else's work.