I don't trust the Supreme Court to produce a proper ruling on this one. I assume Aereo will lose. That said, I don't see how it could be argued that Aereo is breaking any law.
1) Why don't you trust them? I've personally never read a Supreme Court ruling that got the technology angle fundamentally wrong, though I have seen a number where the Supreme Court's principles are at odds with certain values and beliefs often held by technologists.
2) What's so defensible about a business model that is based entirely on taking advantage of someone else's product? Without the content produced by the networks, there would be absolutely no reason for Aereo to exist.
I think Aereo will win, because the precedent is on its side. However, I also think the company is just taking advantage of a loophole and should try actually producing content people want to watch instead of simply taking some other company's content for free.
I have never understood the concept of "taking content for free" and the implied judgment about doing so, with regards to 'retransmission consent'.
If you run an organization that broadcasts content to anybody with an antenna, you should not be shocked, just shocked when somebody picks it up and uses it as they see fit. If you don't want that to happen, don't broadcast your content and don't abuse the public spectrum to try to still exact control over the use of your broadcasted content.
Just because you agree to do N doesn't mean you agree to do N+1 or N+2, etc. The networks do broadcast content, that's very expensive to produce, for free, in return for use of the public spectrum. That's the bargain. But the bargain doesn't mean that they agree to let other people do whatever "they see fit" with the broadcasted content. One part of that bargain, embodied in the copyright rules, is that you can't take the broadcast video and perform it publicly. I.e. I can't tape NBC shows and then open up a movie theater playing them. That's not part of the bundle of rights NBC agreed to give up in the process of broadcasting the show over the air.
All Aereo does is take advantage of a loophole. They couldn't record the shows and stream them, because that would violate the networks' copyright. So they try to shoehorn effectively the same service into the exception for time-shifting.
So a business that would be legal if Aero were leasing the equipment to people in their homes is illegal because it's instead in the Aero office and people connect to it over traditional telecommunications?
If you go to a strip club, and pay the $20 cover, you get to watch the show. Does that mean a company can show up with a camera, broadcast a feed on the internet, and pay $20 for each person who is logged in? It's the same thing right?
> brodcast a feed on the internet ... for each person who is logged in?
The analogous situation would be if they paid $20 per watcher to the strip club, and had one blind dude come in with a whole array of webcams that linked up to people on the internet, with one webcam per person.
To which I'd ask you, why do you think this is a bad thing?
(The difference, of course, being that strip clubs are private whereas the public airwaves are public.)
I am really confused about your analogic intent here.
Who in the real world is being mapped to the strip club which is taking the cover charge money in the analogy? It seems to be that in the analogy's codomain, the strip club might very well love the camera situation as it allows them to make more money per performance. So they can't be standing in for the tv broadcasters. Are they the antenna makers?
The tv broadcasters might more naturally map to the strippers themselves. Except that strippers don't get revenue by something that communicates as easily through the real world video signal like advertisements do. Perhaps if the strippers in the analogy were paid to wear brand logos and messages and such like race car drivers, but they would have to be on the skin, so temporary tattoos then. Or perhaps if the remote viewers in the analogy could hit a button to have the camera toss $X dollar bills onto the stage.
Oh, and the bar... strip clubs also hope to make money on drinks and a cut of the lap dances, is that why you assumed the strip clubs might not like the camera? The cover doesn't actually cover all of the expenses and desired profit. If so, I feel it could have been better spelled out or mentioned at all. But then, maybe the analogy's bar and lap dances are better stand ins for the advertisers in the real world (so we don't have to add in logo tattoos at all).
So, I'm still unsure about this analogy, including about it's value in adding clarity.
The conditions of admission to the show forbid the audience from recording or retransmitting. So you can't do that from inside the theater. But let's just say the stage is set up next to a huge window, and anyone standing on the sidewalk can see the whole thing. The cameraman sets up there, and now he's golden. This is what Aereo is doing. The broadcast station has a huge window on their stage, because they want as many people as possible to watch the show (and accompanying advertisements).
When you broadcast, you are granting implicit license to everyone who can receive to have and keep a copy of that event. Were it otherwise, I could set up an antenna, broadcast a video of me flipping the bird to the camera, and maliciously prosecute everyone receiving on that frequency for copyright violation.
If you want control over who sees your show, you can't really be doing it in front of a huge picture window visible from public property, or by pumping it out over radio signals, which is metaphorically the same thing.
What kind of nonsense analogy is this? Of course it's legal to do that, they can only kick you out if they don't like your camera.
But public broadcasts are.. public. A private issue of patronage has nothing to do with a public issue of legality. You can't make any meaningful connections between the scenarios.
>1) Why don't you trust them?
It may be a selective memory thing, but in my eyes the current court tends to lean towards the interest of big business (Aereo being much smaller than ABC, et al).
> 2) What's so defensible about a business model that is based entirely on taking advantage of someone else's product?
The networks already broadcast the signal for anyone with an antenna to receive. If I own (or rent) a house or apartment where adding an antenna is not feasible (especially as a renter), I don't see why I can pay someone else to setup an antenna and DVR for me.
Does it make a difference that Aereo houses all the antennas in one ___location? If they were an antenna rental/installation (in your home) company would there be any argument?
> What's so defensible about a business model that is based entirely on taking advantage of someone else's product? Without the content produced by the networks, there would be absolutely no reason for Aereo to exist.
Aereo allows people to do no more than what they can already do if they buy and set up their own antenna and DVR/VCR. Thus they take no more advantage of "someone else's product" than TV antenna manufacturers and DVR companies, whose products also would not exist if not for content produced by the networks.
I don't see Aereo as taking advantage of other company's content for free, anymore than internet providers, TV manufacturers and others are. They're providing a transit service; nothing more.
Your argument about them not existing without the content applies to all sorts of businesses, not just Aereo.
The TV network's arguments are specious at best; if a TV antenna manufacturer had somehow invented sufficiently advanced technology for an antenna that could pickup TV signals from any specific area in the US, they would be just as upset.
I view Aereo as nothing more than providing a special antenna that is leased to a customer.
The reliance of the TV networks on the limitations of technology to ensure the success of their business model is not my problem.
In the end, I don't care anyway, I haven't had an antenna or cable TV in nearly a decade. And I don't consume network TV content on Netflix or the like with any regularity. They could all disappear and it wouldn't matter to me.
This is the heart of the dispute: should we view Aereo as an unlicensed streaming service or an outsourced personal DVR?
Certainly Aereo would not exist without broadcast TV. But the service adds a lot of value compared to, e.g. setting up a DIY streaming PVR with MythTV and an antenna.
Given that that Aereo business model was taken directly from a Supreme Court ruling, I think that they should have a strong argument. With the broadcasters going to different circuit courts with cases, this might be done to deal with having different rulings in lower courts. This should probably seen as a good thing for Aereo that it is their case that is being heard vs another (shakier) business model.
Yep... you're right. I had forgotten that the Supremes had just let the Cablevision Second Circuit case stand and didn't rule on it themselves.
Wasn't their another remote DVR case though that they ruled on that had de-duplicated the data for multiple users? The difference in the Cablevision remote DVR being that they didn't de-duplicate data.
Aereo has done well in court so far, I don't think this will be too much different. They have common sense on their side, no technical knowledge needed (everyone on the court will know about TV antennas).
the broadcasters says "Aereo retransmits". If Aereo were doing retransmission, even using individual antenna per customer, it would still be a public performance (Zediva case comes to mind here), and thus broadcasters would have a case. If Aereo only rents the antenna to customer, it is the customer who is doing broadcast capture and retransmission using the rented equipment - seems to be a well established legal activity (i'm wondering why such an argument didn't work for Zediva, though i don't think they "rented" DVD player to customer, only DVD itself - they were arguing that they can do anything like Netflix or Blockbuster, only by way of online streaming instead of physical transfer of the DVD, so it seems they didn't argue that it is customer who plays and streams rented DVD on rented equipment).
If using one antenna to capture and retransmit a show is not legal, and it isn't (or Aereo would simply do that) I don't see how using more private, leased antennas to retransmit a show is anything but a blatant violation of the spirit of the law.
While I think the law making this distinction is silly, and the law is dumb and needs to be changed, I don't see Aereo's workaround as something that fits within that law.
They are using multiple antenna that because that was how the Supreme's told them how to do it in an earlier case on remote DVRs. Since they aren't "commingling" the signals, using their service can be logically thought of as a "private" performance. If they used one antenna, then all of the signals would be mixed together and could be thought of as "public" (which isn't allowed).
Because each user controls their own equipment, and their data isn't stored with that from other people, then you end up with a lot of duplicated, albeit private, data. And that's the difference.
Using one antenna to capture and retransmit a show to yourself is perfectly legal. That's the whole point behind the Slingbox. With a DVR, you are "time-shifting" your viewing. With a Slingbox, you are "place-shifting" your viewing. Put them together, and you can do both. The only distinction for Aereo is that they are providing place and time-shifting as a service using normal (free) over the air signals. Aereo also doesn't allow you to control an antenna for an area where you don't live, so the customer needs to be in the correct geographic area where they could plausibly receive the over-the-air signals without Aereo.
It's not dumb. It captures the very common sense notion that there is a difference between playing a DVD for some friends at home (private performance), and setting up a movie theater with said DVD (public performance).
Aereo is doing almost exactly what cable television once did, putting a radio receiver on one end of a cable and a bunch of customers on the other. (I assume that cable companies probably have direct physical links to local stations by now, but it's not relevant). The fact that their transmission medium is the web rather than coax seems inconsequential to me.
That seems to fall on the `movie theater' end of the dichotomy, but it's legal.
> Aereo is doing almost exactly what cable television once did, putting a radio receiver on one end of a cable and a bunch of customers on the other.
No, Aereo is putting a radio receiver on one end and one customer on the other. Each customer has their own antenna. It's exactly the same as having an antenna on your home TV, only you're renting the antenna and it comes with a DVR.
And if they used one antenna and hooked it up to multiple DVRs, would it be any different from a technical standpoint? The same signal is transmitted, the same broadcast is collected, and the same set of users get to view the same content in the same way. The intent of the legislation wasn't pushed for by the Antenna Maker Lobby(tm) to maximize the number of antennas in the world. It was to prevent a middleman from doing a mass reselling of over the air content without paying licensing fees.
If one is legal, the other should be as well. And if one is illegal, the other should be as well. Anything else would be insane. IMO, both should be legal.
Yes, and in 1992 the law was changed to require cable companies to get retransmission consent in order to engage in that practice (usually by paying fees).
Putting up an antenna for every individual customer (when one antenna would do for all) to skirt around the law is very much a dumb situation for anyone to be in. But that's what they're doing to remain within the law.
If using one antenna to capture and retransmit a show to a single person is legal, and it is (since households simply do that) I don't see how using more private, leased antennas to retransmit a show is anything but a blatant copy of the legal model.
The problem is that the law is nonsensical in the first place, which is why you can approach it from either side and get almost identical results.
While it's true that the Supreme Court often grants cert to overturn cases, I'm not so sure they'll come down on the wrong side of this. I don't have a lot to base this on, but I would prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
