Broadcasters Petition US Supreme Court In Fight Against Aereo 229
First time accepted submitter wasteoid writes "Aereo provides live-streaming and cloud-based DVR capability for Over-The-Air (OTA) broadcasts to their paying customers. Broadcasters object to this functionality, with Fox claiming about Aereo, 'Make no mistake, Aereo is stealing our broadcast signal.' The focus appears to be the ability of Aereo to provide streaming and DVR capabilities that traditional broadcasters have not delivered. The litigious broadcasters are fighting against "Aereo's illegal disruption of their business model.""
NTT in Japan (Score:5, Funny)
Living in Japan once in a while someone from NTT knocks on my door asking that i give them money for receiving the signal they broadcast.
my teachers told me about this scam however i tell them two true things
1. i dont have a TV. so im not paying for something i'm not receiving
2. if you don't want me to get the signal then don't broadcast it to me.
same should apply here. the TV stations broadcasted their signal in "cleartext"
Re: (Score:2)
Telling them not to broadcast it to you if they don't want you to have it free might sound eminently reasonable, but I suspect there is some law against you. The law isn't always reasonable.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
America is an exception when it comes to public broadcast fees. You don't pay for public broadcasting
That's actually false. PBS (the main public TV broadcaster) and NPR (the main public radio broadcaster) each get about 20% of their budget in tax money, which comes from the Federal treasury. (They, in turn, get it from the Federal income tax, Federal borrowing, and generic fees paid to the Federal government.) PBS and NPR get the balance of their funding from donations.
It's my understanding that the British government charges a specific tax to cover the operations of the BBC. In the US, the "public" fund
Re: (Score:2)
...except, of course, for their reliance on the public infrastructure of government to keep others from making unauthorized use of their signal or the information contained therein (i.e., the rebroadcast and copyright issues at stake here), and to keep others from sending out photons in the radio band in the frequencies they "own" (FCC regulations). Fox is quite reliant on your tax dollar
Re:NTT in Japan (Score:5, Informative)
Living in Japan once in a while someone from NTT knocks on my door asking that i give them money for receiving the signal they broadcast.
my teachers told me about this scam however i tell them two true things
1. i dont have a TV. so im not paying for something i'm not receiving
2. if you don't want me to get the signal then don't broadcast it to me.
same should apply here. the TV stations broadcasted their signal in "cleartext"
America is an exception when it comes to public broadcast fees. You don't pay for public broadcasting, yet you pay and a lot for cable. Most civilised countries (almost all or all countries in Europe) have a tv license fee, that's used to finance the public broadcasting system. And I think the same applies in Japan.
Let's make sure we agree on the terminology. "public broadcast" to me means the PBS broadcasts (usually one TV channel and one radio channel per area) that are funded by voluntary donations and our tax money (which isn't voluntary). Commercial broadcast TV is funded by selling commercial air time to advertisers. The price for watching broadcast content is to have to put up with the commercials, which presumably affects what you buy, which is valuable to the advertisers.
Let me repeat this, so it's clear: In the US, commercial TV broadcast is funded by advertising time. (And, in part, by selling rebroadcasting rights to cable channels.) That's why it's been classically "free" off-air to viewers. It's a different model from other countries, where you get taxed for owning a TV. The only exception is the US government sponsored PBS channel, which is still "free" to receive but is funded in part by income tax.
It's not clear from TFA whether Aero is cutting out the commercials. If not, they're not affecting that part of the business model. Granted, you may be able to FF over the commercials, but we've been able to do that for decades using various time shifting techniques. (Which the broadcast stations also fought, and lost.)
The "threat" I see, besides TFA's mention of cable companies adopting the same technique and avoiding retransmission fees, is that providing the content on-demand causes the network to lose control of the timeslots and order in which the content is viewed, which, if you read the articles on show popularity amongst various demographics, is very important to the networks. They'll put a poorly performing show sandwiched between two winners to try to pump up the numbers, or put a clear winner in a less popular time slot, or against a winner on a different channel, to try to increase the numbers in that particular slot. I think that's the part of the business model that on-demand destroys.
Actual legal issues aside, it's convenient on-demand that's the real enemy. The networks have already lost the battle for older content (hulu, netflix, et al) but are determined to hang onto their business model for first-run content.
The problem, of course, is that their prime demographic doesn't watch TV that way. The 18-45 crowd expects to watch content on the device of their choosing at the time of their choosing, and that is directly contrary to the network business model. And the networks don't know how to evolve. The primary consumers of the broadcast TV business model, the "tv tray generation" (mostly baby boomers) are dying out. And the networks don't know what to do about that.
The world is changing. The way content is consumed is changing. The way content is *produced* is also changing, which is a different story out of scope of this article. The classic content producers and content distributors are struggling with what to do about this. I submit that this is a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
If that were all Aereo was doing, there would be no issue. The legal issue is whether Aereo has a right to retransmit copyrighted information without consent of the broadcasters and other copyright holders.
Re: (Score:3)
As I understand it, Aereo erects grids of small antennas in a strong signal area, each antenna belongs to one subscriber who is the onkly one who watches that feed. Americans have, for well over 100 years erected antennas on high points so people in the radi0/TV shadow, or out of range by distance can hear/see the radio and TV transmissions. Many of these were group efforts for towns to get reception over mountains etc.
The courts have seen this and ruled on it, so now they are asked to make illegal a practi
Re: (Score:3)
Never underestimate a special interest with an axe to grind that has politicians in his pocket.
Re: (Score:3)
They are leasing you an antenna. They are connecting YOU to YOUR antenna, and doing so in a way that prevents thieves on the internet from stealing the contents so that you and only you get that signal.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
They aren't really geo-shifting. They only take customers in limited areas and only record programming for that that person could theoretically pick up with an antenna at their place of residence.
Re:NTT in Japan (Score:5, Informative)
"Cable became dominant in the US after people got tired of trying to get a good signal, either in rural areas where the transmitters were distant, or in cities, where buildings caused multipath ghosting and other bad reception. Then people just got too damn lazy (or lived in areas with HOAs that forbade them) to put up antennas. "
You left a really HUGE part out. The part where you paid for cable in order to eliminate the commercials that were the funding source for broadcast. But (as I predicted many years ago), the advertising sneaked back in anyway, and now you're getting dinged at both ends: you still see the commercials AND you're paying $50 or more a month.
Everybody lost but the cable companies. And make no mistake: this did not come about by accident.
Re: (Score:2)
HA!
Re: (Score:3)
"HA!"
Well, it's true. Maybe you don't remember those days, but a big selling point of cable was that it didn't have commercials. You were paying $ in exchange for getting rid of them.
I predicted that wouldn't last, and I was correct.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Solution to the Problem (Score:3)
The problem here isn't that aero is using their signal for free, it's that the broadcast channels think they're entitled to money for retransmitting their signal over another medium. The FCC should make it illegal for broadcast companies to charge cable companies to carry their signal.
I'm quite pissed that when their deal with my local cable company expires the fucking broadcasters have the gall to run ads asking me to demand my cable company caves to their extortion so that I can have the privilige of a h
Rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Are there free television sets broadcast to peoples' homes that I'm missing out on?
Re:Rights? (Score:5, Informative)
No, but there are TV repeaters like the VCR Rabbit from the 1980s that are entirely legal, and do exactly what Areo do - rebroadcast taped or OTA (via the VCR's tuner) to another device.
Why was it called the Rabbit? Because it multiplies the video signal.
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-06-22/business/fi-20799_1_rabbit-system [latimes.com]
This is merely a VCR plus VCR Rabbit in a cabinet in a data-center paid for via subscription for the service. You could roll out your own rebroadcasting DVR and stick it in a closet or under your TV as part of your media system and pipe the signal back out to the Internet available to only your devices like this does.
--
BMO
Re:Rights? (Score:4, Informative)
it is an evolving set of interpretations based on the four basic tests found in what is called the "lemon test." look it up.
Yes, let's look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_v._Kurtzman [wikipedia.org]
Oh hey, it's entirely unrelated, asshole.
--
BMO
Re:Rights? (Score:5, Informative)
Aereo has no right to profit from the significant money spent and effort made to deliver the broadcast signals in the first place. Not without compensation.
The courts have so far, begged to differ. In the now-famous CableVision case [google.com], the court concluded that Cablevision's offer of a 'cloud DVR' product was legitimate: although Cablevision's hardware was making what would (otherwise) be illicit copies, it was operating as a direct extension of the customer's record and playback requests. Just a DVR; but with the hardware offsite rather than in a set top box.
Aereo specifically designed their service to follow the same model: Aereo operates banks of antennas at their facilities, each customers is allocated(possibly dynamically; but always 1-to-1 at any given time) their own antenna and their own DVR/buffer storage, effectively creating an OTA set top box, just with the video being transported over an IP link, rather than a meter of HDMI cable, and user inputs also going over the internet rather than over IR.
So far, the courts' response has been favorable (if sometimes bemused), in the various markets that Aereo has expanded into. They've been sued in every venue, and prevailed.
Re: (Score:2)
Aereo has no right to profit from the significant money spent and effort made to deliver the broadcast signals in the first place. Not without compensation.
Why not? Merely because someone spends money and effort to do something doesn't mean that they're entitled to absolute control over it.
If I put a lot of money and effort into improving my house and the lot it sits on, that increases the value of neighboring properties to some extent. But I'm not entitled to a cut, when my neighbor sells his house for more than he would've gotten, had I not done anything.
Hell, you might as well say that the school in the state I grew up ought to get a share of the money I ma
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, and it's very much prone to a slippery slope. Why should VCR manufacturers have the right to profit from providing systems that record TV shows for personal use? Why should newspapers be allowed to be profit from encouraging sales by providing TV listings? Why should websites be allowed to profit by posting reviews of TV shows.
My understanding of the service is that one could not, as a New York resident, be watching Boston local TV without having a residential address there. Conceptually it's not that
Re: (Score:2)
Aereo leases you an antenna. They also provide you with an encrypted data feed to your antenna. As long as it is your free right to receive signals from an antenna, this is legal. And they encrypt the signal to be sure no one has tapped onto your antenna to copy the content you are receiving legally.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The broadcaster is in the very least entitled to share in this profit.
So why haven't they sued LG? I'm watching TV on an LG right now, and there isn't a profit-sharing model between LG and NBC, is there? LG profited off the broadcast signal, with no compensation to the broadcasters.
I understand what you are saying, but I I don't think it applies. They aren't making money off the broadcasters any differently than TV makers are, and TV makers don't share profits.
You can argue all you like that the business model established by the broadcast industry is antiquated and that they should just go away.
I can't tell if you are being deliberately obtuse, or if you just don't get it. Nobody is saying that the indu
Re: (Score:2)
Aereo does not strip commercials; the traditional method for funding broadcast TV. The growth of DVRs and illegal TV streaming sites has made it more and more difficult for broadcasters to get good estimates of viewership, and most of the illegal video streaming sites remove commercials altogether. If the broadcasters were smart, what they would do is to get Aereo to report viewer totals so that they can demand more cash from advertisers.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, this is a pathologically dense comment.
The broadcasters have a fixed broadcast cost regardless of how many people are receiving it. A logical person (or entity) would want to amortize that cost over as many households as possible. They are 'compensated' by showing their advertisers how big their audience is. That's how BROADcast works.
By your logic, antenna manufacturers and installers have no right to profit from broadcast signals either.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't. They profit by renting customers in the broadcast area a good antenna.
Do you believe it should be illegal to rent someone an antenna, DVR, and slingbox?
Re: (Score:2)
The idea that broadcasters make their money off advertising is a bit simplistic. Advertising is just one aspect of their business. You have to include DVD sales, fees from streaming services, online sales of content, retransmission fees from cable operators, syndication fees, etc.
The industry pitches a fit every single time some new technological innovation comes around about how it will destroy them until they figure out how to monetize it. This is nothing new and I'm frankly tired of hearing these mewl
Re: (Score:2)
The FCC might have something to say about the "encrypt it" idea (hint: the broadcaster would lose its license if it tried it).
Re: (Score:2)
So we have no rights to the content beamed into our homes, but they have the Right to Profit, even with a bad business model.
It's more vexing because it's a bad business model that also sits smack in the middle of some very nice spectrum. The broadcasters are stomping around like their right to profit was handed down by god, when they should be begging for the right to continue to exist in the context of more interesting uses.
Re: (Score:2)
The broadcasters are stomping around like their right to profit was handed down by god
Well, it is Fox.
Re: (Score:3)
No, it is you that do not get it. This much like the so called 'gray market' laws where companies make stuff in China and sell in the USA for $10 each and in India for $1 each - same stuff. An Indian imports to the USA with his $1 buy and sells below the 'official' product.
They want to say that the product we gave away for free over here can not be seen by someone who comes here - via Aireo antennas - I think not.
BTW, who pays your salary?
Re: (Score:2)
This company has obviously been set up to exploit a supposed "loophole" in copyright law, without really understanding that copyright doesn't have "loopholes" since loopholes are designed to be self-defeating as copyright law is flexible based on the LEMON TEST (look it up) not some "fixed rules."
There is no common law federal copyright in the US for published works. This was established long, long ago. Copyright on published works can only arise through federal law, and statutes aren't all that flexible.
I'd agree that there aren't loopholes, but only in the sense that there are almost never loopholes in any law; what people perceive as loopholes are usually disconnects between their mental models of what the law ought to do and how it ought to work, and the reality of what the law actually does and
Re: (Score:2)
The "Lemon test" relates to the constitutional clause governing the establishment of religion, and has absolutely nothing to do with copyright law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_v._Kurtzman [wikipedia.org]
http://www.usconstitution.net/lemon.html [usconstitution.net]
If you had a real point, you didn't make it. Instead, you're throwing around quasi-legal terms that don't fit the situation, and demanding other people figure out what they mean without giving citations, which looks like you don't really understand your point. Then you're claimi
Re: (Score:2)
The Lemon Test is about religion, not copyright. Aren't you the same AC posting the same comment many many times, despite having it pointed out that the Lemon Test doesn't say what you assert? What, is this an experiment to see if factually incorrect (verifiably so) comments can be modded up?
Re: (Score:2)
The broadcasters are wrong here, but still I'd see a need to be pragmatic when it comes to things that enter our "spaces". We already have this as an important understanding in other laws, such as accepting that my tossing something in to the neighbour's garden doesn't automatically make it their property. We'd accept as well that leaving something in a public place doesn't mean it becomes the property of the finder, accepting that there may be abandonment or treasure trove laws that apply in specific cases
Re: (Score:2)
This reminds me of the baker [weingartdesign.com] that wanted to charge a fee for smelling the bread baking.
Tossing something in your neighbor's garden doesn't make it theirs but it also doesn't entitle you to charge them rent.
'Business Model' is not a protected class (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly WHY this should be allowed. If it is cheaper to setup your own antennas than pay someone else to do it then consumers are being overcharged for the service. Competition should be protected, not the opposite of it.
There is more to it... (Score:5, Interesting)
The real reason the broadcasters are doing this is because right now if you dont have an antenna (and many people dont, people in apartments and other shared dwellings, people with no light of sign to the transmission tower etc) the only way to get the OTA channels is to buy pay TV. And the pay TV operators pay a fair chunk of money to the OTA networks for rebroadcast rights.
So what Aereo is doing is allowing a lot more people to get the OTA channels without going through the cable companies (which means the cable companies wont be willing to pay as much for the rebroadcast rights to the OTA networks)
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, pissing off a special interest is probably going to get you nailed.
Re: (Score:2)
Especially with ATSC's limited amount of error correction capacity, if you are in a strong signal area you can probably get a perfect image by unbending a paper clip and shoving it in, or just about any other horrible maldesign you care to subject your tuner to.
If you live in the sticks? Maybe some combination of HAM enthusiast and radio astronomer skills will save you, no guarantees. In areas of intermedia
If Aereo is so horrible (Napster, Bittorrent)... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
... then why don't the big broadcaster get together and buy Aereo before it can - supposedly! - "do more damage". --- This whole thing reeks of the stink TPTB raised each time an Internet file-sharing tech came along. Instead of investing/going along with the "new wave in media consumption", TPTB always demonize whatever the latest content-delivery mechanism does.
Great question, and great advice for the industry.
In another industry, the big publishers own and operate magazines.com ... they could have been idiots and tried to stamp out internet subscription agents, but instead they became the biggest one. Duh.
Re:If Aereo is so horrible (Napster, Bittorrent).. (Score:4, Insightful)
.. then why don't the big broadcaster get together and buy Aereo before it can - supposedly! - "do more damage"
Three reasons:
1) If you win in court, it prevents other people from trying to pull the same stunt
2) It may well be cheaper to pay lawyers to litigate against Aereo instead of attempting to buy it.
3) It just might not be for sale.
Re: (Score:2)
4) That would run afoul of anti-trust laws.
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't read the article, which I suppose is par for the course on slashdot. They don't care less about Aereo. They care about the precedent that anyone can take their programming free and resell it if you set up enough antennas. If Aereo can do it, anyone can.
Re: (Score:2)
The business model is leasing an antenna to a consumer, and providing the connection. They don't like the fact that this is legal.
I'd like to have this kind of service, but not for TV.
This is nothing more... (Score:5, Insightful)
...than a case of how far away from your TV your DVR is allowed to be located.
Which is to say the broadcasters are trying to use smoke and mirrors to cover up rent seeking.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's not. You don't own the antenna. That's a potential legal distinction. And you don't own the DVR. That's another potential legal distinction.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
So people living in rented accomodation (where they don't own the antenna) or who pay a monthly fee to rent their TV and set-top-box combo aren't allowed to legally watch TV either? Good to know.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're the broadcasters' lawyer, they're going to lose.
Re: (Score:2)
But it is already obviously legal to rent an antenna and a DVR. Now it's just a question of how far away from your TV are you allowed to locate the DVR and antenna you rented.
So thats how long it takes... (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember before there was FOX network.
When they came along the big 3 had such a hissyfit at them for daring to do something different.
And now here we are.. Fox is having the fit for someone else daring to do something different.
Didn't take very long at all. 27 years to turn you into a stick up the ass 'we demand profits forever for doing the same thing' greedmonster.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, it didn't, and the broadcasters are still around, while the cable guys have whitewashed their past as upstarts and are playing 'asshole incumbent' with the best o
Re: (Score:2)
Now they do, but they didn't originally. Cable TV appeared around 1950 or a little earlier. The law that obligates cable providers to pay broadcasters to carry their signal (unless the broadcaster demands to be carried, in which case it's free) is from 1992. If we were to wait until 2055 before making Aereo pay broadcasters, I bet Aereo would be okay with that.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not similar. Fox set up another television network that did not use the signals of the other 3 networks.
Why isn't this libel? (Score:4, Interesting)
with Fox claiming about Aereo, 'Make no mistake, Aereo is stealing our broadcast signal.'
It's clearly not theft. Why is it not illegal for Fox to make this fraudulent claim in a public forum?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Because Fox is a corporation and not an individual.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Well, have the government ever shut down a corporation? That'd count as execution*. It would be interesting to know what the capital punishment rate of corporations is to that of people.
* The difference I suppose is that the soul of the corporation can be reincarnated into a similar body and even live in the same house. Realisation of the day - corporations are Hindu.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's the difference between calling J
Re:Why isn't this libel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it not illegal for Fox to make this fraudulent claim in a public forum?
Because some of us believe in free speech rights.
It is already illegal to knowingly make false claims, especially of a legal nature, in the public eye — specifically, with the intent to cause harm, which this clearly represents. It is a deliberate attempt to mislead for financial gain and other purposes.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The constitution enumerates what the government is allowed to do. It does not enumerate what the government is forbidden to do.
But thanks to over a century of people (like you) not knowing that.. the government does whatever it wants.
NIH? (Score:2)
Maybe this is just a case of Not Invented Here, and the broadcasters are wishing that they had thought of, and implemented, first the idea of streaming live on the internet and having a PVR like service. The BBC has had this for some time allowied you to stream the currently broadcast programmes and more recently allowed you to pause and resume, as you can on a PVR. Other UK broadcasters have similar internet offerings, some even allowing you to watch certain programmes before they are broadcast on-air.
Re:NIH? (Score:4, Insightful)
no, not a NIH.
they already invented getting paid for retransmitting the signal they broadcast.
it's not the pvr. it's the retransmit of something they're sending out. aereo is cutting into their fat, fat margin on that service(you'd think that a ota free channel would only be aiming for highest possible viewers?? HAHAHAHA NOT SO! because this is bizarro world. they're shooting for the highest possible money extraction from cable companies and the cable companies customers.).
Re: (Score:2)
In the UK ITV also provides online viewing. They are not payed for by the license fee. They just have to esure that whe they buy programming thier license to use it includes the correct provisions to allow them to stream timeshifted versions of the broadcast.
A lot of the angst the american broadcasters have is often due to contracts they have with production companies/artists etc. that do not allow them to provide this kind of service.
Great Advertisement. (Score:2)
If you weren't suing them, I may not have heard of their service. Now that I'm aware of it, I will most likely sign up once they are in my area.
Broadcast Signals (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We do. They're periodically required to demonstrate that their license is in the public interest. The rules for demonstrating that their service is in the public interest are extremely liberal, but they do exist.
Retransmission fees are a scam anyway (Score:5, Informative)
According to the law; a TV station has two options; they can negotiate a retransmission fee for a cable system; or invoke "must-carry", in which the cable provider is *required* to carry them. The station does not have to pay for a "must-carry" station; they are however required by law to carry them. That's bad for the cable company because they have to dedicate QAM space to a channel they may not want. However, if a cable provider negotiates a retransmission fee; they are allowed at that point to insert "local" ads over OTA stations.
In reality; the stations are only screaming about *potential* loss of profits here. The real losers are the local advertisers; who are paying the bills to keep the station's OTA signal running. Thier ads will only get seen by people with OTA; and those times when a local company isn't inserting ads over airtime.
This is why it's common in some areas for a cable/satellite provider to lose the right to carry a local channel. The station wants more money to reach it's demographic; and when a deal cannot be struck, the channel becomes unavailable. If it's a network affiliate; you lose that network entirely. FCC laws prohibit an "outside" station to be piped in to another market. Ironically; this law was made to protect local advertisers, ensuring they had a better chance to be seen in a market where their ads are already possibly being covered over with whatever promotion your provider is running this month.
The ruling that Aereo is legal was upheld by an appellate court already. They found the place-shifting technology (which is what this is); did not constitute public performance. Likewise; since there was an individual receiver and antenna for each user; there was no breaking of any law.
A2B TV does a similar thing; only with satellite TV. And they've even changed since I first found them. Used to be they'd get you set up with a cable TV account at whatever provider was local to the datacenter, along with a slingbox and "hosting space"; thier new model seems to use satellite TV and you have to send them a receiver. I own a Slingbox (two of them actually); and it's perfectly legal to have them hooked up to my TV's; of course I do pay for a TV service. But what about the Slingbox I sent to my friend in Texas with an OTA receiver so I could watch my favorite football team? Legally, it's my receiver and my hardware; so it *still* falls under placeshifting; and it's still not public retransmission.
Networks are going to complain and bitch because they're "getting thier business model stolen"; they seem to forget thier original business model was providing a service for free that was funded by advertisers; that's shifted in to a service that's still provided free, but paid for by cable and satellite companies. I can't blame advertisers for wanting to pay next to nothing; would *you* want to pay top-dollar for advertising knowing the majority of your demographic on cable or satellite might not see it? Of course not.
Again, it's just the networks sitting there looking at the potential profits they're losing because a lousy business model they created failed; one that was doomed for failure in the first place. What were they doing all those years when analog C-Band was still dominate; and they did not scramble the network fee? All those people were watching network TV without local inserted ads. What were they doing before the 1992 act and cable providers could literally pipe in any OTA channel their antenna farm could pick up; you know, back when the FCC mandated providers had to carry locals. Complicate the matter by the fact the FCC has allowed cable broadcasters to begin encrypting OTA feeds; which were once required to be left unencrypted.
The real issue is if they get this declared illicit; what's to stop them going further? They could begin saying multi-room DVR is illegal; worse yet, they coul
Now if we could only get Congress to ... (Score:2)
... shut down OTA TV, then I'd be happy.
Keeping it 50's (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if this isn't a big deal because Aereo isn't rebroadcasting. Broadcasting is transmitting to a wider audience. Aereo has a single antenna distributing to a single person. Obviously this is what Aereo thinks is the case, the stream from my DVR to my TV is not a "rebroadcast." Contrast this with the cable TV operators, who receive the signal once, often through specialized equipment, and send it to all of their local subscribers.
That's the essence of Aereo's legal position(founded on the 'Cablevision Case', where CableVision's 'cloud DVR product, with a similar 'one tuner and storage allocation per user, controlled by the user' was upheld as licit).
Team Broadcast is apparently shitting themselves for some combination of (A) reactionary stupidity and (B) fear that cable companies that currently pay absurd fees to retransmit OTA programming will find it cheaper to set up these goofy antenna-array things than to pay off the broadcasters(which is a pretty good sign that the broadcasters are currently overpaid, if such a silly mechanism actually saves money; but they obviously like being overpaid...)
Re: (Score:2)
Is that just a pure handout to the broadcast guys, or is there anything even slightly redeeming about it?
Re: (Score:2)
FCC requires cable operators to rebroadcast local OTA stations, but they have to pay for that.
As I understand it, they're not required to carry them and pay. The broadcaster has a choice between required carriage for free, or optional carriage for pay. But non-local channels cannot be substituted for local ones; thus if a cable company won't pay a local broadcaster which is a network affiliate, and which demands to be paid, that network drops off of cable. We saw this earlier in the year with Time Warner Cable and CBS (and its affiliates).
Re: (Score:2)
If the courts decide Aereo doesn't have to pay the broadcasters, then Big Cable won't have to either. The networks will have to go back to 100% advertising revenue. I promise that will not be good for the consumers.
Are you seriously suggesting that there is anything on OTA that is even worth the RF space is chews up? The broadcasters would be doing us all a favor by shrivelling up, dying, and leaving the field open for people who give a damn to pay for service, and people who don't not to have to deal with the ripple effects of the subsidies that keep them creaking along.
Re: (Score:2)
So you want the broadcasters to shrivel up & die.. That would leave Aereo with nothing to retransmit. Who wins then? Certainly not the consumer!
If a service that snags OTA transmissions out of the air (using a Rube Goldberg device, for legal reasons) and then shoves them over the internet is commercially viable, I have a sneaky plan: shut down the 'OTA transmission' and 'ridiculous antenna farm' parts of the process and just sell streaming video over the internet. Win-win. The OTA guys don't need depend on shaking down the cable companies and ad-spamming their customers for money; because they can just have subscribers, and the goofy unnecessary in
Re: (Score:2)
I don't look forward to the day that I have to pay a monthly fee to watch local news, or watch a Pay-Per-View Superbowl. That is essentially what you are suggesting
I am intrigued by your idea of being paid to watch the Superbowl, and would like to learn more.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd raise my price to what he re-sells the lemonade for. But we're not discussing lemonade. We're discussing copyright.
Re: (Score:2)
They are leasing you an antenna ... and connecting you to YOUR antenna for free.
Re: (Score:2)
if Aereo is rebroadcasting the signal, the fact that it's OTA doesn't change anything... it's copyright infringement, plain and simple
How then, do you explain three separate federal courts finding that Aereo is likely not infringing? If it was plain and simple, it seems unlikely that they'd miss it.
Take a look at the opinion from the Second Circuit [eff.org] that came out in the spring.You'll see that what it hinges on is not whether there was a transmission, but to whom Aereo's transmission was aimed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It could be problematic if the supreme court agrees.... as a precedent, it could effectively spell the end of open source works that are still protected by copyright law... the argument being that if something is being made freely available and in the clear, anyone who can legally receive it is free to do whatever they want with it, including things that would otherwise be copyright infringement.
That's not the argument.
The argument is that in the US, copyright only prohibits certain things (most of which, you can find at 17 USC 106). The one which is relevant for Aereo is that public performances are protected by copyright, but private performances are not. By breaking apart their infrastructure as they have, Aereo claims that it is engaged in the business of private performances (because each user has their own private antenna, their own private copies of shows, all sent to them alone, not shared
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When you are doing "private performances" for anyone among the general public who is interested in seeing them, the argument that the performance is still "private" becomes pretty tenuous. This is an absurd abuse of a technicality in how the law happens to be worded
How the law is worded is crucially important. Otherwise, why bother?
The wording at issue is:
To perform ... a work âoepubliclyâ meansâ" ... it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or ... of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance ... receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.
(1) to perform
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance
Aereo isn't performing at a place at all, so part one is out. This is aimed more at, for example, a bar that has a TV set, or a movie theater.
For part 2, their transmission isn't to the public, because they don't make one master transmission. Instead they make individualized transmissions to each customer, each a separate performance, from each customer's separate antenna or each customer's separate DVR'ed copy made
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If it were plain and simple this probably wouldn't be at the stage it's at now. What I think we can note is that Aereo's service is not rebroadcasting in a vein similar to me setting up an antenna in New York and streaming it to all and sundry on the web. The broadcasts are one to one (a single antenna per user), and are reliant upon the subscriber providing a credit card billing address in the area of the signals they wish to receive. With these restrictions in mind, I don't see Aereo being substantially d
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What about file locker services that conserve space by matching identical files? Although the two of us uploaded identical copies of a file, it's only one actual copy held on their end? Using your argument, that is copyright infringement, as the file I download isn't necessarily the one I uploaded.
I get your point, but I think it's the target of the re-broadcasting that's key here. They are not allowing people access to services they would not already be able to receive if they were to stick an aerial out t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But it's not the same file. We can probably agree that it's impractical for me to push this distinction. If you can understand why this distinction is pointless, you can maybe see why I don't understand why you're focussed on considering Aereo to be re-broadcasting. Sure, technically they are, but it's demonstrably not the same as if they were to be either sending the signals outside of the area intended by the broadcaster or sending the signal to anyone who could not otherwise get the same broadcasting if
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
rebroadcast. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.