Supreme Court To Hear Aereo Case 211
schwit1 writes "The Supreme Court will hear broadcasters' challenge to the legality of startup Aereo, in a case that may not only determine the future of digital streaming of station signals but of network television itself. Without comment, the justices on Friday agreed to accept ABC Television Stations vs. Aereo, in which the television networks are seeking to halt the Barry Diller-backed venture, contending that its offering of streams of station signals in New York and other markets violates the public performance provisions of the Copyright Act. Justice Samuel Alito took no part in the consideration of the petition, the court said, without elaborating. Typically such recusals are for a potential conflict of interest, and Alito has previously said that his family owned stock in the Walt Disney Co."
I'm torn... (Score:4, Interesting)
...and I'm sure my opinion will be torn to shreds for it.
I firmly believe that what Aereo does is, strictly speaking, legal, but hardly fair play.
Broadcast television got a pretty sweetheart deal: All of this spectrum is yours, just give us a little public interest news every day. The TV broadcasters use their ownership of the airwaves to produce content that'll get us to watch their sponsor's commercials.
While there are obviously other ways to time and location-shift television, Aereo is essentially a leech on the system. They give nothing back to the content producers. It's hard to root for them unless your only goal is the collapse of broadcast television.
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maybe if they only rebroadcast to a TV, but doing it to devices well outside the tech limit of broadcasting will probably get them shutdown
at the minimum they will probably have to shut the DVR service down
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? I'm running OTA on Media Center and can stream to other devices. The broadcasters just have to adapt to modern times. In fact, most of the times I'm watching TV on my computer either from its tuner or by streaming from Media Center. My 60$ ATSC tuner can record to a USB key. In a format that is readable by a computer, my mom's TV, and such.
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The ones I'm using in the PCs are Hauppauge HVR-1600 (soon to be replaced by an HD Homerun). The converter box is a Homeworx PVR 150. This one is nice since it has HDMI & Component outputs and can do 5.1 on my receiver. (the USB port can also be used to read video and audio files, nice if you don't have a smart tv)
http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1365123671 [mediasonic.ca]
Re:I'm torn... (Score:4, Interesting)
Look up the Cablevision decision, where the supreme court ruled such a remote DVR service was legal. Then think about what you said.
Aereo was designed specifically with obeying the letter of the law as set by Cablevision.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aereo is essentially a leech on the system. They give nothing back to the content producers.
Aren't they expanding the number of folks that have access to that content, and hence, the commercials?
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My guess would be that the net number of viewers of OTA television drop as a result of Aereo, but that, yes, the total number of television viewers increases somewhat. Aereo probably brings in plenty of rural customers who wouldn't get NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX, but also probably also has a lot of urban customers who just want to time-shift.
It's a clever idea, a cool service, an interesting business model, and part of why I'm torn about them.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Informative)
They are no more leeches than Cable companies and other rebroadcasters and bundlers.
My guess would be that the net number of viewers of OTA television drop as a result of Aereo
Since each of their customers are renting a physical antenna from Aereo Each viewer is an OTA viewer: the OTA signal is received by the physical antenna they are renting, and then encapsulated for streaming over the internet.
There is no additional cost for the OTA broadcaster --- in fact, at some point, if all the OTA viewers are using Aereo, then the broadcaster could probably make a deal with Aereo to streamline their delivery, and reduce the number of kilowatts they need.
Since Aereo is playing TV unmodified --- the viewers do see all the ads
Since Aereo are only allowing viewers to join who are in the area of their antennas, and they restrict access based on IP addresses that geolocate to the broadcast area, they are not providing out-of-area viewers access to content.
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not with automatic commercial removal
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Aereo is essentially a leech on the system. They give nothing back to the content producers.
Aren't they expanding the number of folks that have access to that content, and hence, the commercials?
See my other posting; commercial on broadcast television are typically a small percentage national brands, with the remainder being local advertisers within the broadcast area. Unless viewed in the broadcast area, the value of those commercials is Nil, and the network no longer gets paid proportionally to the number of actual viewers, only to the number of viewers within the area where the ads are applicable, and only then if those viewers are not viewing via Aereo (unless they are wiring Nielsen boxes int
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aereo has gone to great lengths to ensure that nobody outside the broadcast footprint can access the content through Aereo. So your point is entirely moot.
This isn't about advertising. (Score:3)
The thing is, broadcasters aren't bringing this case over lost advertising revenue. And they're not bringing it over increasing the size of the broadcast area.
They're bringing this case because if Aereo-like services lets people access the broadcasts within the broadcast area in more convenient ways, that means the broadcasters can't make as much money from selling more-convenient access to their content (e.g. by charging cable-TV retransmission fees, or making a deal with Time-Warner Cable to let subscr
Re:I'm torn... (Score:4, Insightful)
Aereo is essentially a leech on the system. They give nothing back to the content producers.
Aren't they expanding the number of folks that have access to that content, and hence, the commercials?
I use Aereo to watch football games while cooking. I see all the TV ads. Otherwise I would listen to it on the radio and hear the radio ads. Is that what the TV network wants?
Counterprogramming (Score:2)
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*as another poster mentioned, traditional methods for rating TV stations won't track what Aereo users are watching*
Then time to change how they get their stats.
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*as another poster mentioned, traditional methods for rating TV stations won't track what Aereo users are watching*
This, of course... is not Aereo's problem; when there a significant number of Aereo users, and eventually it becomes such that not including Aereo users would result in a non-representative sample, this becomes a problem the researchers and ratings agencies will definitely have to deal with.
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It's hard to root for them unless your only goal is the collapse of broadcast television.
Broadcasters seem to be doing a good enough job on their own with that, considering the amount of crap and Reality TV programming that they're running with these days. I had a fine chance to look at said broadcasters after a 8 year hiatus, and I'm pretty sure everything except for a couple of drama's, was reality tv, including on the specialty channels like discovery, mil-tv, and tlc.
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ABC/NBC/FOX/CBS pretty much only produce 15 hours of programming a week anyway that isn't the nightly news or the Latenight Show.
For the most part, the four broadcast networks have a pretty good suite of dramas and comedies. I think tier-1 cable has better shows, but most reality shows are saved for mid-season replacements and summer. [Cooking and Singing shows are the recent exception, but those 15 hours a week are pretty good.]
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Well if you call it pretty good, I guess that's your taste. But it doesn't seem to jive with the droves of people cutting the cord from cable and satellite, or throwing it all including IPTV into the bin. Maybe Star Trek was right, and TV as a form of entertainment will die by the mid 21st century.
Re: I'm torn... (Score:2)
What does a viewer "give back"? Do they strip the commercials out? If not, they're giving their sponsors a wider audience.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, if I understand the situation correctly the broadcasters aren't really losing anything. Broadcast TV gets its revenues through advertisements, there is no revenue flowing from the delivery of the product. In a way, broadcasters should be grateful that someone is helping them show their ads to even more people without costing them a dime. If they could figure out a way to get viewing figures from Aereo as a form of compensation, to bring to their advertisers as a basis for negotiating rates, they could have the cake and eat it too. If Aereo on the other hand was recording the broadcasts, stripping out the advertisements, and then streaming it on to consumers, that would be a whole other situation.
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...and yes, I know there are dozens of other ways to time-shift.
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1. They explicitly don't permit location shifting, and are actively preventing users from doing so.
2. The DVR doesn't automatically remove commercials, the user has to actively fast-forward past them, which is exactly the same as if the user taped it on a VCR and fast-forwarded through them [might be SLIGHTLY easier, but not different].
It is EXACTLY parallel to the user putting up an antennae and hooking up a VCR in their home.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aereo is essentially a leech on the system
How? Broadcasting over the air is a way of distributing content. Aereo does exactly the same thing. Think of it as a repeater for the broadcast signals. The broadcasters should be happy that another party is helping to distribute their content. The broadcasters get paid via advertising revenues, which are proportional to the number of viewers. Why should they object to more viewers?
Re:I'm torn... (Score:4, Insightful)
They shouldn't. Except...
First issue is that those viewers are time-shifting. The broadcasters hate that because some of their advertisers want the ads to be seen at that time. The great example being Thursday night, when the movie studios want to advertise movies opening that weekend. It doesn't do them as much good if I'm watching commercials meant for Thursday night on the next Monday or I'm watching Monday programming on Thursdays. Why should I, as an advertiser, pay extra for a Thursday night ad when there's no guarantee that the perspective customer will see it on Thursday night?
Second issue is that those viewers are not being measured. Broadcast television is seeing it's viewership decline as people go do other things--including watching the programs that broadcasters are showing via other means. Remember that ad rates are set by how many people are measured watching the show. No measurement and you have no idea how many people are watching and, therefore, no clue as to how to set the ad rates.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:4, Insightful)
First issue is that those viewers are time-shifting. The broadcasters hate that because some of their advertisers want the ads to be seen at that time.
The broadcasters will only "hate"* it if the advertisers stop paying as much. Are there advertisers who think Aereo is reducing the number of viewers who see the ads at the 'right' time? Do they think that reduction is greater than the gain for having their name and product come to more people's attention at all? Can the broadcasters show where this has come up in negotiating prices? I ask, because the broadcasters don't seem to be using that as part of their case. If they have specific cash amounts they could point to, that's actual damages, and so far, the case seems to be about potential or statutory damages instead. Showing where a given advertiser has offered less because the time shifting makes that timeslot less valuable would be refreshing, as it would let the broadcasters claim damages based on a simple straight-forward calculation that wouldn't look like Hollywood accounting gone mad.
* Hopefully, the broadcasters aren't sueing because they 'hate' anybody - lawsuits are supposed to be about making financial matters straight. Responsible adults don't sue becasue they hate someone and want to do whatever kind of damage they can to them, but to make the bottom line come out right. A civil trial is deliberately supposed to be an extraordinarily poor substitute for ripping someone's jugular out.
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You, sir, owe me a new keyboard for that little gem. It's a Logitech G19 and now the LCD isn't working. You can expect your lawsuit by the end of next week :D
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First issue is that those viewers are time-shifting. The broadcasters hate that ...
Tough. The Supreme Court has already said that viewers have a right to time-shift, whether the broadcasters like it or not, in the context of recording of over-the-air signals directly received by the viewers. They're just re-fighting that battle because the context is enough different that they get another at-bat.
Second issue is that those viewers are not being measured. ... Remember that ad rates are set by how many peopl
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The broadcasters get paid via advertising revenues, which are proportional to the number of viewers. Why should they object to more viewers?
The reason they're upset with Aereo is that cable TV companies pay broadcasters in order to carry the broadcast channels over cable. Alternatively, the broadcasters can compel the cable companies to carry the broadcast channels, but then they can't charge for them.
If the Aereo model is legal, it's pretty likely that the cable TV companies will all stop paying broadcasters and will just use antenna farms, like Aereo does. This will seriously reduce the profits of broadcasters more than any additional viewers
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Broadcast television got a pretty sweetheart deal: All of this spectrum is yours, just give us a little public interest news every day.
And that's why it's so easy to root for Aereo: Broadcast television got an absurdly sweet deal (one that, given the absolute shit that passes for 'news' they arguably aren't even honoring) on a very nice chunk of RF. Time for them to move.
If 'broadcasting' over the internet is sufficiently lucrative that Aereo (a 3rd party that has to run a silly teeny-antenna farm for legal reasons) can make money, they can cut out the middleman and do that instead. But if they want to keep acting like a very nice chunk of the airwaves was just handed to them by god for their convenience, fuck 'em. I'll cheer Aereo every step of the way if they do, in fact, cause one or more of the broadcasters to follow through on their threat to take their ball and go cable only.
(That said, I'm not actually sure that I believe your argument: Yes, Aereo doesn't provide anything back to the content producers; but neither does putting an antenna on my roof. And yet, sending free signals laced with ads to people with antennas turns out to be a functioning business model. Aereo doesn't actually detract from that, indeed, they increase the number of viewers within range of the signal, at no additional cost to the broadcaster. If they do have a financial effect, it's purely on the assorted shakedowns that govern the 'Must-carry [wikipedia.org]' rules on cable outfits, another absurdly sweetheart deal given to the broadcasters for, um, reasons. Or something.)
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My argument is that I'm conflicted.
Aereo's business plan is "stream NBC over the internet and get paid for it."
It doesn't pass the sniff-test of what's kosher.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
NO! And that's where you're missing the important point, Aereo's business model is 'rent antenna's, a DVR & bandwidth to allow a user to stream content they want from the available OTA signal anywhere the user wants'...Aereo's users are NOT paying for streaming NBC, CBS, ABC etc., if they were then indeed Aereo's business model would be copyright infringement. Consider that for it to be the case that Aereo were charging for 'streaming NBC over the internet' then all they'd ever need is to record 1 copy of the show for themselves, then make that available to all their users that is explicitly not what they do, every user is recording & streaming the particular station they want to watch, again they are renting the infrastructure not paying for the content.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And cable's original business plan, when it was CATV, was "retransmit NBC via cable and get paid for it". 100% kosher, though the legal wrangling is STILL going on.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
I firmly believe that what Aereo does is, strictly speaking, legal, but hardly fair play.
That's the best kind of legal.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:4, Insightful)
Your opinion shouldn't be 'torn to shreds', your welcome to your opinion, people simply might disagree with it. Specifically what exactly is Aereo doing that I can't do myself? I have an antenna at home able to tune in OTA content, I have a DVR attached to it from which I can record the station of my choice & then 'stream' it anywhere I want to on any device I want. It's 'black letter law' that I have the right to do this. To receive & record all the OTA stations available to me at once I need as many antennas as there are available stations but only 1 DVR & there's certainly no legal limitation on the number of antennas I can have. Now, what if a company sold me a device that had multiple antennas, receivers & 1 DVR that was located in my house from which I streamed the content? Now what if instead of selling it to me they rented it to me? Now just move those devices to a central location and you have Aereo's business model.
Aereo is simply providing the infrastructure to do this in 1 location, they are 'renting' out the infrastructure that every user would otherwise have to buy and install at home, they are clearly NOT charging their users for content, they are charging for the infrastructure. In the process more users have access to the content, more eyeballs on the commercials, and thus the broadcasters in theory should be able to charge more for the commercials & this 'free content' that they are providing using the 'free (monopoly) spectrum' they were granted by the government.
Sorry, Aereo is not leaching off of anyone, as always the Broadcasters missed an opportunity that was obvious to someone else with the technical know how & backing to do it & now they are scared of this somehow ruining their 'business model', the Broadcasters don't have a right over how I watch the content delivered OTA I hope the SC puts the smack down on them, it will be good for their ego.
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Frankly, it probably is illegal. But it shouldn't be.
Check out the history of cable TV (or Community Access Television - CATV - as it was once known). Basically, it started out with a big mountaintop antenna and feeding the broadcast signals down to a poor-reception valley. Essentially what Aereo would argue they're doing now, just they're using the Internet. It was the same progression - the broadcasters complained that the cable companies were mooching and not paying anything back, and the cablecos said "
Re:I'm torn... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see how Aereo is any different than those cable providers who just were retransmitting from an antenna, and those cable providers have to ask permission.
A few years ago, there was a precedent set by Cablevision that no retransmission consent required For a customer that rents an antenna.
In ABC's petition [amazonaws.com]. They take issue with the fact, that Aereo is using a massive number of tiny coin-cell sized very inexpensive antennas mounted on a PCB
Each customer gets an antenna, but they are dynamically assigned. Also, each customer's stream gets transcoded and saved to a customer-specific directory on shared hard drives.
So at some point the customer's stuff is getting blended in some sense; the customer isn't renting 100% of the delivery infrastructure, only the antenna and some disk space used to receive their content.
One of the arguments before the court is their system is engineered as a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance whose sole purpose is to attempt to circumvent the intent of Congress and the copyright law; in regards to, the requirement for consent to retransmission, AND the exclusive rights to public performance.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:4, Informative)
That's basically my point - the jurisprudence is this absurd mess because the law doesn't make much sense.
I had this long paragraph that I elided because it was boring, but the gist of it was: Let's say you put an antenna on your roof - fine. What if you have land at the top of the hill that's blocking your reception, and you put the antenna there and run a cable down? Fine as well. What if you and your neighbor split the cost of a better antenna, and you run the cable to both houses? What if a whole block does this? What if you make people pay a subscription for the upkeep of this mess of coax?
Eventually the line is crossed and it becomes illegal, but there's no obvious place to put that line. One answer is "when there's profit", but there's no legal basis for that since nothing they're doing is illegal in the absence of the Cable Act, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with profits (IANAL, of course).
You (and me and the judges so far) have this mental model of people having antennas on their roofs, which is clearly OK. The law is clear that cable companies have to get permission, but the law isn't particularly good at excluding the other cases. Check out the definitions from the 1982 law [publicaccess.org], which are reused in the 1992 law - it looks like if you set up an antenna for 2 single-occupant houses (there is an exclusion only for MDUs), you'd have a 'cable system' and therefore be a 'cable operator'. The ruling will probably hinge on fairly boring and narrow interpretations of those terms - namely, is Aereo a cable system as defined (intentionally vaguely) by the law? Because if they are, it's clear that they are subject to the retransmission consent rule.
Also, CBS can kiss my ass. They're pretty much the only ones trying to push this crap.
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Unbroken line of rulings in cases vs. Aereo. Other courts have ruled otherwise in cases against similar services, hence why it's going to the Supreme Court.
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I firmly believe that what Aereo does is, strictly speaking, legal, but hardly fair play...
Aereo is essentially a leech on the system.
I can't understand how they could be considered leeches:
In what way is this being a "leech"? If anything it's a service to the local broadcaster. In fact if you think of it, if Aero becomes successful, the broadcas
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Currently, local viewers who cannot get an OTA signal need to buy cable or satellite. Local stations get paid per subscriber for cable and satellite viewers. Aero does not pay this extra fee.
Local stations could improve their broadcast range to covert the cable/Aero/satellite viewers. This would cost money and would lose them the extra fees.
There is a leech involved. I do not think it is Aero.
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Interesting. <joke>Sounds like the broadcasters should just switch off their towers and collect the cable fees.</joke>
(I assume the fee comes from some sort of "must carry" in the area supposedly reached by the towers, and if they switched off the towers the cable providers would simply drop them.)
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the broadcasters do is quite unfair, but technically legal as well.
They delivery YOUR eyeballs to the networks and their advertisers. You might go watch YouTube instead, if Aereo didn't exist.
What broadcasters are worried about is cable retransmission fees, which has nothing to do with Aereo. Viacom wants to keep your cable company paying obscene amounts of money for channels like Nickelodeon and MTV, and threaten to pull their local CBS channel if they don't agree. Broadcast television was never supposed to work that way. Aereo is breaking that model.
I consider Aereo a valuable service for people like me who are out in the fringes... If I spend $200 on an antenna system, I can get most, but not all, of my local channels, with minor breakups. That same money will pay for Aereo for quite a while. It can also save me from buying a DVR as well, though I must admit, those are getting dirt cheap, these days. [walmart.com]
And while I can make an antenna work over time, renters without dedicated private roof space (see: FCC) may not be in a position to do so in any case. Those same renters may also not be in a position where they can get satellite service, either. Then it's just a question of being at the mercy of the local cable company, or not having TV, without Aereo.
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*What broadcasters are worried about is cable retransmission fees, which has nothing to do with Aereo. Viacom wants to keep your cable company paying obscene amounts of money for channels like Nickelodeon and MTV, and threaten to pull their local CBS channel if they don't agree. Broadcast television was never supposed to work that way. Aereo is breaking that model.*
Then let the model break. I'm tired of region-locking DVD or BD discs, not being able to watch something because I'm not in the US, not being ab
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FCC and CRTC are already helping the collapse of free broadcast TV. They took away ch70-83 for cell phones during the 80s and 90s. They did it again recently (52-69 has been reallocated for 700Mhz cell phone bands). And they also removed 2-6 on VHF (big loss for long-range reception when not line-of-sight). Guess what will go when cell phone companies want more spectrum? probably 40-51.
Aereo leases an antenna and a DVR, nothing more. People might be unable/unwilling to install an antenna on their home. The
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I can't believe all the technologies out there that allow viewers to circumvent messages from advertisers. It's truly an outrage! For example, have you heard about the "toilet"? Apparently, many people use it whenever there's a commercial. How insidious!
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I'm not sure that wouldn't be so terrible.
If broadcast TV collapses then Aereo will have nothing to re-broadcast
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Informative)
Just to clarify, Aereo's service has been found not to be illegal by federal trial and appellate courts. However, rival services that are claimed to operate similarly have lost court cases in other jurisdictions; the circuit split is part of the justification for cert.
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How corrupt the system is may well decide if the company wins.
I use Aereo, it's great (Score:5, Interesting)
I live within the broadcast range of Boston but due to a hill I'm on (and weather) I only get one or two channels at best. I like to watch American football and having the signal drop in the middle of a play just stinks. Aereo allows me to watch (and pause/record) shows I would normally get fed up with and just not watch. It's a great service to mesh with Netflix/Amazon Streaming/etc. since you get sports and live news. We really like it.
As to why the broadcasters are against Aereo I guess there could be concern about timeshifting, etc. But if I did get solid reception OTA I could just use any DVR to do pause and recording, or even a VCR (ok not a VCR, no TV is worth using one of those again).
Overall I see Aereo, Netflix, etc. as the future. Much like mp3s and digital streaming are the media for music. It would probably be best for the broadcasters to try and figure out how to best make it all work. I still don't understand why a broadcaster would not want Aereo to 'repeat' their signal, w/o it I would not be able to watch the shows, hence not view the commercials.
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As to why the broadcasters are against Aereo I guess there could be concern about timeshifting, etc.
They are against Aereo because currently the broadcasters get paid by the cable companies that carry their local content, but if what Aereo is doing is legal then the cable companies may decide to do the same thing and stop those payments.
Effectively it puts in a cap on the amount that the local broadcasters can charge cable companies, and that cap will go down as technology gets progressively cheaper.
ABC has a good shot, but Aereo should win (Score:5, Interesting)
ABC does not own the content that it broadcasts: it licenses it from the original authors/producers. That license permits it to distribute the content over the airwaves with the payment of a fee.
Think about it this way. Suppose I wrote a play. I would have both (1) a right to prevent others from copying my written work (the script) and (2) a right to prevent others from performing that play if they got a copy of the script. If I permit a playhouse to perform the play, that playhouse can limit the viewing of the licensed performance to those inside the building. Here, ABC is broadcasting its content to the public: it's like a playhouse that has no walls that anyone from the street can enjoy. The playhouse's recourse is to perform the play inside an enclosed building, and ABC's recourse is arguably to distribute its content to those under contract, which it cannot do over the public airwaves.
Now, if ABC owns the original rights in what it broadcasts, the story is different. In that case it can sue as the holder as the copyright, rather than the holder of merely a license. Even then, arguably ABC has granted everyone with access to broadcasted content an implied license to view it, and forward the content to another location as apparently Aereo does. What Aereo would then be doing is merely a "fair use" of that broadcasted content, which is specifically permitted by the copyright statutes.
Fin-syn is dead (Score:3)
ABC does not own the content that it broadcasts: it licenses it from the original authors/producers.
Come again [wikipedia.org]? The rule requiring broadcast networks to license all prime-time programming from third parties [wikipedia.org] was abolished two decades ago.
Now, if ABC owns the original rights in what it broadcasts, the story is different. In that case it can sue as the holder as the copyright, rather than the holder of merely a license.
In practice, as I understand it, the exclusive licensee of a work in a particular market has remedies under the law very close to those of the owner of copyright.
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The will of corporate lobbyists trumps everything.
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Statutory law trumps the rules of the FCC, bud.
So where's this statutory law stating that ABC can't just produce all of its shows in-house?
All about the money... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it's hilarious (Score:5, Interesting)
If you read the plaintiff's pleading before the court (quoted here [arstechnica.com]):
They are explicitly saying "our business is changing and we want the courts to stop things because creative destruction [wikipedia.org] is unfair." They are not even pretending that they are trying to do something in the public's interest; they are nakedly asking the court to save the entrenched interest. Pathetic assholes.
Keyword: BROADcast (Score:2)
Aereo gives each individual subscriber their own antenna. That's not broadcasting, it's "singlecasting" at most, but really just time and location shifting.
And besides, if customers are subscribing to for content they can't otherwise get because of where they live, who's losing money here?
The travel industry (Score:2)
And besides, if customers are subscribing to for content they can't otherwise get because of where they live, who's losing money here?
(stretching...) The travel industry is losing money from people who would otherwise travel to view works unavailable in their home markets.
Thoughts on SCOTUS (Score:2)
I'm rather tired an annoyed how SCOTUS can wreck and change laws by simply interpreting them differently.
Yes sometimes they rule in societies best interests. As they legalized being gay.
Example, Texas tells the court Its legal to be gay but not have gay sex, SCOTUS's comment "and the difference is?" and now being gay is legal.
Eminent domain and how they think the public use now means private use as in developers taking land is ok. And being paid fair market value? No, sorry.
The Whitehouse went to SCOTUS fo
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And being paid fair market value? No, sorry.
Got a case cite for that? AFAIK while it doesn't infringe the 5th Amendment for governments to take land using eminent domain for private development, there is still an obligation to pay what the property is worth. And if the initial price isn't good enough for the owner (which is usually), the owner can always sue for more.
Does anybody believe Aereo? (Score:2)
Does anybody really think that there is actually one antenna per customer? And that that antenna is hooked up to a particular DVR? And that that antenna and DVR are connected to just one customer?
I just can't and don't believe it. The 'antenna array' is surely a prop, and the DVR has to be a rack of shared servers.
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Cable and satellite are fairly tired of annual negotiations with all the local network broadcasts they need to renew contracts with... it's a hassle for them.
In my heart I believe they would slumber comfortably without this routine.
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Yes. I understand that they have built these arrays of so-called microantennas. I believe that they are props, fakes, shiny objects to distract from what is really happening.
Those antennae are tiny, too small to pick up the relatively long wavelengths of current transmissions. The are packed together so tightly that they would be shielding one another from the signals. Running analog signals from those antennae to tens of thousands of separate tuners? Come on, really?
Thad
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In most areas you could get local stations by hooking up a paperclip in the RF input of your TV. Heck, my antenna is UHF only and I get all the FM stations in and around montreal (more than using a T antenna since it's outside)
The war is already over (Score:2)
This war is already over.
If big TV prevails, they will have successfully defended a dying business model which they will use to insulate themselves from having to evolve in what is a very evolving world, and they will die, frustrated and alone, isolated from the audiences.
If Aereo and the others prevail, they will usher in a new era of content that no longer needs as many middlemen to deliver it, and old broadcast media will wither and die.
Either way, the old way dies. They have received the Hokuto Dan Kot
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If Aereo and the others prevail, they will usher in a new era of content that no longer needs as many middlemen to deliver it, and old broadcast media will wither and die.
No middle men except for the networks, who buy the shows from the producers? Or the broadcasters they are picking the signal up from? Or Aereo themselves (or other companies that follow their model), who you are paying to relay that broadcast (from the local broadcaster) to your device?
Seems to me the Aereo model adds a middle man to the equation. They (Aereo) literally can't exist without the old broadcast media.
Preliminary injunction (Score:2)
In the first place, it was unusual for an interlocutory appeal to be granted from the denial of the preliminary injunction motion. In federal court usually you can only appeal from a final judgment.
Similarly, apart from the fact that it's always rare for a certiorari petition to be granted, it's especially tough where the appeal is not from a final
The 2nd Circuit's ruling (Score:3)
Recusment and stock holding (Score:2)
The summary mentioned Justice Alito recusing himself because of his family's stock in Disney (which owns ABC) and it makes perfect sense to recuse in this case.
But what if the judge had owned stock in CBS or FOX instead? Would he still have recused himself? A ruling in support of Aereo might negatively impact the stock price of corporations not directly related to the case. So the fact that a judge owns stock, regardless of it's connection to the current case, can lead to bias.
I propose we ban all judges an
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I propose we ban all judges and congress members from owning stock during their term in office.
I would have to imagine that the intersection of the set of "People who don't own stock" and "People who are qualified to be judges" is vanishingly small.
The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:3, Insightful)
Aereo is an online streaming service - among its offering, it enables people who stay very far away from NYC (for example, Sydney Australia) to watch TV stations from NYC.
The argument from the teevee stations is that by allowing the streaming of their broadcast content, Aereo is violating the "copyright".
I dunno about you, but I find this argument utterly preposterous !
Legally speaking, true, the way the copyright laws has been stipulated by those "legal experts" is that a copy of whatever copyrighted conte
Re:The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:5, Interesting)
Aereo is an online streaming service - among its offering, it enables people who stay very far away from NYC (for example, Sydney Australia) to watch TV stations from NYC.
The argument from the teevee stations is that by allowing the streaming of their broadcast content, Aereo is violating the "copyright".
I dunno about you, but I find this argument utterly preposterous !
Legally speaking, true, the way the copyright laws has been stipulated by those "legal experts" is that a copy of whatever copyrighted content (be it sound, image, book, or the combination of any form) can only be used one time, in one place.
Aero addresses this the same way Slingbox does. They argue that by having one physical receiver per active subscribed user, that they are not in violation; this is the same way it would work if you had a Slingbox at home in your NYC apartment, and were traveling in another country. The major difference is that advertisers that you see for NY products on your Slingbox have a reasonable expectation that you will be returning to the regional purchase market where your Slingbox is located at some point in the future, after your trip is over, while there's no similar expectation that you'll go to the roof where the Aereo receivers are located at some point, and then proceed to "buy local".
But c'mon !
People living in Sydney Australia don't get to watch teevee station beaming from NYC anyway - and by allowing them to watch it via online streaming, how the fuck this going to make the NYC teevee station losing money ?
ABC objects to this because they license content, and make money on commercials.
Commercials tend to be related to a regional market (i.e. you are unlikely to have a Big-O tires or Chick-fil-A or Trader Joe's or other locale centric food chain specific to the U.S. in Australia). Because of this, advertisers in the NY market don't see any benefit to ABC stations streamed outside the NY market, since they aren't applicable in remote markets; the thing that bothers ABC about this is ads tend to get paid by region, an by Nielsen ratings for the broadcast station within the region. So they don't get a higher income for their licensed content for their franchisees.
Assuming they could get franchisees in the local markets in Australia to pick up and license ABC programming, then there would be advertising for the local market in the broadcast area, and they'd see income for those programs within that region.
So Aereo breaks their regional marketing models by moving content + advertisements. This also devalues their properties, unless they agree to simultaneous release in various regions, and it erodes their leverage position of getting a franchisee in another region where there is no franchisee, because they are unable to hold them hostage to in demand content, which would (effectively) blackmail the local stations into taking a full content package, rather than one or two programs, and would cause income sharing for regional advertising back to the parent network (ABC).
This effect is, incidentally, the same reason that various networks have been going after cable and dish networks to get a larger programming package payout (with the exception that the cable and dish networks do regional advertising substitution on the fly into program packages, rather than taking all the advertising from the network). This was the basis of the CBS (network)/Time Warner (cable provider) dispute last year: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/09/02/cbs-time-warner-resolve-dispute/ [dailyfinance.com]
If Aereo wins, the networks are going to need to revise their business model, so the most likely outcome is actually that there will be a loss for Aero, with a time period for them and the networks to agree to an implementation of a fetch-model for advertising, at which point Aero doesn't end up actually losing, and the network gets part of
Re:The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:5, Informative)
I just looked at the Aereo website, and it appears that they are actually restricting the service to users who live in the same metro area as the Aereo antenna farm in question. If things are as they seem, it impossible for people in Australia to register for Aereo, and the local ads remain relevant.
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Re: what's the point? (Score:2)
Your internet service is all 4G and random WiFi?
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What's the point of Aereo then? Why not stuck up my own antenna and DVR instead? What is the value? Is it just sticking the DVR into the cloud?
Well the obvious fact that antennas are not viable or effective for everyone, you also have the ability to stream to various devices.
I've been trying them out recently, and I do like the fact that I can pull up a recorded show on my phone or my tablet, even when I'm not at home.
However the viewing area is a drawback. I've spent most of the last month traveling on business, and my DVR was filling up with shows that I could not watch because I was not in the allowed viewing area... (and I was too lazy to fi
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Re:The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:5, Insightful)
ABC objects to this because they license content, and make money on commercials.
ABC's inability to make a buck off that is not my problem, nor should it rise to the level of copyright infringement.
Re:The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:4, Informative)
There's nothing to "steal":
it's a digital product and it's also a public broadcast. This would be like saying I'm stealing from slashdot by posting the slashdot logo somewhere else. Give me a fucking break with your leap of logic.
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Actually with a satellite dish you can pick up thousands of channels even more if its movable. In Ireland we have the slightly strange situation of having a national broadcaster RTE and a couple of others, but their output is dwarfed by the number of British channels available via satellite. Strangely Irish channels are encrypted on satellite so if you can't get a terrestial signal you have to subscribe to Sky.
The only thing is things like BBC iPlayer are regionally locked. Really not a problem to record fr
Re:The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:5, Informative)
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ABC objects to this because they license content, and make money on commercials.
While it's try that ABC isn't gaining revenue from people watching in Aussieland, they're also not spending any money on distribution or infrastructure to broadcast the information halfway across the world and increase their customer base.
At bare minimum, it's a break-even. Nothing gained, nothing lost. In reality, it will likely drive sales of DVDs, increase website traffic (which is likely ad supported as well) and provide free testing of the viability of this new market. Maybe there is an untapped w
Blimps over football stadiums (Score:2)
I plan to start a company that flies blimps over football stadiums and broadcasts video of the games. Afterall they are letting the light from the stadium radiate into the environment so I'm entitled to pick it up and rebroadcast it without any compensation to the football teams.
Re:The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:4, Insightful)
"The major difference is that advertisers that you see for NY products on your Slingbox have a reasonable expectation that you will be returning ..."
Just like printer manufacturers have apparently a reasonable expectation that you will buy cartridges from them for their printers that they sell below a reasonable price, or games for your Xbox or...
The customers are not responsible for the unreasonable expectations of somebody's business plan.
Re:The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:5, Informative)
My impression was that you had to be in the broadcast area for a TV station to be able to get it from Aereo. You con't just decide you wanted stations from across the country. This is what keeps them from just being a TV streaming service, they're literally just rebroadcasting it to people who could under normal circumstances already get the content, and making it more convenient.
My parents live about 50 miles from a relatively large city where Aereo is "Coming soon" and apparently waiting for these legal issues to be resolved before they go live there. They used to have a 65 ft tower and a powered antenna in order to be able to receive over the air channels. In the past 20 years they've switched to cable, and the tower rusted and fell down. Now that they're looking to cut the cable, Aereo looks like a very attractive option for them since it would save the cost of setting up another antenna tower. The only reason they want the local channel is to see their nightly news.
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Hulu has nightly national news, and local news can be found on the radio, or on the website of your local newspaper, sometimes with video...
local channels have sports as well wgn america not (Score:2)
local channels have sports as well wgn america does not have blackhawks, and only some of the bulls games that are on WGN.
And places that are like 65 miles from Chicago are in the blackhawks zone and you need WGN 9 / CSN to get all of the games that are not national.
Re: The way they play the "copyright" card (Score:3)
So it would be no problem for the courts to rule that they should lock out customers in a market that want to watch tv in that market
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So it would be no problem for the courts to rule that they should lock out customers in a market that want to watch tv in that market
It would be no problem, and in fact that is what Aereo already does.
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They do one antenna per sub to get around retransmission and license issues. By dedicating A single antenna per user, it's not retransmission. It's more of a relay.
If they grabbed the DVB-T feed, well, first they'd have to get it from somewhere which means a license fee, and lots of boxes one per viewer. It just would not scale as and might run into license redistribution issues.
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The big networks PAY local stations to carry their networks (well, really they pay to get the ads carried; the shows come along for free sorta), and in turn the locals get to act like big shots and ride the branding and sell local ads on whatever they can the rest of the day. They only HAVE to be "CBS yourtown" for a few hours a day. The rest of the time they use that name, they're riding coattails.
If the big networks go away and take their paychecks with them, the local stations would need to find a ne
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The difference is that the antenna isn't on land that you own or lease.
(ipso facto) why does the location of the antenna matter if you are paying a local for that service? what supersedes your ability to find someone that has better reception? especially that this service is _only_ given to others from the same locale (who may not be able to get good reception)?
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why does the location of the antenna matter if you are paying a local for that service?
Use of an antenna on the other side of a packet-switched network might be considered a "transmission" under copyright law, and if something's a "transmission", it's a lot easier to argue that a work is being "performed publicly".
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I've never heard of DMA locks before. Is that some sort of TPM mechanism to prevent devices from snooping on copyrighted memory contents?