I've mentioned this before on HN, I'll say it again: Aereo should now do a pivot, becoming a hardware reseller of TV-signal-receiver/streamer devices like this one: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_broadway.html - it can stream either over your local Wi-fi, or across the interwebs so you can watch remotely when you're out of the house. Broadband speeds are a bit slow, but they're getting there (slowly) - until then, rely on your friend who has Google fiber or something :). Basically you have Aereo service without the service fees (except the initial hardware cost and internet service cost). I'm especially in favour of this because it's putting back the power in the hands of the end customer -- finally, they own the device, they're not relying on the cloud, they're not facilitating another rentier operation.
Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
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Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#72Justices Breyer, Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan were the majority. It isn't over since the case now goes back to the lower court, but Aereo can no longer argue they are the same as a person putting an antenna on their roof.
Its amazing that the left and the right can't agree on anything, not even it being illegal to lie on gun applications, but once IP is tossed in the game they all fall on some pretty strong protectionist postions. I'm not making some big statement here, but it just goes to show that guys like Lawrence Lessig and the EFF keep losing because they have so few allies in government and have the most powerful enemies, the v…
Intellectual property law is the pride and joy of our legal system.
Really.
Patents, Copyright and Trademarks are all American inventions that have spread everywhere in the world. Many Americans think it goes too far, but in the fraternity of lawyers and judges, IP rules.
Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aereo's setup is absurd. Placing hundreds if not thousands of identical antennas on a rooftop, capturing identical signals and sending them, individually, to users. That's expensive and inefficient. The only reason they did it was to exploit a potential loophole in the current law - and now the Supreme Court has effectively closed that loophole.
That's odd reasoning. It sounds like you are saying that any conformance to the law is somehow exploiting a loophole.
Not really. There's such a thing as the "spirit" of a law, and the technical details of a law.
The intention of the changes to the Copyright Act (which Shivetya has detailed better than I can[1]) was to stop basically what Aereo is doing, albeit back in the 1970s with cable companies. The legalese reflected the technology of the time. Aereo found a technical loophole that allowed them to continue to do it, but all the while they were violating the spirit of the law.
Which is, of course, legal. Until it isn't.
Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Describing Roberts as liberal is a great stretch
Pretty sure he's the one who "saved" Obamacare when it went to Supreme Court.
Obamacare was closely based off Republican proposals in the 90s (including Romney's implementation of it in Massachusetts).
Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've not used Aero and haven't heard their argument but I bet their business model is they rent antennas to customers. I'd be curious to know where that argument failed because surely I could create a business that rented antennas to customers and installed them on houses. Why does it matter the location of the antenna? Either way this is bad for the consumer, bad for technology, and bad for innovation.
I imagine the argument fails because it's obvious to anyone who looks at the company's offerings for two seconds that the "rent antennas" thing is just an excuse, and that their actual business model is that they charge for streaming TV.
So then where is the line drawn? Am I not allowed to put an antenna on my roof? What if I put it on my neighbors because it gets a better signal?
I'm honestly curious what is wrong with renting an antenna from a company and streaming the signal, regardless of location.
Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#76The Supreme Court is wrong- the reason cable companies are treated as a 'public' performance of a work is that their distribution medium is shared- any subscriber can tune into that broadcasting of that work over a shared common carrier where one copy of the work is transmitted and many subscribers can view it. Aereo is different in that it only transmits the signal captured to a single subscriber at a time, removing…
Aereo's setup is absurd. Placing hundreds if not thousands of identical antennas on a rooftop, capturing identical signals and sending them, individually, to users. That's expensive and inefficient. The only reason they did it was to exploit a potential loophole in the current law - and now the Supreme Court has effectively closed that loophole.
Don't their antenna's cost 10 cents or something really cheap like that?
Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure he's the one who "saved" Obamacare when it went to Supreme Court.
Describing Obamacare as liberal is a bit of a stretch. - a Canadian
Bear in mind, the U.S. definition of liberal is still far to the right of what the rest of the world considers liberal.
Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aereo's setup is absurd. Placing hundreds if not thousands of identical antennas on a rooftop, capturing identical signals and sending them, individually, to users. That's expensive and inefficient. The only reason they did it was to exploit a potential loophole in the current law - and now the Supreme Court has effectively closed that loophole.
That's odd reasoning. It sounds like you are saying that any conformance to the law is somehow exploiting a loophole.
Now we know that it was not actually conforming to the law.
Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#79Justices Breyer, Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan were the majority. It isn't over since the case now goes back to the lower court, but Aereo can no longer argue they are the same as a person putting an antenna on their roof.
Its amazing that the left and the right can't agree on anything, not even it being illegal to lie on gun applications, but once IP is tossed in the game they all fall on some pretty strong protectionist postions. I'm not making some big statement here, but it just goes to show that guys like Lawrence Lessig and the EFF keep losing because they have so few allies in government and have the most powerful enemies, the v…
People who regularly watch the court know that judges falling into "Left" and "Right" camps are the exception, not the rule. There are typically splits were some of the "Left" judges agree for reason X and some disagree for reason Y, and/or some "Right" judges agree for reason Z and disagree for reason W.
And that's a good thing. This isn't a sports game where I should root for "my team." The judges shouldn't start from the end position they want and work towards that.
Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
#80The decision is limited to the question of whether Aereo violated the networks' "exclusive right" to "perform" their programs "publicly." The dissent (Scalia, Alido, and Thomas) believe that Aereo did not "perform" at all. They believe that when an Aereo subscriber logs in and clicks the play button, that the subscriber, not Aereo, is doing that performing. EDIT: Please note that the dissent would not have necessaril…
I'm reading the opinion now, and I would not have guessed that those particular justices would have made the ruling they did. Does anybody have insight into how this decision fits with the ideological views of the justices?
The conservative Justices generally favor looking at the plain text of the statute, while the liberal Justices are more willing to look at the broader implications and view a situation in functional terms. So it's unsurprising that the liberal justices, and Chief Justice Roberts who is less textualist than the other conservatives, were willing to look past the technicality Aereo was relying on to see that it was functionally equivalent to any other television streaming service.