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Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

supremecourt.gov

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Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonderful summary, and I agree with your conclusion: people should take this as the Court saying "no" to Aereo's contrived, free-riding business model, and others like it, not to new technologies that enable people to store and access content which they already own [a license to].

Can I set up my own antenna in New York and stream its recordings back to myself in Minneapolis? How long is my antenna allowed to be before it magically switches to becoming illegal? This is an incredibly stupid decision that raises many more questions than it answers.

If you read the decision, you will see that you are absolutely allowed to do this. The length of the antenna or wire has nothing to do with anything. What is not allowed is public rebroadcasting (or what the law refers to as "performing").

The entire reason this law was written is because under an old law, cable companies ("community antenna television" in that day) were setting up antennas and running cable to multiple homes, charging the users for it, and not paying anything to the broadcasters/copyright holders. They made the same claim Aereo is making now - we're not rebroadcasting, we're just a big antenna connected to multiple homes. The law was written specifically to address this, but it was written in a generic way to avoid loopholes... like exactly the loophole Aereo claimed existed.

The gist of the supreme court decision is that, despite the behind the scenes trickery, Aereo is essentially no different from a cable company as far as that law was written. The intent of the law was certainly to restrict companies exactly like Aereo, and the letter of the law gives the court the ability to enforce this intent.

Before you call the decision "incredibly stupid" you might want to actually read it.

Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#253
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I set up my own antenna in New York and stream its recordings back to myself in Minneapolis? How long is my antenna allowed to be before it magically switches to becoming illegal? This is an incredibly stupid decision that raises many more questions than it answers.

If you read the decision, you will see that you are absolutely allowed to do this. The length of the antenna or wire has nothing to do with anything. What is not allowed is public rebroadcasting (or what the law refers to as "performing"). The entire reason this law was written is because under an old law, cable companies ("community antenna television" in that day) were setting up antennas and running cable to multi…

What is a semantic difference between setting your own antenna and someone setting it for you and charging for the service? I.e. the service of renting of that antenna? Why the second is suddenly considered bad by the law?

I'm not arguing about whether the law applies, I'm asking to explain the logic of the law which intents to forbid such service.

Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#254
This is a disaster for anyone that offers cloud services. It's legal for me to set up an antenna in a data center and stream what I receive to myself. But it's apparently not legal for me to pay someone to do the exact same thing. What's funny is that if the antenna were connected to me via a coaxial cable, it would probably be legal. But since it uses packets and Cat-6 cables and that crazy Intarwebs thing, it's not. I don't get it.

This is annoying because it also obviously affects useful things like WebSDR. Since WebSDR nodes can tune VHF/UHF, they can receive copyrighted TV and music, which means they're now illegal to run under this ruling. (Fortunately, all the good WebSDR nodes are outside the US, so it doesn't matter in practice. But if you were going to set one up in the US, think again.)

Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#255
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I set up my own antenna in New York and stream its recordings back to myself in Minneapolis? How long is my antenna allowed to be before it magically switches to becoming illegal? This is an incredibly stupid decision that raises many more questions than it answers.

If you read the decision, you will see that you are absolutely allowed to do this. The length of the antenna or wire has nothing to do with anything. What is not allowed is public rebroadcasting (or what the law refers to as "performing"). The entire reason this law was written is because under an old law, cable companies ("community antenna television" in that day) were setting up antennas and running cable to multi…

Aereo now sells me the antenna for $100. They charge me a "colocation" fee. Aereo is now following the law according to this decision. They still don't need to pay broadcasters.

It was an incredibly stupid decision.

I could offer the exact same service. I will point you to a ~$160 hardware device that I will colocate in a datacenter in Chicago for you for $15/month. I'll provide power, networking, and unlimited bandwidth. How is this any different?

Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#256
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I set up my own antenna in New York and stream its recordings back to myself in Minneapolis? How long is my antenna allowed to be before it magically switches to becoming illegal? This is an incredibly stupid decision that raises many more questions than it answers.

If you read the decision, you will see that you are absolutely allowed to do this. The length of the antenna or wire has nothing to do with anything. What is not allowed is public rebroadcasting (or what the law refers to as "performing"). The entire reason this law was written is because under an old law, cable companies ("community antenna television" in that day) were setting up antennas and running cable to multi…

Honestly, I don't see how you justified the decision and agree that it is "incredibly stupid." Am I not allowed to pay someone to set up my antenna? If I do should that involve other cable companies at all?

"The entire reason this law was written is because under an old law, cable companies ("community antenna television" in that day) were setting up antennas and running cable to multiple homes, charging the users for it, and not paying anything to the broadcasters/copyright holders."

I don't see what is wrong with this. Without that company, that person wouldn't be able to access the content - which is, itself, a "public performance." Otherwise, the person wouldn't be willing to pay for it. Either way, its an agreement between two private parties as to how they wish to access public information.

This is protectionism.

Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#257
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I set up my own antenna in New York and stream its recordings back to myself in Minneapolis? How long is my antenna allowed to be before it magically switches to becoming illegal? This is an incredibly stupid decision that raises many more questions than it answers.

If you read the decision, you will see that you are absolutely allowed to do this. The length of the antenna or wire has nothing to do with anything. What is not allowed is public rebroadcasting (or what the law refers to as "performing"). The entire reason this law was written is because under an old law, cable companies ("community antenna television" in that day) were setting up antennas and running cable to multi…

Quite right. If anything, it's the law that's stupid. :)

Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#258
post #73
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I don't think "technical loophole" is the best description. They were trying to make the case that they were providing a long antenna cord which is at least sorta reasonable (and something the cable companies could not claim).

Antennas are legal. Manipulating airwaves to be played on a TV is legal. Long antenna cables are legal. Putting an antenna on my neighbor's roof is legal. Paying my neighbor rent for such a thing is legal. Storing broadcast content is legal. Paying for devices to do such a thing is legal.

Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't own media content. You own a license for media content. Your use of the media is dictated by its license. In general you don't need a license to consume a copyrighted work that you received legally. There was no "click to agree" on the last book I read. You only need a licrense to exceed what copyright allows. Some software companies have argued that the hierarchical storage of a computer violates copyrig…

Can you cite a case at the appellate level that justifies copyright licensing on the basis of ephemeral copies in memory?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak_Comp....

Re: Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

#260
post #243
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a narrow exception for free over the air TV. Are you saying that NBC does not pay anyone for the rights to broadcast a movie?

No. You don't pay to watch NBC over the air. Aereo tried to be the one to watch for free and then redistribute it to you also for free (to them).

You don't pay to watch NBC over the air.

And yet that has nothing to do with content producers being compensated.

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