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Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

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

#271

Post by ironchef »

icebraining wrote: post #263
ironchef wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between me clicking on my remote to tell tivo to record for me than me clicking on a button in a web page telling aereo to record for me? It's still being done on request, no?

Aereo controls what gets recorded, TiVo (the company) doesn't. They're not selling an agnostic tool, they're selling the recording of a particular set of channels.

How does Aereo control what gets recorded? I click to record a show in the interface. That tunes the antenna to that channel at that time and records an individual recording for me.

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

#272

Post by coldpie »

skwirl wrote: post #251
coldpie wrote: post #230

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…

> you are absolutely allowed to do this.

So you agree that I have a legal right to accept the OTA transmission in New York, to make a personal copy of the transmission, and send that copy to myself in Minnesota for viewing.

This is precisely what I do by hiring Aereo. There is no difference except I pay someone else to do the development and maintenance since I lack the skills or free time to travel to New York and set this up myself.

Suppose we look at it through a slightly different lens. I take a file to which I have a legal right, say some copyrighted material that I have paid for. I upload this file to my personal Dropbox account, which I share with no one. Then I travel across the country and download it for viewing.

Has Dropbox just committed copyright violation? If not, how does this differ from the scenario I gave in the first two paragraphs, where apparently Aereo was committing a copyright violation?

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

#273

Post by vibrolax »

kd0amg wrote: post #228
vibrolax wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I understand your question. I think the court has found that the "distribution for pay", i.e. "Cable TV" aspects of aereo's service outweighs the "antenna rental" aspects, and that makes it charging for a public performance. If you rent an antenna on top of the Empire State Building, digitize the signal, and set up your own means to stream it over the internet to your house in Peoria, that is probably a privat…

The part I'm confused about is the distinction between what the Empire State Building management is doing in this setup and selling someone access.

The SC ruled that the number of antennas or where they're located is not the heart of the issue. Aereo effectively supplied a data stream with broadcast content to subscribers (just like a cable tv company) without licensing the right to supply that content. The issue is commercial rights, not technological means. If you personally lease space for an antenna, and engineer a means to get it to your TV to watch, that's ok. If you sell access to the content stream, you are a cable TV company and have to pay redistribution license for the content.

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

#274

Post by AnthonyMouse »

andrewschleifer wrote: post #259
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... .

So according to Wikipedia there is a specific statute that expressly disavows the notion that someone who bought a copy of a computer program would infringe by running it (17 USC 117), the court found that a repair tech wasn't the owner of the copy so the statute didn't apply, and Congress immediately passed another law reversing the effect of the court's decision.

I guess that's technically what I asked for, but I don't think pointing out the existence of that statute does much for the argument that you need a separate license to run a computer program you paid for.

Let's try this again: Can you cite a relevant case that hasn't subsequently been invalidated?

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

#275

Post by Dylan16807 »

harryh wrote: post #269
shmerl wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The logic of the ruling is that Aereo, if you looked at it as a black box, was essentially acting as a cable company. The internal workings of its technology aren't as important as the actual functionality being provided.

If you draw a black box around an antenna salesman and the equipment they've installed, you also get something that appears to be a cable company.

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

#276

Post by icebraining »

ironchef wrote: post #271
icebraining wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aereo controls what gets recorded, TiVo (the company) doesn't. They're not selling an agnostic tool, they're selling the recording of a particular set of channels.

How does Aereo control what gets recorded? I click to record a show in the interface. That tunes the antenna to that channel at that time and records an individual recording for me.

By choosing where to place the antennas.

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

#277

Post by jonnathanson »

dragonwriter wrote: post #191
jonnathanson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem is that Aereo probably could not have prevailed at SCOTUS, because SCOTUS looks to precedent. In this case, their interpretation of the precedent itself (Copyright Act of 1976) was accurate, even if that precedent is out of date in our eyes. If you want SCOTUS justices to innovate, you need to challenge the precedents at their fundamental level, or else point to other precedents that should invalida…

> Well, the problem is that Aereo probably could not have prevailed at SCOTUS, because SCOTUS looks to precedent. In this case, their interpretation of the precedent itself (Copyright Act of 1976) was accurate, even if that precedent is out of date in our eyes. You are confusing enactments (things like the Constitution and statute law, like the Copyright Act) with precedent (prior rulings of courts applying the same…

Sorry, was a misnomer on my part. I was using "precedent" in the broad sense, i.e., to mean a preexisting reference point. But you're quite right in that the term has a very specific legal meaning, and I should have been more mindful of that. (IANAL, and I should probably preface a lot more of my legal discussions with that.)

Nevertheless, I think my point still stands. Court needs to find, sort, and prioritize reference points essentially.

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

#279

Post by danielrhodes »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #237
theworst wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, one difference is the presence of a third-party for-profit entity (Aereo, in this case).

That seems to be the only real distinction anyone can point to. But how is that different than the customer going to a place like Rent-a-Center to rent a TV antenna and paying them for installation? This is really the problem with the "look what it does, not how it does it" school of reasoning. What it does (allow you to watch OTA TV) is allowed sometimes and not others. How is a court supposed to differentiate betwe…

By weighing the intentions of the company against the intentions of the law.

The intentions of the law were to prevent this rebroadcast of content. The intentions of Aereo were clearly to do this. Aereo tested the waters by trying to make a distinction between public and private, and between transmission and performance. Ultimately, the court did not agree such distinctions were valid.

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

#280

Post by Dylan16807 »

shmerl wrote: post #270
harryh wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic of the ruling is that Aereo, if you looked at it as a black box, was essentially acting as a cable company. The internal workings of its technology aren't as important as the actual functionality being provided.

That's not what I was asking. The commenter above said: > 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. I was asking to explain the logic of that law. What is wrong with renting the…

Well if you trust the ruling quoted in http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_17625637 then the distinction is that a transmission from equipment you own to equipment you own is private, but transmission from equipment you rent to equipment you own is public. Don't ask me to explain why.
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