291–300 of 398 posts
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
The reality is that Aereo built the system using their own capital and offered the service for a fee to any member of the public. The business model is no different from a cable company or satellite TV company.
In the case of DropBox, you stipulate that you have the legal right to view the file, so that answers the question.
The Copyright Act is a federal statute that protects any public performance of a copyrighted work from infringing uses. Aereo took what were undisputedly public performances of works from broadcasters to the public, intercepted them, and by a feat of what amounted to technological legerdemain turned them into what it argued were no longer public performances but, instead, individualized transmissions from its service…
And I think Scalia is right that Aereo does not commit a volitional act when one of their subscribers plays back a recorded show. By not committing a volitional act, they cannot be guilty of direct infringement.
I personally also think that the resulting performance is, crucially, not public. (Scalia explicitly does not address this question.) But this argument appears unlikely to prevail in the end.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 s…
If the person you're paying is doing the work, then it's obviously not for their personal use. It's for yours. So they're doing it for money on someone else's behalf, which throws the "personal, non-commercial use" argument straight out the window. Moving on to Dropbox. Dropbox has no involvement in the selection of the file in question, or even the type of file, and moreover, they're not the ones to place it on thei…
Boy is Geek Squad going to be in trouble when it's discovered how many TV installations they've assisted with are used for pirated material.
> They can't claim ignorance as to what they're capturing when their basic sales proposition hinges on a specific declaration as to what - exactly - they're capturing and re-selling.
I don't understand the distinction. In both scenarios, capturing an OTA broadcast and purchasing a digital file, I have the right to own and make personal copies of the content. I don't see how the law can make a distinction based on how I acquired the content in the first place, provided I have both of those rights.
Aereo doesn't need to claim ignorance because I have never broken the law. I have the right to accept the OTA broadcast and to store, transmit, and view personal copies of the broadcast.
Here's a (naive) question: In the US, is a Supreme Court ruling completely final ? What options, if any, are available to the losing party ? Is change through congress the only way to try to appeal rulings? If there are no practical ways to repeal Supreme Court rulings, what happens when the Supreme Court makes a mistaken ruling?
So that answers your question about what the next step could be, as well as why the Court ruled the way it did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 s…
If you hired Aereo and paid all costs for them to do this for you and you alone, it would be at least a grey area. The reality is that Aereo built the system using their own capital and offered the service for a fee to any member of the public. The business model is no different from a cable company or satellite TV company. In the case of DropBox, you stipulate that you have the legal right to view the file, so that…
I have the legal right to accept OTA broadcasts in New York. I also have the right to store personal copies for time shifting (see Cablevision). It is exactly an analogous situation to using Dropbox to store copyrighted material solely for your own use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
It's not really worth me repeating the argument here, as it would take 16 pages to do, and the Supreme Court has already done the work. After reading it I'd love to see your arguments with specific parts of the text.
The Copyright Act is a federal statute that protects any public performance of a copyrighted work from infringing uses. Aereo took what were undisputedly public performances of works from broadcasters to the public, intercepted them, and by a feat of what amounted to technological legerdemain turned them into what it argued were no longer public performances but, instead, individualized transmissions from its service…
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].
Seems to me that they should just start making deals with the locals, Dish network charges something like $5 a month for access to it so it seems like Aereo could ink a deal with a similar cost.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the person you're paying is doing the work, then it's obviously not for their personal use. It's for yours. So they're doing it for money on someone else's behalf, which throws the "personal, non-commercial use" argument straight out the window. Moving on to Dropbox. Dropbox has no involvement in the selection of the file in question, or even the type of file, and moreover, they're not the ones to place it on thei…
> If the person you're paying is doing the work, then it's obviously not for their personal use. It's for yours. So they're doing it for money on someone else's behalf, which throws the "personal, non-commercial use" argument straight out the window. Boy is Geek Squad going to be in trouble when it's discovered how many TV installations they've assisted with are used for pirated material. > They can't claim ignorance…