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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]

#361

Post by davorak »

lisper wrote: post #319
coldpie wrote: post #272

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…

Mathematical induction does not apply to the law. Just because a single instance of an activity is legal does not necessarily mean that N instances of the same activity are legal. This is exactly the distinction between "private" performances, which are fair use, and "public" ones, which aren't.

> Just because a single instance of an activity is legal does not necessarily mean that N instances of the same activity are legal.

One person does something it is legal, but if N people do it it is illegal? I do not think that is what you are trying to say, but I can not isolate what you are trying to say.

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

#362

Post by davorak »

alexqgb wrote: post #339
baddox wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument doesn't work for the analogy, because the viewer is simply paying someone to do the physical work required for the viewer to remotely watch his own stream from his own antenna. It's like the difference between setting up a cable card and Internet stream server yourself, and hiring a tech guy to come to your house and set it up for you.

The critical difference with Aero is that it's never your antenna. It's leased, not owned, and moreover, Aero treats the antennas themselves on a fungible basis, meaning that they they simply maintain a 1:1 relationship between the number of antennas and the number of subscribers, so you're not even leasing any specific piece of equipment. You're just buying individual access to an independently owned and operated an…

> they simply maintain a 1:1 relationship between the number of antennas and the number of subscribers,

That is not my understanding. Bob and George could have both leased Aero antenna in the same area. Bob's could get good rescission and George's could get bad reception impacting making George's experience worse. Or so says the public statements of Aero.

> You're just buying individual access to an independently owned and operated antenna array.

Is there evidence of this that contradicts Aero's public statements?

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

#363

Post by shmerl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #346
shmerl wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, as others pointed out, renting an antenna should be violating the public performance restriction. Or renting a house with antenna for example, since it's commercial activity. It doesn't make sense though.

> So, as others pointed out, renting an antenna should be violating the public performance restriction. Or renting a house with antenna for example, since it's commercial activity. Offering antennas or houses for rent may be a service to the public, but if you the service doesn't involve any of the things that count as performance under the relevant provisions of the copyright act but only the tools to do it, its not…

So what constitutes a mere tool, and what constitutes a performance then?

> If Aereo was literally only renting physical attennas, the situation would be rather different than the actual service they were offering.

Then there is an easy workaround. Let them rent out hardware explicitly. And users can control that hardware anyway they want (for example install some video streaming tools there, may be made by the same Aereo, and stream to themselves). What level of involvement from Aereo makes it a performance?

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

#364

Post by nitrogen »

msbarnett wrote: post #233
nitrogen wrote: post #224

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 copyright…

> 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…

...not just into hierarchical storage but also into RAM...

Just to clarify, by "hierarchical storage" I mean the entire storage hierarchy of the computer, multiple tiers of which may contain a copy of any given data in use by the computer: registers->cache->RAM->HDD Cache->HDD[->backups]

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

#365

Post by davorak »

alexqgb wrote: post #316
coldpie wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wait, do you not see the difference between a one-time transaction with a third party that installs equipment they neither own nor operate and that has nothing to do with content, and an ongoing service relationship with a company that both owns and operates equipment that has everything to do with content? > Are you fucking serious? No need to be rude. Given that nothing illegal occurs throughout the entire proces…

"No need to be rude." Sorry, but I take offense at arguments that are stupid or dishonest. The Geek Squad analogy is not even remotely applicable since nothing owned or operated by the Geek Squad touches the content stream. Given that the content stream is the bone of contention, comparing them to Aero is - at best - stupid, and at worst, diversionary, which smacks of dishonestly. And since we're on the subject, ther…

> Sorry, but I take offense at arguments that are stupid or dishonest.

Having read the conversation it looks more like talking past each other and failing to get to the core issue then stupid or dishonest arguments on either side.

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

#366

Post by lisper »

davorak wrote: post #361
lisper wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematical induction does not apply to the law. Just because a single instance of an activity is legal does not necessarily mean that N instances of the same activity are legal. This is exactly the distinction between "private" performances, which are fair use, and "public" ones, which aren't.

> Just because a single instance of an activity is legal does not necessarily mean that N instances of the same activity are legal. One person does something it is legal, but if N people do it it is illegal? I do not think that is what you are trying to say, but I can not isolate what you are trying to say.

Actually that's exactly what I'm saying. And there are lots of examples where an activity is only illegal if N>>1. Unlawful assembly, for example.

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

#367

Post by mikeash »

kd0amg wrote: post #308
mikeash wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESB would be renting antennas, and then what you do with them is your own business. Aereo is selling streaming TV service that just happens to use antennas in the backend. You might say, it's all the same in the end from a technical point of view. And you're right, but the law doesn't care about the technical point of view. From the legal point of view, Aereo is selling TV streaming, and must comply with laws for TV…

Ok, so if Aereo didn't have "TV service" all over it's marketing literature, they'd probably be in the clear?

I think the service itself would need to be changed as well. I think if they explicitly rented antennas and that was reflected in both their marketing and their actual service (e.g. providing a raw bitstream for a user-selected frequency rather than providing a video stream for a user-selected TV channel) then they'd be alright. This is just what I've been able to understand of the situation and I'm not an expert and could be terribly, terribly wrong, of course.

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

#368

Post by vibrolax »

kdot wrote: post #234

I would love for Aereo to open source the technology, sell me an antenna so that I can run my own Aereo service and stream TV to myself.

You don't need anything from Aereo's stack to do this. Get a device such as a Silicon Dust HDHomerun. http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hdhomerun-dual... This box is 1 antenna in, 2 ATSC tuners, 1 ethernet out. If you want to stream on your LAN, there are clients for Windows and Linux. XBMC supports it. I can't see why you couldn't serve it over the internet as well.

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

#369

Post by vibrolax »

shmerl wrote: post #334
dllthomas wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he does not continue to own the antenna, and you do not continue to pay him.

What if he rents you an antenna, but you install it in your house?

The rental of an antenna is not a public performance. Offering a subscription streaming service including broadcast content to the public is a public performance.

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

#370

Post by vibrolax »

npizzolato wrote: post #357
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By weighing the intentions of the company against the intentions of the law. Putting aside how you're supposed to evaluate the intent of Congress or Aereo without evaluating exactly what it is they're doing, are you ready for the stupid consequences of that? It would mean someone doing the same thing with the same result would be legal if they had different intent. For example, someone could set up a service where…

Intent of involved parties is already a big part of the legal system and is a major (and sometimes necessary) aspect of many laws[1]. And in my opinion having intent matter is just common sense. It's why torrent clients are perfectly okay despite how easy it is to find torrents of copyrighted material, but Popcorn Time was probably going to have a challenging time in the courts[2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me…

Right. The question asked is "Does the technology have substantial non-infringing use?". In the "Betamax case" [1] it was ruled that using VCR's for time shifting was fair use, even though a VCR could be used to illegally copy and distribute content. It had substantial non-infringing use. Bittorrent has substantial non-infringing use, so it is not illegal, though it also has illegal utility.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Univer....

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