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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]

#391

Post by davorak »

snowwrestler wrote: post #315
coldpie wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of DropBox, you stipulate that you have the legal right to view the file, so that answers the question. 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.

You have a file with rights to use it. You upload the file to DropBox; then you download the file from DropBox. At all points along the way you have rights to the file. Aereo has the right to view and time shift NY OTA content for their own use. But they upload their file to their system for your use. In doing so, they are attempting to transfer viewing and time-shifting rights from them to you. This is not exactly t…

> Aereo has the right to view and time shift NY OTA content for their own use. But they upload their file to their system for your use. In doing so, they are attempting to transfer viewing and time-shifting rights from them to you.

Practically what changes though if I have to log into a server and push a button or two to explicitly start an upload from the antenna to my storage space? How much work do I have to do manually before it becomes legal? What about me doing it manually makes it legal, fair, or better for society.

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

#392

Post by davorak »

alexqgb wrote: post #389
karpodiem wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'It's not about your right to pull down OTA content.' yes, it absolutely is - the two issues are inherently coupled.

No it's not and no they aren't. You are not Aereo and Aereo is not you. That's the point. You can pull down content for your personal, non-commercial use, and Aereo can pull down content for its personal, non-commercial use, but the moment either of you pull it down then transfer it to the other - especially on a commercial basis - then you've run afoul of the laws prohibiting retransmission. Capiche?

> then you've run afoul of the laws prohibiting retransmission.

That is what result of the Aero court case says but the legal standing was not so clear with out this court case. Otherwise it probably would not have made it to the Supreme Court nor cause so much discussion on Hacker News.

Really it seems most people who disagree with with the court case are looking for why is this ruling is fair or why did those who originally make the law think it was fair(is is still fair?) or does this make society better?

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

#393

Post by davorak »

johnpmayer wrote: post #114
the_ancient wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see so if you want to be "hardware rental" you have have a bad UI but if you have a good ui you are then SaaS.. WTF

It's not so much as quality of the UI but rather what the service actually is. I can black-box Aereo and it looks pretty much like a rebroadcaster. Aereo isn't renting me an antennae, not in the way AWS rents me a server.

> I can black-box Aereo and it looks pretty much like a rebroadcaster.

I can black box Aereo and it looks like a whole lot of manual work by me to set up an antenna stream and time shift recordings etc.

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

#394

Post by davorak »

untog wrote: post #73
pbreit wrote: 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…

My vague understanding of the sprit of the law that allowed broadcasters use of the public airwaves was that it required for the individuals to be able to make use of the transmissions.

Aero by many is seen as a tool to make use of those transmission on public air waves therefore in the sprit of the law.

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

#395

Post by alexqgb »

davorak wrote: post #392
alexqgb wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not and no they aren't. You are not Aereo and Aereo is not you. That's the point. You can pull down content for your personal, non-commercial use, and Aereo can pull down content for its personal, non-commercial use, but the moment either of you pull it down then transfer it to the other - especially on a commercial basis - then you've run afoul of the laws prohibiting retransmission. Capiche?

> then you've run afoul of the laws prohibiting retransmission. That is what result of the Aero court case says but the legal standing was not so clear with out this court case. Otherwise it probably would not have made it to the Supreme Court nor cause so much discussion on Hacker News. Really it seems most people who disagree with with the court case are looking for why is this ruling is fair or why did those who o…

Putting aside the smoke and mirrors of the "individual antennas" for just a moment, the basic issue is unavoidably clear.

(1) These were retransmissions. (2) They were commercial. (3) That is illegal.

If Aereo was run as a co-op, and subscribers were also the owners of the facility and the employers of its operators, then a plausible argument could be made that the people pulling down the signals and the the people ultimately receiving them were one and the same. Accordingly, they'd be free to do what they liked without getting permission from - or paying money to - the broadcasters.

This arrangement would be substantially different from the original cable retransmission case, where the Supreme Court ruled against a model where the owner / operator of the antenna and backend delivery was distinct from (and sending bills to) the audience.

It would be more like the owners of a Manhattan co-op putting a single antenna on the roof of their building (key word: their) and running multiple wires into their individual units.

But while this far more defensible co-op structure may frustrate the broadcaster's lawyers, it would also frustrate (a) the venture funds backing the set up and (b) the banks angling to produce a liquidity event via a major sale or an IPO since legal immunity would be tied to the non-transferability of ownership from audience members to unrelated third parties.

That's what did Aereo in: they tried to have their cake ("See? Individual antennas! It's personal, non-commercial use!") and eat it ("Hey investors! Would you like violate both the personal and non-commercial shields that protect this operation by purchasing a stake in somebody else's stream?").

I don't know why the lower court couldn't see through this malarky, but I'm glad the Supreme Court did.

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

#396

Post by alexqgb »

davorak wrote: post #382
alexqgb wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's how the arrangement was described last year in a Gigaom article. "the antennas are “multitenant” which means that, when one Aereo subscriber is not using an antenna at a given time, it is available to all other subscribers." http://gigaom.com/2013/02/06/inside-aereo-new-photos-of-the-... So no, it's not "your" antenna any more than a weekend rental from Hertz is "your" car. Moreover, the antenna is only part o…

Thank you for the link. One subscriber uses one antenna at a time. That is how I thought it worked. When you said that "You're just buying individual access to an independently owned and operated antenna array." I thought you meant that all subscribers where sharing access to the to the array. Time share rentals exist so it makes sense you could do it with antenna as well. > Aero's proprietary transcoding setup and t…

It's not that they're mixing signals from multiple antennas, it's that they're running all the signals through the same transcoding system before delivering them, which breaks any concept of individual streams from reception to audience.

Also, there's an important difference between a time-share rental (which has a single owner doing business with a number of clients) and a time-share co-op, in which use of the property is a function of direct, if partial ownership.

If you own the antenna - even in part - you can justifiably claim that your use is personal and non-commercial. However you cannot resell the material to others. And if you don't own the antenna - and are buying access to the material from someone who does - then you're not getting it from an authorized source.

Individual antennas was clever, but not clever enough. Individually owned antennas (as part of a audience-owned operation) would be more defensible. But then the investment opportunity would evaporate.

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

#397

Post by snowwrestler »

davorak wrote: post #391
snowwrestler wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a file with rights to use it. You upload the file to DropBox; then you download the file from DropBox. At all points along the way you have rights to the file. Aereo has the right to view and time shift NY OTA content for their own use. But they upload their file to their system for your use. In doing so, they are attempting to transfer viewing and time-shifting rights from them to you. This is not exactly t…

> Aereo has the right to view and time shift NY OTA content for their own use. But they upload their file to their system for your use. In doing so, they are attempting to transfer viewing and time-shifting rights from them to you. Practically what changes though if I have to log into a server and push a button or two to explicitly start an upload from the antenna to my storage space? How much work do I have to do ma…

As an end user you are allowed certain rights like fair use, viewing OTA broadcasts for free, time shifting content, etc. Your rights extend to cover the property you own.

The concept of property ownership is potent in legal reasoning. If you do things with an antenna and DVR that you own, then you are the legal entity doing those things.

If you pay a fee to a company to do those things, then both you and the company are doing those things. The legal status of the company is a service provider, which is different from an individual end user. Aereo was a service provider, but tried to assert that they were merely an extension of each subscriber's personal property. The Supreme Court said no to that interpretation.

As for society, a legal system that provides revenue opportunities for creative works encourages the flow of capital to invest in those creative works. LOST or Breaking Bad would not be possible if the companies producing them did not have some way of making money to pay back their investors.

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

#398

Post by Apoorv02 »

smeyer wrote: post #90
Apoorv02 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was proposing for them to be prepared before it happened not for the trial.

Sorry, I'm still confused what you mean by "be prepared before it happened". Are you saying they should have pursued a different strategy/loophole around copyright law? That they should have realized they had no chance and not pursued funding? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just genuinely don't understand what preparation you're saying they should have taken. For the record, I work at a company with a lot of f…

I can't imagine myself at their position so all I can give my honest opinion not judgement. What I am saying is that they should have suspected that. It is not my fully informed opinion and it can't be. And I can fully understand your point too. That's pretty much it.
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