A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna • Hacker News Board

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#11

Post by jjoonathan » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #4

kmeisthax wrote: post #2

This article is making the engineer's mistake regarding reasoning about copyright infringement and the law. The courts do not care how the copy was made, they care about what markets the copying would allow someone to get into. "Cloud DVRs are OK but only if the kernel, filesystem, and hardware take great pains to ensure separate physical storage locations for and no compression on each customer-created copy" is absu…

It's possible that the courts/law are so absurd that they could be wrong. Rarely is that considered.

In theory, that's what the legislature is for.

In practice, the process for this is completely broken, so we have a system where the judicial branch pretends to divinate intent from the tea-leaves of legislation, even when it's clear that there could not possibly have been any informed intent because major relevant details were simply not known at the time.

It's not great, but it's better than a system where the judicial branch just does anything it wants.

All this said, instant communication and computers almost certainly introduced better forms of judicial and legislative process that haven't been experimented with because of inertia. I wouldn't volunteer our system as the guinea pig, but I hope that somebody gets around to experimenting with this, because our system sucks hard in a bunch of ways that seem like they are probably fixable.

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#12

Post by flatiron » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #10

I sympathize with the guy who had line-of-sight issues. Or anyone who lives in a multi-unit building, or far from the Big Antennas. However, I just got an antenna ($80) and had it installed on my roof. 40 miles or so to Twin Peaks' antennas, no obstacles. Boom: 800 channels (some paywalled), many in languages other than English. Next is to roll my own DVR. Should be easy, right?

i pay for plex (it was $75 when i got it years ago) and it has a very good dvr and hd homerunner support. it is closed source for profit but runs well on linux

i was using locast as my "antennae" until weeks ago. my wife refuses to let me put an antennae on the roof or inside for aesthetics so its back to cable card from the darn cable company.

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#13

Post by laserlight » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #2

This article is making the engineer's mistake regarding reasoning about copyright infringement and the law. The courts do not care how the copy was made, they care about what markets the copying would allow someone to get into. "Cloud DVRs are OK but only if the kernel, filesystem, and hardware take great pains to ensure separate physical storage locations for and no compression on each customer-created copy" is absu…

> "Cloud DVRs are OK but only if the kernel, filesystem, and hardware take great pains to ensure separate physical storage locations for and no compression on each customer-created copy" is absurd and no judge is going to go for that.

Reminds me of Aereo, the company that rented remote antennas to customers so that they can stream over the Internet what their antennas captured. Supreme court decided that they were violating copyright law [0].

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/supreme-court-pu...

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#14

Post by kesslern » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

flatiron wrote: post #12

AlbertCory wrote: post #10

I sympathize with the guy who had line-of-sight issues. Or anyone who lives in a multi-unit building, or far from the Big Antennas. However, I just got an antenna ($80) and had it installed on my roof. 40 miles or so to Twin Peaks' antennas, no obstacles. Boom: 800 channels (some paywalled), many in languages other than English. Next is to roll my own DVR. Should be easy, right?

i pay for plex (it was $75 when i got it years ago) and it has a very good dvr and hd homerunner support. it is closed source for profit but runs well on linux i was using locast as my "antennae" until weeks ago. my wife refuses to let me put an antennae on the roof or inside for aesthetics so its back to cable card from the darn cable company.

It's not as good as a roof antenna, but attic antennas are a decent option.

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#15

Post by laserlight » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

laserlight wrote: post #13

kmeisthax wrote: post #2

This article is making the engineer's mistake regarding reasoning about copyright infringement and the law. The courts do not care how the copy was made, they care about what markets the copying would allow someone to get into. "Cloud DVRs are OK but only if the kernel, filesystem, and hardware take great pains to ensure separate physical storage locations for and no compression on each customer-created copy" is absu…

> "Cloud DVRs are OK but only if the kernel, filesystem, and hardware take great pains to ensure separate physical storage locations for and no compression on each customer-created copy" is absurd and no judge is going to go for that. Reminds me of Aereo, the company that rented remote antennas to customers so that they can stream over the Internet what their antennas captured. Supreme court decided that they were vi…

I just noticed that Aereo was already part of the discussion.

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#16

Post by gamblor956 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

projektfu wrote: post #7

I think the issue is that the public hasn't been invited to participate in the discussion of what we want copyright law to look like in a very long time. Considering the last major change, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, was 23 years ago, and essentially written by the industry and never seriously debated in the public interest, I don't have good hopes for the future in this area. I think the Supreme Cou…

In other words, record companies are killing music, and it's legal. That's what we need to fix.

Record companies are paying for the music. It takes a lot of money to produce tracks. Most artists never get enough fans or sales to pay off the investment the record company made in them, so the hits very much pay for the failures.

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#17

Post by shadilay » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #16

projektfu wrote: post #7

I think the issue is that the public hasn't been invited to participate in the discussion of what we want copyright law to look like in a very long time. Considering the last major change, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, was 23 years ago, and essentially written by the industry and never seriously debated in the public interest, I don't have good hopes for the future in this area. I think the Supreme Cou…

In other words, record companies are killing music, and it's legal. That's what we need to fix. Record companies are paying for the music. It takes a lot of money to produce tracks. Most artists never get enough fans or sales to pay off the investment the record company made in them, so the hits very much pay for the failures.

The world no longer needs conglomerate record companies. Their antiquated business model is not a valid reason government should step in to protect them. The barrier to entry for artists making and releasing/monetizing music has never been lower. The artists can just make music at home and bootstrap themselves, no investment needed.

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#18

Post by gamblor956 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

enzanki_ars wrote: post #5

What infuriates me the most about this ruling is that long term effects of it. Locast did what they did and inserted ads every 15 minutes because they knew nobody would not contribute to hosting costs without some reason. Had they made it so it was interruption at the start only, _maybe_ it could have held up better in court. And I agree on that front. Remove the donate video from showing every 15 minutes, and only s…

The ruling argued that collecting funds to expand more throughout the US was not valid for their non-profit status for some reason that made no sense.

The law granting them the exception from copyright law that would have allowed them to stream in the first place strictly limited the way funds could be raised and spent by entities claiming the non-profit exemption.

The law is several decades old, and predates the internet. It wasn't the subject of regulatory capture by the cable companies, who were in their infancy when the law was first passed.

Locast chose not to operate like a non-profit, and made a profit on their streaming services, in violation of the law. It's really that simple.

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#19

Post by gamblor956 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

shadilay wrote: post #17

gamblor956 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, record companies are killing music, and it's legal. That's what we need to fix. Record companies are paying for the music. It takes a lot of money to produce tracks. Most artists never get enough fans or sales to pay off the investment the record company made in them, so the hits very much pay for the failures.

The world no longer needs conglomerate record companies. Their antiquated business model is not a valid reason government should step in to protect them. The barrier to entry for artists making and releasing/monetizing music has never been lower. The artists can just make music at home and bootstrap themselves, no investment needed.

Artists have always been able to make music and perform by themselves. But all of that other stuff needed to make it big is expensive (marketing, paying for venues, logistics, recording and producing masters, distribution, etc.), and few artists have the trust fund money needed to handle those costs themselves.

Even Justin Bieber, Lorde, and Billy Eilish depended on record labels to actually profit from their music, though they all broke out on social media platforms on their own.

Re: A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna

#20

Post by techsupporter » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #10

I sympathize with the guy who had line-of-sight issues. Or anyone who lives in a multi-unit building, or far from the Big Antennas. However, I just got an antenna ($80) and had it installed on my roof. 40 miles or so to Twin Peaks' antennas, no obstacles. Boom: 800 channels (some paywalled), many in languages other than English. Next is to roll my own DVR. Should be easy, right?

> I sympathize with the guy who had line-of-sight issues. Or anyone who lives in a multi-unit building, or far from the Big Antennas.

> However...

I don't mean to be uncharitable, but the "however" you wrote is doing a lot of the work here. A lot of people are saying that Locast is pointless or not a big deal because, well, they put up an antenna and it worked so no problem.

Except that it is a problem. I used Locast from the day it became available in Seattle because, try as I might, I could not get reception from all of the TV channels. Standalone house, apartment, low to the ground, high up, didn't matter. There are three broadcasting sites in Puget Sound and the best I could do was 1 reliable, 1 iffy, and 1 not at all.

> Should be easy, right?

Should be, but isn't if you can't get signal. Locast offered that signal (Comcast charges about $19 a month for the privilege of having a plan with just local channels but also charges $19 a month as a broadcast channels surcharge) for a nice donation.