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The Next Chapter

blog.aereo.com

191–198 of 198 posts

Re: The Next Chapter

#191
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Tolkien did not borrow? Where do you think the names of half the characters came from? Our culture would be substantially reduced if we removed all copying. > there should be no termination to it and his family should profit from it forever. What purpose would that serve for society? > We should never take away the rights of the people who create things. If is their choice to give openness to them. We creat…

I believe the bargain is correct or swayed to the user because people want it for free. the creator should have the sole right to set the terms of use and transfer the terms. It is his property.

It is not property. That is the entire point of copyright law: That property law does not apply to something intangible. You can not steal something without depriving the owner of use.

As such, copyright law established an artificial, temporary monopoly which from the outset it was acknowledged was separate from ownership.

And unlike property law, which is frequently (though not universally) seen as codifying "natural" rights to ownership and use, with copyright the bargain is explicit:

The copyright holder is granted restrictions on the rights that would otherwise be held by the public as an incentive to contribute to benefit society as a whole.

There is no inherent right for a creator of a work to expect society to limit the spread of information for their benefit. To grant copyright, society is limiting our freedom of expression to conjure out of thin air a commercial monopoly.

To argue that the bargain is fair is one thing, but confusing copyright with property is something else entirely.

> the creator should have the sole right to set the terms of use and transfer the terms.

The creator does not have the sole right to set the terms of use and transfer under any jurisdiction today. If you argue for that, you argue for a regime so restrictive that we have never seen its like. What you are implying is even far stricter than what applies to actual property.

For example, almost all countries have some system of compulsory licensing. All countries I'm aware of have expiring copyright terms (moves to try to perpetually extend the stated duration notwithstanding). All have exceptions of certain types of copying.

All puts limits as to the extent which the creator of a work may limit (even contractually) usage, even in cases where the creator explicitly avoids selling copies and instead merely licenses or leases instances of the work. (E.g. very few jurisdictions would allow the creator of a work to limit use by race or gender).

It is up to society to set these restrictions because these rights only exist because of the intervention of society in the first place. If a creator does not accept the bargain with wider society, they are free to never release their work. We are not obliged to support rent seeking - the bargain must be balanced accordingly to make up for the self imposed restrictions on freedom of expression that it creates.

Re: The Next Chapter

#192

While I applaud aereo's challenging of the law and twist on the law to create something. The outcome is correct! I read every day on hacker news; copyright laws are wrong, too long, not fair... I do not see it the same way. The hacker news community is a community who creates many things themselves; many of the community has chosen the path to give open licenses to their creation. This is their right and thankfully t…

Wow downvoters, it's ok to have an opinion like this!

It's ok, and I didn't downvote, but it's an extreme viewpoint, so it is unsurprising that he's been downvoted.

He is promoting a view of copyright that extends far past the rights granted by any extant copyright system, in a forum where a lot of us are very aware of how much of culture is constant remixing and borrowing, or outright "stealing" of past content that has only been possible because copyright law is not nearly as exclusionary as the property law principles he seems to believe should apply (and as I pointed out elsewhere, in his other comments he hints at support for a degree of control which does not even apply to any property law system in the world) .

Re: The Next Chapter

#193
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it's worth noting that there are slingbox colocation services in the world where you can rent a slingbox in a remote datacenter in the TV market you prefer...

Can you replicate the functionality of Aereo that way? If so, why is Aereo's bankruptcy a loss? Could all of Aereo's customers just go rent a Slingbox instead? Legitimately curious here.

According recent law passed by SCOTUS owning a Slinbox is OK, renting one is not.

Aereo was exactly like slingbox, except you leased the equipment rather than own it.

Re: The Next Chapter

#194
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is antiquated about the idea that you don't get to use other peoples' valuable content without paying for it? Look: the valuable product here is the content. All the technology can do is get in the way. It's great Aereo's technology got in the way less than its competitors, but that still doesn't mean people found the technology itself valuable. The content is what matters. The content is what delights consumers…

You realize that OTA HDTV is...free, right? Explain to me how any content provider lost a single dollar because of Aereo's existence.

Then tell ABC, CBS, FOX, & PBS to get off the effin airways and become cable-only. Surely there are those who would find uses for the bandwidth that would serve the community

Re: The Next Chapter

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're precisely right: it was a deal.[1] The broadcasters get the airwaves for free, and the public gets TV over those airwaves for free. The deal said nothing about allowing people to capture content over those airwaves and broadcast it over the Internet. You can hardly blame companies for not wanting to give up more on their end of a deal than they agreed to give up! [1] I think it's a waste of valuable spectrum o…

I think you Kennedy and Roberts are all on the same page in thinking Aereo quacked like a retransmission company. The problem is Aereo got greedy and screwed up the marketing. Had their homepage always said, rent a streaming DVR for $10 a month, it wouldn't be a problem. Capturing content and streaming it over the internet is perfectly legal. TiVo does it. Cablevision does it. Slingbox does it. Aereo should have acte…

Are you really saying that Aereo failed due to a marketing? They always presented themselves as a technology platform that leases equipment.

Re: The Next Chapter

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble understanding the ruling, so maybe those here with more knowledge can help. As a thought experiment, assume I live in a building that gets spotty OTA reception on my antenna. However, there is an apartment for rent on the top floor, and I decide to rent it for the sole purpose for storing property. If I set up an antenna in that apartment, but do not live in the space, and run a long cable from the…

SCOTUS never really addressed this. The majority opinion was basically just a bunch of vague hand-waving that amounted to "if it looks like a duck...". That was one of the most frustrating things for me when the decision came out. Obviously we all understood that we might lose, but to have a decision handed down that was so completely devoid of any sort of definitive logic or reasoning was really, really demoralizing…

All that effort to litigate Aereo out of existance, and technology marches on.

https://www.tivo.com/discover/antenna

Re: The Next Chapter

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble understanding the ruling, so maybe those here with more knowledge can help. As a thought experiment, assume I live in a building that gets spotty OTA reception on my antenna. However, there is an apartment for rent on the top floor, and I decide to rent it for the sole purpose for storing property. If I set up an antenna in that apartment, but do not live in the space, and run a long cable from the…

Where you would probably cross the line is you sold this as a service. Doing this for personal use is one thing, selling your apartment's antenna connection over the internet to a single other person is another.

In both examples I am renting space in which to place my antenna. In the first example, I own a single antenna and pay fees to my landlord. In the second example, I own a single antenna and pay fees to Aereo. I would argue that the only difference is marketing.
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