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

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

#31

Post by gamblor956 »

enzanki_ars wrote: post #24
gamblor956 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 int…

Edit: Not a lawyer, and what follows is intended to be more of outlining my understanding and trying to ask clarification on what I'm clearly missing. Sorry if it sounds a bit defensive. Just a very strange lawsuit, specifically in how the service was forced to shutdown instead of being allowed to continue to operate. Isn't that a valid use of the non-profit status? That as long as the funding from donations was goin…

1) This isn't about their 501 non-profit status, it's about their use of the non-profit exemption for re-transmission of copyrighted materials through a service that would otherwise be classified as violating copyrights.

1) No, it's not a valid use of the money under the restrictions of the non-profit exemption from copyright for re-transmission. The law is quite clear on this point: revenues derived from the violating service must not exceed the actual costs of providing that service. Expansion costs are not related to the costs of providing existing service, therefore they are not permitted under the exemption.

3) PBS is not even remotely the same thing, because it's not the non-profit status that is at issue. PBS owns and/or licenses the content they broadcast and stream, so it does not need an exemption from copyright laws. Locast does not own or license the content it streams, so it does need the exemption, and it violated the explicit requirements for the exemption it needed.

4) But Locast attempted to resolve that and remove the interruptions entirely, but was still required to completely shutdown and was given 0 chance to adjust Historically, using someone's IP without their permission resulted in statutory damages, and Locast should consider themselves lucky they're not on the hook for those, as statutory damages for copyright law can be as much as $150,000 per violation* for willful violations of copyright law. * Tech was able to get away with the ask for forgiveness business model for 3 decades, but generally the law does not operate on "ask for forgiveness" basis. It's irrelevant that they got "0 chance" to adjust since the onus was on them to plan their activities in a way that complied with the law.

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

#32

Post by tyingq »

For anyone that was using it personally, and was sad to see it go:

I had a decent experience switching to using the Tablo Dual Lite. It's a local TV tuner and DVR. Mine has 2 tuners, but they also a 4 tuner device.

It does, unlike Locast, require fiddling around with an antenna, but I guess the upside is that nobody can sue it into oblivion.

It does require a subscription for the guide ($5/month) and for the built-in commercial skip (another $5/month), which isn't terrific. But, the UI and the DVR seem more polished than what I was getting using Locast with Stremium (cloud DVR) before. It does take a few seconds to tune into a channel also, which can be annoying.

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

#33

Post by shadilay »

mschuster91 wrote: post #27
shadilay wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The artists can just make music at home and bootstrap themselves, no investment needed. The barrier has never been lower indeed, but it's the barrier to get started and it's still easily a many-thousand-dollars affair - a good recording and Soundcloud isn't everything you need to make money, especially not on a scale you'll be able to make a living from. Production of physical media (especially currently en vogue v…

A few thousand dollars is no barrier for someone with a regular job and music for a hobby. As for vinyls and other physical products artists can always take refundable preorders. Not everyone can or should be a full time professional artist. Nor is the the role of record companies to decide what the public likes.

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

#34

Post by _hilro »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #26

CHIEF JUSTICE SCALIA: But his question is, is there any reason you did it other than not to violate the copyright laws? It's awesome how Aereo's efforts to obey the law are what the court didn't like.

Literally 2 lines below that quote is:

> CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: All I'm trying to get at, and I'm not saying it's outcome determinative or necessarily bad, I'm just saying your technological model is based solely on circumventing legal prohibitions that you don't want to comply with, which is fine. I mean, that's ­­you know, lawyers do that.

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

#35

Post by salawat »

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…

Modern finance comes with so many strings attached, this is the only outcome you will ever see. The American financial system is now more about surveillance and filtering than it is about facilitating economic activity. This tends to centralization and rent seekers. You will run into this with any account offering institution legally moving money.

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

#36

Post by jessaustin »

tyingq wrote: post #32

For anyone that was using it personally, and was sad to see it go: I had a decent experience switching to using the Tablo Dual Lite. It's a local TV tuner and DVR. Mine has 2 tuners, but they also a 4 tuner device. It does, unlike Locast, require fiddling around with an antenna, but I guess the upside is that nobody can sue it into oblivion. It does require a subscription for the guide ($5/month) and for the built-in…

Is Tablo done? I've been considering it...

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

#37

Post by tyingq »

jessaustin wrote: post #36
tyingq wrote: post #32

For anyone that was using it personally, and was sad to see it go: I had a decent experience switching to using the Tablo Dual Lite. It's a local TV tuner and DVR. Mine has 2 tuners, but they also a 4 tuner device. It does, unlike Locast, require fiddling around with an antenna, but I guess the upside is that nobody can sue it into oblivion. It does require a subscription for the guide ($5/month) and for the built-in…

Is Tablo done? I've been considering it...

No, sorry...I was saying that's what I did when Locast folded, I switched to Tablo.

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

#38

Post by jessaustin »

tyingq wrote: post #37
jessaustin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Tablo done? I've been considering it...

No, sorry...I was saying that's what I did when Locast folded, I switched to Tablo.

Thanks for the clarification... my comprehension was lacking!

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

#39

Post by Asooka »

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…

> In reality the law is almost always three steps ahead of technology, because the law is written in a programming language that executes what you intended to write

So why is it always interpreted in favour of what content distributors intend and never in favour of common sense or the public? Laws are a public contract and as such the public, including you, has the right to push for its interpretation one way with judges having the ultimate authority to resolve disagreements. Just because you look at things from a logical perspective doesn't make you unfit to argue for your rights, and claiming otherwise strikes me as a really self destructive mix of learned helplessness and impostor syndrome.

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

#40

Post by projektfu »

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 hits pay for the failures, yes, in the sense that record companies can/used to act as incubators. However, this was true when people paid for individual albums, singles or jukebox plays as well. Also, the recordings are done as advances, so the middle-of-the-road artist who eventually makes royalties pays for the whole production before seeing any money.

What I was highlighting is now the money doesn't even pay directly down the line. The long tail literally makes nothing from people directly deciding to support them by choosing their recorded music. At lest before, if a small band sold 1000 CDs, they'd see the royalties from that.

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