Aereo Loses Supreme Court Case

I agree. Someone in favor of the decision called it a loophole somewhere in this discussion - see post 23 on page 1.

 

Good one. Home furnishings rental, including televisions. So I can rent an antenna somewhere (presumably) and I can put it out my window or on my roof if I have one, but I can't rent it from a guy who has my antenna in New York City. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, gut feelings of "rightness" and "wrongness" aside.

https://furniture.cort.com/storefro...tronics/c02_01-c02_01_06-c02_01_06_01-p1.html

 

A certain someone . . .

 

If you had an antenna somewhere else for your own use then that would be fine. But once you start reselling that signal for profit to others than no go

The Supreme Court should also mandate paragraph separations.

 

You would be renting the product to payoff that product. Usually with interest. This company is not renting you the product but charging you a monthly rate for the signal.

 

It is only your interpretation that the signal is being "resold". It's not a fact.

It's not rent to buy, it's straight up rental.

 

Well they charged a monthly subscription fee and not a rental fee for the gear so that is a fact

 

Not sure why you are just making stuff up. Who called it a "subscription fee"? Only you. Read the Aereo Terms of Use.

RIGHT TO USE AEREO EQUIPMENT AND PLATFORM

1. Aereo makes available to its Members and to Aereo Try For Free Users certain equipment including a remote antenna and tuner (“Antenna Equipment”) and a remote digital video recorder (“DVR Equipment”) (together the “Equipment”). Members may utilize the Equipment to access and manage over the air broadcast television signals remotely via the Internet utilizing supported personal devices including smart phones, tablets, personal computers, netbooks and certain other types of devices capable of Internet connection (collectively “Supported Devices”). A list of current Supported Devices can be found here.

https://www.aereo.com/terms

 

'Members". You are not renting the gear. You are paying for a membership. Their word.

 

You're lucky that you're not a lawyer. And what exactly does membership grant you? It grants you the right to use Aereo's equipment for a fixed period of time. That is what we call "equipment rental". It's all there in paragraph 1. If you want to call it a subscription fee for whatever reason, go ahead, but this is only your characterization, not a fact.

 

What if you were to buy the antenna and pay a monthly fee for "maintenance" of your antenna. Every month they test the antenna you own to make sure that it is working properly. Now you are not paying for the signal. You are paying to make sure your antenna continues to work properly and for repairs as well. How about a maintenance and repair contract for your antenna? This would be like an extended warranty.

 

An antenna costs like 30 bucks. You just buy one and put it in your window whether your a renter or a home owner or whatever.

 

Free tv and free radio exist because the airwaves are supposed to be public. Meaning the ownership of them is ours. Broadcast stations pay for a license to broadcast their programming out in the open. Cable companies pay to have those signals on their own networks. So I'm not sure I understand why Aereo thought they wouldn't need to pay something... and yet they are charging for a service? Can't understand how they thought that was cool.

 

Thanks. You figured it all out. I can't believe no one thought of this before.

 

Sounds sarcastic! But seriously there are people that don't know that tv is broadcast for free... even people in areas where they could easily get like 30 channels for nothing.

 

I totally understand your point of view but we obviously disagree so I won't continue to try to change your mind.

I'm coming g from a place that one should respect copyright law and not try to resell the property of others no matter how you package it

ok. They call it a membership not me. When I rent a carpet cleaner it's not membership. But you are correct I'm not a lawyer. But real lawyers on the Supreme Court made the decision

 

It appears the angle the case hinged on was "public performance" versus "private performance." The argument was that Aereo provided access to technology that only the specific consumer controlled, so therefore the stream of the signal to the home was private and not public. A cable company, by contrast, streams the same signal to anyone who hooks up to their service, and that's therefore considered a "public" performance.

As I noted earlier, the fact that Aereo charged for their service is oddly irrelevant, the same way that copying a CD for another person is a copyright infringement whether you charge the other party or not.

 

Decision entirely in line with current laws, where Congress (while 'fixing' an older retransmission case) provided for what has become a lucrative income for the larger, incumbent content providers. The cable companies and anyone like Aereo has to pay those providers, which is basically why those that have cable pay more than I do for my OTA HD. That did make sense as those cablers/companies ( best thought of these days as The Last Mile ) had to build not only their data centers, aerials (I remember passing Richmond Comcast reception center many times) but also the cable to each customer. Aereo efficiently bypassed all that, lowering their costs by using the internet as infrastructure as do so many modern companies.

So it's disappointing but not unexpected, and may or may not have any corollary effects over shutting Aereo itself down.

There is plenty of scope for investigating the cable, phone and content companies under existing RICO and business competition monopoly laws. They do seem to be growing exponentially which is usually seen as a good thing (e.g. for their shareholders) but have a monopoly on their remaining customers.

Aereo is potentially the start of the sort of TV we technology fans want to see; as mentioned above, currently to access the entire smorgasbord requires paying all the fees to the cable companies whether you use their cables or not. Personally, I find that to be abuse of power. They have the switch, and I can't watch (even if prepared to pay a currently going rate like the 9.99 Netflix subscription) unless I shell out the whole $120 (which was the minimum Comcast rate here before I told them to go).

 

I'm not following your logic. Cable companies may have monopolies in many places if you want channels that aren't broadcast over the air, but that isn't Aereo's business anyway from what I've read. In a way, Aereo was competing with cable companies' "limited basic" channel line up, which is basically locally broadcast channels and maybe a couple of dedicated local public affairs channels. Comcast certainly doesn't charge $120 for limited basic, but they do charge more than Aereo, in part because they are paying to retransmit content. Also, as far as I know, lots of stuff is available to stream online directly from the content providers. (See this site for a list of channels: http://www.killthecablebill.com/tv-channels/.)

I just don't get the argument that a company like Aereo is the best or only way to address the high cost of cable TV service or the monopolistic granting of cable TV licenses in most municipalities. If you want to watch NBC programming and cannot get a signal over the air with your own antenna, then go to NBC's own website and stream the programs from there. I'm guessing they will force you to sit through some commercials that Aereo's DVR would otherwise let you skip, but if you don't want to pay for TV content then the money has to come from somewhere -- and that's advertising.

 

Cable companies try everything they can to avoid selling the "limited basic" service. In some cases, it's hidden on their website or not even present. They try to avoid selling it to you over the phone as well. The FCC also decided cable companies could force consumers to buy or rent equipment to receive basic service in the name of eliminating all analog distribution. If the FCC ever decides operators don't need to offer this level of service, I would bet many of them would cut it out altogether.

 

While the programming Aereo used was 'over the air', it's still something that the cable companies pay a lot of money to send to their customers, as per the 1976 revisions to copyright. That's why Aereo were found to be illegal- they weren't playing by the (arguably out of date) rules.

Cable companies are to an extent stuck with this model; while the fees they pay are 'negotiable' both sides have an interest in profiting by keeping them high. Remember this is, as mentioned in one of my links, ADDITIONAL income for retransmission on top of regular licensing and advertising profits for the providers concerned, that has grown from nothing to an estimated $16 billion this year over the industry. The providers can keep jacking their fees to the cable co because people want to see the channel, and don't have an alternative to their cable co fees which just keep going up where most technology costs are dropping. I have a choice between ATT and Comcast here, nothing else, and there's nothing to choose between them cost wise. I choose to use neither, and do something else with my $14o/month.

The one bright light here is that many providers like ABC are streaming some programming directly to consumers now anyway. The next shoe to drop is when the broadcasters en masse use this ruling to stop all that, because they haven't all got a cut. (here, full streaming of ABC still requires a cable co login and your $140)

 

Let me try another thought experiment with analogous facts, as I enjoy thinking about this case.

Suppose you hire a contractor to set up an antenna, and connect it to a computer with storage and software effectively making it into a DVR-type device, enabling you to capture and playback broadcast TV. Illegal? Of course not.

Now suppose the contractor does this for half the town; once your neighbors hear about your setup, they decide they want it too. Has anyone crossed the line into illegality? I don't think so.

Now suppose the contractor comes up with an idea. He says to you and your neighbors, "Let's make things a bit easier. Rather than have me come out to your house for a service call every time your equipment crashes, how about we change things around a bit -- I'll set up all the antennas on my property, and run just one server from there which you can connect to in order to select and capture and playback broadcasts." Is this now illegal? Should it be? Why, if the previous two scenarios are not?

Would this week's Supreme Court majority say this is illegal? Probably, though it's hard to say. The statutory interpretion in part II of the majority opinion is superficially persuasive, but really the decision rests on the view that Aereo acted like a cable company. I don't find that very compelling, as legal analysis, and I suspect, as some others do, that the uncertainty might affect innovation and the market in an unfortunate way.

 

Good question. But he is not charging everyone a monthly subscription for the copyrighted material that is being collected. The setting up of a DVR may be the kicker. But just you buying the antenna for a one time payment fee and paying someone to install it would be ok. But if he is using one antenna capturing the signal and content and reselling that to everyone, that would be a no no..

 

You weren't pointing out the obvious. You overtly stated a generalized political opinion -- of which there are plenty of people who disagree -- and then said you didn't want to get in the details to avoid getting in trouble.

How about next time skipping the details AND the generalization?

 

From everything I read about the case, while I believe in principal what Aereo was doing violating copyright, by the letter of the law, they were not. The problem was the law needs to reflect new technologies (or maybe it doesn't depending upon your point of view) and the legislative branch punted it to the judicial branch -- who should have, IMO, punted it back to the legislative branch since the issue was really a legislative one.