Big media makes money off of other people's work all the time. In fact, that's basically the definition of a corporation.
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U.S. Supreme Court Pulls the Plug on Aereo
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Big media makes money off of other people's work all the time. In fact, that's basically the definition of a corporation.
I see both sides of the argument. I'm just confused why the Government gets to step into the fray and basically say "We aren't cool with this {wink} {wink}". Isn't that like mom stepping in and saying, "Now you can make your own decisions, but if I were you..."
The prostitute-in-chief gets a lot of his campaign contributions from Hollywood.
I'm not sure you understand their business model. They were not charging for content, they were charging for access to an antenna at a premium location.
What they were doing was taking an antenna and pairing it with a customer. You paid for access to that antenna. One customer per antenna, restricted by the broadcast strength of FREE OTA channels.
They also allow you to rent a DVR with that one antenna. Each customer had a DVR, with no shared content.
What you're describing is them rebroadcasting one source to everyone. It's this confusion that probably led to the SC decision.
It's called an amicus curiae brief and they aren't limited to "the Government".
You missed my point, yes I understand that. What I'm getting at is why should our governing body who (for the most part) "represents" the United States (all of us) be able to submit a brief like this? It just doesn't make sense to me.
D
Deleted member 136890
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US Supreme Court: the best court money can buy
The supreme court is now just a rubber stamp for the government and corporations. Actually the government and corporations are the same thing now
^^^QFT
Exactly and I could not have said it any better. I will add one thing tho, the SCOTUS is a fraud.
cdr_74_premium
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Oh, and the evil corporation did nothing to make the work of said people come into fruition. All it did was exploit the poor soul. Really evil.
Parja
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Yeah, who wants wireless transmission of data, anyway? This is clearly just a passing fad.
heatlesssun
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But here's the thing. You could do the same thing with a SINGLE antenna in a broadcasting area. The one judge on the appellate court where Aereo won that voted against Aereo made note of over engineering on the service.
I'm not against what Aereo is doing here, but the bottom line is that what they are selling is only of value because of the content. And it looks like Aereo's business would have a negative impact on the people that are paying to broadcast that content. I think it's much more of an economic issue that a technical one.
They didn't. SCOTUS basically said it was the same thing, just using different technology. Since Congress amended the 1976 Copyright Act to fix change the legality of those early CATV systems, that fix applies to Aereo as well.
That's just arguing semantics. Just because you say you're billing for pvr service doesn't exempt you from the reality of what you're actually providing.
CATV is one to many
Aereo was one to one
the issue came down to the anntena arrays Aereo used
wile they rented each element to only one person the element on its own would not work with out the whole array
Aereos argument was this was still one to one
Broadcasters said it was one to many
This is what I've been saying too. The viability of Aereo's product/service depends wholly on broadcasts of contents they do not own.
On another note, it's interesting this is on the front page but a bigger Supreme Court decision isn't http://news.yahoo.com/justices-limit-cellphone-searches-arrests-145357478--finance.html
Modred189
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This opinion, while expected and arguably the right one under current law, is disappointing. That said, like the Donald Silver incident and the nixing of Donovan from the US team by Klinsmann, if you're surprised, you weren't paying attention.
The SCOTUS got it 100% right when it said that the old CATV antenna farms were originally ok under (C) law, then illegal under the 1976 (c) act, and that the Aereo model is essentially the same damn thing. While I appreciate the nuance that Scalia's dissent tries to impart into the decision (that is the Aereo model is likely a violation of (c) for other reasons), I don't think the differences between the CATV model and Aereo are important under current (c) law.
Of course, if we think the outcome is not what we want (as opposed to the correct legal decision) then we need a new law, and we should go see our representatives about that.
The SCOTUS got it 100% right when it said that the old CATV antenna farms were originally ok under (C) law, then illegal under the 1976 (c) act, and that the Aereo model is essentially the same damn thing. While I appreciate the nuance that Scalia's dissent tries to impart into the decision (that is the Aereo model is likely a violation of (c) for other reasons), I don't think the differences between the CATV model and Aereo are important under current (c) law.
Of course, if we think the outcome is not what we want (as opposed to the correct legal decision) then we need a new law, and we should go see our representatives about that.
He's mainly losing it because it was conservative justices that dissented.
Modred189
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1) Because they are the ones that wrote the law. Their opinion informs the court as to what the law was intended to do. This is an important part of the SCOTUS' job in interpreting laws.
2) The government is, in one way or another, the entity that will apply the ruling that comes out of a case. Thus they have a vested interest in the outcome.
3) The government, ostensibly, represents the interests of the country, and that voice has value and should be heard, since they are the ones who will be most impacted by a ruling. Whether it's an accurate representation is another thing...
TwistedAegis
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Saw this earlier, awesome. Finally a win for privacy and the 4th amendment in the digital age.
The cloud angle is interesting given this ruling. I expect the content producers and their favorite providers to try and limit that in the long run. We live in a society that seems to want centralized control for everything and the providers of those services won't mind that at all. Monopolies are bad unless Gov says they're good.
I think the best reaction I've read so far on this is to compare it to renting a TV set. Given the current ruling and the 1976 law, logic states it is illegal to rent a tv. So long Rent-a-center companies renting tvs and radios.
In the end the only way things change is the public/customers force change by cutting the cord and/or going to antenna only. If comcast didn't charge me more to just have internet I wouldn't bother with cable tv.
I think the best reaction I've read so far on this is to compare it to renting a TV set. Given the current ruling and the 1976 law, logic states it is illegal to rent a tv. So long Rent-a-center companies renting tvs and radios.
In the end the only way things change is the public/customers force change by cutting the cord and/or going to antenna only. If comcast didn't charge me more to just have internet I wouldn't bother with cable tv.
Modred189
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First, the cloud isn't in danger. The Majority clearly calls those services out at the end of the opinion.
Second, you're right: monopolies are bad unless the government says otherwise. That's how it's always been. (Hence FTC review of major mergers, patent law, private utilities etc)
WADR you didn't read the opinion or understand it. It's not like that at all. When you rent a TV, you have a posessory interest in a hardware device in YOUR home. There is no middleman between you and the broadcaster. There is no secondary broadcast (which is the MAJOR issue here).
Or change the law.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1824011
So if I live is a OTA blindspot and pay my neighbor to put up an antenna for me and DVR my shows for me, I'm breaking copyright.
TwistedAegis
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Huh? You're more than free to put an antenna on your property to capture the OTA broadcast for your own personal use. In your example, if Aereo provided the service of coming to your house, installing an antenna, etc, and then renting it back to you, I highly doubt it would have a legal issue.
What was the issue is centralizing all of that, with a technical solution of 1 MILLION! antennas!, creating a legal fiction that the solution was anything different than 1 big antenna.
I see those points. I guess I just don't agree with most of them.
1) "They" didn't write the law. In this case it was written decades ago. It's akin to a contractor taking over a job. He's got a blueprint but no idea why the architect put the kitchen in the back yard.
2) Maybe? I thought courts applied rulings? Which, yes, is a government position, but not the position which spoke to this issue. Also when I hear the words "Vested Interest" the immediate vision I get is already rich asshole politicians rolling in piles of money supplied by "lobbyists".
3) I'll give you that one.
I guess it just seems dirty for me. I also probably have no idea what I'm talking about, just my thoughts. Politics... I need to go shower now.
cjcox
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Aereo does not in any way shape or form distribute single recordings to multiple recipients. You are wrong. Aereo gave you an antenna close to the broadcast antennas and a dvr as a service. In fact, it some ways it was more limited than normal @home OTA in that if you bought their basic service, you couldn't use your antenna to watch two different channels or even to watch while recording another.
cjcox
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Rebroadcasting as in hitting play on your home DVR... sure.. ok.. if that's rebroadcasting then a lot of things need to die now. You really need to understand the technology behind what Aereo (and others, it's not just them) are doing. In fact, unlike your DVR which does "broadcast" potentially to multiple devices simultaneously, there were more limitations with Aereo's model (one tuner, one channel at a time for live and recording)... it was a pretty flexible DVR, but not as good as what you'll be able to do with Tablo (for example).
It really doesn't matter how it's played back, or even if it's one stream or two. The issue is that Aereo is transmitting content that it does not own. The moment that content streams from the DVR to whatever device you are using Aereo's device becomes essentially a broadcaster...that's making money off of delivering content it does not own.
How is it a secondary broadcast if its at the behest of a single user/customer who can't get decent HD signals at his home? Its all about possesory interest now? Then going back to the cloud, doesn't that kill it given their logic? Carve outs by black robed thugs are irrelevent and easily overturnable by another black robe thug down the line. I'm rebroadcasting it through the internet in many cases. What do you think a frigging HD TV is? Its a receiver/transcoder for those HD signals you pick up with an antenna. Depending on location and the tv "hardware" you can get signals without an actual antenna.
Regarding monopolies, I'll take the "government" seriously when the government maintains only one monopoly itself aka the monopoly of force. The government likes to pick winners and losers based on who bribed who and ignore black letter law when it suits them. They're hypocrites of the highest order. If government cared about competition they'd get out of healthcare and education business.
Modred189
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No,, because there is no rebroadcast. No public performance. Also, there is existing law that allows you to do this as-is.
This isn't really true at all. The Court itself cited to the House Report on the creation of the relevant sections of the '76 act that documents the purpose and discussions surrounding the bill as written.
See also, "royal we"
We're getting mixed up in levels of courts. The lowest level courts apply the law. The Appellate courts (like the SCOTUS) interpret the law.
No it doesn't. Look at it this way. You can do this whole DVR thing 2 ways. First is the Aereo way:
1- Broadcast happens from source*
2- Broadcast captured by Aereo antenna#
3- Broadcast saved to Aereo servers#
4- Saved broadcast is streamed to the user.**
5- User views the broadcast##
Where:
*= first broadcast
**=second broadcast
#= first "viewing/consumption by Aereo
##= Second viewing/consumption by user
The second is a DVR way.
1- Broadcast happens from source
2- Viewer captures broadcast using home antenna
3- User sends content to [DVR Co.]'s server for storage
4- User later streams content from DVR
5- User views content.
Note that the Aereo method traces the content in a straight line from the source, through Aereo, to the user. No loops. The DVR method traces a loop. The content goes from the source, to the user, to the DVR servers, and back to the user. Because the end user was the original consumer/recipient of the content, using his own antenna, he has certain time-shifting rights to the content via the Betamax cases. That loop that the content traces makes the difference between a timeshift and a rebroadcast.
"black robed thugs? lol, you mean the ones that made the search of a cell phone without a warrant unconstitutional today? yea.. ok... But you miss the point. The example you give of your antenna is not a PUBLIC BROADCAST. That is a legal term of art and the definition matters. When the signal hits your antenna, the content is yours under a license with specific terms. Among them is the right to interpret the digital signal into a signal your TV can display. What you cannot do is re-transmit that signal to other people. THAT would be a public broadcast.
What about all those people who don't have cable, high speed internet for streaming or the money to pay for it?
There is still a large portion of the population that relies on over-the-air TV broadcast.
If you are paying your neighbor a monthly fee, then yes.
Hah, a legal term of art. Definitions don't mean squat anymore. Aereo is acting as your antenna/tv and sending you the signal via the internet. This is nothing but government granted monopolies and content creators begging to maintain their monopoly on control of distribution, on so called "public airwaves" no less. Breyer's promises that this won't affect cloud type distribution is fantasy land. DVR technology conflicts with DVD/BD sales. Why buy the set when you've recorded them off the "air"? Its a reason I've built a small HTPC, to ultimately rig up a system recording off my cable signal or OTA.
The cell phone warrant ruling means nothing given the government is trying to hide its stingray data stealing methods from the ACLU. Its a fluff ruling meant to mollify the public for now. Somehow, I don't think most police agencies are quaking in their boots right now. If defintions mattered, Roberts wouldn't have called the ACA a "tax" instead of a penalty. And if its a tax, black letter law in the Constitution itself says you can't tax individuals based on income or specific factors like age/sex etc., they have to be equally proportional across the citizenry. The healthcare law is blatantly unconstitutional any way you slice it yet many people tell me its "settled law". Pass an ammendment and I'd half agree and tell you to expect a war.
Your faith in the courts is your own. I have more respect for people who believe in the literal truth of the Bible or Scientologists than I do of people who actually respect the supreme court these days.
I had a feeling from the start this was going to happen. Like it or not they were finding ways to get around rules that are in place. It is no different than Vonage or any VoIP service when they first started out. Normal telephone services have to pay each other for toll charges and have to pay 911 fees. Vonage tried just refused to pay any of that stuff complaining that if they had to pay what everyone else did then they couldn't offer service as cheaply as they wanted. In the end they were forced to pay that and their rates went up. The issue with any claim by Aereo is that if they make a single cent they are making profit off of the signal. It doesn't matter how they try to twist what they are doing, they are making a profit only because they are rebroadcasting tv signal and that is it. They thought they found a loophole and tried to use it to make money. The loophole closed on them so now they have to figure out new ways to make money. Or they have to pray that the broadcast rules change, which I don't see happening no matter how much we might not like them.
They can claim the money is going wherever they want, but they are charging you a fee and giving you tv service. They can claim whatever they want but the end result is still the same.
I would say no. if you are renting space and they have no idea what you are doing then they aren't charging you for anything in regards to the tv service. It is different when it is somebody else is selling you the entire service as then part of what you are paying them is for the service. Look at it from this perspective. You can give your wife or girlfriend money or a nice gift and they have sex with you as a thank you and that is ok. You go pickup a woman on a corner and pay her for sex and that is illegal. In both cases you are giving something of monetary value and are having sex due to that. But only one is "wrong".
Like the person above said, only if you are forced to pay them a monthly fee for watching said dvr.
They can claim the money is going wherever they want, but they are charging you a fee and giving you tv service. They can claim whatever they want but the end result is still the same.
I would say no. if you are renting space and they have no idea what you are doing then they aren't charging you for anything in regards to the tv service. It is different when it is somebody else is selling you the entire service as then part of what you are paying them is for the service. Look at it from this perspective. You can give your wife or girlfriend money or a nice gift and they have sex with you as a thank you and that is ok. You go pickup a woman on a corner and pay her for sex and that is illegal. In both cases you are giving something of monetary value and are having sex due to that. But only one is "wrong".
Like the person above said, only if you are forced to pay them a monthly fee for watching said dvr.
Your argument is that you have a way for you to personally record your own content.. so you are doing exactly what the person you are quoted said and creating a loop. Unless you then turn around and sell your recordings to people and think that is justified as it took you time to record and burn the content to a pile of dvds.
Liberalism seeks to expand government's influence and the size of the bureaucracy. Regulations = power. They buy the peoples' vote with taxpayer funded projects, in exchange for more of their money.
you're missing the point. Right now i can buy OTA DVR's. I'm assuming they aren't going to go after those services. They are services because DVR's are a PITA if you don't have a channel guide service of somekind. If I can use an antenna and DVR on my own property, can I use them on a separate piece of property from where I'm viewing them. If I can't people just lost the ability to stream from their homes to their mobile devices or a friend's TV. So assuming I can still use my own hardware from my own property. Aero made the mistake of renting Antenna's only. They needed to rent a piece of property too.
In other words, if I can set an atenna and DVR in my living room and watch it in my bedroom. And I can set up an Antenna/DVR in my main house and watch it in my hotel room or a cabin I own on a lake. Why can't I watch them from a tiny patch of land managed by Aereo? Basically if you can shutdown Aereo you can shutdown remote viewing with your own equipment from your own home and not much of a stretch to shut it down within your home.
If someone can't be paid to DVR remotely for you, you can't DVR remotely either.
What if Aero's terms of service were for the equipment only and the channels were "free" by classifying the service as a remote rental DVR service?
A lot of head shops around here are not allowed to sell bongs and pipes, but may sell tobacco and include said pipe or bong at no charge skirting the law.
Its kind of funny because you can go to an Ace Hardware, Home Depot or Lowes and make 1/2 the stuff sold yourself.
A lot of head shops around here are not allowed to sell bongs and pipes, but may sell tobacco and include said pipe or bong at no charge skirting the law.
Its kind of funny because you can go to an Ace Hardware, Home Depot or Lowes and make 1/2 the stuff sold yourself.
I am trying to understand the rebroadcast angle. When i looked at this company before they were using "micro" antenea, that users rented and used a virtual DVR. So what is the difference in renting the antenna and DVR at home? The internet connection? Second viewing? I sometimes watch stuff I DVR twice is that a crime? How does this not affect Slingbox users?
I guess they were pushing the boundaries, but if each user had thier own rented "antenna" and the recorded content was not pooled (that is bob and myself record "my little ponies" there are two copies, one for him and one for me, in the servers instead of one copy that areo stored and let us stream) I don't see much difference other than it is "rented (from the cable company)" and not "in the customers house".
Modred189
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Considering the SCOTUS cited a series of definitions that were created in the 70s, I don't think this statement makes much sense in context...
That's one way of putting it, but it doesn't make it legal. Someone can sell antennas all day long, but since the 70s, acting as an antenna service and rebroadcasting abroad has been illegal per an act of Congress. So your recharacterization doesn't mean anything in the face of decades of law.
The airwaves are not public in that they are free. They are public in that the government owns them and licensed their use to the broadcasting companies. You don't own them because "you" (your representatives in the government) sold away any rights "you" (the People) had in them in exchange for license fees. So you/the public no more "owns" or has a right to do anything with these airwaves than you do the curb in front of your house.
I don't know why you think any of this. Breyer's language is exactly the kind of dicta that sets precedence and policy for years. The Betamax case is a prime example. Same with Campbell v. Acuff Rose in which dicta has defined fair use ever since. That said, your HTPC is perfectly legal since there is no public rebroadcast. Now, if you start selling access (or giving it for free) to your DVR recordings on the HTPC to other people, you'd be doing the same thing as Aereo. You don't own that content, so you can't re-sell/rebroadcast it.
WADR, havign said this, you've shown you don't understand the Constitution or the law of the US. This is a common law country. That means statutory law (like the Constitution) and the law created by the courts (like the rulings we are talking about) are, COMBINED, the law of the land. The Constitution is not "black letter" law (MAYBE with the exception of the amendments involving prohibition and slavery (#s 13, 18 and 21).
Faith has nothing to do with it. The proof is in the pudding, and the track record of the court shows that it gets more right than wrong (and your characterization of the Obamacare ruling shows, again, that you don't understand the Constitution or the Taxing and Spending clause. You may not AGREE with the ruling, but that doesn't mean it was questionable legally.)
This is correct. And this ruling doesn't change that. There is no public rebroadcast.
Streaming from your home to your own device is fine. Again, no public rebroadcast. ("public" is defined by who sees the content, not where it is seen). BUT as soon as you send it to a friend's TV, there is going to be a question. "Public" is defined as you, your family, and a close group of friends. So, if it's your neighbor, or a colleague at work, you'd likely be fine as is, even under the Aereo ruling. That definition of "public" has been around, also, since the 60s/70s.
No, that has nothing to do with it. The issue, if you read the opinion, is that Aereo "publicly performed" the broadcast after receiving it. You are not a close friend or family member, so by sending you the stream it collected from the air, it violated the broadcaster's copyrights over the performance of the content.
The land, the antennas, and even the recording functionality Aereo offered are irrelevant to the Court's decision. In fact some of those issues were not even before them, and are still undecided at the lower court level.
Again, no. In all of your examples (but for the Aereo example) there is a public rebroadcast. Sending it from your house to ANY location to yourself, your family or a close circle of friends is COMPLETELY legal. Sending it from an unrelated third party COMPANY (Aereo, who is not a family member or close friend) to yourself is a public rebroadcast and violates copyright.
Focus on that public rebroadcast because THAT is the hinge point.
See my responses to jpm above. It's not the hardware that matters AT ALL. It's the public rebroadcast.
See my responses to jpm above. It's not the hardware that matters AT ALL. It's the public rebroadcast.
But the slingbox is a great example of something JUST on the other side of the line. The difference lies in the fact that YOU are the recipient of the original broadcast. Thus YOU are the license holder for the content, and you can place-shift/time-shift it all you want. That's because when you send it to Slingbox and they restream it to you, there is no public rebroadcast. There is a place/time-shift to yourself. That's legal under the Betamax cases.
If, however, you gave your password and user ID to slingbox to everyone you knew at work, you'd be violating the copyright because you'd be enabling a public rebroadcast. Just the same as if you recorded an NFL game and then played it in a highschool gymnasium for the entire town.
Again, it's the public rebroadcast. Because you were not the original recipient, Aereo was, THEY are the ones in possession of the license to time and placeshift, but not publicly. By "renting" the antenna, it doesn't change anything. The 1976 copyright act and it's targeting of CATV farms made that clear. i.e., the Court said it was a function over form issue. Just by saying, "well it's a rented antenna, so it's the customer's not ours" is not effective.
MAYBE. just MAYBE, if Aereo actually SOLD the antennas to customers, it would be a different story. But not likely. They're trying to create a loophole that was already tried and sealed up by Congress, and was worth a shot but doomed to fail.