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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't exactly seem legal. Streaming free local network broadcasts was definitively ruled as illegal by the Supreme Court in 2014 -- remember that was Aereo's entire business model. [1]

It seems like the Stanford service is trying to justify themselves by being an academic study and limiting to 500 concurrent participants... but it's telling they don't list any legal justification on the site, and merely generically claim:

> Stanford respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe your copyright has been violated on a Stanford site, please notify puffer-copyright-notices@cs.stanford.edu and give notice as stated under Reporting of Alleged Copyright Infringement. [2]

I'm honestly shocked this ever passed Stanford legal review. Maybe it never did?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

[2] https://puffer.stanford.edu/terms/

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They're maybe trying to use the same law that Locast[1] is: there's a specific carve-out in the law about rebroadcasting for nonprofits: "an exception in U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 111) for retransmission of television programming by non-profits without charge or any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage (besides the costs needed to cover the operations and maintenance of the retransmitter), which was originally intended to cover over-the-air translator stations" [2]

[1] https://www.locast.org

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locast#Legal_challenge

> direct or indirect commercial advantage

So none of the research results will be licensed, patented, or used to bolster the universities reputation?

That's not commercial advantage as colloquially known. Commercial advantage would roughly translate to direct profit taking.

And they aren't doing it to become world renowned for their rebroadcasting, they're doing research and publishing results first and foremost. Big difference. Unless you want to start couching every type of university research as commercial advantage now, which seems pretty harmful to the university research landscape to me.

I never understood what the business interest of the tv stations was in preventing streaming online. They already give away for free the stream over the air. What gives? Do they make money on the antennas or receivers or something?

The rights to distribute a program on different media and in different geographies are sold separately. The broadcaster itself is likely not authorized to distribute the show online, so they can't authorize you to do it either.

Much of the programming of the OTA networks are produced in-house. (Previously, it was 100% in-house.)

The advertisers don’t want their content available everywhere. They often do regional promotions they don’t want the rest of the world to have knowledge of.

> Much of the programming of the OTA networks are produced in-house.

Not really.

> (Previously, it was 100% in-house.)

Nope.

Even in-house programming doesn't mean you're free of underlying copyright issues.

They get paid by the cable companies (or YouTubeTV style equivalents). It’s not too much (~$0.40/subscriber IIRC) but it obviously adds up.

They don’t get that money if you use an antenna, but that’s a small market compared to the internet. Most people who use antennas won’t pay anyway, and broadcasting gives them access to the network.

But opening up streaming will draw a lot of people who would otherwise have a cable subscription. Which will lead to much more cord cutters and cut into the carriage fees from the cable company.

You have the reasoning wrong for why they broadcast over the air via antennas, it was (still is I think?) mandated by the FCC.

I have heard that small cable companies pay upwards of $11 per month per sub in retran fees. This article from the industry says..."According to Kagan, the average retrans fee charged by a broadcast station will reach $2.93 by 2022, putting it behind only ESPN ($11.08) and cable channel TNT ($3.09)." [1]

This increase by YTTV is driven by the leverage that ViacomCBS has because of the CBS locals then own. They are forcing YTTV to take these network. Until retransmission consent is changed, we are stuck paying the local station holders despite the fact that their content is free OTA.

[1] - https://www.multichannel.com/news/is-the-retrans-cash-cow-ru...

One would think that the improved ad performance analytics should make up for the loss of $0.40 to $3.00 a month. But maybe they know ads don't work as well as they say and don't want the proof to get out...

Many of them charge cable operators for the right to carry them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retransmission_consent - so having the channel available free online diminishes the value of the retransmission consent.

Also, the copyright licenses the station has for their programming usually specify limits on redistribution - e.g. geographical, types of carriage, amount of customers reached (with a wider distribution costing more, as it provides more value to the licensee and reduces the licensor's ability to sell licenses to other entities).

>Many of them charge cable operators for the right to carry them.

So the opposite of what some ISPs are trying to pull.

The cable operators are the only "broadband" ISP for most people in the US. Cable operators want income as both ISPs and as channel providers. The TV channels want income from cable operators and advertisers. Losing one means fewer avenues of revenue.

The reality is cable operators are no longer need to be anything but a dumb pipe. And TV channels are no longer as valuable as they once were due to multitude of other sources of information.

> I never understood what the business interest of the tv stations was in preventing streaming online. They already give away for free the stream over the air. What gives? Do they make money on the antennas or receivers or something?

Pretty simple. They money using a tried and true model, why would they bother innovating or rocking the boat. It's much easier to collect the check for most of the money on the table than to bother innovating and collecting a slightly higher percentage with signicant potential downsides.

I think that they broadcast over the air for free only because they are required by law. Otherwise they would probably only be available on cable, Netflix, etc...

An interesting aspect of Aereo's model is that they attempted to circumvent these regulations by leasing each customer an individual antenna which they could access remotely. They maintained "antenna farms" full of tiny antennas.

It was a brilliant $100m bet that backfired for no good reason.

No good reason? They tried to exploit a technical loophole that was clearly against the spirit of the contracts and law.

But there's no good reason that it's legal to buy a server and stick an antenna on it, but it's not legal to rent a preconfigured server that has an antenna on it.

There wouldn't be loopholes if the law was consistent, and I would argue there is no 'spirit' in such a confusing set of rules.

always wondered if netflix couldn't have had warehouses full of dvd drives to avoid licensing fees. wouldn't work for new releases with a lot of peak demand but maybe it would be more feasible for the back catalog of older titles.

Zediva did this for a while before they were shutdown. I guess this is a lesson on the risks of disrupting an industry through a loophole that can be shutdown by a single ruling.

A "matrix" for DVDs, safely ensconced in their little pods until their master grows weary and evicts them to the discount bins.

When you buy a consumer DVD, that DVD only has a license for home viewing. Video stores require a special license to rent out videos. So, I assume netflix would have to pay that fee at least (which they probably already had for their mail order DVDs).

They wouldn't rent the DVD to you. They'd sell it to you, with an agreement to buy it back later on. First-sale doctrine, baby!

They might also need to sell you a short-term lease on that particular drive bay, so that you are playing the DVD in your own home too.

> Video stores require a special license to rent out videos.

First sale doctrine covers rentals, but having good relations with studios to get supply of new releases often influences rental establishments to avoid buying discs at retail to rent out. (But, RedBox will sometimes do it)

They agreed to stop a few years ago. Redbox used to break the "buy only" window of DVD releases. Meaning you could rent a movie from Redbox before it was available to rent on any streaming service.

They buckled from pressure from studios and agreed to stop for the reason you gave.

It kind of seemed at the time that they used their right to do this as a negotiating tactic in getting better prices from distributors.

Wouldn't want to be in charge of maintaining the system that has to handle the DVD and DVD drive farm.

Would they be able to achieve that without using libdvdcss which could cause legal problems? Also, I think most people want HD or 4k these days

Wow, what did that look like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zh5EqlqvHE

Wow, that's pretty much exactly the kind of introspective I guess I was looking for. Thanks.

Kind of sad it got killed off :(

I can't find it now, but could swear I read somewhere that educational institutions are specifically allowed to redistribute TV signals. My high school, for example, had a system where a single cable box / VHS / DVD player in the library could be made to present as channel 3 on all the classroom TVs.

If there is such a rule I highly doubt it's intended to cover distribution to the public, more like within campus facilities, but that could be what Stanford is trying to exploit.

They don't actually check your region either, you just have to check a box saying that you're in the U.S. It seems to be flying under the radar, at least until now

They addressed the law in a previous post, but basically there is a carveout for non-profit research that allows the retransmission of over the air signals to people in the US.

If you slap an "academic" label on it, no one will bother you. Same like how PredictIt is run by a university so they're allowed to be a casino that takes MasterCard and Visa.

PredictIt has letters of non-enforcement from either the SEC or the one that regulates commodities trading or both. It’s more than just saying “academic”.

Stanford can legally do this only because it's a non-profit conducting research

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20491571

Isn’t it true that in all cases of copyright violation the party who believe their rights are being infringed has to first ask the other party to stop, usually called a cease and desist notice.

No... One can still pursue in court for damages that occurred before the cease and desist letter was sent.

Ah, right, that’s obvious now you point it out.

Couldn't they ask the librarian of Congress for an exemption?

I imagine it passed legal by arguing based on the fair use doctrine, a defense that Aereo didn't raise.

Seems like a long study, but I suppose it's nice to have a bigger dataset.

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