Locast’s free TV service shuts down after losing copyright ruling
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I wish we had an FCC that was more aggressively on the side of the consumer, that would get much more than just the money they currently get from the broadcasters in exchange for the valuable spectrum that they're permitted to occupy.
I didn't mind the interruptions when I was a free user, and didn't mind the $5. Unfortunately, the statute as interpreted seems to mean that unless your non-profit retransmission network exists in its entirety in whole cloth from the beginning, it can't be legal. I'm not sure this was intended either. I think the EFF does have some room to appeal.
It doesn't seem like they actually needed to shut down. They didn't just interrupt the broadcast, the notifications would stop, and then exit out of the app. You could go back into it and watch for another fifteen minutes or so, and then you'd get another "give us some money or these notifications continue" notification.
The judge's ruling was that this means of "forcing" of users to "donate" weren't voluntary donations at all and that locast was therefore not a non-profit. They could have continued by either actually making the donations truly voluntary or by operating as a for-profit.
August 31, 2021:
> Response to Summary Judgement
>
> In the big media companies' lawsuit against Locast, the court just issued a disappointing ruling. We are evaluating our options and will keep you posted as the situation develops.
September 1, 2021:
> Stopping the interrupt
>
> Locast is suspending immediately all programming interruptions to request donations.
> This means that anyone located in a market we serve who signs up for Locast will get the service without interruption, regardless of whether or not they donate.
> Of course, it is up to you whether or not to contribute to Locast. But if you currently contribute, we humbly request that you continue to do so. And if you don't contribute, we hope that you will do so if you can afford it.
September 2, 2021:
> Suspending Operations
>
> As a non-profit, Locast was designed from the very beginning to operate in accordance with the strict letter of the law, but in response to the court’s recent rulings, with which we respectfully disagree, we are hereby suspending operations, effective immediately.
It seems like removing ads was not enough for someone, they turned their attitude very quickly.
There are plenty of non-profits that give similar benefits if you donate. Even a local garden near me that is a non-profit won't let me enter unless I give a donation. I just don't see the difference here.
I think this ruling is excessively narrow, since it means that any such non-profit retransmission network would have to exist in its entirety, from the beginning, and could never increase in size (or at least could never use donations to increase in size, which is effectively the same). But it's not a profitability argument.
This judge basically nullified the original law in a way, so Locast would have had to have the capital to cover the whole country from day 1, and that would be fine? How were these nonprofits ever supposed to come into existence to restream broadcast TV?
And it mentions they only brought in 4.5 million. To restream content to millions of users, this really does not seem like a ridiculous amount.
They weren't. The law was really just intended to legalise a few existing networks, it wasn't supposed to be used for anything significantly bigger than a university campus.
The crux of the matter was this, quoted from discussion portion of the ruling (aka, the part where the judge explains the reasoning behind their decision): "On those undisputed facts, in 2020 Locast made far more money from user charges than was necessary to defray its costs of maintaining and operating its service," Stanton wrote."
The copyright exemption for non-profits explicitly limits revenue to the costs of providing the service, and no more. (Note that the way the exemption is written, this means current and past costs associated with the service, not prospective future costs such as those associated with expansion. Locast could have expanded; they simply aren't allowed to raise the money to pay for the expansion until after they have actually expanded. This is a deliberate and intended result of the law, which is intended to limit the size and growth of non-profit re-broadcasters while still allowing their existence.)
Locast could have kept operating, by reducing the donations it collected. Shutting down was entirely its own decision.
As described, the big concern with your hypothetical is private inurement.
- forego carriage fees in exchange for cable companies being forced to carry the channel
- withhold their feed in exchange for negotiated carriage fees
The big broadcast networks, at least in the US, have desirable content, so they demand payment for access to their feeds. Advertising is almost a secondary business at this point. Actual broadcast usage is on the rise, but is a dying business from the networks' point of view.
Moreover, the UK has a FreeSat service so for a one-time payment, you can watch television live even in areas where their already-excellent FreeView service doesn't cover (or you want HD versions of some channels because having a license to broadcast (BBC, ITV plc and STV plc, Channel 4 Television Corporation, S4C Authority, Channel 5 Ltd., and others) and the operations of broadcasting (Arqiva) are totally separate). But maybe there's actually an indirect recurring fee in the form of TV licenses, so at the same time I dunno.
It's literally no longer in their interest to encourage cord-cutting. They make $x per customer per year on carriage fees, and it's difficult to argue that you can make more than $x by saying "we can reach the cord-cutters better than other media products" and using that to goose your ad rates.
I guess their goal would be to eventually subsume into being a cable channel entirely, so you don't have to run all the transmitter infrastructure. Of course, then they no longer have a privileged position when negotiating with cable/satellite providers.
Now people who generally want to follow the rules will be faced with jailbreaking their firestick or paying exorbitant rates for Cable for channels they have no interest in.
There's also the HTPC or NAS-based recording option as well, but that's a bit more involved.
And that’s the problem. Virtually everyone who gets Locast, including me, can’t get reliable reception. This is exactly what retransmission non-profits are supposed to help with. But in response to Locast, people say “just put up an antenna.” I would love to but I live in a city of hills and trees that eat RF for breakfast and dinner.
I have paid for Locast since it arrived in my market and I’m immensely sad to see it go.
Still, I've found a lot of people who CAN get signal just grew up on cable and don't really know how to even check for OTA availability or what to do to get it if they have it, so I like to mention it for their benefit.
Not trying to minimize how frustrating it is for folks who can't though.
As you mention, some situations may not have reception due to special circumstances--and for them, I understand--but I think many people just don't think of just using an antenna these days. Or maybe they just want to hit the easy button and pay the monthly fee. (?)
It's not too big of a loss for me since I can't stand to watch network tv with it's insane amount of advertising but for live sporting events, it would be a nice option to have.
Even with suitable antennas, the broadcasting power of the transmitters has been significantly decreased, so in some cases you really are in an unlucky spot where the transmission isn't fully good. Moreover (specifically in the US), ATSC (before the recent 3.0 standard anyway) doesn't use OFDM, so when there's a weak signal it's a lot harder to lock on it.
I'd like to point out that during the analogue era, I got a fuzzy picture, but I got picture and sound. Now I get compression artifacts and stuttering and entire drop-outs.
And therein is the problem. I'm on a ground-level apartment unit. The OTA antenna I stick on the corner of a wall in the living room can't pick up shit.
If you're in a market that can get locast, you can also buy a digital receiver for about $20 and get the same local channels that locast was broadcasting.
Then today they shut down. I'd be curious to know what changed in 24 hours.