I don't trust the Supreme Court to produce a proper ruling on this one. I assume Aereo will lose. That said, I don't see how it could be argued that Aereo is breaking any law.
2) What's so defensible about a business model that is based entirely on taking advantage of someone else's product? Without the content produced by the networks, there would be absolutely no reason for Aereo to exist.
I think Aereo will win, because the precedent is on its side. However, I also think the company is just taking advantage of a loophole and should try actually producing content people want to watch instead of simply taking some other company's content for free.
If you run an organization that broadcasts content to anybody with an antenna, you should not be shocked, just shocked when somebody picks it up and uses it as they see fit. If you don't want that to happen, don't broadcast your content and don't abuse the public spectrum to try to still exact control over the use of your broadcasted content.
All Aereo does is take advantage of a loophole. They couldn't record the shows and stream them, because that would violate the networks' copyright. So they try to shoehorn effectively the same service into the exception for time-shifting.
But public broadcasts are.. public. A private issue of patronage has nothing to do with a public issue of legality. You can't make any meaningful connections between the scenarios.
When you broadcast, you are granting implicit license to everyone who can receive to have and keep a copy of that event. Were it otherwise, I could set up an antenna, broadcast a video of me flipping the bird to the camera, and maliciously prosecute everyone receiving on that frequency for copyright violation.
If you want control over who sees your show, you can't really be doing it in front of a huge picture window visible from public property, or by pumping it out over radio signals, which is metaphorically the same thing.
The analogous situation would be if they paid $20 per watcher to the strip club, and had one blind dude come in with a whole array of webcams that linked up to people on the internet, with one webcam per person.
To which I'd ask you, why do you think this is a bad thing?
(The difference, of course, being that strip clubs are private whereas the public airwaves are public.)
Who in the real world is being mapped to the strip club which is taking the cover charge money in the analogy? It seems to be that in the analogy's codomain, the strip club might very well love the camera situation as it allows them to make more money per performance. So they can't be standing in for the tv broadcasters. Are they the antenna makers?
The tv broadcasters might more naturally map to the strippers themselves. Except that strippers don't get revenue by something that communicates as easily through the real world video signal like advertisements do. Perhaps if the strippers in the analogy were paid to wear brand logos and messages and such like race car drivers, but they would have to be on the skin, so temporary tattoos then. Or perhaps if the remote viewers in the analogy could hit a button to have the camera toss $X dollar bills onto the stage.
Oh, and the bar... strip clubs also hope to make money on drinks and a cut of the lap dances, is that why you assumed the strip clubs might not like the camera? The cover doesn't actually cover all of the expenses and desired profit. If so, I feel it could have been better spelled out or mentioned at all. But then, maybe the analogy's bar and lap dances are better stand ins for the advertisers in the real world (so we don't have to add in logo tattoos at all).
So, I'm still unsure about this analogy, including about it's value in adding clarity.
Certainly Aereo would not exist without broadcast TV. But the service adds a lot of value compared to, e.g. setting up a DIY streaming PVR with MythTV and an antenna.
Also, what harm is being done to the broadcasters?
Aereo allows people to do no more than what they can already do if they buy and set up their own antenna and DVR/VCR. Thus they take no more advantage of "someone else's product" than TV antenna manufacturers and DVR companies, whose products also would not exist if not for content produced by the networks.
> 2) What's so defensible about a business model that is based entirely on taking advantage of someone else's product?
The networks already broadcast the signal for anyone with an antenna to receive. If I own (or rent) a house or apartment where adding an antenna is not feasible (especially as a renter), I don't see why I can pay someone else to setup an antenna and DVR for me.
Does it make a difference that Aereo houses all the antennas in one location? If they were an antenna rental/installation (in your home) company would there be any argument?
Your argument about them not existing without the content applies to all sorts of businesses, not just Aereo.
The TV network's arguments are specious at best; if a TV antenna manufacturer had somehow invented sufficiently advanced technology for an antenna that could pickup TV signals from any specific area in the US, they would be just as upset.
I view Aereo as nothing more than providing a special antenna that is leased to a customer.
The reliance of the TV networks on the limitations of technology to ensure the success of their business model is not my problem.
In the end, I don't care anyway, I haven't had an antenna or cable TV in nearly a decade. And I don't consume network TV content on Netflix or the like with any regularity. They could all disappear and it wouldn't matter to me.
PART of the business model comes from a Supreme Court ruling (the Sony Betamax case) that permitted home recordings as fair use.
The other part is based on a Second Circuit case (Cablevision) that authorized remote DVR service.
There is a circuit split on several elements in the Cablevision holding so it is quite possible the Supreme Court could rule against Aereo.
Wasn't their another remote DVR case though that they ruled on that had de-duplicated the data for multiple users? The difference in the Cablevision remote DVR being that they didn't de-duplicate data.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Aereo102813...
While I think the law making this distinction is silly, and the law is dumb and needs to be changed, I don't see Aereo's workaround as something that fits within that law.
That seems to fall on the `movie theater' end of the dichotomy, but it's legal.
A single customer. One radio receiver per customer if I understand their model correctly.
No, Aereo is putting a radio receiver on one end and one customer on the other. Each customer has their own antenna. It's exactly the same as having an antenna on your home TV, only you're renting the antenna and it comes with a DVR.
If one is legal, the other should be as well. And if one is illegal, the other should be as well. Anything else would be insane. IMO, both should be legal.
I agree, I should be able to purchase or rent an antenna from anyone I want to.
Because each user controls their own equipment, and their data isn't stored with that from other people, then you end up with a lot of duplicated, albeit private, data. And that's the difference.
Using one antenna to capture and retransmit a show to yourself is perfectly legal. That's the whole point behind the Slingbox. With a DVR, you are "time-shifting" your viewing. With a Slingbox, you are "place-shifting" your viewing. Put them together, and you can do both. The only distinction for Aereo is that they are providing place and time-shifting as a service using normal (free) over the air signals. Aereo also doesn't allow you to control an antenna for an area where you don't live, so the customer needs to be in the correct geographic area where they could plausibly receive the over-the-air signals without Aereo.
The problem is that the law is nonsensical in the first place, which is why you can approach it from either side and get almost identical results.