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No, that's not it. The ruling hinges on 17 USC 111 and the use of Locast donations to expand to new markets. The judge took a narrow interpretation of the statu
by classichasclass 5y ago
No, that's not it. The ruling hinges on 17 USC 111 and the use of Locast donations to expand to new markets. The judge took a narrow interpretation of the statute, saying that expansion was not part of the law, and therefore the use of donations was therefore beyond the costs of running the service, which is permitted. No ruling was made on whether Locast itself was a non-profit or not.
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.
- sjg007 5y agoI imagine this will be overturned on appeal. Basically all nonprofits have an interest in the case now including the Center For Public Broadcasting.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y agoYea, I often dislike when judges massively expand rulings, but it's been a thing for ages that non profits are allowed to expand. Otherwise no nonprofit could grow at all. 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.
- Mindwipe 5y ago> How were these nonprofits ever supposed to come into existence to restream broadcast TV? 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.