AirBnB and Netflix aren't founded on legal loopholes; they're hindered by them. Hotel owners are trying to kill AirBnB via legal loopholes. Netflix still mails

AirBnB and Netflix aren't founded on legal loopholes; they're hindered by them. Hotel owners are trying to kill AirBnB via legal loopholes. Netflix still mails DVDs precisely because there are no legal loopholes. Aereo seems like a much riskier proposition. Even if Aereo wins in court, as the article notes, there's a good chance that the big content providers would just decide to sell the same service for cheaper. (Unlike the author of this article, I'm not sure why this would be bad, though, and I think it's a decent reason to root for Aereo as long as you're not invested in it.) OTOH, I agree with you that $12/month is not actually all that excessive for the service Aereo wants to offer. I could do the same thing with a DVR and a $20 antenna, but the equipment cost would be about at least the price of a year of Aereo service, and it would require more work on my part to set up and offer poorer quality because of the shitty upload speed on residential connections.