8 ms·

Inside the tech aiming Aereo through TV's legal hoops

27 points by Varcht 13y ago

rasz_pl 13y ago
"drove to a Home Depot and bought those PVC pipes that ordinarily the cheap terrorists would use for making explosive" Wow, Chet Kanojia, founder and chief executive of the TV-streaming company is really ...stupid?
efnx 13y ago
While reading this I could stop thinking how wasteful it all seems. Here we are creating a complicated solution to a very simple problem. All the workarounds needed to navigate around copyrights violations is costly - for the earth! If Aereo could just record it once and distribute it out we'd be saving energy. Broadcast companies can just let them build it out and then buy the idea and make a nice press release about improved service.
rayiner 13y ago
> The result: thousands of customers in 11 cities watching broadcast TV -- the most popular channels on television -- at a fraction of the subscription price of a cable or satellite package (monthly Aereo fees are as low as $8). But those customers are in jeopardy of losing their service. This is the heart of the issue, isn't it? Aereo can provide this service for so cheap because it's using someone else's content for free. They don't themselves create or provide anything users actually want to buy--they just distribute the work of other people, and do so without compensating the people who created the products that are actually in demand. I don't really buy Aereo's claim that somehow this implicates cloud computing. Lawyers and technologists can argue about how Aereo's array of individual antennas interacts with the public performance aspects of the Copyright Act, but I think ordinary users wouldn't view Aereo as a "cloud computing service" akin to Drop Box, but simply a website where they can stream TV shows for very cheap (ala Hulu).
- nkozyra 13y ago
  The problem is that they're not sidestepping the law, and that the law intentionally makes it daunting and complicated to fulfill this purpose. In other words, the law was designed to make such a prospect so unappealing that nobody would ever broach it. Now that someone has, well ...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - harryh 13y ago
    The law wasn't designed to allow this. That's absurd. The laws were written before any of this was possible by people who didn't conceive of this sort of company.
    - nkozyra 13y ago
      Of course it was. You're looking at it literally, as though it considered transcoders, etc. The 1 antenna per customer was very clearly conceived to prevent "disruptive" approaches to broadcast.
      - logfromblammo 13y ago
        I think it was intended to erect a prohibitive barrier to any firm seeking entry. As it turns out, technical improvements have lowered that barrier such that it is no longer prohibitive--merely onerous. It was literally beyond comprehension of the judges when the rules were formulated that anyone could possibly do what Aereo has done. And now that it has been done, the court has the option to either undermine precedent and the illusion of impartiality or to destroy an enormously remunerative revenue stream for a very generous and politically grateful industry.
        nkozyra 13y ago
        Yes, precisely. When enacted, 1 antenna per customer was essentially saying "you can't practically do this."
- evan_ 13y ago
  > Aereo can provide this service for so cheap because it's using someone else's content for free. They don't themselves create or provide anything users actually want to buy--they just distribute the work of other people, and do so without compensating the people who created the products that are actually in demand. Imagine I pay Geek Squad, or some other handyman service, to come to my house and set up an antenna on my roof and hook it up to a DVR. I can't imagine anyone saying that either I or my handyman has done anything wrong. What is Aereo doing that's different? The only difference is that the wire between the DVR and my television is longer. > its Rube Goldberg machinations are clearly just away to sidestep the law. It would be a whole lot easier for everyone involved if they could just use ONE antenna. The whole Rube Goldberg machinations are to comply with the law.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > The only difference is that the wire between the DVR and my television is longer. Hardly. The major difference is who owns and controls the equipment, and what other equipment they own and control. By your reasoning the only difference between inviting my friends over to watch a DVD and a movie theater is that the latter involves a bigger screen and more "friends." It's the kind of reductionist argument that lawyers and engineers love but ring hollow in terms of common sense.
    - evan_ 13y ago
      > The major difference is who owns and controls the equipment, and what other equipment they own and control. OK, I rent my DVR from the cable company, surely you're as upset about that as you are about Aereo? Since the equipment is owned and controlled by a corporation that's not paying for the production of the television? > By your reasoning the only difference between inviting my friends over to watch a DVD and a movie theater is that the latter involves a bigger screen and more "friends." I don't see how this makes any sense or is relevant at all, sorry.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        > OK, I rent my DVR from the cable company, surely you're as upset about that as you are about Aereo? Since the equipment is owned and controlled by a corporation that's not paying for the production of the television? By that reasoning, a leased car is the same as a taxi. > I don't see how this makes any sense or is relevant at all, sorry. My point is that you're focusing on one dimension ("the length of the wire") and saying that two situations are analogous because they differ only in the quantity of that one dimension. But that's not the only way in which the two situations differ. Along other dimensions, there's a huge difference between a handyman installing an antenna in your house and Aereo streaming TV shows over the internet.
- icebraining 13y ago
  My ISP doesn't create anything that I want to buy either, it just distributes the work of other people (e.g. Google, Netflix, etc) without compensating them. Are ISPs running on an unethical business model? Aereo is just an ISP for the airwaves instead of the Internet - it carries content that people have the right to access for them, and gets paid for that.
- cujo 13y ago
  How is it different than paying your cable company to watch local channels over the wire? You can't watch "premium" cable channels. It's just the stuff you'd pick up with an OTA antenna, commercials included. The real benefit of aereo is that it's all web based, so no one is tethered to their tv to watch.
  - bri3d 13y ago
    Your cable company pays the local channels in most cases; look up "Retransmission Consent Agreement." Aereo are specifically avoiding negotiating these types of agreement.
    - joezydeco 13y ago
      Aereo didn't avoid the negotiation - they discovered a way to not have to pay the retransmission fees at all. No negotiation needed. This is the heart of why Aereo is at the Supreme Court trying to defend a situation that the Court created themselves. If Aereo can skip out on the fees, the cable and dish companies will follow suit immediately. And this is what has the broadcasters scared.
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  The content creators aren't compensated when you put rabbit ears on your TV either. They have to make their money sidechannel via advertising. Aereo provides more eyes for that advertising, so you really can't accurately say that the network isn't compensated. They're compensated the exact same way as any other OTA broadcast. There's one important thing you're not adequately accounting for that makes this situation difficult to analogize. The deal that gives broadcasters access to the airwaves also specifies that customers be able to freely tune into over-the-air programming. As they said in the article, there are a lot of people who don't even live in a place where they can access the digital broadcasts due to coverage issues. Many people in apartments are not allowed to install aerial antennas that might also allow them to access the OTA signals. Aereo helps provide such people with a cheaper way to access the content they are entitled to than cable. I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with what Aereo's doing. The elephant in the room is that if it gets ruled legal, the floodgates will be opened for cable companies to do the same, and the retransmission scheme will be in peril. My opinion is that Aereo shouldn't be punished for what these other companies might do.
- crazygringo 13y ago
  > because it's using someone else's content for free Um, the TV channels are already broadcasting their content for free. You know that, right? > They don't themselves create or provide anything users actually want to buy They're no different from an antenna and DVR of your own. You buy those, or you buy Aereo -- same thing. Both cases distribute the signal. You're not complaining that people shouldn't be able to buy their own antennas because the antennas don't "create anything", are you? > do so without compensating the people You do realize that broadcast TV comes with commercials, no? The channels have been compensated for decades this way, and it's not like Aereo is stripping out the commercials.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  On the other hand, the article implies that the broadcasters are not very good at... broadcasting. A big challenge for Aereo was finding a location that gets all the signals: > "It's striking to me," Lipowski said, describing missing signals at many places around the city, no more than a few miles from the current broadcast center on the Empire State Building. "You would not get the channels that the FCC said you should be able to receive. ... It was just gone, you could no longer receive television signals, you had to do something different. That's not fair." Some Aereo customers use it because they can't receive signals from the broadcasters. The broadcasters seem to feel that these customers shouldn't use Aereo. Instead, the customers should pay ComastTimeWarnerMegaCorp, who can then pay the broadcasters. i.e. Not only do the broadcasters not want to spend money improving their infrastructure -- they want to get money for not broadcasting well. The sense of lazy entitlement among broadcast and cable operators is pretty stunning.
gtCameron 13y ago
Reading that makes me wonder how they actually make any money. $8 a month per subscriber seems pretty low for the hardware and bandwidth involved per stream. Even if you count on only a certain percentage of people watching at any given time you need to account for the high volume events where 80% of your customer base would be watching the Super Bowl for example. The more I think about it the more it seems like the company's purpose is more about forcing this court case than actually building a sustainable business.
- rasz_pl 13y ago
  >$8 a month per subscriber seems pretty low for the hardware and bandwidth involved per stream. USB DVB-T dongle is $7 with free shipping. So they simply CANT spend more on hardware when it is that cheap with cots parts.
  - gtCameron 13y ago
    Thats less than half of the equation. They still have to get the signal to a transcoder, transcode the stream, store it on a "personal DVR" for each customer, and then stream it to you.
    - rasz_pl 13y ago
      You will be transcoding hundreds of SAME streams. If they are at least a little bit smart they implemented shared intermediate data pool = you transcode them individually, but you reuse all the calculations = only one set of calculations per one Multiplex, rest pooled from cached data.
  - morganw 13y ago
    Areo offers service to people in radio shadows.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rtkwe 13y ago
  Haven't you heard? Companies don't have to make money anymore, just have to keep climbing the evaluation ladder until they get acquired by a company with a big enough purse to bail out.
ForHackernews 13y ago
I still don't really understand the point of Aereo. Are there people who have high-speed internet (i.e. not in remote areas) but who can't just put up an antenna? The only reason I can imagine is international viewers who want to watch US broadcast TV.
- what_ever 13y ago
  I live in an apartment complex in US which doesn't allow setting up my own antenna.
- javanix 13y ago
  Even if I wanted to put up an antenna, certain spots are just not going to get reception easily for all of the channels I want to watch.
- cujo 13y ago
  1 - People who don't have a TV but don't mind watching the occasional show on their computer 2 - People who rent so can't put up antenna and get lousy reception on the indoor types 3 - People who just get crappy antenna reception I find it fascinating that so many people are confused about Aereo. Many of these people pay their cable provider for the privilege of watching local stations over the wire. It's basically the same service, only you're not tethered to a television to watch.
  - Yhippa 13y ago
    I have TiVo Product Lifetime Service and built my own antenna but would love Aereo because of #3. I live in an area where it's difficult to get good reception and this would solve a huge problem if I could get the local stations reliably.
- revscat 13y ago
  I have Aereo because I cannot get a clear broadcast signal.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  At the moment Aereo locks you into the metropolitan region specified by the billing address on your credit card. So if your card has a Denver address, you can only see Denver channels. So this would not be a usable solution for international viewers. Perhaps in the future if things loosen up.
harryh 13y ago
Here's my question: why do the TV networks still broadcast over the air? If they weren't doing that none of what Aereo is doing would be possible. Do they really make that much money from showing commercials to people with rabbit ears? Maybe I live in a bubble but everyone I know that watches TV gets cable or somehow watches over the internet.
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  In 1996, 58.4% of American households had cable [1], but 96.7% of American households have at least one TV. Assuming that this difference is made up mostly of people watching OTA TV (not satellite TV, fiber, other, or non TV watchers), that still leaves a pretty massive audience. I wish I had numbers, but my understanding is that retransmission fees are currently not the majority of income for broadcasters. Certainly, they are quite significant and growing, though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_State...
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    Dish and Direct TV have about 34 million subscribers between them. That's nearly 30% of U.S. households (something like 117 million households).
    - tanzam75 13y ago
      Latest figures from February 2014, http://www.tvb.org/research/media_comparisons/4729/72512 http://www.tvb.org/research/media_comparisons/4729/72512 Wired cable 58.3% ADS 31.9% OTA 10.3% Satellite is counted in ADS, Alternate Delivery System.
  - harryh 13y ago
    Presumably that 58.4% has gone up some in the last 18 years?

27 points by Varcht 13y ago

"drove to a Home Depot and bought those PVC pipes that ordinarily the cheap terrorists would use for making explosive" Wow, Chet Kanojia, founder and chief executive of the TV-streaming company is really ...stupid?

efnx 13y ago

While reading this I could stop thinking how wasteful it all seems. Here we are creating a complicated solution to a very simple problem. All the workarounds needed to navigate around copyrights violations is costly - for the earth! If Aereo could just record it once and distribute it out we'd be saving energy. Broadcast companies can just let them build it out and then buy the idea and make a nice press release about improved service.

rayiner 13y ago

> The result: thousands of customers in 11 cities watching broadcast TV -- the most popular channels on television -- at a fraction of the subscription price of a cable or satellite package (monthly Aereo fees are as low as $8). But those customers are in jeopardy of losing their service. This is the heart of the issue, isn't it? Aereo can provide this service for so cheap because it's using someone else's content for free. They don't themselves create or provide anything users actually want to buy--they just distribute the work of other people, and do so without compensating the people who created the products that are actually in demand. I don't really buy Aereo's claim that somehow this implicates cloud computing. Lawyers and technologists can argue about how Aereo's array of individual antennas interacts with the public performance aspects of the Copyright Act, but I think ordinary users wouldn't view Aereo as a "cloud computing service" akin to Drop Box, but simply a website where they can stream TV shows for very cheap (ala Hulu).

nkozyra 13y ago
The problem is that they're not sidestepping the law, and that the law intentionally makes it daunting and complicated to fulfill this purpose. In other words, the law was designed to make such a prospect so unappealing that nobody would ever broach it. Now that someone has, well ...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- harryh 13y ago
  The law wasn't designed to allow this. That's absurd. The laws were written before any of this was possible by people who didn't conceive of this sort of company.
  - nkozyra 13y ago
    Of course it was. You're looking at it literally, as though it considered transcoders, etc. The 1 antenna per customer was very clearly conceived to prevent "disruptive" approaches to broadcast.
    - logfromblammo 13y ago
      I think it was intended to erect a prohibitive barrier to any firm seeking entry. As it turns out, technical improvements have lowered that barrier such that it is no longer prohibitive--merely onerous. It was literally beyond comprehension of the judges when the rules were formulated that anyone could possibly do what Aereo has done. And now that it has been done, the court has the option to either undermine precedent and the illusion of impartiality or to destroy an enormously remunerative revenue stream for a very generous and politically grateful industry.
      - nkozyra 13y ago
        Yes, precisely. When enacted, 1 antenna per customer was essentially saying "you can't practically do this."
evan_ 13y ago
> Aereo can provide this service for so cheap because it's using someone else's content for free. They don't themselves create or provide anything users actually want to buy--they just distribute the work of other people, and do so without compensating the people who created the products that are actually in demand. Imagine I pay Geek Squad, or some other handyman service, to come to my house and set up an antenna on my roof and hook it up to a DVR. I can't imagine anyone saying that either I or my handyman has done anything wrong. What is Aereo doing that's different? The only difference is that the wire between the DVR and my television is longer. > its Rube Goldberg machinations are clearly just away to sidestep the law. It would be a whole lot easier for everyone involved if they could just use ONE antenna. The whole Rube Goldberg machinations are to comply with the law.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > The only difference is that the wire between the DVR and my television is longer. Hardly. The major difference is who owns and controls the equipment, and what other equipment they own and control. By your reasoning the only difference between inviting my friends over to watch a DVD and a movie theater is that the latter involves a bigger screen and more "friends." It's the kind of reductionist argument that lawyers and engineers love but ring hollow in terms of common sense.
  - evan_ 13y ago
    > The major difference is who owns and controls the equipment, and what other equipment they own and control. OK, I rent my DVR from the cable company, surely you're as upset about that as you are about Aereo? Since the equipment is owned and controlled by a corporation that's not paying for the production of the television? > By your reasoning the only difference between inviting my friends over to watch a DVD and a movie theater is that the latter involves a bigger screen and more "friends." I don't see how this makes any sense or is relevant at all, sorry.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      > OK, I rent my DVR from the cable company, surely you're as upset about that as you are about Aereo? Since the equipment is owned and controlled by a corporation that's not paying for the production of the television? By that reasoning, a leased car is the same as a taxi. > I don't see how this makes any sense or is relevant at all, sorry. My point is that you're focusing on one dimension ("the length of the wire") and saying that two situations are analogous because they differ only in the quantity of that one dimension. But that's not the only way in which the two situations differ. Along other dimensions, there's a huge difference between a handyman installing an antenna in your house and Aereo streaming TV shows over the internet.
icebraining 13y ago
My ISP doesn't create anything that I want to buy either, it just distributes the work of other people (e.g. Google, Netflix, etc) without compensating them. Are ISPs running on an unethical business model? Aereo is just an ISP for the airwaves instead of the Internet - it carries content that people have the right to access for them, and gets paid for that.
cujo 13y ago
How is it different than paying your cable company to watch local channels over the wire? You can't watch "premium" cable channels. It's just the stuff you'd pick up with an OTA antenna, commercials included. The real benefit of aereo is that it's all web based, so no one is tethered to their tv to watch.
- bri3d 13y ago
  Your cable company pays the local channels in most cases; look up "Retransmission Consent Agreement." Aereo are specifically avoiding negotiating these types of agreement.
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    Aereo didn't avoid the negotiation - they discovered a way to not have to pay the retransmission fees at all. No negotiation needed. This is the heart of why Aereo is at the Supreme Court trying to defend a situation that the Court created themselves. If Aereo can skip out on the fees, the cable and dish companies will follow suit immediately. And this is what has the broadcasters scared.
acjohnson55 13y ago
The content creators aren't compensated when you put rabbit ears on your TV either. They have to make their money sidechannel via advertising. Aereo provides more eyes for that advertising, so you really can't accurately say that the network isn't compensated. They're compensated the exact same way as any other OTA broadcast. There's one important thing you're not adequately accounting for that makes this situation difficult to analogize. The deal that gives broadcasters access to the airwaves also specifies that customers be able to freely tune into over-the-air programming. As they said in the article, there are a lot of people who don't even live in a place where they can access the digital broadcasts due to coverage issues. Many people in apartments are not allowed to install aerial antennas that might also allow them to access the OTA signals. Aereo helps provide such people with a cheaper way to access the content they are entitled to than cable. I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with what Aereo's doing. The elephant in the room is that if it gets ruled legal, the floodgates will be opened for cable companies to do the same, and the retransmission scheme will be in peril. My opinion is that Aereo shouldn't be punished for what these other companies might do.
crazygringo 13y ago
> because it's using someone else's content for free Um, the TV channels are already broadcasting their content for free. You know that, right? > They don't themselves create or provide anything users actually want to buy They're no different from an antenna and DVR of your own. You buy those, or you buy Aereo -- same thing. Both cases distribute the signal. You're not complaining that people shouldn't be able to buy their own antennas because the antennas don't "create anything", are you? > do so without compensating the people You do realize that broadcast TV comes with commercials, no? The channels have been compensated for decades this way, and it's not like Aereo is stripping out the commercials.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
6cxs2hd6 13y ago
On the other hand, the article implies that the broadcasters are not very good at... broadcasting. A big challenge for Aereo was finding a location that gets all the signals: > "It's striking to me," Lipowski said, describing missing signals at many places around the city, no more than a few miles from the current broadcast center on the Empire State Building. "You would not get the channels that the FCC said you should be able to receive. ... It was just gone, you could no longer receive television signals, you had to do something different. That's not fair." Some Aereo customers use it because they can't receive signals from the broadcasters. The broadcasters seem to feel that these customers shouldn't use Aereo. Instead, the customers should pay ComastTimeWarnerMegaCorp, who can then pay the broadcasters. i.e. Not only do the broadcasters not want to spend money improving their infrastructure -- they want to get money for not broadcasting well. The sense of lazy entitlement among broadcast and cable operators is pretty stunning.

gtCameron 13y ago

Reading that makes me wonder how they actually make any money. $8 a month per subscriber seems pretty low for the hardware and bandwidth involved per stream. Even if you count on only a certain percentage of people watching at any given time you need to account for the high volume events where 80% of your customer base would be watching the Super Bowl for example. The more I think about it the more it seems like the company's purpose is more about forcing this court case than actually building a sustainable business.

rasz_pl 13y ago
>$8 a month per subscriber seems pretty low for the hardware and bandwidth involved per stream. USB DVB-T dongle is $7 with free shipping. So they simply CANT spend more on hardware when it is that cheap with cots parts.
- gtCameron 13y ago
  Thats less than half of the equation. They still have to get the signal to a transcoder, transcode the stream, store it on a "personal DVR" for each customer, and then stream it to you.
  - rasz_pl 13y ago
    You will be transcoding hundreds of SAME streams. If they are at least a little bit smart they implemented shared intermediate data pool = you transcode them individually, but you reuse all the calculations = only one set of calculations per one Multiplex, rest pooled from cached data.
- morganw 13y ago
  Areo offers service to people in radio shadows.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rtkwe 13y ago
Haven't you heard? Companies don't have to make money anymore, just have to keep climbing the evaluation ladder until they get acquired by a company with a big enough purse to bail out.

ForHackernews 13y ago

I still don't really understand the point of Aereo. Are there people who have high-speed internet (i.e. not in remote areas) but who can't just put up an antenna? The only reason I can imagine is international viewers who want to watch US broadcast TV.

what_ever 13y ago
I live in an apartment complex in US which doesn't allow setting up my own antenna.
javanix 13y ago
Even if I wanted to put up an antenna, certain spots are just not going to get reception easily for all of the channels I want to watch.
cujo 13y ago
1 - People who don't have a TV but don't mind watching the occasional show on their computer 2 - People who rent so can't put up antenna and get lousy reception on the indoor types 3 - People who just get crappy antenna reception I find it fascinating that so many people are confused about Aereo. Many of these people pay their cable provider for the privilege of watching local stations over the wire. It's basically the same service, only you're not tethered to a television to watch.
- Yhippa 13y ago
  I have TiVo Product Lifetime Service and built my own antenna but would love Aereo because of #3. I live in an area where it's difficult to get good reception and this would solve a huge problem if I could get the local stations reliably.
revscat 13y ago
I have Aereo because I cannot get a clear broadcast signal.
joezydeco 13y ago
At the moment Aereo locks you into the metropolitan region specified by the billing address on your credit card. So if your card has a Denver address, you can only see Denver channels. So this would not be a usable solution for international viewers. Perhaps in the future if things loosen up.

harryh 13y ago

Here's my question: why do the TV networks still broadcast over the air? If they weren't doing that none of what Aereo is doing would be possible. Do they really make that much money from showing commercials to people with rabbit ears? Maybe I live in a bubble but everyone I know that watches TV gets cable or somehow watches over the internet.

acjohnson55 13y ago
In 1996, 58.4% of American households had cable [1], but 96.7% of American households have at least one TV. Assuming that this difference is made up mostly of people watching OTA TV (not satellite TV, fiber, other, or non TV watchers), that still leaves a pretty massive audience. I wish I had numbers, but my understanding is that retransmission fees are currently not the majority of income for broadcasters. Certainly, they are quite significant and growing, though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_State...
- maxerickson 13y ago
  Dish and Direct TV have about 34 million subscribers between them. That's nearly 30% of U.S. households (something like 117 million households).
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    Latest figures from February 2014, http://www.tvb.org/research/media_comparisons/4729/72512 http://www.tvb.org/research/media_comparisons/4729/72512 Wired cable 58.3% ADS 31.9% OTA 10.3% Satellite is counted in ADS, Alternate Delivery System.
- harryh 13y ago
  Presumably that 58.4% has gone up some in the last 18 years?