20 ms·

Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]

301 points by acjohnson55 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rglover 12y ago
Not surprised. The service works by rebroadcasting over the air signals and then charging for them, right?
- unreal37 12y ago
  Not really. They rented you exclusively an antenna at their location, and you can use it to watch over the air TV. There was no rebroadcasting technically, which is how they hoped to get around the law.
  - warfangle 12y ago
    That's the only difference between Aereo and the original CATV companies. Original CATV was one giant antenna on a hill piping the broadcast to homes that couldn't get the signal; this is thousands of antennas intelligently provisioned on a hill piping the broadcast and providing DVR functionality to homes that don't necessarily want to deal with using the crappy tv antenna -> computer hardware available.
- djb_hackernews 12y ago
  I've not used Aero and haven't heard their argument but I bet their business model is they rent antennas to customers. I'd be curious to know where that argument failed because surely I could create a business that rented antennas to customers and installed them on houses. Why does it matter the location of the antenna? Either way this is bad for the consumer, bad for technology, and bad for innovation.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I imagine the argument fails because it's obvious to anyone who looks at the company's offerings for two seconds that the "rent antennas" thing is just an excuse, and that their actual business model is that they charge for streaming TV.
    - djb_hackernews 12y ago
      So then where is the line drawn? Am I not allowed to put an antenna on my roof? What if I put it on my neighbors because it gets a better signal? I'm honestly curious what is wrong with renting an antenna from a company and streaming the signal, regardless of location.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        I don't think anything is wrong with renting an antenna and streaming the signal. What's illegal here (not that I think it should be, but it seems clear enough that this is what the law says) is providing a streaming TV service without obtaining the appropriate licenses. The implementation details on the backend are irrelevant. I don't think you'd have any trouble setting up DJB's Internet-Accessible Antenna Rental if that's what you actually offered. Stick some SDR equipment on the antenna and give me access to the raw bitstream. If I want to watch TV with the service, then I can tell your equipment to tune to the appropriate frequency, and then decode the bitstream locally. But if you set up DJB's TV Streaming without paying any license fees, and you just implement that by receiving signals from an antenna, it's a different beast even if it looks the same technologically.
      - danielweber 12y ago
        Of course you can put an antenna on your roof. You can probably also put an antenna on your neighbor's roof. Your neighbor cannot get into the business of rebroadcasting TV signals, though. Your intent to figure out exactly where the line is drawn is a failure that geeks have when going about the law. The law isn't written for a robot to unfailingly interpret. You won't get a good answer for the same reason the tribes making headphones out of coconuts won't get a good answer for how exactly they need to wear them for the cargo planes to come back.
- HCIdivision17 12y ago
  As I understand it, one of their goals was to not be considered a broadcaster. Rather, it's more akin to a wire in that it's one-to-one, not one-to-many. I am eager to hear some expert commentary on the ruling on what the side effects will be.
dynofuz 12y ago
This doesnt make sense. You are paying for renting the antenna. You're not paying for the content.
- emehrkay 12y ago
  How exactly does Aereo work? You rent an antenna from them, they record the show for you, and you can play it back at a later time?
  - mason55 12y ago
    You can view OTA content live and record what you're watching just like a DVR. They don't proactively record for you.
  - Guvante 12y ago
    They work like a DVR, you can set a show to record and it will save a copy just for you using your antenna.
  - pbreit 12y ago
    That's one version. The other is that you simply watch the show in near-real-time, just as you would if the camera were sitting in your window. IANAL, but felt like the DVR functionality really clouded the case and possibly skewed it away from Aereo. Harder to claim you are merely an antenna when you are recording, too.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    (It sucks you got downvoted for asking an earnest question.)
- Shivetya 12y ago
  Under the changes that Congress specifically made to the Copyright act I do believe the court ruled correctly. Congress moved in 1976 to protect broadcasters from Cable companies doing nearly what Aereo is doing, capturing and sending by another means the broadcast of a TV station. Congress at the time did not like how the courts were ruling in favor of the then fledgling CATV services. Courts ruled that capturing and sending the shows to cable viewers was not a violation as were not acting as "performers". Congress changed that they were, effectively stopping cable from providing local and regional channels. Well Congress showed who was truly doing this by adding in all sorts of new compulsory fees for carrying local channels. So CATV can and in some cases has to carry local content and pay for it. TL;DR Congress changes to Copyright in 1976 at the behest of broadcasters versus CableTV is the basis for the ruling. The original broadcaster owns all rights unless otherwise assigned.
muyuu 12y ago
Down. Any mirrors?
- theg2 12y ago
  http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-461_l537.pdf http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-461_l537.pdf this is still working for me.
  - muyuu 12y ago
    This is what I see (connecting from the UK): 500 Internal Server Error The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.
- ComputerGuru 12y ago
  Here you go: http://cl.ly/1h0P1W2h181W http://cl.ly/1h0P1W2h181W
- ruytlm 12y ago
  There's also a Scribd mirror up: http://www.scribd.com/doc/231280851/ABC-v-Aereo-Decision http://www.scribd.com/doc/231280851/ABC-v-Aereo-Decision
  - muyuu 12y ago
    Cheers.
electronous 12y ago
This is precisely why old people shouldn't be anywhere near tech.
- Loughla 12y ago
  That's a beautiful attitude.
- smackfu 12y ago
  They wrote 18 pages explaining their reasoning complete with citations, and that's your rebuttal?
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  Barry Diller, a major backer of Aereo, is 72.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pgrote 12y ago
Justices Breyer, Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan were the majority. It isn't over since the case now goes back to the lower court, but Aereo can no longer argue they are the same as a person putting an antenna on their roof.
- Grue3 12y ago
  So, all the "liberal" judges? Sucks that the ones who usually defend human rights are also the same people who stifle innovation.
  - sheetjs 12y ago
    Describing Roberts as liberal is a great stretch
    - Grue3 12y ago
      Pretty sure he's the one who "saved" Obamacare when it went to Supreme Court.
      - nfoz 12y ago
        Describing Obamacare as liberal is a bit of a stretch. - a Canadian
        krapp 12y ago
        Bear in mind, the U.S. definition of liberal is still far to the right of what the rest of the world considers liberal.
        Grue3 12y ago
        And by the whole world you mean Western Europe and a few other countries. US is very liberal compared to many other places (like my own country).
cheez0r 12y ago
The Supreme Court is wrong- the reason cable companies are treated as a 'public' performance of a work is that their distribution medium is shared- any subscriber can tune into that broadcasting of that work over a shared common carrier where one copy of the work is transmitted and many subscribers can view it. Aereo is different in that it only transmits the signal captured to a single subscriber at a time, removing the 'public' nature of the performance and hence invalidating their argument. How absurd.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Is that really a necessary part of 'public performance' according to law? You can show movies for pay if only one person is in the audience? I'm not sure that argument works.
- amalcon 12y ago
  The Supreme Court is not able to be wrong on a matter of U.S. law. It gets to decide what that law means, not you. It's not the decision I'd hoped for, nor the one I'd make, but it's nonsense to claim that it's "wrong". All we can do about it now is to get the law changed.
  - DrJokepu 12y ago
    There are Supreme Court decisions that are generally regarded as "wrong" by posterity. Dred Scott v. Sandford comes to mind.
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    > The Supreme Court is not able to be wrong on a matter of U.S. law. It gets to decide what that law means, not you. The Supreme Court decides interpretations of law, but the law itself (as written or as interpreted) is quite capable of being wrong. Law does not determine morality.
    - pionar 12y ago
      That also does not mean that SCOTUS is "wrong". A law can be "wrong" (subjective), and the SCOTUS will still have to uphold it if it is constitutional.
johnpmayer 12y ago
Seems like, because Aereo isn't just a hardware renter but also an integrated SaaS provider, they were treated as such. The court opinion talks in terms of user interaction with menus on the site to select shows. We're kidding ourselves if this works anything like "hardware rental". If it were, it would feel more like AWS.
- skottk 12y ago
  This. Aereo wanted to define the activity by drawing a box around the tiny antenna and the user. The Supremes draw the box around Aereo and their customer base.
  - dminor 12y ago
    So if Aereo were just in the antenna rental business, and some other entity were in the cloud DVR business, and consumers paired them together it would be just fine? Edit: having read the decision, it seems there were companies that provided antenna services back in the 60's, and congress amended the copyright act to forbid them. The ability for Aereo subscribers to choose which material is transmitted is key to Aereo's argument.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - drdaeman 12y ago
      Well, if Aereo would provide antenna and SDR that end-user could control (and a third party decoding software would decode the video, huh) - would it be the same?
- the_ancient 12y ago
  I see so if you want to be "hardware rental" you have have a bad UI but if you have a good ui you are then SaaS.. WTF
  - johnpmayer 12y ago
motbob 12y ago
The decision is limited to the question of whether Aereo violated the networks' "exclusive right" to "perform" their programs "publicly." The dissent (Scalia, Alido, and Thomas) believe that Aereo did not "perform" at all. They believe that when an Aereo subscriber logs in and clicks the play button, that the subscriber, not Aereo, is doing that performing. EDIT: Please note that the dissent would not have necessarily ruled that Aereo's service was legal. The dissent merely believes that Aereo's service complies with this one specific part of the Copyright Act. From the dissent: "[Our] conclusion does not necessarily mean that Aereo's service complies with the Copyright Act. Quite the contrary. The Networks' complaint alleges that Aereo is directly and secondarily liable for infringing their public performance rights and also their reproduction rights." So this decision is designed to be as tight as possible. The Court is trying to limit the effects of its decision by constraining it to this one claim by the networks. From the language of the dissent, I have a hunch that even if this one aspect of the case had been decided in Aereo's favor, that some other aspect would have resulted in its service being declared illegal. Scalia: "I share the Court's evident feeling that what Aereo is doing (or enabling to be done) to the Networks' copyrighted programming ought not to be allowed."
- acjohnson55 12y ago
  I'm reading the opinion now, and I would not have guessed that those particular justices would have made the ruling they did. Does anybody have insight into how this decision fits with the ideological views of the justices?
  - acheron 12y ago
    It's almost as if the justices are actual people with complex sets of knowledge, opinions, and interpretations rather than just your stereotypes!
    - berberous 12y ago
      While I generally agree, this opinion split down ideological lines and it also strikes me as curious.
executor14 12y ago
Scalia's dissent likens Aereo to a "photocopier or VCR." He says the court's decision "will sow confusion for years to come." More from Scalia's dissent: "The Court vows that its ruling will not affect cloud-storage providers and cable-television systems, but it cannot deliver on that promise given the imprecision of its result-driven rule."
pdq 12y ago
Scalia, Thomas, and Alito wrote their dissenting opinion, starting on page 23.
Apoorv02 12y ago
Aereo is not violating anything but they should have prepared for something like this. Absurdity is common when you are trying to provide similar service to the consumer in a better way without creating monopoly.
- smeyer 12y ago
  >Aereo is not violating anything but they should have been prepared for something like this. In what other sense could they have been prepared? They fully expected to end up in the courts, likely through the supreme court, and planned appropriately. They lost the case, but it doesn't seem to be for lack of preparation.
  - Apoorv02 12y ago
    I was proposing for them to be prepared before it happened not for the trial.
    - smeyer 12y ago
      Sorry, I'm still confused what you mean by "be prepared before it happened". Are you saying they should have pursued a different strategy/loophole around copyright law? That they should have realized they had no chance and not pursued funding? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just genuinely don't understand what preparation you're saying they should have taken. For the record, I work at a company with a lot of former Navic Networks employees (the company Chet Kanjoia founded before Aereo) so there's plenty of talk about Aereo and I'm pretty familiar with their model.
      - Apoorv02 12y ago
        I can't imagine myself at their position so all I can give my honest opinion not judgement. What I am saying is that they should have suspected that. It is not my fully informed opinion and it can't be. And I can fully understand your point too. That's pretty much it.
cowardlydragon 12y ago
No way, a decision from the Supremes that favors entrenched corporate interests? At least this time it isn't such a direct attack on the "common people"
snowwrestler 12y ago
I never liked the Rube-Goldbergian design of the Aereo system. It was clearly more complex than necessary, for the sole reason to try to find and fit through a loophole in the law. To support that would set bad precedent, I think--both legally and technologically. Even if you hate copyright, I'd argue that this ruling is probably better in the long run because it clarifies the situation and the fight. From that perspective I think the decision is essentially correct, although I'm sure it will be unpopular here. However, I did read the syllabus, and there is some language in there referencing viewer participation in a public performance, that seems worrisome. But I'm not a lawyer, so I will be interested to see informed discussion of whether the specific legislation and precedents were applied correctly, and what implications were created by this decision.
- bediger4000 12y ago
  One man's loophole in the law is another man's strict conformance to the law. It looks to me like Aereo read the text of the law very carefully, and did what they could to provide for a consumer demand. The only problem is that Aereo didn't get enough money fast enough to "create an ecosystem" or whatever the phrase is when you mean "monied interest not afraid to lobby for their cause".
sschueller 12y ago
Does that mean good bye Aereo? Didn't they say they would shut down their service if they loose?
- veritas20 12y ago
  Yes, they've stated that they have no Plan B. I would have to disagree with them though. There are always options. The ruling essentially invalidated the live stream portion of their service. I believe that there is still a huge market for cloud DVR. I rarely watch live TV these days, and if I do it's because there was no other option.
evandena 12y ago
So how does this ruling not affect the cloud storage providers?
- executor14 12y ago
  ..."And we have not considered whether the public performance right is in- fringed when the user of a service pays primarily for something other than the transmission of copyrighted works, such as the remote storage of content."
- skottk 12y ago
  Because it's not about "the cloud" in general. It's about specifically the rebroadcast of television radio signals, concerning which there's a substantial body of law created to govern the activities of cable TV providers. In other words, the SC just defined Aereo as a cable company, when they wanted to be a cloud services company.
  - evandena 12y ago
    Thanks
cm-t 12y ago
HN/reddit ddos'ed ?
- smackfu 12y ago
  Really? I've never had problems getting to the SCOTUS opinion PDFs, and that's pretty impressive since the traffic must be intense right after a ruling is released. And it would be difficult to use a CDN because the decisions CANNOT be released early.
mikeash 12y ago
I imagine this is a minority opinion here, but I don't see a problem with this decision. Tech people like to treat laws as rigid rules that would be written in a formally specified language if only legislators were capable of such a thing. But they're not, and by design. It doesn't make sense for a law to be written such that receiving on one antenna and sending the result to your users is illegal, but receiving one an antenna farm all located in the same spot and sending the result to your users is legal. Do we really want to live in a country where the obvious solution is illegal but an insane workaround is legal? I don't want a precedent set where it becomes standard for laws to be bypassed with expensive and technically pointless workarounds. If we want to allow companies to receive TV broadcasts and stream them over the internet, we should do so. If we don't, we shouldn't. A situation where they're only allowed to do it if they have 10,000 separate and unnecessary antennas is absurd. Personally, I think it's ridiculous that a TV station can broadcast their signal free of charge to anyone capable of receiving it, but if a company wants to receive it and then pass it along to somebody, they have to pay a fee. But the problem is with the ridiculous law, not with a completely reasonable interpretation of it.
- skottk 12y ago
  Your points about the way law works are exactly where technical people often run into trouble when they reason about the law. Given that the TV broadcasters are paying for the right to broadcast (often gigantic amounts of money), I don't see a problem with preventing an Aereo from free-riding on that privilege. YMMV.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Why do they pay for the right to broadcast, though? Because they want people to watch, right? Isn't receiving their signal and transmitting it to more people who can watch it more easily and with higher quality doing them a service? If you look back before cable TV, broadcasters transmitted their signal and the only people who could watch it were those with suitable equipment within range. Broadcasters competed to get as many people as possible to watch. Each new eyeball (preferably in pairs) meant additional revenue for them with no additional cost. Then comes cable TV. In addition to access to new channels, it also provides the benefit of being able to watch regular broadcast channels even when you couldn't receive them over the air. That means more viewers for the broadcast stations, and thus more revenue. Why, then, should broadcast stations get paid for distributing their signal to more people, which is what they want anyway? It's clear to me that this is what the law says, and since the Supreme Court's job is to interpret the law, it also seems clear enough to me that they made the right decision here. But it doesn't seem like a very good law.
themgt 12y ago
The really interesting question is the implications for future precedent/innovations. The ruling says "But this difference [Aero's technological setup] means nothing to the subscriber. It means nothing to the broadcaster. We do not see how this single difference, invisible to subscriber and broadcaster alike, could transform a system that is for all practical purposes a traditional cable system into “a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card.” In other cases involving different kinds of service or technology providers, a user’s involvement in the operation of the provider’s equipment and selection of the content transmitted may well bear on whether the provider performs within the meaning of the Act. But the many similarities between Aereo and cable companies, considered in light of Congress’ basic purposes in amending the Copyright Act, convince us that this difference is not critical here." What this seems to leave open is the question of whether a company that was e.g. a generic cloud service with various features and functions, among them the ability to rent a mini-antenna and stream recorded data from it to your computer, would still be infringing. It suggests the infringement is largely due to the way Aereo positioned and marketed itself to customers - the common sense reality of the service overrode the technological loophole they attempted to exploit.
- skottk 12y ago
  The user involvement bit is addressing the Cartoon Network case regarding Cablevision's remote DVR architecture that Aereo is based on. Cablevision designed a remote DVR system that made transient, user-specific copies based on the user's pressing a button on their set-top-box remote. In their defense against Cartoon Network et al., Cablevision made the "volitional conduct" defense that Scalia talks about in the dissent here- essentially, that the user who pressed the button was responsible for making the copy. Cablevision won at trial and on appeal in the Second Circuit. The biggest difference between the Cablevision case and the Aereo case is that Cablevision has and pays for the broadcast licenses that Aereo was trying to avoid having to obtain.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I find the use of "innovation" here irritating. There's nothing "innovative" in 2014 about a service that streams TV over the internet. The only thing "innovative" about Aereo is its legal strategy of exploiting a loophole in the law.
mp99e99 12y ago
very sad day for consumers and tech, lots of possible business models broken.
- Goronmon 12y ago
  very sad day for consumers and tech, lots of possible business models broken. I'm not seeing it. The decision seems to specifically covering only the business model used by Aereo. That is, charging users for a service that retransmits television content without a license to do so. What other business models are you talking about?
selmnoo 12y ago
I've mentioned this before on HN, I'll say it again: Aereo should now do a pivot, becoming a hardware reseller of TV-signal-receiver/streamer devices like this one: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_broadway.html http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_broadway.html - it can stream either over your local Wi-fi, or across the interwebs so you can watch remotely when you're out of the house. Broadband speeds are a bit slow, but they're getting there (slowly) - until then, rely on your friend who has Google fiber or something :). Basically you have Aereo service without the service fees (except the initial hardware cost and internet service cost). I'm especially in favour of this because it's putting back the power in the hands of the end customer -- finally, they own the device, they're not relying on the cloud, they're not facilitating another rentier operation.
- brucehart 12y ago
  Slingbox seems to have a strong position in this market. It's tougher to stream video from a person's home than from a data center. Most homes with broadband have limited upload speed that makes it difficult to stream good quality video. I'm hoping newer compression algorithms such as HEVC will make it possible to get decent quality even on connections with less than 1 Mbps upload bandwidth.
  - avmich 12y ago
    You probably don't need to sell the equipment with the idea that it will be installed in homes? Why not to keep person's equipment in data centers?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Sony was selling exactly this thing....9 years ago. They made LocationFree base stations which would stream your TV signal to your PSP anywhere in the world over the internet. That was incredibly impressive for 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LocationFree_Player http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LocationFree_Player
jedberg 12y ago
I wonder if Aereo would be legal if they dropped the DVR portion of the service. It seems like that is the issue here. If it's really just me renting an antenna it seems like that is still legal.
- skottk 12y ago
  Nope - it's the unlicensed transmission that this decision covers. The opinion actually states that a cable company (with its licenses) would be able to offer the DVR portion of the service. The DVR thing was covered in the Second Circuit's Cartoon Network/Cablevision decision. It's what gave Aereo the idea to try the many-antennas approach. The biggest difference is that Cablevision has broadcast licenses.
  - jedberg 12y ago
    Got it, thanks for the clarification.
pontifier 12y ago
I'm constantly amazed by the way the supreme court carves a razor sharp line through the issues. They always seem to examine these complex issues with the clarity they deserve. That's their job, but these are some fantastic and intelligent individuals, and are the only people in government, especially the justice system, that I have complete confidence in. I truly wish I could have more confidence in other parts of government, especially lower court judges, and the police.
- RockyMcNuts 12y ago
  Al Gore probably doesn't share your confidence.
- allworknoplay 12y ago
  You're so right in theory, except that they're almost always split along idealogical lines -- individual justices strongly adhere to a single political ideology, AND justices with similar ideologies almost always stick together. That implies, sadly, that instead of clear first-principles rulings they're really just interpreting the law to suit their beliefs. The split has been studied endlessly and it's real; they rule politically rather than rationally. Just one example of coverage: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/the-incredible-polarization-and-politicization-of-the-supreme-court/259155/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/the-incr...
  - acheron 12y ago
    that they're almost always split along idealogical lines Except not. Stereotypical 5-4 decisions are down, unanimous decisions are up. Overall the justices are agreeing with each other more than ever. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/06/25/despite-hard-cases-supreme-court-displays-remarkable-degree-of-unanimity/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014...
mckoss 12y ago
The dissenting opinion is based on a theory that Aero did not make a choice in what they were rebroadcasting. I disagree as they carefully selected the geographic region for their antennas based on their belief in the market demand for (copyrighted) shows in that region. They also carefully adjusted their equipment to be tied to the specific frequencies of broadcasters. They knew and promoted precisely what content viewers would watch.
taude 12y ago
So in my area, I can't get over-the-air TV. I even put an antenna on my roof, and it doesn't work. What's the governments responsibility for providing public band tv stuff to me? Seems like I'm forced to buy into the cable cabal?
euroclydon 12y ago
I haven't given Aereo much thought, but it seems like, if I could rent a VPS in Miami, I could watch Miami Dolphins games online for the cost of Aereo plus the VPS. That would be like $30/mo for 5 months. $150 total -- much cheaper than the NFL Sunday Ticket. That alone is a big loophole!!!
- bmelton 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure they at least attempt to limit your antenna to one in a nearby area to you, though I'm not a customer, so I can't say how effectively they disallow it. That said, I'm apparently in a suburb of Baltimore, and when I visit the aerio site, I only see access to Baltimore services... suggesting that I'd have a hard, if not impossible time getting an antenna in Miami.
  - euroclydon 12y ago
    That's why I mentioned the VPS. A quick search for "Miami VPS" reveals $20 options which would do the trick. http://www.hostvirtual.com/datacenters/miami http://www.hostvirtual.com/datacenters/miami
ISL 12y ago
The majority opinion leaves open the possibility of bandpassing the antenna signal and sending the (already compressed) digital TV signal across the internet to to be decoded at the user's machine. It appears to be the "performance" upon which the majority's opinion hangs; if the "performance" happens in-app on the user's box, it's possible to evade this requirement. On the one hand, I'd agree with Scalia that the "looks-like-cable-TV" standard is a shaky one, at best. On the other hand, the court is saying "Look, we agreed in the past, but Congress explicitly disagreed with us. Go fix Congress, and we'll agree with you; we're not legislators."
notastartup 12y ago
Are there any other services like Aereo out there? What was the key deciding factor that they broke the law? What will happen now to Aereo's investors money? Will it be used to pay a large copyright royalty fee? Can it pivot? I think the latter is unlikely seeing they had no other plans, they bet the horse. Reading this article back in March, I would've been freaked if I was an investor. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_Co4SqIKy30J:www.businessinsider.com/aereo-doesnt-have-a-plan-b-2014-3+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_Co4SqI... “No. There is no plan. We believe in our merit and we do think it’s the right thing. Progress is important. The mission of this company was to try to create an open platform, to try to wedge the system open a little bit. And if we don’t succeed in that despite our best efforts, good law on our side, and the merits of our case, it will be a tragedy but it is what it is.” Aereo CEO
jervisfm 12y ago
Here's a (naive) question: In the US, is a Supreme Court ruling completely final ? What options, if any, are available to the losing party ? Is change through congress the only way to try to appeal rulings? If there are no practical ways to repeal Supreme Court rulings, what happens when the Supreme Court makes a mistaken ruling?
- dworin 12y ago
  The supreme court is the ultimate court of appeals in the United States - once you lose there, your only remedy is to change the law, or in some cases, change the constitution. Since the supreme court interprets the law, the way you to change the ruling is to change the law. In a few recent cases, the supreme court has basically said (paraphrasing) "we don't like this ruling, but this is what the law says. If you want to fix it, talk to Congress, not us." There have been some very notable instances where the Supreme Court has changed its mind or modified its prior rulings (for instance around civil rights), so while its the end of the road for this petitioner, it doesn't bar the law evolving in the future.
- djflutt3rshy 12y ago
  Yes, it's very strong legally. Congress or the states can try for a Constitutional Amendment (but those are few and far between, last one was in 1992), or the Supreme Court can later reverse itself partially or in full. An example of that would be Plessy v Ferguson in 1896, where the Supreme Court ruled segregation laws were constitutional, but later in the 50's (Brown v. Board of Education) they reversed it.
  - npizzolato 12y ago
    Those are the only options if they're ruling on the constitutionality of a certain law. If they're just deciding on whether or not an action violated any given law (as in this case), you could reverse the ruling by changing the law itself (i.e. through Congress).
- ovulator 12y ago
  Appealing to congress to change the law in question is the only recourse to the losing party. What exactly do you mean by a “mistaken” ruling?
grellas 12y ago
The Copyright Act is a federal statute that protects any public performance of a copyrighted work from infringing uses. Aereo took what were undisputedly public performances of works from broadcasters to the public, intercepted them, and by a feat of what amounted to technological legerdemain turned them into what it argued were no longer public performances but, instead, individualized transmissions from its service to each of its end users as an audience of one. In this case, the Supreme Court rejected that argument, relying heavily on the idea that it was merely interpreting a statute (the Copyright Act) that had been amended by Congress in 1976 in part to overturn a couple of Supreme Court cases that had interpreted the prior Act to permit cable-TV style transmissions of copyrighted material free of copyright restrictions. The Court held that, in doing so, Congress intended to bring cable-like services such as Aereo into the Act's sweep regardless of the particular technological ways in which it handled the copyrighted material as it re-transmitted it to its users. Treating such technology, in effect, like a black box, the Court emphasized that, regardless of its innards, this service appeared to all concerned - to broadcasters, to viewers, etc. - to be functioning just like a cable service and therefore fell squarely within the Act's coverage as Congress had intended to modify it in making the 1976 amendments. The most fascinating part of the decision, in my view, was how the Court arrived at this result while simultaneously trying to narrow its impact so that modern technological innovations would not be hit by its shrapnel. The Court not only did so but did so emphatically. Indeed, it devoted an entire section IV (pages 15-17) of its opinion to that issue. "We agree", said the Court, "that Congress, while intending the Transmit Clause to apply broadly to cable companies and their equivalents [i.e., Aereo], did not intend to discourage or control the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies." The Court then goes on to suggest (without deciding) a number of potentially key distinctions by which things such as, e.g., cloud music services might not in any way be infringing, including the prospect of fair use or the fact that the user receiving a transmission from the service may already own the copyrighted works being transmitted. I believe this is a strong signal from the Court that lower courts are not to ham-handedly interpret copyright law to stifle innovation but are to apply it carefully to prevent its abuse. All in all, this decision represents a guarded upholding of traditional IP protections that prevents the use of technology to enable free-wheeling use of broadcasted materials while at the same time limiting its holding to that narrow sphere. Given the technical wording of the Act, it could just as easily have gone the other way and upheld the Aereo service as nothing more than something that facilitates individual, "private" performances via a streaming technology. But that would certainly have glorified form over substance and, I think, the Court got it right in the end.
kdot 12y ago
I would love for Aereo to open source the technology, sell me an antenna so that I can run my own Aereo service and stream TV to myself.
- vibrolax 12y ago
  You don't need anything from Aereo's stack to do this. Get a device such as a Silicon Dust HDHomerun. http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hdhomerun-dual/ http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hdhomerun-dual... This box is 1 antenna in, 2 ATSC tuners, 1 ethernet out. If you want to stream on your LAN, there are clients for Windows and Linux. XBMC supports it. I can't see why you couldn't serve it over the internet as well.
Glyptodon 12y ago
If aliens have a TV channel does that make SETI@home illegal?
jusben1369 12y ago
I think this is a good read as it relates to the broader implications of this decision; http://www.vox.com/2014/6/25/5841820/the-supreme-courts-aereo-decision-could-endanger-cloud-storage http://www.vox.com/2014/6/25/5841820/the-supreme-courts-aere...
jrockway 12y ago
This is a disaster for anyone that offers cloud services. It's legal for me to set up an antenna in a data center and stream what I receive to myself. But it's apparently not legal for me to pay someone to do the exact same thing. What's funny is that if the antenna were connected to me via a coaxial cable, it would probably be legal. But since it uses packets and Cat-6 cables and that crazy Intarwebs thing, it's not. I don't get it. This is annoying because it also obviously affects useful things like WebSDR. Since WebSDR nodes can tune VHF/UHF, they can receive copyrighted TV and music, which means they're now illegal to run under this ruling. (Fortunately, all the good WebSDR nodes are outside the US, so it doesn't matter in practice. But if you were going to set one up in the US, think again.)
ashmud 12y ago
Bit of an "edit war" on their wikipedia page over declaring them defunct already. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aereo&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aereo&action=hist...
dguaraglia 12y ago
What bothers me about this is how quickly decisions are made when it comes to content and copyright. Average Joe doesn't give a flying f* about his privacy, the loss of life in war, the obscene spending on failed military projects, the lack of social programs, the millions stuck with ridiculous student debt... But hey, touch their right to watch Netflix or some local station from NYC from their house in California and SHIT GETS REAL! Tsk tsk...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

301 points by acjohnson55 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rglover 12y ago

Not surprised. The service works by rebroadcasting over the air signals and then charging for them, right?

unreal37 12y ago
Not really. They rented you exclusively an antenna at their location, and you can use it to watch over the air TV. There was no rebroadcasting technically, which is how they hoped to get around the law.
- warfangle 12y ago
  That's the only difference between Aereo and the original CATV companies. Original CATV was one giant antenna on a hill piping the broadcast to homes that couldn't get the signal; this is thousands of antennas intelligently provisioned on a hill piping the broadcast and providing DVR functionality to homes that don't necessarily want to deal with using the crappy tv antenna -> computer hardware available.
djb_hackernews 12y ago
I've not used Aero and haven't heard their argument but I bet their business model is they rent antennas to customers. I'd be curious to know where that argument failed because surely I could create a business that rented antennas to customers and installed them on houses. Why does it matter the location of the antenna? Either way this is bad for the consumer, bad for technology, and bad for innovation.
- mikeash 12y ago
  I imagine the argument fails because it's obvious to anyone who looks at the company's offerings for two seconds that the "rent antennas" thing is just an excuse, and that their actual business model is that they charge for streaming TV.
  - djb_hackernews 12y ago
    So then where is the line drawn? Am I not allowed to put an antenna on my roof? What if I put it on my neighbors because it gets a better signal? I'm honestly curious what is wrong with renting an antenna from a company and streaming the signal, regardless of location.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      I don't think anything is wrong with renting an antenna and streaming the signal. What's illegal here (not that I think it should be, but it seems clear enough that this is what the law says) is providing a streaming TV service without obtaining the appropriate licenses. The implementation details on the backend are irrelevant. I don't think you'd have any trouble setting up DJB's Internet-Accessible Antenna Rental if that's what you actually offered. Stick some SDR equipment on the antenna and give me access to the raw bitstream. If I want to watch TV with the service, then I can tell your equipment to tune to the appropriate frequency, and then decode the bitstream locally. But if you set up DJB's TV Streaming without paying any license fees, and you just implement that by receiving signals from an antenna, it's a different beast even if it looks the same technologically.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      Of course you can put an antenna on your roof. You can probably also put an antenna on your neighbor's roof. Your neighbor cannot get into the business of rebroadcasting TV signals, though. Your intent to figure out exactly where the line is drawn is a failure that geeks have when going about the law. The law isn't written for a robot to unfailingly interpret. You won't get a good answer for the same reason the tribes making headphones out of coconuts won't get a good answer for how exactly they need to wear them for the cargo planes to come back.
HCIdivision17 12y ago
As I understand it, one of their goals was to not be considered a broadcaster. Rather, it's more akin to a wire in that it's one-to-one, not one-to-many. I am eager to hear some expert commentary on the ruling on what the side effects will be.

dynofuz 12y ago

This doesnt make sense. You are paying for renting the antenna. You're not paying for the content.

emehrkay 12y ago
How exactly does Aereo work? You rent an antenna from them, they record the show for you, and you can play it back at a later time?
- mason55 12y ago
  You can view OTA content live and record what you're watching just like a DVR. They don't proactively record for you.
- Guvante 12y ago
  They work like a DVR, you can set a show to record and it will save a copy just for you using your antenna.
- pbreit 12y ago
  That's one version. The other is that you simply watch the show in near-real-time, just as you would if the camera were sitting in your window. IANAL, but felt like the DVR functionality really clouded the case and possibly skewed it away from Aereo. Harder to claim you are merely an antenna when you are recording, too.
- danielweber 12y ago
  (It sucks you got downvoted for asking an earnest question.)
Shivetya 12y ago
Under the changes that Congress specifically made to the Copyright act I do believe the court ruled correctly. Congress moved in 1976 to protect broadcasters from Cable companies doing nearly what Aereo is doing, capturing and sending by another means the broadcast of a TV station. Congress at the time did not like how the courts were ruling in favor of the then fledgling CATV services. Courts ruled that capturing and sending the shows to cable viewers was not a violation as were not acting as "performers". Congress changed that they were, effectively stopping cable from providing local and regional channels. Well Congress showed who was truly doing this by adding in all sorts of new compulsory fees for carrying local channels. So CATV can and in some cases has to carry local content and pay for it. TL;DR Congress changes to Copyright in 1976 at the behest of broadcasters versus CableTV is the basis for the ruling. The original broadcaster owns all rights unless otherwise assigned.

muyuu 12y ago

Down. Any mirrors?

theg2 12y ago
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-461_l537.pdf http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-461_l537.pdf this is still working for me.
- muyuu 12y ago
  This is what I see (connecting from the UK): 500 Internal Server Error The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.
ComputerGuru 12y ago
Here you go: http://cl.ly/1h0P1W2h181W http://cl.ly/1h0P1W2h181W
ruytlm 12y ago
There's also a Scribd mirror up: http://www.scribd.com/doc/231280851/ABC-v-Aereo-Decision http://www.scribd.com/doc/231280851/ABC-v-Aereo-Decision
- muyuu 12y ago
  Cheers.

electronous 12y ago

This is precisely why old people shouldn't be anywhere near tech.

Loughla 12y ago
That's a beautiful attitude.
smackfu 12y ago
They wrote 18 pages explaining their reasoning complete with citations, and that's your rebuttal?
snowwrestler 12y ago
Barry Diller, a major backer of Aereo, is 72.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pgrote 12y ago

Justices Breyer, Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan were the majority. It isn't over since the case now goes back to the lower court, but Aereo can no longer argue they are the same as a person putting an antenna on their roof.

Grue3 12y ago
So, all the "liberal" judges? Sucks that the ones who usually defend human rights are also the same people who stifle innovation.
- sheetjs 12y ago
  Describing Roberts as liberal is a great stretch
  - Grue3 12y ago
    Pretty sure he's the one who "saved" Obamacare when it went to Supreme Court.
    - nfoz 12y ago
      Describing Obamacare as liberal is a bit of a stretch. - a Canadian
      - krapp 12y ago
        Bear in mind, the U.S. definition of liberal is still far to the right of what the rest of the world considers liberal.
        Grue3 12y ago
        And by the whole world you mean Western Europe and a few other countries. US is very liberal compared to many other places (like my own country).

cheez0r 12y ago

The Supreme Court is wrong- the reason cable companies are treated as a 'public' performance of a work is that their distribution medium is shared- any subscriber can tune into that broadcasting of that work over a shared common carrier where one copy of the work is transmitted and many subscribers can view it. Aereo is different in that it only transmits the signal captured to a single subscriber at a time, removing the 'public' nature of the performance and hence invalidating their argument. How absurd.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Is that really a necessary part of 'public performance' according to law? You can show movies for pay if only one person is in the audience? I'm not sure that argument works.
amalcon 12y ago
The Supreme Court is not able to be wrong on a matter of U.S. law. It gets to decide what that law means, not you. It's not the decision I'd hoped for, nor the one I'd make, but it's nonsense to claim that it's "wrong". All we can do about it now is to get the law changed.
- DrJokepu 12y ago
  There are Supreme Court decisions that are generally regarded as "wrong" by posterity. Dred Scott v. Sandford comes to mind.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  > The Supreme Court is not able to be wrong on a matter of U.S. law. It gets to decide what that law means, not you. The Supreme Court decides interpretations of law, but the law itself (as written or as interpreted) is quite capable of being wrong. Law does not determine morality.
  - pionar 12y ago
    That also does not mean that SCOTUS is "wrong". A law can be "wrong" (subjective), and the SCOTUS will still have to uphold it if it is constitutional.

johnpmayer 12y ago

Seems like, because Aereo isn't just a hardware renter but also an integrated SaaS provider, they were treated as such. The court opinion talks in terms of user interaction with menus on the site to select shows. We're kidding ourselves if this works anything like "hardware rental". If it were, it would feel more like AWS.

skottk 12y ago
This. Aereo wanted to define the activity by drawing a box around the tiny antenna and the user. The Supremes draw the box around Aereo and their customer base.
- dminor 12y ago
  So if Aereo were just in the antenna rental business, and some other entity were in the cloud DVR business, and consumers paired them together it would be just fine? Edit: having read the decision, it seems there were companies that provided antenna services back in the 60's, and congress amended the copyright act to forbid them. The ability for Aereo subscribers to choose which material is transmitted is key to Aereo's argument.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - drdaeman 12y ago
    Well, if Aereo would provide antenna and SDR that end-user could control (and a third party decoding software would decode the video, huh) - would it be the same?
the_ancient 12y ago
I see so if you want to be "hardware rental" you have have a bad UI but if you have a good ui you are then SaaS.. WTF
- johnpmayer 12y ago

motbob 12y ago

The decision is limited to the question of whether Aereo violated the networks' "exclusive right" to "perform" their programs "publicly." The dissent (Scalia, Alido, and Thomas) believe that Aereo did not "perform" at all. They believe that when an Aereo subscriber logs in and clicks the play button, that the subscriber, not Aereo, is doing that performing. EDIT: Please note that the dissent would not have necessarily ruled that Aereo's service was legal. The dissent merely believes that Aereo's service complies with this one specific part of the Copyright Act. From the dissent: "[Our] conclusion does not necessarily mean that Aereo's service complies with the Copyright Act. Quite the contrary. The Networks' complaint alleges that Aereo is directly and secondarily liable for infringing their public performance rights and also their reproduction rights." So this decision is designed to be as tight as possible. The Court is trying to limit the effects of its decision by constraining it to this one claim by the networks. From the language of the dissent, I have a hunch that even if this one aspect of the case had been decided in Aereo's favor, that some other aspect would have resulted in its service being declared illegal. Scalia: "I share the Court's evident feeling that what Aereo is doing (or enabling to be done) to the Networks' copyrighted programming ought not to be allowed."

acjohnson55 12y ago
I'm reading the opinion now, and I would not have guessed that those particular justices would have made the ruling they did. Does anybody have insight into how this decision fits with the ideological views of the justices?
- acheron 12y ago
  It's almost as if the justices are actual people with complex sets of knowledge, opinions, and interpretations rather than just your stereotypes!
  - berberous 12y ago
    While I generally agree, this opinion split down ideological lines and it also strikes me as curious.

executor14 12y ago

Scalia's dissent likens Aereo to a "photocopier or VCR." He says the court's decision "will sow confusion for years to come." More from Scalia's dissent: "The Court vows that its ruling will not affect cloud-storage providers and cable-television systems, but it cannot deliver on that promise given the imprecision of its result-driven rule."

pdq 12y ago

Scalia, Thomas, and Alito wrote their dissenting opinion, starting on page 23.

Apoorv02 12y ago

Aereo is not violating anything but they should have prepared for something like this. Absurdity is common when you are trying to provide similar service to the consumer in a better way without creating monopoly.

smeyer 12y ago
>Aereo is not violating anything but they should have been prepared for something like this. In what other sense could they have been prepared? They fully expected to end up in the courts, likely through the supreme court, and planned appropriately. They lost the case, but it doesn't seem to be for lack of preparation.
- Apoorv02 12y ago
  I was proposing for them to be prepared before it happened not for the trial.
  - smeyer 12y ago
    Sorry, I'm still confused what you mean by "be prepared before it happened". Are you saying they should have pursued a different strategy/loophole around copyright law? That they should have realized they had no chance and not pursued funding? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just genuinely don't understand what preparation you're saying they should have taken. For the record, I work at a company with a lot of former Navic Networks employees (the company Chet Kanjoia founded before Aereo) so there's plenty of talk about Aereo and I'm pretty familiar with their model.
    - Apoorv02 12y ago
      I can't imagine myself at their position so all I can give my honest opinion not judgement. What I am saying is that they should have suspected that. It is not my fully informed opinion and it can't be. And I can fully understand your point too. That's pretty much it.

cowardlydragon 12y ago

No way, a decision from the Supremes that favors entrenched corporate interests? At least this time it isn't such a direct attack on the "common people"

snowwrestler 12y ago

I never liked the Rube-Goldbergian design of the Aereo system. It was clearly more complex than necessary, for the sole reason to try to find and fit through a loophole in the law. To support that would set bad precedent, I think--both legally and technologically. Even if you hate copyright, I'd argue that this ruling is probably better in the long run because it clarifies the situation and the fight. From that perspective I think the decision is essentially correct, although I'm sure it will be unpopular here. However, I did read the syllabus, and there is some language in there referencing viewer participation in a public performance, that seems worrisome. But I'm not a lawyer, so I will be interested to see informed discussion of whether the specific legislation and precedents were applied correctly, and what implications were created by this decision.

bediger4000 12y ago
One man's loophole in the law is another man's strict conformance to the law. It looks to me like Aereo read the text of the law very carefully, and did what they could to provide for a consumer demand. The only problem is that Aereo didn't get enough money fast enough to "create an ecosystem" or whatever the phrase is when you mean "monied interest not afraid to lobby for their cause".

sschueller 12y ago

Does that mean good bye Aereo? Didn't they say they would shut down their service if they loose?

veritas20 12y ago
Yes, they've stated that they have no Plan B. I would have to disagree with them though. There are always options. The ruling essentially invalidated the live stream portion of their service. I believe that there is still a huge market for cloud DVR. I rarely watch live TV these days, and if I do it's because there was no other option.

evandena 12y ago

So how does this ruling not affect the cloud storage providers?

executor14 12y ago
..."And we have not considered whether the public performance right is in- fringed when the user of a service pays primarily for something other than the transmission of copyrighted works, such as the remote storage of content."
skottk 12y ago
Because it's not about "the cloud" in general. It's about specifically the rebroadcast of television radio signals, concerning which there's a substantial body of law created to govern the activities of cable TV providers. In other words, the SC just defined Aereo as a cable company, when they wanted to be a cloud services company.
- evandena 12y ago
  Thanks

cm-t 12y ago

HN/reddit ddos'ed ?

smackfu 12y ago
Really? I've never had problems getting to the SCOTUS opinion PDFs, and that's pretty impressive since the traffic must be intense right after a ruling is released. And it would be difficult to use a CDN because the decisions CANNOT be released early.

mikeash 12y ago

I imagine this is a minority opinion here, but I don't see a problem with this decision. Tech people like to treat laws as rigid rules that would be written in a formally specified language if only legislators were capable of such a thing. But they're not, and by design. It doesn't make sense for a law to be written such that receiving on one antenna and sending the result to your users is illegal, but receiving one an antenna farm all located in the same spot and sending the result to your users is legal. Do we really want to live in a country where the obvious solution is illegal but an insane workaround is legal? I don't want a precedent set where it becomes standard for laws to be bypassed with expensive and technically pointless workarounds. If we want to allow companies to receive TV broadcasts and stream them over the internet, we should do so. If we don't, we shouldn't. A situation where they're only allowed to do it if they have 10,000 separate and unnecessary antennas is absurd. Personally, I think it's ridiculous that a TV station can broadcast their signal free of charge to anyone capable of receiving it, but if a company wants to receive it and then pass it along to somebody, they have to pay a fee. But the problem is with the ridiculous law, not with a completely reasonable interpretation of it.

skottk 12y ago
Your points about the way law works are exactly where technical people often run into trouble when they reason about the law. Given that the TV broadcasters are paying for the right to broadcast (often gigantic amounts of money), I don't see a problem with preventing an Aereo from free-riding on that privilege. YMMV.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Why do they pay for the right to broadcast, though? Because they want people to watch, right? Isn't receiving their signal and transmitting it to more people who can watch it more easily and with higher quality doing them a service? If you look back before cable TV, broadcasters transmitted their signal and the only people who could watch it were those with suitable equipment within range. Broadcasters competed to get as many people as possible to watch. Each new eyeball (preferably in pairs) meant additional revenue for them with no additional cost. Then comes cable TV. In addition to access to new channels, it also provides the benefit of being able to watch regular broadcast channels even when you couldn't receive them over the air. That means more viewers for the broadcast stations, and thus more revenue. Why, then, should broadcast stations get paid for distributing their signal to more people, which is what they want anyway? It's clear to me that this is what the law says, and since the Supreme Court's job is to interpret the law, it also seems clear enough to me that they made the right decision here. But it doesn't seem like a very good law.

themgt 12y ago

The really interesting question is the implications for future precedent/innovations. The ruling says "But this difference [Aero's technological setup] means nothing to the subscriber. It means nothing to the broadcaster. We do not see how this single difference, invisible to subscriber and broadcaster alike, could transform a system that is for all practical purposes a traditional cable system into “a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card.” In other cases involving different kinds of service or technology providers, a user’s involvement in the operation of the provider’s equipment and selection of the content transmitted may well bear on whether the provider performs within the meaning of the Act. But the many similarities between Aereo and cable companies, considered in light of Congress’ basic purposes in amending the Copyright Act, convince us that this difference is not critical here." What this seems to leave open is the question of whether a company that was e.g. a generic cloud service with various features and functions, among them the ability to rent a mini-antenna and stream recorded data from it to your computer, would still be infringing. It suggests the infringement is largely due to the way Aereo positioned and marketed itself to customers - the common sense reality of the service overrode the technological loophole they attempted to exploit.

skottk 12y ago
The user involvement bit is addressing the Cartoon Network case regarding Cablevision's remote DVR architecture that Aereo is based on. Cablevision designed a remote DVR system that made transient, user-specific copies based on the user's pressing a button on their set-top-box remote. In their defense against Cartoon Network et al., Cablevision made the "volitional conduct" defense that Scalia talks about in the dissent here- essentially, that the user who pressed the button was responsible for making the copy. Cablevision won at trial and on appeal in the Second Circuit. The biggest difference between the Cablevision case and the Aereo case is that Cablevision has and pays for the broadcast licenses that Aereo was trying to avoid having to obtain.
rayiner 12y ago
I find the use of "innovation" here irritating. There's nothing "innovative" in 2014 about a service that streams TV over the internet. The only thing "innovative" about Aereo is its legal strategy of exploiting a loophole in the law.

mp99e99 12y ago

very sad day for consumers and tech, lots of possible business models broken.

Goronmon 12y ago
very sad day for consumers and tech, lots of possible business models broken. I'm not seeing it. The decision seems to specifically covering only the business model used by Aereo. That is, charging users for a service that retransmits television content without a license to do so. What other business models are you talking about?

selmnoo 12y ago

I've mentioned this before on HN, I'll say it again: Aereo should now do a pivot, becoming a hardware reseller of TV-signal-receiver/streamer devices like this one: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_broadway.html http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_broadway.html - it can stream either over your local Wi-fi, or across the interwebs so you can watch remotely when you're out of the house. Broadband speeds are a bit slow, but they're getting there (slowly) - until then, rely on your friend who has Google fiber or something :). Basically you have Aereo service without the service fees (except the initial hardware cost and internet service cost). I'm especially in favour of this because it's putting back the power in the hands of the end customer -- finally, they own the device, they're not relying on the cloud, they're not facilitating another rentier operation.

brucehart 12y ago
Slingbox seems to have a strong position in this market. It's tougher to stream video from a person's home than from a data center. Most homes with broadband have limited upload speed that makes it difficult to stream good quality video. I'm hoping newer compression algorithms such as HEVC will make it possible to get decent quality even on connections with less than 1 Mbps upload bandwidth.
- avmich 12y ago
  You probably don't need to sell the equipment with the idea that it will be installed in homes? Why not to keep person's equipment in data centers?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- gambiting 12y ago
  Sony was selling exactly this thing....9 years ago. They made LocationFree base stations which would stream your TV signal to your PSP anywhere in the world over the internet. That was incredibly impressive for 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LocationFree_Player http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LocationFree_Player

jedberg 12y ago

I wonder if Aereo would be legal if they dropped the DVR portion of the service. It seems like that is the issue here. If it's really just me renting an antenna it seems like that is still legal.

skottk 12y ago
Nope - it's the unlicensed transmission that this decision covers. The opinion actually states that a cable company (with its licenses) would be able to offer the DVR portion of the service. The DVR thing was covered in the Second Circuit's Cartoon Network/Cablevision decision. It's what gave Aereo the idea to try the many-antennas approach. The biggest difference is that Cablevision has broadcast licenses.
- jedberg 12y ago
  Got it, thanks for the clarification.

pontifier 12y ago

I'm constantly amazed by the way the supreme court carves a razor sharp line through the issues. They always seem to examine these complex issues with the clarity they deserve. That's their job, but these are some fantastic and intelligent individuals, and are the only people in government, especially the justice system, that I have complete confidence in. I truly wish I could have more confidence in other parts of government, especially lower court judges, and the police.

RockyMcNuts 12y ago
Al Gore probably doesn't share your confidence.
allworknoplay 12y ago
You're so right in theory, except that they're almost always split along idealogical lines -- individual justices strongly adhere to a single political ideology, AND justices with similar ideologies almost always stick together. That implies, sadly, that instead of clear first-principles rulings they're really just interpreting the law to suit their beliefs. The split has been studied endlessly and it's real; they rule politically rather than rationally. Just one example of coverage: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/the-incredible-polarization-and-politicization-of-the-supreme-court/259155/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/the-incr...
- acheron 12y ago
  that they're almost always split along idealogical lines Except not. Stereotypical 5-4 decisions are down, unanimous decisions are up. Overall the justices are agreeing with each other more than ever. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/06/25/despite-hard-cases-supreme-court-displays-remarkable-degree-of-unanimity/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014...

mckoss 12y ago

The dissenting opinion is based on a theory that Aero did not make a choice in what they were rebroadcasting. I disagree as they carefully selected the geographic region for their antennas based on their belief in the market demand for (copyrighted) shows in that region. They also carefully adjusted their equipment to be tied to the specific frequencies of broadcasters. They knew and promoted precisely what content viewers would watch.

taude 12y ago

So in my area, I can't get over-the-air TV. I even put an antenna on my roof, and it doesn't work. What's the governments responsibility for providing public band tv stuff to me? Seems like I'm forced to buy into the cable cabal?

euroclydon 12y ago

I haven't given Aereo much thought, but it seems like, if I could rent a VPS in Miami, I could watch Miami Dolphins games online for the cost of Aereo plus the VPS. That would be like $30/mo for 5 months. $150 total -- much cheaper than the NFL Sunday Ticket. That alone is a big loophole!!!

bmelton 12y ago
I'm pretty sure they at least attempt to limit your antenna to one in a nearby area to you, though I'm not a customer, so I can't say how effectively they disallow it. That said, I'm apparently in a suburb of Baltimore, and when I visit the aerio site, I only see access to Baltimore services... suggesting that I'd have a hard, if not impossible time getting an antenna in Miami.
- euroclydon 12y ago
  That's why I mentioned the VPS. A quick search for "Miami VPS" reveals $20 options which would do the trick. http://www.hostvirtual.com/datacenters/miami http://www.hostvirtual.com/datacenters/miami

ISL 12y ago

The majority opinion leaves open the possibility of bandpassing the antenna signal and sending the (already compressed) digital TV signal across the internet to to be decoded at the user's machine. It appears to be the "performance" upon which the majority's opinion hangs; if the "performance" happens in-app on the user's box, it's possible to evade this requirement. On the one hand, I'd agree with Scalia that the "looks-like-cable-TV" standard is a shaky one, at best. On the other hand, the court is saying "Look, we agreed in the past, but Congress explicitly disagreed with us. Go fix Congress, and we'll agree with you; we're not legislators."

notastartup 12y ago

Are there any other services like Aereo out there? What was the key deciding factor that they broke the law? What will happen now to Aereo's investors money? Will it be used to pay a large copyright royalty fee? Can it pivot? I think the latter is unlikely seeing they had no other plans, they bet the horse. Reading this article back in March, I would've been freaked if I was an investor. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_Co4SqIKy30J:www.businessinsider.com/aereo-doesnt-have-a-plan-b-2014-3+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_Co4SqI... “No. There is no plan. We believe in our merit and we do think it’s the right thing. Progress is important. The mission of this company was to try to create an open platform, to try to wedge the system open a little bit. And if we don’t succeed in that despite our best efforts, good law on our side, and the merits of our case, it will be a tragedy but it is what it is.” Aereo CEO

jervisfm 12y ago

Here's a (naive) question: In the US, is a Supreme Court ruling completely final ? What options, if any, are available to the losing party ? Is change through congress the only way to try to appeal rulings? If there are no practical ways to repeal Supreme Court rulings, what happens when the Supreme Court makes a mistaken ruling?

dworin 12y ago
The supreme court is the ultimate court of appeals in the United States - once you lose there, your only remedy is to change the law, or in some cases, change the constitution. Since the supreme court interprets the law, the way you to change the ruling is to change the law. In a few recent cases, the supreme court has basically said (paraphrasing) "we don't like this ruling, but this is what the law says. If you want to fix it, talk to Congress, not us." There have been some very notable instances where the Supreme Court has changed its mind or modified its prior rulings (for instance around civil rights), so while its the end of the road for this petitioner, it doesn't bar the law evolving in the future.
djflutt3rshy 12y ago
Yes, it's very strong legally. Congress or the states can try for a Constitutional Amendment (but those are few and far between, last one was in 1992), or the Supreme Court can later reverse itself partially or in full. An example of that would be Plessy v Ferguson in 1896, where the Supreme Court ruled segregation laws were constitutional, but later in the 50's (Brown v. Board of Education) they reversed it.
- npizzolato 12y ago
  Those are the only options if they're ruling on the constitutionality of a certain law. If they're just deciding on whether or not an action violated any given law (as in this case), you could reverse the ruling by changing the law itself (i.e. through Congress).
ovulator 12y ago
Appealing to congress to change the law in question is the only recourse to the losing party. What exactly do you mean by a “mistaken” ruling?

grellas 12y ago

The Copyright Act is a federal statute that protects any public performance of a copyrighted work from infringing uses. Aereo took what were undisputedly public performances of works from broadcasters to the public, intercepted them, and by a feat of what amounted to technological legerdemain turned them into what it argued were no longer public performances but, instead, individualized transmissions from its service to each of its end users as an audience of one. In this case, the Supreme Court rejected that argument, relying heavily on the idea that it was merely interpreting a statute (the Copyright Act) that had been amended by Congress in 1976 in part to overturn a couple of Supreme Court cases that had interpreted the prior Act to permit cable-TV style transmissions of copyrighted material free of copyright restrictions. The Court held that, in doing so, Congress intended to bring cable-like services such as Aereo into the Act's sweep regardless of the particular technological ways in which it handled the copyrighted material as it re-transmitted it to its users. Treating such technology, in effect, like a black box, the Court emphasized that, regardless of its innards, this service appeared to all concerned - to broadcasters, to viewers, etc. - to be functioning just like a cable service and therefore fell squarely within the Act's coverage as Congress had intended to modify it in making the 1976 amendments. The most fascinating part of the decision, in my view, was how the Court arrived at this result while simultaneously trying to narrow its impact so that modern technological innovations would not be hit by its shrapnel. The Court not only did so but did so emphatically. Indeed, it devoted an entire section IV (pages 15-17) of its opinion to that issue. "We agree", said the Court, "that Congress, while intending the Transmit Clause to apply broadly to cable companies and their equivalents [i.e., Aereo], did not intend to discourage or control the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies." The Court then goes on to suggest (without deciding) a number of potentially key distinctions by which things such as, e.g., cloud music services might not in any way be infringing, including the prospect of fair use or the fact that the user receiving a transmission from the service may already own the copyrighted works being transmitted. I believe this is a strong signal from the Court that lower courts are not to ham-handedly interpret copyright law to stifle innovation but are to apply it carefully to prevent its abuse. All in all, this decision represents a guarded upholding of traditional IP protections that prevents the use of technology to enable free-wheeling use of broadcasted materials while at the same time limiting its holding to that narrow sphere. Given the technical wording of the Act, it could just as easily have gone the other way and upheld the Aereo service as nothing more than something that facilitates individual, "private" performances via a streaming technology. But that would certainly have glorified form over substance and, I think, the Court got it right in the end.

kdot 12y ago

I would love for Aereo to open source the technology, sell me an antenna so that I can run my own Aereo service and stream TV to myself.

vibrolax 12y ago
You don't need anything from Aereo's stack to do this. Get a device such as a Silicon Dust HDHomerun. http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hdhomerun-dual/ http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hdhomerun-dual... This box is 1 antenna in, 2 ATSC tuners, 1 ethernet out. If you want to stream on your LAN, there are clients for Windows and Linux. XBMC supports it. I can't see why you couldn't serve it over the internet as well.

Glyptodon 12y ago

If aliens have a TV channel does that make SETI@home illegal?

jusben1369 12y ago

I think this is a good read as it relates to the broader implications of this decision; http://www.vox.com/2014/6/25/5841820/the-supreme-courts-aereo-decision-could-endanger-cloud-storage http://www.vox.com/2014/6/25/5841820/the-supreme-courts-aere...

jrockway 12y ago

This is a disaster for anyone that offers cloud services. It's legal for me to set up an antenna in a data center and stream what I receive to myself. But it's apparently not legal for me to pay someone to do the exact same thing. What's funny is that if the antenna were connected to me via a coaxial cable, it would probably be legal. But since it uses packets and Cat-6 cables and that crazy Intarwebs thing, it's not. I don't get it. This is annoying because it also obviously affects useful things like WebSDR. Since WebSDR nodes can tune VHF/UHF, they can receive copyrighted TV and music, which means they're now illegal to run under this ruling. (Fortunately, all the good WebSDR nodes are outside the US, so it doesn't matter in practice. But if you were going to set one up in the US, think again.)

ashmud 12y ago

Bit of an "edit war" on their wikipedia page over declaring them defunct already. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aereo&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aereo&action=hist...

dguaraglia 12y ago

What bothers me about this is how quickly decisions are made when it comes to content and copyright. Average Joe doesn't give a flying f* about his privacy, the loss of life in war, the obscene spending on failed military projects, the lack of social programs, the millions stuck with ridiculous student debt... But hey, touch their right to watch Netflix or some local station from NYC from their house in California and SHIT GETS REAL! Tsk tsk...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]