7 ms·

An Update on Aereo

84 points by acjohnson55 12y ago

digdigdag 12y ago
The battle may have been lost but the fact that Aereo became as successful as it was in the short time it existed is a step in the right direction. Unless it's encrypted information, I find it absurd that the courts would side with the cable companies on what is essentially a beam of publicly accessible light.
- qq66 12y ago
  Many beams of publicly accessible light are regulated. You can't tape the Simpsons off the air and sell your own DVD box sets.
  - crunchcaptain 12y ago
    But I could sell you a VCR. I might even let you store it at my house since I have better reception than you. Wait, that would be illegal...
    - EpicEng 12y ago
      Nope, it wouldn't be. It's the reselling en masse that they have a problem with.
    - zaroth 12y ago
      Right, how does all this impact the I-DVR that I rent to my "friend" for $10 in BTC each month, to defray the cost of my internet bill? It would be interesting to see a decentralized Aereo make another go at this.
    - qq66 12y ago
      It's actually illegal to sell a VCR that does not honor the do-not-copy transmitted signal. The courts and legislature generally sanction the activity, not the tool.
- mrcwinn 12y ago
  I'm sorry, I completely respect your opinion, but frankly any company that can "use" "free" data from the air and resell it much cheaper than, say, the $150 cable bill, is going to be successful. That doesn't make it lawful, or even good for content creators. I know I hold a very unpopular opinion in this forum, but I think it's unwise to treat Aereo like some angel of free speech. The truth is, this is a for-profit company with investors hoping to make money. They make that money by shortcutting the existing distribution system and selling something very cheaply that they got for "free." Is it good for consumers? In the short-term, it seems to be. People love the service as far as I can tell and it's cheap. But in the long-term, I worry about a service that syphons money away from content producers (and distributors, to whom I'm less sympathetic) and puts it instead in their own pockets. I simply can't wrap my brain around how content can be produced, grabbed for free, and - importantly - re-sold for profit. I do not think this is a "public demonstration" of work. Finally, I think it's unfair, as some have, to claim that SCOTUS is a bunch of thieves in bed with Comcast on one hand, but heroic and commendable on another hand with regard to the warrant cell phone case. It may actually be — actually, now it is the case - that if you have an exception with the law, you will need to work to change it.
  - byuu 12y ago
    > any company that can "use" "free" data from the air and resell it much cheaper than, say, the $150 cable bill, is going to be successful. OTA broadcasts are free for everyone. You do not have to pay $150 a month to receive them. Aereo did not offer HBO or AMC or other cable-only channels through their service. To me, the only real issue at play was whether it is legal for a person in OH to receive OTA broadcasts from NY. And there may be some merit there: some of the local stations might possibly be funded in part by local taxes.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Why are you putting free in quotes? OTA television is completely free to consume. Nobody is being undercut. Cable companies use most of that $150 to buy private content. Nobody is advocating for splicing into private wires and making copies. We're in this weird situation where local TV companies tricked their distributor into paying them, even though they previously shouldered the costs of distribution themselves. I see that as the biggest injustice here. >I simply can't wrap my brain around how content can be produced, grabbed for free, and - importantly - re-sold for profit. Imagine a taxi that brings you to a free concert. There is nothing wrong with making a profit off of providing convenient access to something. That's what every ISP in the world does. They're not selling the TV shows. They're connecting you with the antenna that sends out free TV.
- ZenPro 12y ago
  This comment is a sterling example of the crazy attitude of many on Hacker News. Those "beams of light" had to be created, administered and regulated in order to even exist. It is absurd that you think created content is simply a "beam of light" that anyone can harness how they see fit. I guess the objects in your house are just clusters of publicly accessible carbon; after all your locks are just lumps of publicly accessible alloys.
  - DerpDerpDerp 12y ago
    Except that the particular beams of light being discussed are intentionally meant by the broadcasters as resources for the public as part of fulfilling their deal to license the spectrum that beams of light useful for TV happen in, since the spectrum is fundamentally a public resource (hence open to anyone), and the exchange of public spectrum comes only in return for public usable content. It's not like the claim was about just any beam of light.
    - thisisdave 12y ago
      Right. I think that there's a big difference (legally and morally) between the beams of light passing between my cell phone an the cell tower, versus something that's being broadcast specifically so that everyone with an antenna can hear it.
    - ZenPro 12y ago
      That is true to a point. But the spectrum is only a public resource under specific conditions and Aereo has not met those conditions according to the law and legal institutions we have empowered to make those decisions. I have read some of your previous posts and they are exceptionally well written. However, I await the idiotic HN consensus about to be posted below this comment stating - a. Judges are <insert slur> old men b. Old people don't understand technology c. Silicon Valley could solve the entire world if we just let it
kevincennis 12y ago
Aereo employee here. Just wanted to say "thank you" to the HN community for all the support over the past few years. Some of the most interesting and thoughtful analysis I've seen on Aereo has been in the comments here. Of course, some of the worst, too. But that's what makes it Hacker News. This has obviously been a pretty difficult week for Aereo, and lots of people are speculating about what will happen to the company – but I don't think we're done just yet.
- leorocky 12y ago
  I'm sorry for your tough week. Not to pile on the negativity, it was an innovative product, and none of this is your fault, but it probably doesn't make sense to resell copyrighted content. As for not being done, your CEO, Kanojia, said: "If it’s a total straight-up loss, then it’s dead. We’re done," Was that a bluff?
  - acjohnson55 12y ago
    IMO, they're selling an alternative method of accessing the copyrighted content that's already freely available to you, if you bought your own equipment.
- vonklaus 12y ago
  Please keep fighting, pivot into hardware and resell the antenna. If you did some software as well people would be able to make a distributed network similar to your centralized one. Revenue streams from the hardware and software could keep you viable.
  - byuu 12y ago
    Absolutely. There are lots of us that live in areas with little if no content easily obtainable over-the-air, and our HOAs forbid larger antennas. I am sure NYC and SF get a much better selection of OTA channels. I would love the opportunity to lease an antenna off-site. And not just from the US, but antennas around the world. I can do my own DVR recording and storage locally. Break it up to where individuals can install your antenna and DVR software for it. And let them lease it to another individual. Imagine me in the US and a friend in Japan want to share. I put up an antenna for him, he puts one up for me. I get to watch Japanese TV, he gets to watch US TV. We now both have a great resource for language study. And it's 100% decentralized.
eck 12y ago
Could Aereo pivot to selling a physical device that one would plug into a home router and do roughly the same thing?
- AJ007 12y ago
  That would be the right direction. From my understanding, there are devices like that now but the price points are higher up front and technical to set up. A plug and play approach with a monthly lease could work (assuming you can't actually make one for $30.) The bigger issue is, can this model scale and survive 5 years out? If it can not, it may be better to pull the plug. This is a bigger loss to the TV stations than it is to Aereo users. How many Aereo users are going to go out and re-connect their televisions? Even if they do, the limitations can only reduce their viewing time. Friends who still have antenna televisions or were using Aereo largely did so because their wives liked to watch stupid reality TV shows. I never connected an antenna to my television. I have not had cable for three years. Broadcast TV stations could not make me a viewer if I was paid to watch. Between Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Youtube, and Twitch why would I choose to watch broadcast? It is only a matter of short time before the mass market sees it this way as well.
  - esturk 12y ago
    Just curious, do some of these devices work directly with a desktop/laptop device? Or possibly even a dongle for tablets/smartphones? I remember seeing HKTV having these dongles which are fairly small and works pretty well with mobile devices. Maybe they can try that route.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikeryan 12y ago
    Between Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Youtube, and Twitch why would I choose to watch broadcast? It is only a matter of short time before the mass market sees it this way as well. reply A few main reasons the mass market won't see it your way. 1. Sports - you can't generally stream sports in your local market. 2. TV shows don't hit those services usually until a year or so after their original air date. 3. There's a lot of TV viewing that happens more on a 'browsing' basis. Food Network, DIY, Discovery, a lot of the viewing that happens on these networks are because folks are just bored and scanning the channels. Non serialized shows like cooking or The Daily Show, have a hard time transitioning to the services you mentioned. 4. Cost effectiveness. Once you add up the cost of many of the services you mentioned the cost of monthly fees and individual show rentals is going to get very close to your normal cable bill.
DanBlake 12y ago
Forgive my ignorance of the judicial system, but why would the issue be returned to the lower courts? My understanding is that a Supreme Court decision was about as final as something could get- Is there any paths to Aereo being able to win some other battle and potentially come back to life? Can you appeal a Supreme Court decision?
- eli 12y ago
  IANAL, but I believe the Supreme Court only ruled on one specific claim in the lawsuit not the lawsuit itself. There were other claims and the lawsuit is technically ongoing, but this one crucial aspect has been decided. No, you cannot appeal a Supreme Court decision.
  - seliopou 12y ago
    You can't appeal a Supreme Court decision, but you can invalidate it by changing the law or amending the Constitution.
- mikeryan 12y ago
  The Supreme Court doesn't make rulings on cases they make rulings on matters of law. Most frequently, and in this case, the matter of law in front of the Supreme Court, (does Aereo's service infringe on copyright) is a core tenet of the case so it will mean the case will be lost for Aereo. However there's still a lot to be wrapped up in the lower court for example if there are damages to be paid etc. A better example is the Cell Phone Search where they just ruled you can't search cell phones (again a matter of law). I believe in this case there were two defendants who had their phones searched during relatively routine arrests which led to greater crimes and charges. My understanding is that one case will lead to the defendant being released but the other case had enough evidence without the cell phone data that he can still be convicted.
aianus 12y ago
Can someone explain to me how it hurts the content owners to have more eyeballs watching their freely broadcasted, advertisement supported shows?
- davidgerard 12y ago
  Hollywood logic: 1. Someone, somewhere, is interacting with something we might own a chunk of. 2. Therefore, IT'S OURS GIVE US ALL THE MONEY.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    I don't think this should be downvoted. When you look at, for example, the Sonny Bono act, aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act[1], it's obvious this is a significant Hollywood approach. Or consider this 1982 quote from the MPAA's head: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Valenti#Valenti_on_new_technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Valenti#Valenti_on_new_tec...
- tptacek 12y ago
  One issue is subtle. Broadcast television appears to be free for any consumer with an antenna, but it really isn't. The tiny minority of consumers who watch antenna TV are subsidized by the overwhelming majority of consumers who pay to watch TV via DBS, cable, or IPTV. The revenue streams from retrans fees fund content development and acquisition. Further, both broadcasters and pay TV providers are unhappy with any streaming service that interferes with advertising, either by making it simple to skip ads or by making it harder for advertisers to value airtime.
  - seliopou 12y ago
    I think the last part of your answer is the important one. Eyeballs don't matter if you can't count them.
fencepost 12y ago
I wasn't an Aereo customer, but were they streaming in standard video streaming formats? If so, would it be viable for them to really lease the antennas to people and stream the non-decoded HDTV signal? It would require some sort of software defined radio decoding on the client side and would certainly reduce the features they could offer easily, but by doing that they basically become a simple signal repeater service - a commercial "range extender."
- kevingadd 12y ago
  That kind of nitpicky detail won't matter to the entertainment lobbies that effectively own a huge chunk of our government. Aereo was already built on a bunch of clever, detail-focused legal loopholes and caveats that should have protected them, but the case got reversed at the supreme court after they won.
narrowrail 12y ago
I think we should just reclaim the EM spectrum (IIRC, roughly 450-700 MHz) used by the broadcasters to build a better wireless network owned by the people. Perhaps a mesh network of sorts; the specifics could be worked out, but it should be considered. What a large piece of spectrum to waste on one-way communication, mostly filled with crappy adverts.
- Zancarius 12y ago
  I kinda like this "scorched earth" policy: If public airwaves paradoxically cannot be used by the public because of performance/copyright laws, why not just scrap it? I had a curious thought this morning, probably echoing some of the sentiments I've read here (and elsewhere). We're overlooking the precipice of a sort of "regulation paralysis" that's threatening the tech industry in the US. If we continue down this path, in 20 years, we're going to be substantially behind other nations. And to what end? To protect incumbent companies that have deep pockets for lobbying efforts in their financial favor? Where was that study that suggested reading news leads to depression? I should stop while I'm ahead.

84 points by acjohnson55 12y ago

The battle may have been lost but the fact that Aereo became as successful as it was in the short time it existed is a step in the right direction. Unless it's encrypted information, I find it absurd that the courts would side with the cable companies on what is essentially a beam of publicly accessible light.

qq66 12y ago
Many beams of publicly accessible light are regulated. You can't tape the Simpsons off the air and sell your own DVD box sets.
- crunchcaptain 12y ago
  But I could sell you a VCR. I might even let you store it at my house since I have better reception than you. Wait, that would be illegal...
  - EpicEng 12y ago
    Nope, it wouldn't be. It's the reselling en masse that they have a problem with.
  - zaroth 12y ago
    Right, how does all this impact the I-DVR that I rent to my "friend" for $10 in BTC each month, to defray the cost of my internet bill? It would be interesting to see a decentralized Aereo make another go at this.
  - qq66 12y ago
    It's actually illegal to sell a VCR that does not honor the do-not-copy transmitted signal. The courts and legislature generally sanction the activity, not the tool.
mrcwinn 12y ago
I'm sorry, I completely respect your opinion, but frankly any company that can "use" "free" data from the air and resell it much cheaper than, say, the $150 cable bill, is going to be successful. That doesn't make it lawful, or even good for content creators. I know I hold a very unpopular opinion in this forum, but I think it's unwise to treat Aereo like some angel of free speech. The truth is, this is a for-profit company with investors hoping to make money. They make that money by shortcutting the existing distribution system and selling something very cheaply that they got for "free." Is it good for consumers? In the short-term, it seems to be. People love the service as far as I can tell and it's cheap. But in the long-term, I worry about a service that syphons money away from content producers (and distributors, to whom I'm less sympathetic) and puts it instead in their own pockets. I simply can't wrap my brain around how content can be produced, grabbed for free, and - importantly - re-sold for profit. I do not think this is a "public demonstration" of work. Finally, I think it's unfair, as some have, to claim that SCOTUS is a bunch of thieves in bed with Comcast on one hand, but heroic and commendable on another hand with regard to the warrant cell phone case. It may actually be — actually, now it is the case - that if you have an exception with the law, you will need to work to change it.
- byuu 12y ago
  > any company that can "use" "free" data from the air and resell it much cheaper than, say, the $150 cable bill, is going to be successful. OTA broadcasts are free for everyone. You do not have to pay $150 a month to receive them. Aereo did not offer HBO or AMC or other cable-only channels through their service. To me, the only real issue at play was whether it is legal for a person in OH to receive OTA broadcasts from NY. And there may be some merit there: some of the local stations might possibly be funded in part by local taxes.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Why are you putting free in quotes? OTA television is completely free to consume. Nobody is being undercut. Cable companies use most of that $150 to buy private content. Nobody is advocating for splicing into private wires and making copies. We're in this weird situation where local TV companies tricked their distributor into paying them, even though they previously shouldered the costs of distribution themselves. I see that as the biggest injustice here. >I simply can't wrap my brain around how content can be produced, grabbed for free, and - importantly - re-sold for profit. Imagine a taxi that brings you to a free concert. There is nothing wrong with making a profit off of providing convenient access to something. That's what every ISP in the world does. They're not selling the TV shows. They're connecting you with the antenna that sends out free TV.
ZenPro 12y ago
This comment is a sterling example of the crazy attitude of many on Hacker News. Those "beams of light" had to be created, administered and regulated in order to even exist. It is absurd that you think created content is simply a "beam of light" that anyone can harness how they see fit. I guess the objects in your house are just clusters of publicly accessible carbon; after all your locks are just lumps of publicly accessible alloys.
- DerpDerpDerp 12y ago
  Except that the particular beams of light being discussed are intentionally meant by the broadcasters as resources for the public as part of fulfilling their deal to license the spectrum that beams of light useful for TV happen in, since the spectrum is fundamentally a public resource (hence open to anyone), and the exchange of public spectrum comes only in return for public usable content. It's not like the claim was about just any beam of light.
  - thisisdave 12y ago
    Right. I think that there's a big difference (legally and morally) between the beams of light passing between my cell phone an the cell tower, versus something that's being broadcast specifically so that everyone with an antenna can hear it.
  - ZenPro 12y ago
    That is true to a point. But the spectrum is only a public resource under specific conditions and Aereo has not met those conditions according to the law and legal institutions we have empowered to make those decisions. I have read some of your previous posts and they are exceptionally well written. However, I await the idiotic HN consensus about to be posted below this comment stating - a. Judges are <insert slur> old men b. Old people don't understand technology c. Silicon Valley could solve the entire world if we just let it

kevincennis 12y ago

Aereo employee here. Just wanted to say "thank you" to the HN community for all the support over the past few years. Some of the most interesting and thoughtful analysis I've seen on Aereo has been in the comments here. Of course, some of the worst, too. But that's what makes it Hacker News. This has obviously been a pretty difficult week for Aereo, and lots of people are speculating about what will happen to the company – but I don't think we're done just yet.

leorocky 12y ago
I'm sorry for your tough week. Not to pile on the negativity, it was an innovative product, and none of this is your fault, but it probably doesn't make sense to resell copyrighted content. As for not being done, your CEO, Kanojia, said: "If it’s a total straight-up loss, then it’s dead. We’re done," Was that a bluff?
- acjohnson55 12y ago
  IMO, they're selling an alternative method of accessing the copyrighted content that's already freely available to you, if you bought your own equipment.
vonklaus 12y ago
Please keep fighting, pivot into hardware and resell the antenna. If you did some software as well people would be able to make a distributed network similar to your centralized one. Revenue streams from the hardware and software could keep you viable.
- byuu 12y ago
  Absolutely. There are lots of us that live in areas with little if no content easily obtainable over-the-air, and our HOAs forbid larger antennas. I am sure NYC and SF get a much better selection of OTA channels. I would love the opportunity to lease an antenna off-site. And not just from the US, but antennas around the world. I can do my own DVR recording and storage locally. Break it up to where individuals can install your antenna and DVR software for it. And let them lease it to another individual. Imagine me in the US and a friend in Japan want to share. I put up an antenna for him, he puts one up for me. I get to watch Japanese TV, he gets to watch US TV. We now both have a great resource for language study. And it's 100% decentralized.

eck 12y ago

Could Aereo pivot to selling a physical device that one would plug into a home router and do roughly the same thing?

AJ007 12y ago
That would be the right direction. From my understanding, there are devices like that now but the price points are higher up front and technical to set up. A plug and play approach with a monthly lease could work (assuming you can't actually make one for $30.) The bigger issue is, can this model scale and survive 5 years out? If it can not, it may be better to pull the plug. This is a bigger loss to the TV stations than it is to Aereo users. How many Aereo users are going to go out and re-connect their televisions? Even if they do, the limitations can only reduce their viewing time. Friends who still have antenna televisions or were using Aereo largely did so because their wives liked to watch stupid reality TV shows. I never connected an antenna to my television. I have not had cable for three years. Broadcast TV stations could not make me a viewer if I was paid to watch. Between Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Youtube, and Twitch why would I choose to watch broadcast? It is only a matter of short time before the mass market sees it this way as well.
- esturk 12y ago
  Just curious, do some of these devices work directly with a desktop/laptop device? Or possibly even a dongle for tablets/smartphones? I remember seeing HKTV having these dongles which are fairly small and works pretty well with mobile devices. Maybe they can try that route.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeryan 12y ago
  Between Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, Youtube, and Twitch why would I choose to watch broadcast? It is only a matter of short time before the mass market sees it this way as well. reply A few main reasons the mass market won't see it your way. 1. Sports - you can't generally stream sports in your local market. 2. TV shows don't hit those services usually until a year or so after their original air date. 3. There's a lot of TV viewing that happens more on a 'browsing' basis. Food Network, DIY, Discovery, a lot of the viewing that happens on these networks are because folks are just bored and scanning the channels. Non serialized shows like cooking or The Daily Show, have a hard time transitioning to the services you mentioned. 4. Cost effectiveness. Once you add up the cost of many of the services you mentioned the cost of monthly fees and individual show rentals is going to get very close to your normal cable bill.

DanBlake 12y ago

Forgive my ignorance of the judicial system, but why would the issue be returned to the lower courts? My understanding is that a Supreme Court decision was about as final as something could get- Is there any paths to Aereo being able to win some other battle and potentially come back to life? Can you appeal a Supreme Court decision?

eli 12y ago
IANAL, but I believe the Supreme Court only ruled on one specific claim in the lawsuit not the lawsuit itself. There were other claims and the lawsuit is technically ongoing, but this one crucial aspect has been decided. No, you cannot appeal a Supreme Court decision.
- seliopou 12y ago
  You can't appeal a Supreme Court decision, but you can invalidate it by changing the law or amending the Constitution.
mikeryan 12y ago
The Supreme Court doesn't make rulings on cases they make rulings on matters of law. Most frequently, and in this case, the matter of law in front of the Supreme Court, (does Aereo's service infringe on copyright) is a core tenet of the case so it will mean the case will be lost for Aereo. However there's still a lot to be wrapped up in the lower court for example if there are damages to be paid etc. A better example is the Cell Phone Search where they just ruled you can't search cell phones (again a matter of law). I believe in this case there were two defendants who had their phones searched during relatively routine arrests which led to greater crimes and charges. My understanding is that one case will lead to the defendant being released but the other case had enough evidence without the cell phone data that he can still be convicted.

aianus 12y ago

Can someone explain to me how it hurts the content owners to have more eyeballs watching their freely broadcasted, advertisement supported shows?

davidgerard 12y ago
Hollywood logic: 1. Someone, somewhere, is interacting with something we might own a chunk of. 2. Therefore, IT'S OURS GIVE US ALL THE MONEY.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I don't think this should be downvoted. When you look at, for example, the Sonny Bono act, aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act[1], it's obvious this is a significant Hollywood approach. Or consider this 1982 quote from the MPAA's head: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Valenti#Valenti_on_new_technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Valenti#Valenti_on_new_tec...
tptacek 12y ago
One issue is subtle. Broadcast television appears to be free for any consumer with an antenna, but it really isn't. The tiny minority of consumers who watch antenna TV are subsidized by the overwhelming majority of consumers who pay to watch TV via DBS, cable, or IPTV. The revenue streams from retrans fees fund content development and acquisition. Further, both broadcasters and pay TV providers are unhappy with any streaming service that interferes with advertising, either by making it simple to skip ads or by making it harder for advertisers to value airtime.
- seliopou 12y ago
  I think the last part of your answer is the important one. Eyeballs don't matter if you can't count them.

fencepost 12y ago

I wasn't an Aereo customer, but were they streaming in standard video streaming formats? If so, would it be viable for them to really lease the antennas to people and stream the non-decoded HDTV signal? It would require some sort of software defined radio decoding on the client side and would certainly reduce the features they could offer easily, but by doing that they basically become a simple signal repeater service - a commercial "range extender."

kevingadd 12y ago
That kind of nitpicky detail won't matter to the entertainment lobbies that effectively own a huge chunk of our government. Aereo was already built on a bunch of clever, detail-focused legal loopholes and caveats that should have protected them, but the case got reversed at the supreme court after they won.

narrowrail 12y ago

I think we should just reclaim the EM spectrum (IIRC, roughly 450-700 MHz) used by the broadcasters to build a better wireless network owned by the people. Perhaps a mesh network of sorts; the specifics could be worked out, but it should be considered. What a large piece of spectrum to waste on one-way communication, mostly filled with crappy adverts.

Zancarius 12y ago
I kinda like this "scorched earth" policy: If public airwaves paradoxically cannot be used by the public because of performance/copyright laws, why not just scrap it? I had a curious thought this morning, probably echoing some of the sentiments I've read here (and elsewhere). We're overlooking the precipice of a sort of "regulation paralysis" that's threatening the tech industry in the US. If we continue down this path, in 20 years, we're going to be substantially behind other nations. And to what end? To protect incumbent companies that have deep pockets for lobbying efforts in their financial favor? Where was that study that suggested reading news leads to depression? I should stop while I'm ahead.