Aereo and the Supreme Court

[pb4uski]

What does that matter? They would be providing me with the same end result that any other individual can get OTA if they have good signal - the technical form may be different to facilitate the transfer from the antenna farm to me, but the substance is the same... no more, no less. It would be no different than if I had a friend with great OTA signal at his house set up a digital antenna and slingbox at his house and then I grabbed the slingbox contents over the internet.

[explanade]

The networks and TV stations get billions in retransmission fees every year.

Lot of money riding on this decision and this Court has tended to favor moneyed interests over upstarts.

[bUU]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski What does that matter?

Transmission is legal; retransmission without paying a licensing fee is not. The "matter" is money due to the copyright holder.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski the substance is the same

By that logic, the substance is the same as cable television. QED.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski It would be no different than if I had a friend with great OTA signal at his house set up a digital antenna and slingbox at his house and then I grabbed the slingbox contents over the internet.

Effectively correct: What your friend would be doing would be a similar violation, especially if he charged you for it like Aereo.

[imoldernu]

The Supreme Court closes for the summer on June 30. Aereo is one of the decisions due.
Here's an article that lists the Ten major Decisions that are due, along with some educated guesses as to the outcomes. Aereo is last on the list.

And Then There Were 10: Final SCOTUS Decisions May Finally Divide Court - Forbes

Enjoy your vacation, judges

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski What does that matter? ...

I pretty much agree with your view, but I don't think our view matters. This will be decided on legal technicalities and lawmakers that may be allowing themselves to be influenced.

Aero actually uses a separate physical antenna for each customer - now that makes no practical sense at all, it is clearly legal maneuvering.

So here's a parallel - imagine I have a friend who lives nearby, but he gets poor reception due to a metal building nearby and physical restrictions to putting up an effective antenna. So I tape his favorite shows, commercials and all, and he picks them up each day and watches them.

I don't see how this could make any difference at all to the broadcaster. We are both watching the shows we want, and their commercials are there which pays their bills. The difference in reception is just a technicality. Of course, a recording facilitates commercial-skipping, but that has been the case for decades. Broadcasters are adapting, and mingling the advertising with the show itself (product placements, etc).

-ERD50

[RockyMtn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RockyMtn I believe the broadcasters will prevail and Aereo will be required to pay for copyrighted content just as any other distributor does.

As predicted down goes Aereo!

Here is a link to the ruling. Will be interesting to see if this spells the end of Aereo or if they will attempt to negotiate with broadcasters to be able to continue to offer a service of any kind.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...3-461_l537.pdf

Broadcasting stocks up nicely on the news.

[easysurfer]

I support both rulings. The one on Aero and on cell phone privacy.

[explanade]

They were going to protect the business models of big media companies against any upstart.

[imoldernu]

The decision is in, and Aereo is (effectively) no more.

Contrary to what most might believe, the 6-3 decision was not what might have been expected.

Dissenting opinions from Robert, Scalia and Alito, while convoluted, will be interesting to legal types.

As always, prepare to pay more, for less.

Watch for another, very long battle over the legal aspects of "the cloud".

One would have thought that our forefathers might have eliminated all of the discord by establishing guidelines to cover this... or earlier, that the basics might have been included in the ten commandments.

[explanade]

One thing they called right though, that the police can't search your phone without a warrant.

I keep my phone locked.

[Chuckanut]

With Aereo out, I now must concentrate on improving my ability to receive and record OTA television. There are only about 5 shows I am interested in receiving and often just one or two of them in a given week.

I think I have solved the antenna problem with a flat antenna from Costco for about $40. Now to work on recording the signal.

Every cloud has a silver lining. The Supreme Court has saved me probably $100 a year that I would have spent on Aereo. I can now spend that on my own equipment.

[imoldernu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuckanut Every cloud has a silver lining. The Supreme Court has saved me probably $100 a year that I would have spent on Aereo. I can now spend that on my own equipment.

I'd go for that too, except we're in between several rocks and the hard place.

Only OTA channel available with indoor antenna, is a religious channel. Even with a good rooftop antenna, nearest channels are 95 to 100+ miles away. Intermittent at that... We're not allowed outside antennas. Our only source for internet is Comcast or Hughes satellite.. and for TV... Directv, Dish, Comcast . ergo... Comcast...

No Tyranny of Choice here...

[Chuckanut]

I bought one of the Winegard FlatWave AMPED antenna's from Costco for $40 and it works much better than my old rabbit ears. I pick up stations I never knew existed. However, I am relatively near the broadcast antennas for my area, though my line of sight is not very direct.

I am amused by the way the antenna is marketed: No Monthly Fee, No Subscription, No Contract. This is quite normal to me, but I I imagine there are some younger folks who know they must pay the necessary tribute to the cable companies to watch TV.

[ziggy29]

We're still procrastinating about getting an outdoor antenna up at the house here. We think we know where we'll put it and it's pretty simple to just repurpose a couple of the cables coming from the dish that go into the house (it's regular RG-6 and there are no boxes or switches downstream from the grounding blocks.) Our church owns the house so we just need to get their approval -- we'll even pay for it all, it should pay for itself within 3 months of missing satellite bills. We'll miss some stuff, but between Hulu, Amazon Prime and Netflix together with getting all the local networks OTA, we should be fine. We just need to pull the trigger, and every time big money networks and cable/satellite providers "win" it motivates me a little bit more...

[ziggy29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by imoldernu As always, prepare to pay more, for less.

It never fails to amaze me how entities like the cable/satellite industry and the networks can spin this as a "victory for consumers". And yet they always do. Just like mergers in an increasingly uncompetitive market are touted as being "good for our customers."

[REWahoo]

Yep, sounds like you're a real pro at crastinating.

[ls99]

My prediction failed, Aereo lost. Bummer.

[yakers]

I am unhappily surprised that Aereo lost. I want to cut the cord (Dish, in my case) It sounds easy enough to connect an antenna but not sure about a DVR with a usable interface. Then I would want to add Apple TV or Roku. My next project sometime in July.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yakers I want to cut the cord (Dish, in my case) It sounds easy enough to connect an antenna but not sure about a DVR with a usable interface.

I've mentioned before that I cut the cord and am using an antenna along with a 'combination' DVR: a SiliconDust HDHomeRun DUAL High Definition Digital TV Tuner and Windows Media Center which is part of Windows Vista, 7, and 8. The software lets you see a schedule of future programming two weeks out and opt to record individual shows or an entire series. You can also get a remote to operate the system.

Unless you want to watch everything on your computer monitor you'll need the capability to hook up your TV as a second monitor. I have my 60" plasma connected and we've been really happy with the set up.

[ziggy29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yakers I am unhappily surprised that Aereo lost. I want to cut the cord (Dish, in my case) It sounds easy enough to connect an antenna but not sure about a DVR with a usable interface. Then I would want to add Apple TV or Roku. My next project sometime in July.

I wish I was surprised. I really thought (IANAL, obviously) they dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's. But I also think the default these days is to protect Big Business, and you need a ridiculously solid argument to beat them. It wasn't solid enough.

The DVR thing is the problem, at least if you don't want to give TiVo $15 per month. I've toyed with Windows 7's Media Center (running on a 2009 Mac Mini!) with the stations I can get with an indoor antenna (surprisingly many with an indoor antenna, being 50 miles away from the tower, but passing cars momentarily kill the signal) but haven't really tested it hard. I think I want to play with it more to test it as a proof of concept.