[enzanki_ars]

What infuriates me the most about this ruling is that long term effects of it. Locast did what they did and inserted ads every 15 minutes because they knew nobody would not contribute to hosting costs without some reason. Had they made it so it was interruption at the start only, _maybe_ it could have held up better in court. And I agree on that front. Remove the donate video from showing every 15 minutes, and only show it at the start. Encourage funding through better on screen messages and make it more clear that it's voluntary.

But the big part of the ruling was that it wasn't just how they requested funding, but the why. The ruling argued that collecting funds to expand more throughout the US was not valid for their non-profit status for some reason that made no sense. And as a result, it appears that a replacement will never exist, because the cost of pulling all of these channels with careful and specific antenna placement in a city, the hardware to pull all of those channels in real time, re-encoding the feed from MPEG2 to HLS/MP4 for the web, potentially making different qualities to account for network conditions (can't remember if the M3U8 playlists from Locast did that or not), and the networking costs of transmitting video are expensive.

And the lawsuit was stupid too. US TV channels are crammed to the max with advertisements, so much so that it feels more like an ad delivery mechanism than an entertainment delivery system. Locast could have been advantageous as they would have actual data of who is watching what when and where. Ad companies love that data, and with traditional OTA feeds, they don't have that. Instead, all of these OTA companies actively refuse offering the ability to watch their streams online for free. Other than local news content, everything else is locked behind a paywall of having an active cable subscription. Why should I, as a consumer, pay $100 a month to watch this same OTA content, just so I can watch it online, especially for a medium so jam packed with ads?

I live in the edge of Columbus, Ohio in an apartment. I'm still within 10 miles of the transmitters for the big 6 stations (the local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CW, and PBS collectively only use 4 transmitters.). My apartment is luckily facing sort of line of site to most of those transmitters. But even then, I still have bad signal issues with those channels, and in some cases leading to an unwatchable recording. The signal was bad enough that my recording of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Opening Ceremonies was bared by loss of 2 to 5 seconds of video and audio every 2 minutes. My only alternative was to play $65 to $100 a month to cable or cordcutting subscription to watch that broadcast online. And out of spite for continuing to shutdown any free way to watch their OTA content online, I will _never_ pay. Our laws regarding OTA broadcasts and how people can use and view them need to change ASAP, otherwise what is the point of having them if is not accessible to all.

[LocalH]

Regulatory capture at its finest. I presume you’re aware of retransmission consent, the mechanism that allows local stations (whether network-owned or not) to demand payment for carriage of their signal, that carries 90% or more content that the station does not own, but merely has license to broadcast. This would be fine if most stations weren’t part of large station groups that own dozens of stations. These large station groups demand higher and higher fees from operators (and both sides of every argument are always presented as “[the other side] wants to take your [network] away because they [want too much/won’t pay enough], call them to demand they stop doing that”, when the average person who would see those messages does not have the knowledge to understand how it works, because they quite rightly have more important things to worry about).

The networks can be shitty to their non-owned-and operated stations too. The long-term local ABC affiliate got shafted a few years back. They’d been an affiliate since 1969. ABC demanded a substantially larger amount of money to renew the affiliation than they had in the past. The station initially tried to negotiate the amount down, ABC refused to budge. After careful consideration, the station decided to nonetheless agree to ABC’s demands. After all that, ABC still turned around and basically said “nah, forget it” and went with their direct competitor in the market, who already operated the CBS affiliate. ABC and CBS are now subchannels of the same broadcaster, who happens to be owned by one of the larger station groups. The networks do this because it gives the stations more leverage to demand more from operators, and the station groups have more capital than smaller independently-owned stations. The networks also directly benefit, as the stations in the larger, more flagship markets tends to be network owned and operated (O&O). A station group that says “we own X number of stations and unless you pay us more money, we’ll restrict your carriage of all of them” has a lot more pull than a company that owns one station.

There is actually a choice, but it’s on the broadcaster’s end. A station can elect to choose “must-carry” status, where the operator transmits the signal with no compensation (which generally only applies to a station’s primary subchannel), or a station can demand payment for retransmission.

If cable was invented today, the networks would have it shut down in a hot minute.

[commandlinefan]

> actively refuse offering the ability to watch their streams online for free

They probably have exclusivity contracts with the cable providers. They're sliding into irrelevance already, but will probably make their services completely available on the internet a few years after their slide into total irrelevance is complete.

[gamblor956]

The ruling argued that collecting funds to expand more throughout the US was not valid for their non-profit status for some reason that made no sense.

The law granting them the exception from copyright law that would have allowed them to stream in the first place strictly limited the way funds could be raised and spent by entities claiming the non-profit exemption.

The law is several decades old, and predates the internet. It wasn't the subject of regulatory capture by the cable companies, who were in their infancy when the law was first passed.

Locast chose not to operate like a non-profit, and made a profit on their streaming services, in violation of the law. It's really that simple.

[enzanki_ars]

Edit: Not a lawyer, and what follows is intended to be more of outlining my understanding and trying to ask clarification on what I'm clearly missing. Sorry if it sounds a bit defensive. Just a very strange lawsuit, specifically in how the service was forced to shutdown instead of being allowed to continue to operate.

Isn't that a valid use of the non-profit status? That as long as the funding from donations was going towards that expansion only, it can still be considered a non-profit? Looking at the quick Wikipedia definition, that seems to be the case, if you consider Locast's mission is to provide retransmission of OTA broadcasts to all people in the US.

> "A second misconception is that nonprofit organizations may not make a profit. Although the goal of nonprofits isn't specifically to maximize profits, they still have to operate as a fiscally responsible business. They must manage their income (both grants and donations and income from services) and expenses so as to remain a fiscally viable entity. Nonprofits have the responsibility of focusing on being professional, financially responsible, replacing self-interest and profit motive with mission motive." [1]

PBS is also a non-profit, but PBS does something similar in that certain content is locked behind their "PBS Passport" subscription. If this ruling that requiring donations view without interruption, then PBS is also violating non-profit status based on your statement regarding "Locast chose not to operate like a non-profit." But Locast attempted to resolve that and remove the interruptions entirely, but was still required to completely shutdown and was given 0 chance to adjust... My understanding about hte reasoning for shutting down is that using collected funds, via any means, expansion across the US isn't allowed for some questionable reason under the section of the law Locast was using.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization#Managem...

[gamblor956]

1) This isn't about their 501 non-profit status, it's about their use of the non-profit exemption for re-transmission of copyrighted materials through a service that would otherwise be classified as violating copyrights.

1) No, it's not a valid use of the money under the restrictions of the non-profit exemption from copyright for re-transmission. The law is quite clear on this point: revenues derived from the violating service must not exceed the actual costs of providing that service. Expansion costs are not related to the costs of providing existing service, therefore they are not permitted under the exemption.

3) PBS is not even remotely the same thing, because it's not the non-profit status that is at issue. PBS owns and/or licenses the content they broadcast and stream, so it does not need an exemption from copyright laws. Locast does not own or license the content it streams, so it does need the exemption, and it violated the explicit requirements for the exemption it needed.

4) But Locast attempted to resolve that and remove the interruptions entirely, but was still required to completely shutdown and was given 0 chance to adjust Historically, using someone's IP without their permission resulted in statutory damages, and Locast should consider themselves lucky they're not on the hook for those, as statutory damages for copyright law can be as much as $150,000 per violation* for willful violations of copyright law. * Tech was able to get away with the ask for forgiveness business model for 3 decades, but generally the law does not operate on "ask for forgiveness" basis. It's irrelevant that they got "0 chance" to adjust since the onus was on them to plan their activities in a way that complied with the law.