[rayiner]

What is antiquated about the idea that you don't get to use other peoples' valuable content without paying for it?

Look: the valuable product here is the content. All the technology can do is get in the way. It's great Aereo's technology got in the way less than its competitors, but that still doesn't mean people found the technology itself valuable. The content is what matters. The content is what delights consumers.

Given that reality, I think it's absurd to say that regulations protecting the people who create the content, the product without which the whole downstream ecosystem of streaming services and content consumption devices are utterly irrelevant, it's absurd to say those regulations are antiquated.

[twelvedigits]

Keeping in mind that this content is being broadcast over public spectrum, you're right: the content is the most valuable product.

As a consumer, I want to access that content in an efficient, functional manner. My tax dollars are paying for it. So, I bought an antenna. It couldn't pick up any stations in my apartment, and this is a very common problem in NYC. Even if it picked up stations, I'd have to buy a separate device to record shows so that I can watch them on my schedule.

With Aereo, I was renting an antenna. The company built capital-intensive, power-sucking data warehouses in every city in which it operated and filled them with antennae for every customer. Aereo provided me with a cloud-based antenna, no different than buying one from Best Buy or Amazon.

Only:

(a) the signal was clear and reliable, not fuzzy. My friend has a long coaxial cable connected to his television and he tapes a 12" x 12" antenna to his window. Kind of ridiculous.

(b) they included a cloud-based DVR that allowed me to watch what I want, when I want. They improved the relationship that I had with broadcast content.

Aereo was very clear about the fact that they built a solution that adhered to the law because everyone had an individual antenna. This solution was very expensive, but it worked and though it was described as a Rube Goldberg machine, it made sense.

And here's the ultimate rub for content companies: now I don't watch your content at all. I don't see your ads. I have someone else's cable password, and I watch things sporadically, but I don't discover new shows like you want me to.

[harryh]

Your tax dollars are paying for TV show production?

[tapsboy]

No. But our eyeballs watching those paid ads on free broadcast TV are enabling payments + profit for the production of that content. The numbers may vary by broadcaster and program, but the business model is clear, or atleast was.

[harryh]

The people that make TV shows make money in several different ways. Paid ads are only a portion of their business.

[jcampbell1]

I come down on the other side. The networks get the airwaves for free. It was a reasonable deal -- free bandwidth in exchange for a public service and an ad supported business model.

If the networks want to give up their bandwidth and let the government auction it off, fine. I just don't like this crap that they get the spectrum for free, and I can't rent an antennae of my choosing.

IMO, either we allow Aereo, or we make the networks pay for the spectrum, or we get rid of over the air and use it for cell data.

I am all for people getting paid for their content, but your argument is like saying libraries should be outlawed.

[rayiner]

You're precisely right: it was a deal.[1] The broadcasters get the airwaves for free, and the public gets TV over those airwaves for free. The deal said nothing about allowing people to capture content over those airwaves and broadcast it over the Internet. You can hardly blame companies for not wanting to give up more on their end of a deal than they agreed to give up!

[1] I think it's a waste of valuable spectrum on creaky inefficient technology, mind you, but it's the deal the government made.

[jcampbell1]

I think you Kennedy and Roberts are all on the same page in thinking Aereo quacked like a retransmission company.

The problem is Aereo got greedy and screwed up the marketing. Had their homepage always said, rent a streaming DVR for $10 a month, it wouldn't be a problem. Capturing content and streaming it over the internet is perfectly legal. TiVo does it. Cablevision does it. Slingbox does it.

Aereo should have acted like a hardware rental company until after the supreme court ruling.

[pissmonger]

Are you really saying that Aereo failed due to a marketing? They always presented themselves as a technology platform that leases equipment.

[thedufer]

"broadcast" is the wrong word here. The whole point of Aereo is that it was unicast, which is hard to rationalize as being different from running a wire.

[varelse]

"I am all for people getting paid for their content, but your argument is like saying libraries should be outlawed."

I suspect if you set up a privately owned library and lent out bestsellers, that's exactly what would happen.

That said, it'd be a real kicker IMO if the government stepped in and started broadcasting everything on the public airwaves for free anywhere in the world over the Internet. If the broadcasters don't like that, tough, go broadcast on cable. Of course, this will never happen because corporatocracy...

[sib]

"I suspect if you set up a privately owned library and lent out bestsellers, that's exactly what would happen."

The First Sale Doctrine would disagree with you.

[bjt]

You can rent books here: http://www.chegg.com/

and here: http://www.bookrenter.com/

[jcampbell1]

Renting books is perfectly legal in the US.

[discardorama]

> What is antiquated about the idea that you don't get to use other peoples' valuable content without paying for it?

Slingbox allows you to stream broadcast content without problems. Broadcasters are OK with that. So Aereo was basically renting out 1000s of little slingboxes; how's that a problem now?

[rsync]

Also, it's worth noting that there are slingbox colocation services in the world where you can rent a slingbox in a remote datacenter in the TV market you prefer...

[snowwrestler]

Can you replicate the functionality of Aereo that way? If so, why is Aereo's bankruptcy a loss? Could all of Aereo's customers just go rent a Slingbox instead? Legitimately curious here.

[pissmonger]

According recent law passed by SCOTUS owning a Slinbox is OK, renting one is not.

Aereo was exactly like slingbox, except you leased the equipment rather than own it.

[res0nat0r]

Slingbox allows customers to privately rebroadcast content they have a license to view unlike Aereo which did not have that right.

[thedufer]

No one is claiming Aereo has that right. They're claiming that the person renting the antenna does.

The implication of the case seems to be that renting an antenna does not give you those rights in the same way buying one does, which is bizarre and kind of hard to rationalize.

[res0nat0r]

You can rent an antenna and do this privately to you and your household, you can't do this as a 3rd party company according to the law.

[crazypyro]

Except the whole argument was that the 3rd party company wasn't doing it, it was simply providing a location for the customer's rented property to sit, wasn't it?

[res0nat0r]

Basically the 3rd party didn't have a right to redistribute the content which is what the court ruled.

[res0nat0r]

Not sure why a fact is something that should be so disagreeable to be downvoted. I know the truth hurts for this issue, but that is reality.

[psychometry]

You realize that OTA HDTV is...free, right? Explain to me how any content provider lost a single dollar because of Aereo's existence.

[untog]

Because cable companies pay broadcast companies to redistribute broadcast content - it's a major source of income for the broadcast companies. The cable companies said that if Aereo were allowed to get away with what they were doing then they'd do the same thing themselves.

[discardorama]

So Aereo was screwed because _cable_ companies decided to overpay? Can you imagine if you bought a car, and then the dealership comes back to you for more money because your neighbor paid much more for the same model?

[untog]

Aereo was screwed over because _cable_ companies were legally mandated to pay for broadcast content, and Aereo skirted that law.

[baddox]

So a completely unrelated third party has a completely separate deal with content producers that has nothing to do with the legal free OTA broadcasts. Still doesn't add up.

[psychometry]

OK, but do you understand that cable companies primarily provide cable channels as their service? You're comparing apples to oranges.

[apaprocki]

Aereo's model wasn't limited to OTA. It wasn't publicized a lot, but Bloomberg TV was the first non-OTA channel to stream over Aereo.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873239815045781...

[pissmonger]

Then tell ABC, CBS, FOX, & PBS to get off the effin airways and become cable-only. Surely there are those who would find uses for the bandwidth that would serve the community

[aidenn0]

You can protect your content, up until you broadcast it publicly; then people who want to can watch it. If aereo is over the line, but having an antenna on your roof isn't, then it starts to become unclear where the line is.

[snowwrestler]

If the value of Aereo's service was the technology, then couldn't they have stayed in business by paying licensing fees on the content? Ultimately, that's what the legal disagreement was over--the fees, not the technology.

[morninj]

The content owners would have to agree to license their works to Aereo.

[the_ancient]

Which is another problem with copyright law

If you want a legal monpoly over your works, you should not be able to pick and choose which services can rebroadcast it.

If you offer your channel to comcast you should be required to offer to any other service for the same fee or substantially the same fee,

That should be the string that is attached for intellectual privilege,

[dragonwriter]

> If you want a legal monpoly over your works, you should not be able to pick and choose which services can rebroadcast it.

The ability to control who uses something is exactly what a legal monopoly over it is.

Its like saying of personal property, "if you want a legal monopoly over your things, you shouldn't be able to pick and choose who can borrow them."

[the_ancient]

Hardly, there is no such thing as intellectual property.

With property you have exclusive access over a physical item, with intellectual privilege the government is granting you the exclusive control over an idea, visual or audio representation of an idea, or some other non-physical concept.

for example Copyright does not apply to a DVD it applies to the visual idea's and representation of those idea that happened to be stored on a DVD

The government created this artificial privilege and enforces that with threats of violence.

It is in no way akin to property, nor does is have any analogous relationship to property.

[dragonwriter]

> Hardly, there is no such thing as intellectual property.

There absolutely is such a thing as intellectual property.

> With property you have exclusive access over a physical item

With property, you have exclusive rights with regard to something, but the exclusive rights may not be specifically to "access", and it may not be in a "physical item". Intangible personal property (which includes intellectual property, but also lots of other property rights in nonphysical things -- like securities, rights to legal action, etc.) is hardly a new thing.

> The government created this artificial privilege

Property is artificial, man-made, exclusive privilege with regard to something -- all of it is created through government, and all of it is enforced with threats of violence.

> It is in no way akin to property

Even your own description is exactly like every form of property.

[ufmace]

Yes, the content is what's valuable. And it's already paid for by the ads, which are part of the content stream. As far as I know, Aereo wasn't interfering with those ads in any way. The providers are getting exactly the same deal that they always have - your eyeballs on their ads in exchange for content.

I don't see how they can legitimately claim that they are entitled to more money because it's all happening over the internet instead of in your living room, especially when they aren't lifting a finger to distribute over the internet themselves.

[morninj]

Copyright law forces cable companies to pay to retransmit content. According to the Supreme Court, Aereo is "substantially similar" to a cable system, so it's bound by the same requirements. Unfortunately for Aereo, it's not actually a cable company, so it can't participate in the compulsory licensing scheme.

[the_ancient]

That is why the court ruling is wrong..

it is either a cable company, and gets the compulsory license, or it is not.

This was a Incorrect ruling by the courts, which is par for the courts, the Supreme Court gets it wrong more than it gets right