Kevin Bostic
A New York federal appeals court on Monday upheld a prior ruling in favor of broadcast television streaming service Aereo, disappointing broadcasters, who say that company's operations constitute illegal retransmission of owned content.
A district court judge last year blocked an attempt by CBS, Comcast, News Corporation, and Disney, to stop Aereo from retransmitting their broadcasts to subscribers in New York, the only state in which Aereo is currently available. Those subscribers pay about $8 per month to Aereo, which set up an array of antennas that receive over-the-air television broadcasts before routing the signal through the Internet to a subscriber's phone, computer, or tablet.
The broadcasters contend that Aereo's operations are "public performances" of their protected content, and that the service is thus in violation of retransmission rules governing their broadcasts. With other operators like Time Warner already paying for retransmission rights, the broadcasters looked to win a preliminary injunction against Aereo in a bid to stem possible lost revenue.
On Monday, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the lower court's prior ruling in a 2-to-1 decision. The majority opinion found that the broadcasters were "not likely to prevail on the merits."
The New York Times reports that one judge out of three dissented, claiming that the antenna array Aereo uses to capture content before retransmission is a "Rube Goldberg-like contrivance, overengineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law." That judge, Denny Chin, said that the streams were in fact "public performances" and thus in violation of copyright.
Representatives for the broadcasters expressed their disappointment at the verdict. "Today's decision is a loss for the entire creative community," they said in a statement. "The court has ruled that it is O.K. to steal copyrighted material and retransmit it without compensation."
The representatives went on to say that they are considering their options to protect their programming.
With the positive ruling, Aereo now plans to expand its operations to 22 more cities this year. "We always thought our Aereo platform was permissible and I'm glad the court has denied the injunction. Now we'll build out the rest of the U.S.," said media mogul Barry Diller, a major backer of Aereo.
The case is unlikely to end with Monday's decision, however, as the Federal District Court in Los Angeles ruled against an Aereo-like service called Aereokiller in December.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
26 Comments
Representatives for the broadcasters expressed their disappointment at the verdict. "Today's decision is a loss for the entire creative community," they said in a statement. "The court has ruled that it is O.K. to steal copyrighted material and retransmit it without compensation."
Obviously not, you dolts; that would be illegal. You're changing the story somewhere.
Aereo's setup sounds sort of like a "startup telecom". Or an "indie telecom", whatever you want to call it. They're doing exactly what the existing telecoms are doing, except over the Internet (with a bunch of truly unnecessary converting in the middle). And are the old fashioned guys just whining that they're being beaten at their own game?
I've been following Aero's story for a while. Great win for them. Hope it keeps up and they expand to cities nationwide. The beauty of this program that nothing else can provide- are local channels and you can cut the cord. Don't discount the NFL as the monstrous powerhouse it is. With Aero- you don't need cable or even a tuner (or antenna)- just an app on the Apple TV 6. Can't wait. :)
[quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/156761/appeals-court-denies-broadcasters-motion-to-shut-down-aereo-tv-streaming-service#post_2303462"]A New York federal appeals court on Monday upheld a prior ruling in favor of broadcast television streaming service Aereo, disappointing broadcasters, who say that company's operations constitute illegal retransmission of owned content.[/quote] I'm sure there's more to the story - and the discussion about the type of antenna seems to support that. On the surface, it should have been an easy decision. If you have a neighborhood pool party and show a copyrighted movie, it can be considered an illegal public performance. I'm not sure why this is any more acceptable. It would be interesting to read the entire decision to see where they draw the line.
I spoke with someone who set up a similar service in Australia but shut it down because . If you have to request the recording be made BEFORE it is transmitted how exactly does this system differ from a PVR (which we already know is legal)? Sure the equipment is in the cloud, rented and the content only accessible by an internet connection but this is no different from renting the equipment and rigging a similar set-up yourself. Aereo's fee is for providing simplicity. The problem content producers have to face is that the "Broadcasting" model compares poorly to "on demand" services. The Aereo business model is only successful because theare too stubborn to accept their historical profits were obtained through strong-arming a captive audience and are unsustainable. The industry can't reasonably expect to be able to region code content AND limit broadcasts to particular dates/times AND make them only available with a subscriptions or bundled with other content AND limit the ability of people to record, delay and rebroadcast that content for personal use AND embed advertisements into the content AND limit the ability of people to filter out those advertisements. Ultimately there needs to be a business strategy that compromises between the needs of industry and the needs of consumers. This might results in some content produced under the existing model no longer being viable. I'm confident we can find ways to encourage prioritisation of high-quality content for special interest groups over the poor-quality broad audience content
Seems like the District court in the Aereokiller case is now at odds with two appellate courts in other districts. It is interesting to note Aereos plans seem to exclude the ninth circuit for now. I wonder if they are hoping Aereokiller has a succesful appeal.