aereo

Oops, U.S. supreme court kills cable TV industry

10 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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On the other hand, cable still has a fistful of dollars.

Well. That didn’t take long. Barely a fortnight after the U.S. supreme court ruled that Aereo “looks-like-cable-TV” so it must be treated like cable TV (in dissenting justice Antonin Scalia’s phrase), Aero has told a federal trial court judge, OK, we’re cable TV…

The Supreme Court’s holding that Aereo is a cable system under the Copyright Act is significant because, as a cable system, Aereo is now entitled to the benefits of the copyright statutory license pursuant to the Copyright Act…Aereo is proceeding to file the necessary statements of account and royalty fees.

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If new tech looks like old tech, old rules apply says supreme court

28 June 2014 by Steve Blum
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Today’s turn-of-the-knob logic might have made VCRs contraband 30 years ago.

Functionality, not technology, should guide how pre-Internet laws are applied in cyberspace. That’s the essential logic behind a U.S. supreme court ruling on Wednesday, that said that the same copyright rules that apply to cable TV systems also apply to Aereo, an online system for accessing broadcast television signals.

Aereo argued that since viewers were individually activating a tiny receiver and antenna, and selecting which channel to watch, it was more like a VCR than a cable TV system, which streams multiple channels continuously.… More