Aereo Ruling Could Impact Pandora 107
itwbennett writes "Aereo's court battles are far from over, to be sure, but the ruling earlier this month that the TV streaming service doesn't violate copyright laws must have the folks at music streaming service Pandora shaking their heads, wondering why they're still paying royalties that currently consume more than half their revenues. The implications of Aereo's business model are far-reaching and may ultimately 'be resolved by Congress, just as it did when cable first came on the scene, by passing legislation to redefine a public performance,' writes broadcast industry attorney David Oxenford."
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Sure it is. A link to one of those "reputation management firms" (or whatever those shill scumbags call themselves) made the rounds awhile back mentioning slashdot and reddit by name.
Playing back a recording (Score:2)
It should never be considered a "public performance".. Not until a video of me fixing a toilet actually fixes a toilet.
Re:Playing back a recording (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the words on the paper, silently, and to myself.
Private performance.
I read the words aloud in my own home. The cats look at me like I am insane. (Because I probably am for reading aloud to them to begin with, since they can't comprehend the words I am speaking anyway.)
Private performance.
I read aloud to my 3 year old niece from her favorite Dr Suess book.
Private performance.
I read aloud in front of hundreds of people who paid to attend, or were otherwise asked to attend that reading.
Public performance.
One of these things is not like the others.
This isn't hard.
Re:Playing back a recording (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't hard.
I disagree. People are surprised to learn that showing a movie to a bunch of school kids is "a performance". People violate the law all the time and don't even realize it, because you have to be an expert to learn all of the intricacies of copyright law. I really don't understand why we apply it to non-commercial use.
Re:Playing back a recording (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Playing back a recording (Score:5, Insightful)
Good. Now define "educational".
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Good. Now define "educational".
Easy. Anything done by a government-run school. The government doesn't want to get sued for every stupid copyright violation, so it exempted itself, just as it always does with shitty laws.
By way of example, the government is about to exempt itself from Obamacare [politico.com].
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You know, one of the first things we need to insist upon, is congress passing laws specifically saying they MUST be subject to the same laws as the rest of the populace they represent. This shit has to STOP.
If they had to deal with the Social Security system, and the medical system, etc...that they force down our throats, they might be a little more thoughtful before pushing crap legislature through.
Re:Playing back a recording (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, here's a 5-part series [educationworld.com] on how simple copyright is in education.
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but how do I know that I have permission from the copyright holders to view the video?
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Sincerely, after reading the TOC and finding this:
Part 2: Is Fair Use a License to Steal?
I stopped reading any further.
Fair Use is NOT a License to Steal. Fair Use is a sick joke remembering us that our freedom to interchange knowdlege [aka learning] (and mix it, change it, adapt it, improve it, etc.) has been sold to private companies so much that it has to be preserved from dissapearing.
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Am I going to be violating copyright law if I watch it?
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Do you plan to learn anything from it?
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You can read it. You can set up a lab full of computers and instruct all of the students to read it individually. But throw that puppy on an overhead, and it's a "performance".
Without government rules like this, how could commerce even function?
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Do two eyes watching it count as a public performance?
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If you are teaching music, you can't just start playing every album ever made and say "it's education, it's exempt!" You can't even play an entire song and say "did you hear that cord progression at the be
Re:Playing back a recording (Score:5, Insightful)
The intention was that what the law says is public, vs private, is not what the general public has in mind for that. The added joy of people unknowingly violating that law just underscores this fact, and only serves to show that the definitions used for legal applications are byzantine, and purposefully convoluted to serve a specific economic agenda.
Personally, I feel that the legal system is not supposed to be used in such a fashion; [to create specific legal categories of infringement, specifically to monetize clearly non-economic, and private activities via renumeration of court awarded fees and judgements.]
To me, such activities say two things:
1) There is an influential demographic that is suffering from an entitlement complex, who feels they are entitled to financial compensation for non-economic uses of things they have created, or any time a person other than their sublicensed client in any way accessess that intellectual property. Eg, they think they should be paid if I lend a book to a friend, and other stupid things.
2) this demographic has paid substantial sums of money to cuddle up with politicians, for the express purposes of having these definitions and categories of infringement, and accepted methods of renumeration drafted and signed into law.
I am apt to point out that a supreme court judge asserted that just because one has enjoyed a living performing a certain service for a time, does not mean that the courts are compelled to ensure their continued profit from that service, nor for the wheels of progress to be halted or reversed. (Paraphrased)
In other words, the interested parties lobbying for this legislation do not actually have a legitimate position from which to frame their demands, and the legal definitions in question should never have been drafted.
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I am apt to point out that a supreme court judge asserted that just because one has enjoyed a living performing a certain service for a time, does not mean that the courts are compelled to ensure their continued profit from that service, nor for the wheels of progress to be halted or reversed. (Paraphrased)
I know Heinlein said that*, but it sounds extremely out of character for a Supreme Court Justice. A quick Google search didn't turn up anything good, which Justice said that?
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
Heinlein, Life-line (1939)
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-- People are surprised to learn that showing a movie to a bunch of school kids is "a performance".
No they aren't surprised at all. About playing movies in classrooms, I've heard many teachers say: "I don't know why we're not being sued." They just go along with it because it's so wide-spread that they assume it must be legal somehow, or at least significantly under the radar. It seems to be legally safe, because it's both non-profit, and educational, but those involved aren't so brainless as you make the
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I didn't say "teachers". I would expect teachers to be much more savvy about copyright in the classroom than the population at large. I'd be surprised if you could make it through a masters in education without the topic coming up at least a few times.
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After seeing what you learn about copyright in a M.Ed. program, you are sadly mistaken. Considering copyright lawyers are confused about what is allowed and what isn't, imagine what the educators are like. I left that class more confused then when I went in. The result is that you get teachers that are too terrified to use anything or they just go "fuck it" and do whatever they want because, in the end, they are the experts as to what is educational and what isn't.
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When "people violate a law all the time and don't even realize it" it's called "untenable" and the law should be struck down.
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"Untenable" is a concept that doesn't appear to exist where "justice" is a private industry that is "too big to fail."
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You left a few out, which could be relevant to the case at hand:
I read aloud in front of a microphone connected to an FM transmitter, while hundreds of people listen to their radios tuned to the frequency my FM transmitter is broadcasting on.
I read aloud in front of a microphone connected to a PC which is streaming the audio from that microphone over the internet, while hundreds of people in their respective private rooms around the world connect to that stream and listen in.
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Performances in venues where you have to buy a ticket (or otherwise register) and pass through security are still public performances.
Re:Playing back a recording (Score:5, Informative)
I watch broadcast tv
Private performance.
I record broadcast tv to my computer and play it back later
Private performance.
I record broadcast tv to my computer and stream it to a computer/tablet/phone over the internet
Private performance
I rent an antenna, a hard drive, and bandwidth from a 3rd party and record broadcast tv onto the hard drive so that I can play it back over the internet.
*Second Circuit Court says: Private performance.
Pandora is wondering why this can't apply to them as well.
*The decision is limited to NY, Vermont, and Connecticut.
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I watch broadcast tv Private performance.
How do you come to the conclusion that the television show that is broadcast to the public, is actually a private performance? The fact that you are in a different room than other people watching it, doesn't make it private. The fact you are watching it in private doesn't make it private.
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I read aloud to my 3 year old niece from her favorite Dr Suess book.
Private performance.
I read aloud in front of hundreds of people who paid to attend, or were otherwise asked to attend that reading.
Public performance.
Agreed. Of course, there's a pretty big gap between your 3 year-old niece and hundreds of people who paid to attend or were otherwise asked to attend.
Take the numbers, for example. If I read aloud to 1 person who paid me to read it, is it a public performance? What if I'm paid to do other things. Suppose I'm a nurse for an elderly person and I'm paid to help him out in the bathroom, cook meals, and read him books? He's paying me, I'm making money from reading him books, but it's only one other person.
W
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Private. All of them.
An unpublicized reading or performance is a private performance (unpublicized meaning by definition not made known to the public). If the nursing home had advertised the performance using the title of the performed work in any way, as opposed to having "reading time" or "music time" on a schedule, then they would fall uner public performance guidelines.
If you don't make the performance of the specific work known to the public then it is a private performance.
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Private. All of them.
An unpublicized reading or performance is a private performance (unpublicized meaning by definition not made known to the public). If the nursing home had advertised the performance using the title of the performed work in any way, as opposed to having "reading time" or "music time" on a schedule, then they would fall uner public performance guidelines.
If you don't make the performance of the specific work known to the public then it is a private performance.
Personally, I would love to come and live in the country you are writing the laws for...
However according to US law,
To perform or display a work “publicly” means—
(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by me
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As a writer, I'm here to inform you that you are a genuine, grade-A doorknob.
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If the fact that--unlike most people who style themselves as such--I have actually been published by big names in the industry (well, okay, not O'Reilly--not yet, at least), have close to a million total print copies sold, make a pretty nice living in one of the world's nicer cities, and still have time to squander on you makes me special...
Well, gee, I will just try very hard to live it down somehow.
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How nice for you that you can apparently see inside my head and understand what motivates me.
In fact, my writing career began as exactly that--an effort to help others.
The fact that it has also worked out to benefit me materially, well beyond any expectations that I had when I started, is a rather nice side effect.
BTW, I worked my ass off, took nothing that did not belong to me, and did not raise my hand against anyone in the course of establishing myself. So if you're trying to guilt-trip me or lay some ki
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BTW, I worked my ass off, took nothing that did not belong to me, and did not raise my hand against anyone in the course of establishing myself.
I should also point out that this was probably the first time in my life that I could make such a claim about about any of my endeavours. I'm not exactly an angel now, but I was even less of one in previous incarnations.
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No, nothing is new under the sun, and yes, I've stood on the shoulder of giants.
So what the ring-tailed rambling hell are you on about?
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Pandora needs to change technology to win. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Except that Pandora doesn't exactly stream live radio. They generate content streams customized to the listener (or in the case of the genre "stations" specific to that genre). So yeah the closest Pandora could get would be a few million cds and some sort of switching mechanism for the stream.
They pay for access to the content, plus a per play fee. Really don't see how the ruling could be in any way applied to Pandora
Re:Pandora needs to change technology to win. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, FM stations that broadcast over 200 feet have to be licensed. The cheapest way to go beyond unlicensed use is LPFM but it's rather quirky in its requirements, wouldn't be suitable, and would be overpowered by 1000x or more. Using frequencies outside the traditional FM range is another story entirely though.
Power draw would also not be an issue. A transmitter and receiver on the same circuit board could get away with power of under 1mW. Possibly significantly below 1mW in a faraday cage.
As to cost,
Re:Pandora needs to change technology to win. (Score:4, Informative)
Or a $20 50mW FM transmitter, a stripped bit of wire to use as an antenna, and a faraday cage for each user's personal "station". That would put them pretty much exactly where aero is.
Not even close. Aereo is merely relaying an existing signal. Pandora is originating the signal.
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Pandora pays exorbitant license rates above and beyond that paid by actual FM radio broadcasters.
It may be worth it to implement a system where they transmit a custom "Radio station" and then receive it via an antenna like Aereo just to pay the radio license fees and not the streaming license fees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_radio#US_royalty_controversy
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RE: Pandora pays exorbitant license rates above and beyond that paid by actual FM radio broadcasters.
That's because the RIAA wants to kill competition.
If the RIAA owned Pandora, these fees would magically disappear.
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Re:Pandora needs to change technology to win. (Score:4, Informative)
It wasn't CDs, but rather DVDs, but that is essentially what Zediva tried with individual DVDs and players [wikipedia.org]. It ultimately didn't work out for them in the end, although I don't believe that there was final verdict that said what they were attempting to do was illegal. If another company wanted to try the legal challenge, they better have VERY deep pockets.
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- I sign up for $x/year, pay up-front
- They record many radio channels for me, and index them by song
- After a month of recording the many channels, the amount of music they have available for me is good enough and they can just plug my library into their old algorithms and everything works fine and it's a private performance so no royalties are due.
- Profit!!
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Re: Pandora needs to change technology to win. (Score:1)
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What would be the point? I can already stream live radio from a vast number of stations from all over legally and with no cost. Heck, a fair number of stations even allow you to stream recorded broadcasts for nothing.
Re: Pandora needs to change technology to win. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that would still be public performance. It's defined in the Copyright Act, and includes performances to only one person at a time:
To perform or display a work âoepubliclyâ meansâ"
(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.
Instead there'd have to buy one CD per user who wanted to listen.
They could save momey by renting them to users. Except that you can't rent music CDs as a rule due to an exception to first sale ( 17 USC 109 (b)(1)(a) ), they might need to create a complicated system of selling and repurchasing discs on demand which would probably not convince a court that it was something other than rental.
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Re: Pandora needs to change technology to win. (Score:2)
If you were playing the radio, rather than prerecorded music, it's likely he was saying that you fell under the home style exception. Or perhaps ASCAP has some circumstances where they won't extort money out of people, but I have a hard time imagining it.
Music videos (Score:1)
Do the same royalties apply to music videos? If not, why doesn't Pandora stream low quality video/high quality audio for the songs it can to cut down on costs.
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aereo may need to add forced Regional locks if (Score:2)
aereo may need to add forced Regional locks if they don't want to get sued the by the NHL, NBA, MLB, NFL, ESPN / ABC and others.
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Is this Aero service not limited to the local market where the broadcast station might be received? If so, are these local market not blacked out by the sports organizations? Can they broadcast their "antenna" signal from a local area to the entire Internet? Since broadcast TV depends on advertising, should the broadcasters not be happy to get more eyeballs to advertise to?
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Aereo only takes customers who live in the greater NYC area. Yes, if you are a customer you can access your account from anywhere in the world, but you have reside somewhere that you could conceivably record the same content with an antenna and stream it to yourself. There are other products on the market now that let you do that. Aereo just lets consumers outsources the technology. I expect that as Aereo expands to more cities they will only allow customers to record and stream content from their loca
Uh, why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right - Pandora is in control of the content; Aereo is just transmitting a signal somebody else controls over the Internet. If Pandora were re-transmitting an FM station from some market instead of choosing the songs .... wait, how did this ever go from a lame draft on somebody's blog to a Slashdot story?
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I would also add that it is a public, free broadcast. Pandora is picking and chosing the content they broadcast.
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Because Aereo also allows time shifting the recording. So I think the original author has a valid point. So lets say I have the array of N antennas, and I pick up a song played by a public station. Do I now have N performances of the song that I can time shift out for free? Maybe the quality isn't so great so I explicitly create a High Quality Audio radio station (as was suggested) and I pay the fees (or don't depending on the size/law) for a single broadcast (which again are picked up by my antenna array) Do I again have N performances of the song available? At this point if you are creating your own radio station, you probably don't even need to time shift.
It has been policy and (I believe law) that anything transmitted OTA for Radio and TV since its inception is considered a public broadcast when done by the licensed stataions. So what Aero is doing for TV could equally be done for Radio. And the time-shifting argument doesn't apply as VCR/DVR issues have already been resolved and its ultimately no different.
The result may be that more will leave the public OTA TV and Radio services - whether groups like ABC, CBS, FOX, etc want to take their media to regu
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What Aereo is doing is not even rebroadcasting, which would apparently be the word that the broadcast industry is trying to redefine. It's basically the same as having an antenna, DVR and Slingbox at your home, except it's not at your home and there are a lot of them under one roof.
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Libraries should take advantage as well (Score:2)
About 10 years back, there was a big uproar that libraries wanted to do similar with regular print bo
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Actually, some libraries are renting electronic versions of books. My wife will take out Kindle books via our local library and the New York Public Library. (You just need to be a New York resident, no need to live in New York City to sign up.) It goes through Amazon.com and it has DRM, of course, but it's still electronic rentals. She also takes out audio books that she can play on an iPod or other device.
Redefining "public performance" (Score:2)
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You can bet that the MAFIAA is hard at work writing legislation for their wholly owned subsidiary, the US Congress...
This is a ridiculous notion, to say that the US Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the RIAA and MPAA. ...they begrudgingly share ownership with Monsanto, BP, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, Comcast, and General Motors.
Tuuuu (Score:1)
Aero redirects others' signals and is just a fancy antenna. Pandora is 1000 little Internet radio stations, and should pay royalties like any other.
There is no comparison. In the former, the stations pay the royalties. In the latter, the station, Pandora, does, too.
Tune In Radio isn't even like either -- it is just a finder and facilitator of broadcast radio stations' newfangled Intertubes feeds.