Bye Bye Aereo, For Now 93
An anonymous reader writes It didn't take long for Aereo to deal with the realities of the U.S. Supreme Court decision. As of 11:30am EDT today Aereo is suspending operations while they go back to U.S. District Court. In order to keep good will with customers during this time, they are refunding the last month's payment for service. curtwoodward (2147628) writes to point out that the decision which has shut down Aereo for now doesn't mean doom for other cloud services: Don't listen to the trolls---the Supremes were very clear that their ruling only applied to Aereo's livestream and things that look just like it. iCloud, Dropbox and friends are fine.
Listen to the trolls (Score:4, Informative)
The Supremes weren't as clear as they wanted, hence the lawsuit by Fox against Dish over Hopper [arstechnica.com] the next day.
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And they will most surely lose... It didn't overturn the cablevision decision.
That doesn't matter. If the SCOTUS leaves any ambiguity at all, industries will use it to file frivolous lawsuits against their competitors. They may even get idiotic rulings from lower courts if they get lucky and this will make its way back up to SCOTUS again.
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...I seem to recall making that same remark myself in response to the first Aereo message posted here.
Some guy's black robe won't magically prevent everyone from trying to get that rule applied in the lower courts. It will have to be litigated back up to the SCOTUS before 9 guys can declare that "sorry, it doesn't apply to you". Although even that's not assured. By the time it gets back up to the SCOTUS, it could be different guys or case could just come out different.
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I didn't use Aereo, so have no skin in this game. But they effectively rented an antenna to people. Not a shared antenna, a private, one-to-one, real live antenna.
Nevermind Dropbox and the like - This ruling sets a much darker precedent than merely whether or not you can store data you don't strictly "own" in the cloud. Although those seven uselessly-obsolete
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Only if DirectTV has an issue with it or maybe if your neighbor is an asshole and charges you for it and is also doing this for every other household in the country.
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DirectTV should have zero say in the matter. And whether my neighbor lets just me, or a million people do the same, how does that materially differ? He has let people use his rooftop to mount an antenna, nothing more, nothing less.
And there you see the real problem - If it makes sense to allow one person to do it, you can't really discrim
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DirectTV should have zero say in the matter. And whether my neighbor lets just me, or a million people do the same, how does that materially differ?
It matters, because THIS is what the court is relying on, in effect.
They are totally ignoring all aspects of the technological arrangement, including the fact that a dedicated antenna is being rented out.
And saying.. essentially... if the end-user experience --- the end result -- is the same as with a CATV network, or if your business look like a CATV
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Exactly, I was only trying to point out that his analogy was not really very close to the actual case at hand.
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One person walking across a grassy field is fine. A million people walking across the same field leaves only trampled desolation.
Welcome to real world, where scale matters.
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I didn't use Aereo
Neither do I, in fact I had to read this far down the comments to figure out what the hell it was, no hints in the summary.
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They weren't renting an antenna.
You are correct, except that was exactly what they were doing.
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Did anyone seriously... (Score:3)
...think that was ever going to last? C'mon now... really?
From CEO/Founder Chet Kanojia (Score:5, Informative)
"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress." --Charles Kettering, inventor, entrepreneur, innovator & philanthropist
A little over three years ago, our team embarked on a journey to improve the consumer television experience, using technology to create a smart, cloud-based television antenna consumers could use to access live over the air broadcast television.
On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision in favor of Aereo, dealing a massive setback to consumers.
As a result of that decision, our case has been returned to the lower Court. We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps. You will be able to access your cloud-based antenna and DVR only until 11:30 a.m. ET today. All of our users will be refunded their last paid month. If you have questions about your account, please email support@aereo.com or tweet us @AereoSupport.
The spectrum that the broadcasters use to transmit over the air programming belongs to the American public and we believe you should have a right to access that live programming whether your antenna sits on the roof of your home, on top of your television or in the cloud.
On behalf of the entire team at Aereo, thank you for the outpouring of support. It has been staggering and we are so grateful for your emails, Tweets and Facebook posts. Keep your voices loud and sign up for updates at ProtectMyAntenna.org - our journey is far from done.
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The spectrum may be public, but the public does not own the data in the spectrum, (just as roads may be public, but the public don't own the cars on the roads).
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No one owns data. Someone might have copyright on it, which may or may not be something other people should care about. I'm inclined to think they shouldn't, because copyright lobby has broken the bargain (limited-time incentive to expand the public domain) and it's actively hindering production of culture in digital era.
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They where acting like the cable co / CATV (Score:2, Informative)
but they tried to use an loop hole to get out of paying the fees to the OTA channels for the rights to retransmit.
Dish, directv, TWC, Comcast, WOW and others likely would of done the same if Aereo won to cut there fees.
Now Aereo can stay around and do the same thing if they pay the fees.
Re: They where acting like the cable co / CATV (Score:4, Insightful)
The charges that OTA channels get to charge cable companies a purely a protection racket. THAT is what should have been made illegal, not Aereo!
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How, so? The content is a product and the cable companies profit from that product, and should therefore pay the OTA broadcasters for its use.
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The content is a product and the cable companies profit from that product, and should therefore pay the OTA broadcasters for its use.
No.... it's OTA. The content is being distributed freely over the air. The cable companies are profiting from value they add in terms of technical expertise, engineering work, the spending of massive amounts of dollars in capital expense to build and maintain infrastructure.
Some viewers have difficulty receiving the OTA content over the air at the quality they want using
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So, it's like gpl -- once in the air, it's becomes free to anyone who can read it? Well then, anyone should able to record it and sell DVDs of tv shows too, right?
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Re:They where acting like the cable co / CATV (Score:5, Informative)
Because there's a law that explicitly says "you need a license to retransmit free-to-air TV signals". I think it's bullshit too and it leads to absurdities like this, but the law is extremely clear. In fact, they wrote the damn thing because there was a company with a centrally-located antenna and a lot of people paid to access its signal over wires. Sound familiar?
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because there was a company with a centrally-located antenna and a lot of people paid to access its signal over wires.
Yes. That's what Community Access TV was originally developed for.
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The economics of the broadcast business have changed and it's debatable that it could survive without this source of revenue.
Everything else is moving toward a 'pay for viewer' model. Netflix and others want access to the last mile? Hand the money over to the ISP. Pretty soon, if you want people to watch your local broadcast crap, pay up or no viewers. The middle ground right now is 'must carry'. Its why we have all those shopping networks and whack-a-doodle Christian channels. Local broadcasters can join that club. Make your money selling vacuum cleaners or indulgences like everyone else.
Aereo was just ahead of its time.
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Why don't you try putting up an antenna and reselling the signal to your neighbors for profit. Do you think such behavior would be regarded as legal or acceptable?
It wouldn't be legal, but only because the law that's at issue here was written in order to make that behavior illegal after somebody did precisely that and it was ruled legal by the SCOTUS (in other words, "so we fixed the glitch"). It's all in the decision.
Whether it should be illegal is another question. The law as written leads to absurdities like this Aereo case, but you can think of others. Let's remove the motive of profit here (the law doesn't distinguish anyway). My neighbors were going to put up t
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Many older apartment buildings had a common antenna on the roof for a TV, and a lead in your apartment you could attach to your TV.
I wonder how that would play out in this modern environment, given it was part of your rent, even if not called out explicitly.
I wonder if modern HD TV is handled in a similar way in any apartment buildings, not that most people would use anything but cable anyway.
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You can put your antenna in your neighbor's yard, or share the same hardware. You're able to receive those broadcasts yourself as long as there is no corporate intermediary controlling your access.
Where does the "corporate intermediary" show up in the law? Is it still rebroadcasting if the corporation rents/sells me an antenna and a coax cable and that's it?
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Or to be more precise, the broadcaster can insist on "must carry" but when they do so, they're forbidden from demanding compensation. They could go without either if they choose, or they could completely (at their option) forbid anybody from retransmitting anything. When they do permit or demand retransmission, they're also allowed to dictate to the cable operator where when and how they're allowed to transmit to.
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Aereo was a leech.
Wrong. I could buy an HDTV antenna and wire it and mount it - or I could pay Aereo to send be a signal from my own rented antenna and get exactly the same mix of local broadcast stations. Aereo was a service I was willing to pay for.
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The 1992 Cable Act set up the must-carry; and it's intention was to help get smaller ignored broadcasters on to cable systems with the must-carry provision. The retramission consent was probably foresight. ATSC was working on HDTV standards at that time (which, if you ask me were at least 10 years too early); 8VSB and COFDM were modulation methods looked at. For some odd reason, the FCC adopted 8VSB even though it's technically inferior to COFDM. 8VSB does not
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Up next on the chopping block are going to be multi-room DVRs, Slingbox technology, and probably anything that delivers video to your computer. The judgement was not very clear on an even less clear law; and "past-precedent" will be used to get all kinds of new technology illegal.
What are you talking about? Nobody made Aereo's technology "illegal." The Supreme Court simply said that if they want to keep doing what they're doing, they have to pay licensing fees, just like any cable TV company does, and just like streaming services the license content (like Hulu) do.
Keeping personal copies of over-the-air content to replay for yourself has a long legal history in the courts (going back to VCRs and cassette tapes) -- "private, non-commercial timeshifting in the home" has clearly be
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1. Neighbor lets you rent antenna on his roof, you and he run a coax cable from it to your TV.
2. Same but more neighbors/antennas.
3. Same but digitally encoded.
4. Same but using internet connections as opposed to a cable between the houses.
5. Same but with a cloud based DVR.
6. Aereo.
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PBS doesn't do it for the sole reason that the law forbids non-commercial entities from seeking retransmission fees. Don't think for a second that they wouldn't if they could. Remember, PBS is one of the organizations that launched the original lawsuit against Aereo. They make a ton of money from the sales of their DVDs, and it was their opinion that Aereo was reducing the value of these sales by allowing users to make DVR recordings of them at a very low cost (otherwise your typical DVR costs a lot more th
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You're tacitly equating the organization that gave us Reading Rainbow, The News Hour, and Nova with the organization that gave us Xenu? Seriously?
No, I'm just giving you an example of why a not for profit doesn't mean there's no profit involved. That isn't used as a means of equating or even comparing the two organizations whatsoever, it's just better describing what exactly not for profit means.
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Oh and by the way, PBS president Paula Kerger brings in somewhere north of $600,000 per year annually. He personally was one of those lobbying for the government to put the brakes on Aereo. He also regularly lobbies for more government funding to PBS. That's just to give you an idea of what you defended when you said with regard to this lawsuit, and I quote: "Take PBS out of the equation."
I hear people rail all day about CEO pay being too much, while these same people often believe that PBS deserves taxpaye
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Re:They where acting like the cable co / CATV (Score:5, Insightful)
but they tried to use an loop hole to get out of paying the fees to the OTA channels for the rights to retransmit.
In fact, those are rights to rebroadcast. While technically you would have to describe Aereo as "transmission", what they are really doing is transporting, and they are doing it as your agent.
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And transmitting is different from transporting, how?
Because broadcast is a likely synonym for transmit (and vice versa) but not for transport, and no broadcast is occurring — in fact, precisely the opposite — "transport" is probably a better word to describe what they do.
Pay the fees or challenge the law mandating the fees in the first place. Aereo shouldn't get a free pass that isn't available to any other commercial operator
It should be available to all, because they're not infringing upon broadcast rights designed to ensure that content and commercials are delivered together.
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Here is the difference between Aero and Cable, and the reason the so called loop hole is valid. Cable collects all the broadcasts signals and retransmitts all those signals along to all subscribers. The fee is the right to collect and retransmit en masse.
There is also and issue of the broadcasters use of the public airwaves. In exchange for this use, it is assumed that the tax payers
Where? (Score:2)
Where != were.
Um (Score:2, Interesting)
If they simply delay the stream by a tiny amount, even just a few seconds, the decision no longer applies, because then it becomes timeshifting on behalf of the customer, rather than live retransmission. Am I the only one who sees this loophole?I hope not.
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I think it's even mentioned at one point of the Supreme Court's decision. They'll have to do a bit more than that, and only offer pre-recorded programming, but It'll probably be done and, if they have the money to survive the lawsuits, it'll end up before the Supreme Court again. http://nypost.com/2014/06/26/hope-for-aereo-despite-supreme-court-defeat/ [nypost.com]
The geek too clever for his own good. (Score:2)
If they simply delay the stream by a tiny amount, even just a few seconds, the decision no longer applies, because then it becomes timeshifting on behalf of the customer, rather than live retransmission. Am I the only one who sees this loophole?
The Supremes don't take it well when you try to evade their decisions by resorting to half-assed tricks and gimmicks. Tricks that may be particularly embarrassing to the minority who stood by you the first time around.
Kanojia has some work to do (Score:2)
What the fuck is Aereo? (Score:1)
Why the fuck do basic tech terms get defined, but "Aereo" has no explanation?
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You expect the /. editors to actually do their job?
Bwahahaha.
They have been slacking the day /. started.
And yes, it sucks that they can't even post a summary to set the context.
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yeah I was like "WTF is Aereo" also, and had to google for it.
And the summary mentions the Supremes but does not explain why Diana Ross and the Supremes are involved with a flaky soon-to-be-dead internet startup.
Legislating from the bench (Score:1, Interesting)
Let's be clear on what happened here. The supposedly conservative judges modified an existing law.
They took the text of the law and decided that something that complied with the letter of the law was still in violation "because".
Because what? Because they thought that the intent of the legislators when passing the law was to ban this type of arrangement. Perhaps so, but that should not be relevant. What should be relevant is the text of the law. What happened was that the Supreme Court essentially re-wrot
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They took the text of the law and decided that something that complied with the letter of the law was still in violation "because".
Because -----
Aereo was a community antenna system operating under the thinnest of legal and technical disguises and for CATV the rules have been clear at least since the mid-nineties.
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Not a community antenna. One antenna services one person.
more like a fixed array of antennas serving a great many people.
and marketed to the same audience that began subscribing to community antenna services in the late 1940s.
57 channels and nothing on... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do people waste so much energy on TV?
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TV content has became so bad that even if they offered me a few buck to watch shows, I wouldn't be interested. What passes today as TV really sucks. What they need to do is produce a better product with less ads. As far as Aereo, again for what ? A better way to watch shit TV ? Funny stuff.
Aereo can I at least get my PBS stream? (Score:2)
Aereo can certainly stream PBS and other must carry stations legally by this ruling.
Please Aereo, continue carrying these streams while you work for a solution.
What they should have done... (Score:2)
What they should have done is lease or sell the boxes to their subscribers and charge a monthly service fee to keep their boxes from being attacked by viruses, etc.
That way they can't be sued for anything but installing commodity software at the owner's request.
This (Score:1)
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They should totally restructure their business (Score:2)
Have one company that "rents" the antenna and provides a Software Defined Radio as a Service offering, where an API is simply provided to provision an antenna controller box which has its own IP address that listens on a specified frequency and bandwidth, compresses the bits, and streams them to the consumer.
Then another company that makes a box, which integrates with this service and "selects" television channels, from the radio antenna provider who is acting as a common carrier for "capturing sign