Supreme Court to hear broadcast copyright case
By Andrea Peterson, Washington Post
Aereo is a company that sells access to live television programming over the Internet — without paying broadcasters for the privilege. Unsurprisingly, broadcasters don’t like that. In fact, they dislike it so much that they’ve engaged in a lengthy legal battle to shut Aereo down. And Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear their case.
Aereo uses small HDTV antennas to receive over the air broadcasts — just the television any normal consumer with a digital antenna could receive over the air for free, not cable channels — and mirrors their content on their own servers. Users pay a small monthly fee for control of one of those antennas, as well as features including a cloud hosted DVR service. Broadcasters have alleged this counts as “retransmission” — which would require Aereo to pay fees for privilege — or else a public performance that infringes copyright.
But Aereo argues that since each subscriber is assigned their own antenna to control, it doesn’t violate the federal copyright laws. And a majority opinion from New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the streaming service.