It's all over for Aereo

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I suspected it would end like this, but hoped that it wouldn't. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court sided with broadcasters who had filed a lawsuit against Aereo, a company whose business was to rent you a tiny, dime-sized antenna that resided in their facility, which would in turn stream broadcast network television to your house over the Internet. For $8 a month, you could not only watch the video but record it as well. Below is a diagram of how it works, from deadline.com, which has a thorough and comprehensive Q&A about the company and how it ended up in front of the Supreme Court.

 

In effect, Aereo was claiming that because the streams are free in the first place, they are not violating any copyright laws. They're right on the first part, of course; in fact you can attach any number of broadcast antenna to your house and get network TV for no charge. The broadcasters, however, claimed that it was a violation of copyright law since cable companies are legally bound to pay networks for their content. The Supreme Court agreed, stating in a 6-3 decision that there was no difference between Aereo and a cable company. The dissenting judges stated that because it was the consumer who was doing the watching and Aereo was simply acting as a middleman, the company was not violating any copyright laws.

Again, I suspected this would happen but I'm sad that it did. I cut the cable cord a long time ago, and since all local news streams online anyway and I don't follow sports (not to mention my spectacular digital media center), it hasn't been a big deal. But I am someone who believes that many big media companies are clinging too tightly to old business models and they should have found a way to work with Aereo and companies like it to move their business practices and channels forward, rather than continue the pattern of sue-sue-sue. It didn't work with record labels, whom I actually sided with, and I imagine it won't work for TV for too much longer.

Also, while researching this article, I found this picture on tapscape.com, which has some good infographics about Aereo, as well as a post that pulls no punches regarding their opinion on the whole thing. In light of the decision, it gave me quite the chuckle.

One other thing: There are some claims being made that this verdict against Aereo means that the floodgates will open for larger legal actions against cloud services in general. I don't believe that will happen as Aereo was a specific case and the cloud is so vast, integrated, and critical that it will maintain its existence as it is. If not, well, it would be the Internet equivalent of this.
If you are interested in seeing the court's point of view and why they decided the way they did, you can read their full decision in .pdf form here.