Aereo Creator Prepared for 'Great Fight' > It will be an easy, but expensive win for Aereo

reply to Rambo76098

Re: It will be an easy, but expensive win for Aereo

If you were a lawyer you would be agreeing with me.
There are 3 specific things going on here and only one of them has to be deemed illegal for you to be right.

1. An end user watching OTA broadcasts on their TV
2. An end users leasing an antenna and equipment from a company to connect to their TV
3. An end user connecting their leased antenna to a device like another tv, computer, or phone over a long cord for their for private personal viewing only.

Please tell me how any of those are illegal????
Oh, wait you cant.

1. Is legal or no one can watch OTA tv
2. Is legal or you could not rent or lease anything that shows anything copyrighted, you would have to buy it out right.
3. Copyright law would have to set a limit on the distance you can be from your antenna to make this illegal. Right now this does not exist.

For Aereo to be illegal they have to change the law, this change would also then make slingboxes illegal

Don't argue with this Oh_No guy, no matter how much fact and reality you bring to the table, and hold up in front of him, he will keep repeating his contentions over and over. I went through this on the last Aereo thread. He is like the song from the Music Man about Iowans. "And we're so by God stubborn / We could stand touchin' noses / For a week at a time / And never see eye-to-eye"

But... despite my warning to you.... here goes.

Your first three cases are all legal to do without obtaining a separate license in that they have not been ruled illegal. Case 1 is basic reception of a broadcast signal by a TV. Case 2 is CATV, where there's one big antenna and everyone connects to it. Case 3 is SlingBox, where an end user place-shifts the feed over the Internet.

Important to note that case 2 is NOT today's Cable TV, which DOES have to license the stream. Why? Because they capture and rebroadcast the stream in a different form for the end user, as a paid service. It's not just a straight delivery of the received signal to the TV.

Important to note that case 3 is NOT Aereo. Why? Because Aereo captures and rebroadcasts the stream in a different form for the end user, as a paid service. Why is this not Slingbox? Those magic words: "paid service". SlingBox is NOT a paid service, it is a hardware device that the end user purchases and owns and operates ON HIS/HER OWN.

So get this straight Oh_No: an end user can placeshift (SlingBox) or timeshift (DVR) a broadcast, on their own, using their own hardware. That's legal and allowed under the standard license. But if a COMPANY offers a PAID SERVICE doing placeshifting or timeshifting FOR THE END USER, that is NOT legal and is a copyright violation, unless of course they've acquired the required licenses from the owners.

Hey, this may change sometime, but that's the way it is, and has been held by the courts for many moons now.

Case 3 is Aereo.
'broadcasting' is to multiple people which aereo does not do.
They lease you the antenna and tuner and dvr that you connect your viewing device to with a long cord for private viewing only. Aereo 'broadcasts' nothing.
If you want to call it 'retransmission' then a OTA tuner box I connect to my TV does the exact same 'retransmission' when I connect it to my analog tv - it even changes the format of the digital video signal and sends it over a cord to my analog tv.

So you are saying it is illegal to lease a antenna, tuner, dvr, or any other media equipment to a customer for their singular private only viewing??

No court has upheld this. I went over this in another topic and linked to the zediva dvd service injuction. Companies run out of money and settle. There has been no court ruling saying leasing equipment with a long cord is illegal yet.
This is why Aereo is doing what they are doing. It is not illegal by ANY court ruling or any current law.

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reply to MyDogHsFleas

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I did not insult you. I just understand that you are pre 2000 in your working technology and did not grow up with the technology we use today.
You thinking about aereo in antiquated terms that do not apply today. I broke down the 3 issues here and neither of them are against the law.

If you really know the industry you would know there has never been a ruling deeming the leasing setup aereo doing illegal. No copyright law limits the lenght of your cord or how you lease equipment from someone.

reply to MyDogHsFleas