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posted by
NCommander
on Wednesday June 25 2014, @03:55PM
from the why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept.
from the why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept.
The United States Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 against Aereo, saying that Aereo's scheme to lease out thousands of tiny antennas doesn't differentiate it from a cable company, and therefore Aereo violates copyright law. "In a 6-3 opinion (PDF) written by Justice Steven Breyer, Aereo was found to violate copyright law. According to the opinion, the company is the equivalent of a cable company, which must pay licensing fees when broadcasting over-the-air content. "Viewed in terms of Congress; regulatory objectives, these behind-the-scenes technological differences do not distinguish Aereo's system from cable systems, which do perform publicly," reads the opinion."
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Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not
advice, it is merely custom.
-- Mark Twain
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:18PM
This decision basically upholds that copyright is now for rent-seeking. Anyone who wants a cut of someone else's innovation can simply assert copyright in some way and has to be given money. Innovation is not possible without paying the established corporations rent. I'm still trying to process this decision (it's already making me want to microwave a cat and mail people pizza rolls), but it seems to be saying innovation is not allowed in the USA without paying established corporations money. If this logic is extended, almost any new medium for the transfer of information could be shut down by the same approach. Apple could have been put out of business with the original iPod because it allowed people to bypass CDs in the same way Aero allows people to bypass cable TV. I wonder if this could be extended to cloud computing in general. Any time a copyrighted file is involved, a cloud service could be shut down. And there's no appeal, this is final.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by WillAdams on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:21PM
The appeal would be to get Congress to change the law in question --- or write one which demands that judicial review be done in terms of what is actually written into the law, as opposed to what the judges think was intended.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @05:10PM
Pizza Rolls are owned by General Mills and cannot be distributed without their consent. As a result of your actions, all mail and shipping services will be shut down.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday June 25 2014, @09:25PM
Nonsense. The content WAS and IS decidedly copyrighted. Cable companies having to pay to retransmit copyrighted content is no more rent-seeking than people with DVD-Burners having to pay copyright owners to make and sell copies of their works. The rent-seeking part of copyright is that it has been unconstitutionally extended out to infinity-minus-1-day, instead of the original 20-year life to give creators ample time to profit from it before public domain takes over.
Nope. Only true if Apple was renting iPods, and the one who copied that music onto them from the radio or similar (which Aereo effectively does). You can still rent out a TV antenna.
In fact, the next incarnation of Aereo might be to provide hosting space and VPN internet connectivity for Tivos/Slingboxes/HDHomeRuns, without Aereo directly managing the hardware and the storage space for the users.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday June 26 2014, @04:11AM
Not to argue your point but the original copyright term was 14+14 years with the necessity of registering your work and depositing a copy at Oxford or Cambridge all for advancing learning. The Americans copied this with the Constitution changing the advancement of learning to advancing the sciences and arts and Congress with the first American copyright law having the same terms except the copy deposited at the Library of Congress.
14+14 still seems like a good compromise with most works from the 20th Century now entering the public domain and the blockbusters from pre-1986 entering the public domain. I like the idea of having to make an effort to copyright work as well, why should this post be copyrighted, especially for my lifetime + 50 (where I am) or 70 years. Perhaps an automatic protection for one year to stop someone taking your work before it is finished and/or registered.