SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 16 submissions in the queue.
SoylentNews
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."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
You fill a much-needed gap.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday June 25 2014, @08:25PM
So, after the law was changed in the 1970s, all the cable re-broadcast companies had to do to evade the law was to install a separate TV antenna and tuner for each customer?
In this case, I'm afraid its you who are trying to argue "...but this is new and different because its on the Internet!".
At worst, all SCOTUS did was save Congress the effort of slipping a quick loophole-blocking rider into the next fisheries and peanut farms bill.
The beef here is the 1970s law defining re-transmission of free-to-air signals as copying. That's dumb. That's what needs fixing.