Back in the day,here in the mountainous terrain of nc,there were lots of areas that had a few antennas atop the highest peaks,that served several homes.The antennas weren't on the homeowners property.Was that,or would that be considered illegal?
Aereo Attracts Support From Dish Network, EFF & More For SCOTUS Hearing
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I disagree. Whether I put an antenna on my house or put it on the roof of my commercial building a few miles away and then run the signal through phone/data lines should not even be relevant.
Or if a tenant pays me to rent a second antenna and do the same, why is this?
Renting from Aereo is no different, in my opinion
This is where you run into trouble. In each of the scenarios you have physical control over the antenna and equipment as an individual. You may not in #6, depending on the arrangement. You may hire someone to do the work for you, but you as an individual can choose to do it all yourself.
With Aereo, they claim that that are renting you an antenna, but in reality you do not have property control over that antenna like you would if you leased the real estate and put up your own antenna.
If you were able to visit your cubic centimeter and adjust your antenna with Aereo, then perhaps it would really be fair use of your property.
There is a distinct difference. You as an individual receiving OTA signals have a statutory exemption from copyright laws to receive them free of charge. Cable and DBS as you know have statutory exemptions when they receive permission from the stations by either must carry or paying an agreed upon fee. Does Aereo acting on your behalf (which is what it pretty much boils down to) have that copyright exemption extended to them? I would bet that they will eventually lose that argument since you do not have any control of the system as an individual, so they are selling a service, not renting you a bunch of items.
So your distinction is whether I can visit my antenna or not and adjust it? I just don't see it that way. If I have an antenna problem on my roof I am calling a TV guy to crawl up there and deal with it. If my antenna is not working with Aereo then I am calling the tech support guy to adjust it.
You do forget one big thing in all of this - these channels broadcast over the airwaves and are free tv. This is simply a technological update to an existing model.
We used to have a knob on the tv to turn the channels. Then someone made a remote control. The basic function is just that - to turn the channel.
Clearly three justices in the 10th circuit ruled one way and the 2nd circuit felt differently.
Time will tell.
Yes, you can. And, you can have a single OTA antenna atop an apt building, and have it feed all of the apartments. You can also have a tower-mounted community antenna feeding everybody in town.
None of that really applies to a Slingbox, as it has the ability to rebroadcast content via the Internet that has been subscribed to by a single account-holder of cable, IPTV, or satellite service. Even OTA is limited by law to specific areas broken into DMA's. But, the law has been interpreted to allow people who reside in those DMA's to watch programming from their DMA, even when temporarily away from home. So, Sling limits the stream to one viewer at a time, presumably the subscriber or resident who has the legal permission to view it.
You remind me of the guy I used to argue with about whether or not his tapping into the cable feed in his apartment was actually stealing, as the connection was there in his unit, and had signal. So, in his mind, it was not stealing.
The rulings of course were over the injunction, not the legality of what Aereo was doing.
There is a statutory exemption in copyright law for an individual to receive OTA signals. If you run a bar or a restaurant and want to put up an antenna and show the picture to guests there are strict limits or you have to pay. Community antennas and individual antennas are spelled out.
I do not see Aereo having a slam dunk case here. In fact I personally feel that they will lose the case, but then I could be wrong. Yes leasing/renting land and putting up an antenna is legal for an individual. Hiring someone to put it up for you is also legal. But, will the courts really buy that Aereo is really renting land to the individual and the renters really have property control?
we will find out if and when SCOTUS rules. Isay if because they send the whole matter back to the lower courts.
The whole matter must be sent back to the lower courts no matter what. This is about the injunction and is not in any way related to a ruling on the merits.
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Actually you can purchase an ip address in new york, that is how some do it.
But that is not what is occuring here. You are straining logic. In your example you do not own the wires nor have consent of the cable company or anyone else.
In Aereo's example, I lease a remote antenna and a remote storage device. I use my remote antenna to pull down broadcast signals that are free over the air signals. I use data lines to transmit the broadcasts to me and only me. I live in the same metro area as the broadcast.
I lived in an apartment years ago where the owner charged a fee to hook up to the master apartment antenna on top of the building. How is this any different? I had a legal right to lease an antenna to receive free broadcast signals.
What seems to be confusing people is that this is a copyright law issue. The content of television, even OTA broadcasts are copyrighted and can only be used for purposes granted by the copyright holders. In order to make it "easier" there are blanket exemptions from copyrights granted by Congress. For example there is a blanket exemption for a satellite company like Dish to retransmit the OTA content on their satellite service by either paying a fee or the station electing must carry. This blanket copyright exemption says for that purpose the Dish customer enjoys the same rights as an OTA reception. If it was not for this exemption Dish would have to obtain permission from every possible copyright holder, this includes every song played in every commercial, every script, every image, etc... essentially an impossible task. The same goes for cable companies.
Broadcast television stations/networks have obtained rights for OTA transmission only of all the content that they put in the broadcasts. The OTA rights are only for individual reception. This is why bar and restaurants have to pay fees for their TVs (there is an exemption for a single TV of a certain size if no admission is charged).
The fact that a transmission is in the clear or OTA does not give anyone any rights to it. That was settled by courts a long time ago. It is illegal for you for example to receive Dish network without Dish's permission, even though Dish's satellites are bombarding your private property with a signal.
Of course no one previously considered if renting a tiny antenna from someone on property that was not being rented was the same thing as leasing/renting land and leasing/renting an antenna, this is what the courts will decide.
If the courts side with Aereo, one can bet that the broadcasters would immediately go to Congress to get the law updated to close that "loophole".
Broadcast television stations/networks have obtained rights for OTA transmission only of all the content that they put in the broadcasts. The OTA rights are only for individual reception. This is why bar and restaurants have to pay fees for their TVs (there is an exemption for a single TV of a certain size if no admission is charged).
The fact that a transmission is in the clear or OTA does not give anyone any rights to it. That was settled by courts a long time ago. It is illegal for you for example to receive Dish network without Dish's permission, even though Dish's satellites are bombarding your private property with a signal.
Of course no one previously considered if renting a tiny antenna from someone on property that was not being rented was the same thing as leasing/renting land and leasing/renting an antenna, this is what the courts will decide.
If the courts side with Aereo, one can bet that the broadcasters would immediately go to Congress to get the law updated to close that "loophole".
i recognize that this is your position but as we have discussed before others see the situation differenty. whenever the court announces a decision (expected to be june0 we il have bit more insight.
Question for eveyone...
I pay a fee to use someone's computer remotely over the internet. They live in the same Town but have much better upload speed than I do.
They pay for the internet on their end, may even use it for other things. I pay for the internet on my end. One day I'm using that computer while sitting in the park on my Tablet, and realize, hey, if I have them plug in a Hauppage USB TV stick I could watch some TV while in the park. Well they have one and will plug it in. Since they are not using it and getting channels from it is free there is no charge.
Would that be legal?
Then my friend who also lives in the same town sees me doing this and wants to do the same thing. He calls and finds out the guy has another computer and will lease it for the same price I am paying, and will even include the TV stick.
Is that legal?
Now that guy is overwhelmed with requests and beefs up his Internet, and has 150 people doing the same thing. They each have a log in that only works on the computer they have been assigned to. If their USB stick fails they see no TV but others see their USB stick.
Would it make any difference if you had to buy the USB stick for a one time fee? But you can sell it back if you wish?
I pay a fee to use someone's computer remotely over the internet. They live in the same Town but have much better upload speed than I do.
They pay for the internet on their end, may even use it for other things. I pay for the internet on my end. One day I'm using that computer while sitting in the park on my Tablet, and realize, hey, if I have them plug in a Hauppage USB TV stick I could watch some TV while in the park. Well they have one and will plug it in. Since they are not using it and getting channels from it is free there is no charge.
Would that be legal?
Then my friend who also lives in the same town sees me doing this and wants to do the same thing. He calls and finds out the guy has another computer and will lease it for the same price I am paying, and will even include the TV stick.
Is that legal?
Now that guy is overwhelmed with requests and beefs up his Internet, and has 150 people doing the same thing. They each have a log in that only works on the computer they have been assigned to. If their USB stick fails they see no TV but others see their USB stick.
Would it make any difference if you had to buy the USB stick for a one time fee? But you can sell it back if you wish?
That should be fine, then. But, why would one subscribe to that vs just doing it themselves at home?
If you want to get futher into it - Say I can get all the channels from a neighboring DMA at my own house. (I can - Springfield Mass) If Aereo can too, why couldn't I also get those legally?
Or even more, within my own DMA, Aereo has their antenna and it happens to get out of market channels that I can not get at my house. If it is legal for me to rent to get my DMA channels, why wouldn't I be able to also watch any signal the antenna mounted inside my DMA can get?
Or even more, within my own DMA, Aereo has their antenna and it happens to get out of market channels that I can not get at my house. If it is legal for me to rent to get my DMA channels, why wouldn't I be able to also watch any signal the antenna mounted inside my DMA can get?
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There are people who live inside a DMA that cannot receive all of the channels with an antenna. There are even some people who live inside a DMA that cannot receive ANY of their supposedly local channels with an antenna. As I understand it, there are dark spots in Manhattan.
