yes, while cable TV mso's are subject to copyright law in regards to retransmission of local broadcasters, I thought from day one satellite was granted an exemption including the current, but near to expire, STELAR legislation.
There have been attempts to take away satellite exemption on copyright in regards to retransmission of local broadcast but those attempts failed. However, with new legislation being crafted to replace the soon-to-expire STELAR, the fight to take away satellites exemption copyright in regards to local into local is underway right now, or at least that's my understanding of the situation.
And for what it's worth copyright law has no special standing in which Congress cannot explicitly write any exemption it wants to in any piece of legislation. As far as I can remember, copyright is not an article of the Constitution. Further, copyright laws themselves can be completely re-written struck out or amended anyway Congress pleases including even abolishing what we know as copyright in our modern world. Of course, that's an extreme an unlikely situation. However if at some point society and Congress believe that local into local for satellite and local retransmission for cable TV should be exempt from copyright for the purposes of retransmission, Congress can do so and it would not be overturned. In regards to copyright law, Congress can do anything it wants and that is why satellite, to my last recollection, is exempt and not cable TV MSO's. However new satellite legislation could force satellite LiL to be subject to the same copyright provision as cable TV, of course, the satellite companies will fight that and could once again prevail. perhaps I've missed something but I seem to recall that satellite is still exempt from copyright in regards to local into local.
