SCOTUS says that because many people are being transmitted the same quasi live programming at the same time, it is a distribution. They note that the Congressional legislation's intent was not to create a loophole where antennas could be farmed as Aereo do. I find it odd that the uber-conservatives dissented. This felt like a 9-0 decision, one way or the other. The dissenting opinion seems to argue that Aereo is doing ("performing") nothing.
What is funny is the dissent liken Aereo antennas to that of a library card. The oddity is that you are not charged to get or use a library card. Their argument seems odd. They argue because the system doesn't know what it is transmitting (copyrighted or not-copyrighted material) that all is square, but Aereo has no rights to any of it, so the entire system, on this basis is infringement. It seems absurd that they note that Aereo isn't broadcasting all the channels at the same time as a cable or sat company. A box usually has only one or two tuners, so they aren't actually capable of receiving all of the channels at the same time either.
The most convincing argument used at Satguys is that Aereo is legal because the antenna is being leased by the consumer, so they are receiving a signal that they own rights to. But I don't see this argument in the dissenting opinion. Scalia is more or less saying Aereo isn't doing anything. What I find odd is that based on their argument, it should be legal to redistribute a single channel and charge for such services, because if you rebroadcast a signal in 1's and 0's and thus are not broadcasting like a cable company, then it is kosher.
I apologize for my rant on my last post. Still devastated like everybody else on this controversial SCOTUS ruling.
As I say before I hate corporate greed and corruption like The NAB, MPAA, RIAA, ESRB, and US Anti-Doping Agency as well.
I felt The NAB took away freedom. That's my POV!
Lets not go over the top here. This isn't exactly controversial. They looked at this from the big picture point of view, more of what they were doing, not how they were doing it. People were paying. What were the people getting for the payment, a DVR service and access to locals*.
* - Aereo said they were renting an antenna too.