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Supreme Court to Decide if Aereo's Service Results in ‘Public Pe

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Aereo Investors Lose a $95.6 Million Bet on Future of Television. Getty Images When Aereo launched in February 2012, Barry Diller and other investors in the streaming TV service spoke hopefully of freeing programming from a closed network.

Aereo Investors Lose a $95.6 Million Bet on Future of Television

Were they too optimistic? Aereo scored $95.6 million in venture equity despite a legal bull rush from television networks who contended the company was violating their public performance rights. Remarkably, $33.5 million of Aereo's funding — more than a third — came in October 2013 as the case was nearing the Supreme Court. The high court hadn't yet delivered its near death knell. On Thursday, Aereo declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and according to the debtor's court documents, the upstart had burned through most of its funding. However, that will come too late for the 74 unfortunate employees in Boston and New York who were laid off from the company last week. In truth, Aereo never surpassed 80,000 subscribers, according to documents filed with the Copyright Office.

Streaming TV site Aereo files for bankruptcy, will reorganize. Aereo filed for voluntary bankruptcy on Thursday, a move the company says will allow it to “maximize the value of its business and assets” without being dragged down by ongoing lawsuits in several states.

Streaming TV site Aereo files for bankruptcy, will reorganize

The Chapter 11 filing appears to be a strategic decision by Aereo, which offered consumers a way to watch and record TV on mobile devices but has been hamstrung since suffering a 6-3 defeat at the Supreme Court in June. Aereo’s bankruptcy petition shows it owes roughly $2 million to a list of creditors that include internet companies like Level 3 and Google, as well as several law firms. Aereo’s saga signals a chilling effect for innovation. Thursday’s announcement by Aereo that it will be shuttering its Boston office and laying off most of its staff is the inevitable consequence of an unfortunate Supreme Court decision that will chill disruptive innovation in stodgy industries like broadcasting for many years to come.

Aereo’s saga signals a chilling effect for innovation

Aereo is, of course, the company that deployed a warehouse full of dime-sized antennas to stream over-the-air broadcasts to its customers’ Internet-connected devices. Unlike traditional cable TV systems, which use one big antenna to capture and distribute the same broadcast signals to every subscriber, each of Aereo’s tiny antennas enabled individual customers to watch a broadcast in real-time or record programs on Aereo’s cloud-based DVR service. Issues arose for the company not long after Aereo debuted in New York City in 2012, when broadcasters filed a federal lawsuit accusing the service of copyright infringement. Form vs. Function Performance Anxiety. News, weather, sports. WASHINGTON — Thirty years after failing to convince the Supreme Court of the threat posed by home video recordings, big media companies are back and now trying to rein in another technological innovation they say threatens their financial well-being.

News, weather, sports

The battle has moved out of viewers' living rooms, where Americans once marveled at their ability to pop a cassette into a recorder and capture their favorite programs or the sporting event they wouldn't be home to see. Now the entertainment conglomerates that own U.S. television networks are waging a legal fight, culminating in Tuesday's Supreme Court argument against a startup business that uses Internet-based technology to give subscribers the ability to watch programs anywhere they can take portable devices.

The Hollywood Reporter. Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia WASHINGTON – U.S.

The Hollywood Reporter

Justices test Aereo on copyright issue but raise concern about harming cloud services. Several Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism about Internet streaming start-up Aereo during oral arguments on Tuesday, saying that it looked like the company was created to act as a technical workaround to bypass copyright laws.

Justices test Aereo on copyright issue but raise concern about harming cloud services

But some justices also raised concerns that a decision siding with television broadcasters in the case could have far-reaching effects on new Internet cloud and other technologies, which would then be swept up in other questions about the reach of copyright laws. Video The future of Aereo, an online service that provides over-the-air television channels, hinges on a battle with broadcasters that goes before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. Larry Page’s chopping block Matt McFarland APR 25. Chief Justice Slams Aereo At Supreme Court Hearing In Copyright Lawsuit. If you thought that the legal dispute between Aereo and the broadcasters was combative, it paled compared with today’s one-hour hearing at the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Slams Aereo At Supreme Court Hearing In Copyright Lawsuit

In oral arguments before the nine Justices, both sides took some heavy blows, but the Barry Diller-backed streaming service definitely took one to the jaw from Chief Justice John Roberts. “Your technological model is based solely on circumventing legal prohibitions that you don’t want to comply with,” Roberts told Aereo attorney David Frederick during the presentation before a packed chamber. “There’s no reason for you to have 10,000 dime-sized antennas except to get around the Copyright Act,” he said. Added Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: ”You are the only player so far that pays no royalties whatsoever.” US Gov to argue against Aereo.

Aereo — Just the middleman, or a scofflaw? In Plain English. For those of us who grew up adjusting the rabbit ears on our seventies-era televisions (and having to get up to change the channel to one of the other four or five available stations – no remote controls!)

Aereo — Just the middleman, or a scofflaw? In Plain English

, the service offered by Aereo, Inc., is nothing short of miraculous. For just eight dollars a month, you get the ability to start watching a TV program – say, the Super Bowl – live on your iPhone while you are out of your house. When you get home, you can pick up seamlessly where you left off on your television or desktop computer. Or, you can record the entire program on a remote DVR assigned to you and watch the whole thing later on. Aereo Petitioners Focus on Who Supplies the Content.

Cross-posted on the Law Theories blog.

Aereo Petitioners Focus on Who Supplies the Content

The petitioners have filed their reply brief in the Aereo appeal, and I’m thrilled to see their focus on who supplies the content—a standard for differentiating cloud computing sheep from goats that I’ve been advocating (see here and here). Right out of the gate, the petitioners note that Aereo supplies the content: Congress could hardly have been clearer that it did not want technological advances (or, in Aereo’s case, gimmicks) to undermine its basic policy judgment that a third party should not be able to build a business model out of supplying performances of the copyrighted works of others to the public without authorization.

Twitter.

CBS threatens if AEREO wins

Aereo’s streaming TV service presents the Supreme Court with a $97m question - Business. An Alliance in Media Petitions Justices. Guest post: Copyright's Public Performance Right, Cable Television, and Aereo. The following post comes from Peter Menell, Koret Professor of Law and Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at& University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).

Guest post: Copyright's Public Performance Right, Cable Television, and Aereo

The Supreme Court will soon confront whether Aereo’s service—which affords subscribers access to over-the-air television signals through the use of dime-sized, customer-specific antennas and remote digital video recorders—infringes the Copyright Act’s public performance right under the “transmit clause”: To perform or display a work “publicly” means –. . .(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work … to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times. 17 U.S.C. § 101.

A majority of the Second Circuit panel found that it did not. See WNET, Thirteen v.

Law student Amicus

Amicus Supreme Court. Fordham 2014: Aereo. Supreme Court ruling. Net.wars: Courting favor. The cheeky ways people find to circumvent the status quo are always fascinating. The case of American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo, which reached the US Supreme Court this week, is a perfect example. Aereo is a wacky scheme that probably could only happen under the specific conditions prevailing in American broadcasting.

As CNN has a helpful video explaining the service, but the gist isn't too difficult. The stations and networks that have spectrum to do so - CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, Fox, local independents - put out their broadcasts free-to-air and anyone with an antenna inside their broadcast range can pick them up. At $8 a month, the service's appeal is clear.

Copyright Alliance Files Amicus Brief Before the Supreme Court o

TV networks will reportedly seek Supreme Court review of Aereo - CNET Mobile. The nation's television networks will petition the US Supreme Court during the next week to review lower court decisions over the legality of Aereo's retransmission of TV signals on the Internet, Variety reports. Apparently frustrated with the conflicting courtroom record, the broadcasters have decided to file their petition, or writ of certoriari, by October 15, the entertainment newspaper reported Wednesday night, citing anonymous sources familiar with the case. CNET has contacted Aereo and the four major broadcast TV networks, which includes CNET parent CBS, for comment and will update this report when we learn more. Aereo, which launched in New York last year, uses antenna/DVR technology to let consumers watch live, local, over-the-air television broadcasts on some Internet-connected devices, including the iPad and iPhone.

Aereo, which has been busy expanding its service beyond New York, also faces lawsuits in Boston and Utah. Broadcasters petition Supreme Court in Aereo fight - CNET Mobile. Brief Amici Curiae CDT. Brief for respondent CA2. Antennas, broadcasting, and copyright: the Supreme Court’s review of ABC v. Aereo. The Hollywood Reporter. On Monday, U.S.

District Judge Alison Nathan decided it was not wise to get ahead of the U.S. Aereo heading to the US Supreme Court? Aereo’s business model of re-transmitting TV broadcasts without a license infringes copyright and should be shut down. Its business model is a “sham” designed to capitalize on perceived loopholes in the US Copyright Act. This was the opinion of Circuit Judge Chin in his dissent in WNET, Thirteen v. Aereo, Inc 2013 WL 1285591 (2nd.Cir.Apr, 1, 2013).

The Supreme Court’s review of ABC v. Aereo

EFF Files Supreme Court Brief Defending Internet Streaming Servi. How the Supreme Court could decide the future of broadcast television. The latest legal defeat for big TV broadcasters against the start-up company Aereo could lead to a Supreme Court showdown over your ability to get free television signals. On Tuesday, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals said it wouldn’t revisit its April ruling, in which a three-judge panel refused to issue an injunction halting Aereo, a service that steams over-the-air TV signals to consumers without paying broadcast networks. Aereo charges a small, monthly fee to consumers for the service, which can be viewed on computer devices, including tablets. Supreme Court to Decide if Aereo's Service Results in ‘Public Performance' o... By Tamlin H. Bason. Supreme Court Justices Conflicted on Legality of Aereo - Law Blog.