In the US, broadcast channels are free over the air. However, there is a law that says if cable companies want to retransmit the broadcasts, the networks can charge the cable companies.
Is Aereo "retransmitting" the broadcast, or just renting personal antennas? That is what the Supreme Court was deciding.
I'm not making some big statement here, but it just goes to show that guys like Lawrence Lessig and the EFF keep losing because they have so few allies in government and have the most powerful enemies, the various deep-pocketing IP abusers like tech firms or Disney.
What now? Back to our DRM-laden lives with no silver lining I guess. Shame that the profit on mass entertainment trumps all rights. I wonder if my Slingbox is illegal now. Probably not, supposedly this decision is narrowly written, which is a welcome change from the big sweeping conservative-led majority decisions of late.
And that's a good thing. This isn't a sports game where I should root for "my team." The judges shouldn't start from the end position they want and work towards that.
http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SB_...
Decisions on issues that have high political salience tend to be the ones that make news; there is currently something of a correlation with political salience and 5-4 split decisions on the courts, since Justices positions are most ideologically (rather than legally) consistent on points that were politically salient at the time of their appointment, and the issues with the strongest political salience also are often relatively consistently salient over an extended period of time, and since the court splits at or close to 5-4 on a lot of enduringly-salient issue areas.
But plenty of 9-0 issues on issues that have current salience make news, and 5-4 decisions on which the justices are split but there isn't a great deal of political salience often aren't treated as any more newsworthy than any other decision.
I went looking through those 5-4 cases to see if were along the left/right line. Only 4 of the 8 had Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas on the same side.
(The second had Thomas writing the opinion and Scalia writing the dissent. That's pretty rare.)
EDIT duh, that's what the color-coding was for. Oh well.
Really.
Patents, Copyright and Trademarks are all American inventions that have spread everywhere in the world. Many Americans think it goes too far, but in the fraternity of lawyers and judges, IP rules.
I believe that's the key insight. "Intellectual property" is good (in the sense of generating lots of work) for the legal profession. Judges tend to rule towards things that benefit the legal profession(s), and against things that don't benefit those profession(s).
However, you're wrong in point of fact. Copyright is an English law thing, a statute law, not a common law. Look up "Statute of Queen Anne". It's from 1710. Patents seem to be a British or Venetian thing. The USA almost didn't have a patent or copyright system, Thomas Jefferson was quite against them. For a long time, the USA allowed immigration on the basis of possessing some skill or patented idea - the USA was an "IP Outlaw". Not too surprisingly, this coincides with the USA's period of industrialization.
"Intellectual Property", the idea that one can own ideas, is just a bad idea, from an economic standpoint.
Copyright law was also largely invented by Britain dating back to when the printing press was invented in the 1600s.
Trademark law is even older dating as far back as the Roman Empire. The first modern Trademark system was actually set up by France.
Your assertion about this stuff being American inventions is wrong.
The UK made nothing to spread it, the US made sure it's more universaly accepted than the Human Rights convention.
The Berne Convention was developed at the instigation of Victor Hugo of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale. Thus it was influenced by the French "right of the author" (droit d'auteur) (...) Before the Berne Convention, national copyright laws usually only applied for works created within each country. So for example a work published in United Kingdom by a British national would be covered by copyright there, but could be copied and sold by anyone in France. (...) The Berne Convention followed in the footsteps of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of 1883, which in the same way had created a framework for international integration of the other types of intellectual property: patents, trademarks and industrial designs.
Have you heard of the British Empire? The UK did quite a lot to spread their legal traditions.
Bear in mind that the function of the Supreme Court isn't to propose new laws (legislate); it's to rule on existing laws. By its own mandate, the Supreme Court does not serve an innovative function in government. It serves an examination and arbitration function. If we want to change anything here, we'll have to start in the other branches of government, or else bring a case that sufficiently challenges the Copyright Act.
You are confusing enactments (things like the Constitution and statute law, like the Copyright Act) with precedent (prior rulings of courts applying the same law). These are fundamentally different things, thought the court looks to both
Nevertheless, I think my point still stands. Court needs to find, sort, and prioritize reference points essentially.
2. Roberts has a deep and wide judicially conservative record. He cannot be called "liberal" in the context of American politics; it's not even up for debate. The man and his judicial practice is as conservative as they come.
3. I really don't see why it matters. The justices' political leanings have nothing to do with whether or not their decisions are "correct" or not (although it may provide insight into why they decide one way or another).
[0]www.heritage.org
In a nutshell, the dissent would have also ruled against Aerio, just for a different reason than the majority. This sentence from Scalia's dissent should put things in perspective:
"I share the Court's evident feeling that what Aereo is doing (or enabling to be done) to the Networks' copyrighted programming ought not to be allowed."
It isn't over since the case now goes back to the lower court, but Aereo can no longer argue they are the same as a person putting an antenna on their roof.