Re:Supreme court: Aereo is violating copyright law [pdf]
by tanzam75 on Wednesday June 25, 2014 @12:15PM
(#7944880)
> The Supreme Court is wrong- the reason cable companies are treated as a 'public' performance of a work is that their distribution medium is shared.
No.
What makes a cable company "public performance" is that the company is selling services to the general public in an arms-length transaction. The shared nature of the transmission medium is irrelevant.
They could send streams directly to individual subscribers using IPTV, as AT&T does with U-verse, and it would still be a public performance.
That is why Aereo needed the individual antennas to try to take advantage of a perceived loophole. Aereo with one big antenna would not have made it to the Supreme Court, because it would have been so obviously in the wrong.
No.
What makes a cable company "public performance" is that the company is selling services to the general public in an arms-length transaction. The shared nature of the transmission medium is irrelevant.
They could send streams directly to individual subscribers using IPTV, as AT&T does with U-verse, and it would still be a public performance.
That is why Aereo needed the individual antennas to try to take advantage of a perceived loophole. Aereo with one big antenna would not have made it to the Supreme Court, because it would have been so obviously in the wrong.