The Supreme Court struck a dramatic blow against Aereo today in a ruling that puts the TV streaming service as it currently exists on its deathbed. In a 6–3 ruling, the court found that Aereo’s service violates the Copyright Act by playing back recordings of broadcasters’ TV shows — even though it legally captures those shows over the air and obtains individual copies for each viewer. Aereo had argued that it was merely providing technology that its subscribers were renting in order to watch TV, posing that the viewers were responsible for playing back those recordings. Aereo as you know it is done for
The ruling is one of the most important seen by the television industry since the 1984 Betamax case but in many ways will have an opposite effect, stifling one area of innovation that was beginning to force the industry out of its comfort zone. Some broadcasters had even said that they would open their own Aereo competitors if the service were found to be legal. Instead, this ruling fully removes Aereo and copycat services as a threat.
That’s a huge issue for Aereo, as its current business has just been found illegal. Aereo will likely have to pay licensing fees to broadcasters if it wants to continue operating, but that’s if broadcasters will give it those licenses and if Aereo can afford them. Certainly, it would be difficult to pay those fees and continue offering its service, which costs $8 per month, at such a low price.
Aereo may choose to reinvent itself, but up to this point it’s said that a Supreme Court ruling against it would essentially mean the end. “If it’s a total straight-up loss,” Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia told The Verge earlier this year, “then it’s dead. We’re done.”
The coalition of broadcasters facing off against Aereo included Disney, NBC, Fox, and CBS, among others. The White House had also joined them in the fight, arguing that Aereo was a threat to copyright.
After launching in 2012, Aereo was quickly hit with a number of lawsuits in the districts that it popped up in, including New York and Boston. It largely won these cases and even saw a major victory before a US appellate court, which found that it did not violate broadcasters’ copyright early in 2013.
Suits continued to be filed against Aereo, however. And eventually, both it and broadcasters petitioned the Supreme Court with the hope of quickly putting an end to their battle, interested in settling the issue of legality sooner rather than later.
Aereo’s service allows subscribers to watch and record live TV over the internet for a monthly fee. It maintains a bank of tiny antennas in each city that it operates in that pull down local TV signals broadcast over the air, much like old rabbit ears. Every time a subscriber wants to watch or record a show, Aereo assigns an antenna to them. Aereo actually takes separate recordings for every single person watching and doesn’t allow them to be shared. That means that even if you forgot to record last week’s Crossbones, you won’t be able to watch a recording that someone else made, even though it’s in Aereo’s system. You’ll just have to wait for a rerun.
Aereo went through those lengths to keep streams individual because it believed that it was effectively mimicking a setup that someone might create at home — albeit with the added complexity of a recorder. The broadcasters argued that Aereo’s streams constituted public performances of their content, thus violating the Copyright Act and requiring that it be licensed for playback. Aereo said that its subscribers — and not the company itself — were the party responsible for playing the shows. Broadcasters argued the opposite, finding agreement in the court.
