Service Aereo wins in court, but expects lobbying in Congress

Aereo is a young startup from New York that provides streaming and recording services for later viewing of a TV broadcast based on a paid subscription. In fact, with the help of the service, the user can watch non-coded TV channels broadcast on a PC or, using a special application, on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Apple TV player. The user is given a choice of several tariffs: from a dollar a day, eight a month (which is comparable to a Netflix subscription fee) to eighty a year. Aereo presents itself as a cheap alternative to cable or satellite television with fewer channels. At the moment, the company works only in New York, although a plan is underway to expand into 22 other American cities, limited by court decisions.



The fact is that the legal part of the service is very ambiguous. On March 1, 2012, just a few weeks after the February launch of Aereo, the company received a lawsuit from a consortium of television broadcasters who accused the service of copyright infringement. The work of Aereo, according to representatives of television channels, is based on recording and publicly reproducing content without any coordination with television channels, and public reproduction requires license fees. The proceedings and litigation dragged on, while the broadcasters, including Fox, ABC, CBS, NBCUniversal and others, did not always benefit, which led them to call Aereo a service using loopholes in the laws.



And so, on April 1, 2013, the second exit session of the US District Court, by two votes against one, made a serious decision in favor of Aereo.



Broadcasting companies were denied the release of a preliminary injunction on the service. The decision of the majority of judges was influenced by the fact that Aereo provides each user with a tiny rent (its size is only a few millimeters) of the antenna, through which the service works. With this antenna, subscribers receive network streaming available to anyone on the radio channel of television channels to a phone, tablet or TV. Thus, the precedent created by the case of Cablevision Corporation, whose video recorders were found not to infringe copyright, was used.

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Judge Denny Chin, who did not agree with his colleagues, points out that the principle of using private mini-antennas indicates that private rather than public reproduction is taking place, for which no license fees are required. Chin believes that in this way Aereo is only trying to avoid problems with the law. Dennis Wharton, vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters (Washington) echoes him.



Broadcasters threaten that if the work of Aereo is not stopped, or the model does not include licensing, they will not be able to continue to provide the general public with broadcasts of sports and competitions, as well as famous Grammy-level ceremonies. Opponents of the young service are frightened by the fact that cable and satellite operators will reduce fees to partners, since the cost of content will decrease, and on the Internet, due to Aereo, it will be difficult to create a platform for providing on-demand content.







For Aereo, this is far from the end of a legal battle: the past has shown that if they didn’t take a lawsuit, they will lobby for Congress, said Chet Kanoija, executive director of the company. As the head of Aereo says, the company only provides small ears for listening to free television programs available.



Is it possible to consider on the Internet free what is free and uncoded on the radio? It is difficult to regard the trial as a good advertisement (it only scares partners like this), however, users like new and innovative services, and some consider the only mistake Aereo is slowness with entering the market of their city.