Honestly, I don't see how you justified the decision and agree that it is "incredibly stupid." Am I not allowed to pay someone to set up my antenna? If I do should that involve other cable companies at all?
"The entire reason this law was written is because under an old law, cable companies ("community antenna television" in that day) were setting up antennas and running cable to multiple homes, charging the users for it, and not paying anything to the broadcasters/copyright holders."
I don't see what is wrong with this. Without that company, that person wouldn't be able to access the content - which is, itself, a "public performance." Otherwise, the person wouldn't be willing to pay for it. Either way, its an agreement between two private parties as to how they wish to access public information.
This is copyright. Copyright holders are allowed to assign reasonable restrictions on the content they broadcast publicly in order to monetize that content as they see fit. One of those restrictions is that the content broadcast over public airwaves may not be rebroadcast or retransmitted for non-private use. If your business model is encoding and retransmitting that content over the Internet, that's not private use. Considering the entire content industry's business model is based on controlling the distribution of the content that they own, there's no way this decision could have gone any other way. If you fundamentally disagree with the content industry's right to control distribution of content that they legally own (or at least control copyright to), then you are free not to consume any of it.
I have no pity for Aereo here. They based their business model on a legal technicality, and SCOTUS simply applied an updated technological interpretation to an old law. Their investors were big time media guys (Barry Diller was a founder of both Fox and USA networks) who knew the risks they were taking: it didn't pan out for them. Aereo is not a story of a plucky startup fighting the system; it's just one part of the system fighting another part of the system over who gets more money. Had Aereo won this decision, the real winners would have been Comcast, DirecTV, AT&T and Verizon.
>Had Aereo won this decision, the real winners would have been Comcast, DirecTV, AT&T and Verizon.
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? Public performances should be public! Location-shifting (at least within the initial broadcast area) and time-shifting should not need any additional licenses. Cable companies shouldn't have to pay for those particular actions either.
If it's a bad law then get the law changed. Unless you can make an argument to convince the supreme court why that law is unconstitutional, the supreme court doesn't decide which laws are good or bad -- they only rule against how (and why) the laws are written. Changing the laws is Congress's job.
"The entire reason this law was written is because under an old law, cable companies ("community antenna television" in that day) were setting up antennas and running cable to multiple homes, charging the users for it, and not paying anything to the broadcasters/copyright holders."
I don't see what is wrong with this. Without that company, that person wouldn't be able to access the content - which is, itself, a "public performance." Otherwise, the person wouldn't be willing to pay for it. Either way, its an agreement between two private parties as to how they wish to access public information.
This is protectionism.