Your argument doesn't work for the analogy, because the viewer is simply paying someone to do the physical work required for the viewer to remotely watch his own stream from his own antenna. It's like the difference between setting up a cable card and Internet stream server yourself, and hiring a tech guy to come to your house and set it up for you.
The critical difference with Aero is that it's never your antenna. It's leased, not owned, and moreover, Aero treats the antennas themselves on a fungible basis, meaning that they they simply maintain a 1:1 relationship between the number of antennas and the number of subscribers, so you're not even leasing any specific piece of equipment. You're just buying individual access to an independently owned and operated antenna array.
That's miles away from "just hiring a tech guy to come over and set up your cable card".
> they simply maintain a 1:1 relationship between the number of antennas and the number of subscribers,
That is not my understanding. Bob and George could have both leased Aero antenna in the same area. Bob's could get good rescission and George's could get bad reception impacting making George's experience worse. Or so says the public statements of Aero.
> You're just buying individual access to an independently owned and operated antenna array.
Is there evidence of this that contradicts Aero's public statements?
Here's how the arrangement was described last year in a Gigaom article.
"the antennas are “multitenant” which means that, when one Aereo subscriber is not using an antenna at a given time, it is available to all other subscribers."
So no, it's not "your" antenna any more than a weekend rental from Hertz is "your" car. Moreover, the antenna is only part of the package. The real lyncpin making the system work is - or was - Aero's proprietary transcoding setup and the equipment that handles the feed coming off the antenna, and that is definitely not run on a 1:1 basis.
I mean, the whole idea that this is a bunch of individually "leased" equipment packages that just happen to be co-located in the same facility without any meaningful overlap between each person's personal, individual feed ("just like me putting my antenna on someone else's roof!") is such complete and utter bullshit.
Thank you for the link. One subscriber uses one antenna at a time. That is how I thought it worked.
When you said that "You're just buying individual access to an independently owned and operated antenna array." I thought you meant that all subscribers where sharing access to the to the array.
Time share rentals exist so it makes sense you could do it with antenna as well.
> Aero's proprietary transcoding setup and the equipment that handles the feed coming off the antenna, and that is definitely not run on a 1:1 basis.
Is there evidence they are mixing signals from different antenna to improve signal quality. I thought I had read quotes from the CEO saying with pride this was not the case.
It's not that they're mixing signals from multiple antennas, it's that they're running all the signals through the same transcoding system before delivering them, which breaks any concept of individual streams from reception to audience.
Also, there's an important difference between a time-share rental (which has a single owner doing business with a number of clients) and a time-share co-op, in which use of the property is a function of direct, if partial ownership.
If you own the antenna - even in part - you can justifiably claim that your use is personal and non-commercial. However you cannot resell the material to others. And if you don't own the antenna - and are buying access to the material from someone who does - then you're not getting it from an authorized source.
Individual antennas was clever, but not clever enough. Individually owned antennas (as part of a audience-owned operation) would be more defensible. But then the investment opportunity would evaporate.
