The Aereo Crashed: Cheap Internet TV Thwarted

American Broadcasting Cos., Inc. v. Aereo, Inc.

The Supreme Court of the United States has now determined that internet streaming services directly infringe the copyrights of several television networks.  American Broadcasting Cos., Inc. v. Aereo, Inc., Case No. 13-461 (Supr. Ct.,  Jun 25, 2014) (Breyer, Justice) (Scalia, Justice, dissenting).

Background

At the heart of Aereo's system is an antenna.  Aereo employs thousands of dime-sized antennas stored in warehouses located in the geographic markets the company services.  Aereo assigns a particular antenna to each of its subscribers.  The subscribers select the network television shows they want to watch by clicking the "watch" button on Aereo's website.  The subscriber's assigned antenna then begins to capture the desired television show from the local airwaves and stores the broadcast signal to a data file exclusively assigned to the subscriber on a company server.  In other words, Aereo's system creates a