Streaming video startup Aereo may have streamed its last, as the Supreme Court has ruled that the company’s business model – selling “antenna subscriptions” that allow consumers to stream over-the-air television content to any Mac, PC, or iOS device – violates federal copyright laws.
The Court held that Aereo’s customers constitute “the public,” and that retransmitting television networks’ copyrighted material goes against their exclusive right to perform their works publicly as the holders of the copyright. Justice Breyer wrote for the majority, joined by Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
“We must decide whether respondent Aereo, Inc., infringes this exclusive right by selling its subscribers a technologically complex service that allows them to watch television programs over the Internet at about the same time as the programs are broadcast over the air,” the opinion reads. “We conclude that it does.”
Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito dissented with the argument saying that Aereo’s digital transmissions do not constitute a “performance,” thus, the networks have no legal standing.
The claim by the television networks that Aereo directly violated their copyright “fails at the very outset because Aereo does not “perform” at all,” Justice Scalia wrote in the dissent. “The Court manages to reach the opposite conclusion only by disregarding widely accepted rules for service-provider liability and adopting in their place an improvised standard (“looks-like-cable-TV”) that will sow confusion for years to come.”
While Aereo hasn’t as yet responded to the decision, the company’s co-founder Chet Kanojia was quoted in April as saying they would have to shut down the business if the ruling went against Aereo, saying “There is no plan B.”
