Cablevision Realizes It Argued Against Its Own Interests In Aereo Case; Flips Sides
from the without-admitting-that... dept
Here's a bizarre footnote to a bizarre footnote in the ongoing legal fight between Aereo and the TV broadcasters. As you may recall, Aereo has relied heavily on the precedent in the 2nd Circuit in the Cablevision case, which effectively ruled that Cablevision's remote DVR was legal. The first bizarre footnote was that in the district court case, Cablevision actually sided with the broadcasters. We pointed out that this was fairly cynical and obnoxious by Cablevision, as it appeared that the company was just trying to protect its turf from a competitor by arguing that its own remote DVR was legal, but this competitor's was illegal. Of course we left out one adjective.It wasn't just cynical and obnoxious, it was monumentally shortsighted. That's because anyone who had spent more than about 30 seconds understanding the details of the case knew that the broadcasters weren't just focused on Aereo -- but rather were looking to use Aereo to overturn the Cablevision ruling. They were pretty explicit about this all along -- and even some of the judges understand this.
Now that the NY case has been appealed to the Supreme Court, and it's abundantly clear that the networks are aiming to take down the Cablevision ruling, Cablevision appears to finally have recognized what a monumentally stupid move it made in supporting their arguments earlier in the case (even if the networks lost). Rather than admit that it was in error, it appears that Cablevision has decided to cover up their flip flop by just screaming much more loudly against the very networks it sided with earlier in this case. It's come out with a scathing statement blasting the networks for their appeal, and arguing that the networks were engaged in a "willful attempt to stifle innovation." That's almost exactly the opposite of what it said before.
Cablevision's media wranglers would probably argue that its amicus brief in support of the networks was merely focused on a different argument: that Aereo didn't meet the same qualifications as Cablevision, but it's bizarre to think they didn't realize that the point of the case was to take down the victory Cablevision got in its case. Furthermore, a win for Aereo would actually be huge for Cablevision, because it would allow them to start offering a similar service, and get out from under crazy retransmission fees.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: copyright, remote dvr, tv broadcasters
Companies: aereo, cablevision
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
That means any ruling that goes against Aereo, is equally applicable to Cablevision, something they really should have realized from the start.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bound to happen
Right hand meet left hand...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Inconsistency is a sign of basically criminal intent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Inconsistency is a sign of basically criminal intent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Inconsistency is a sign of basically criminal intent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Am I the only person confused?
Maybe you need to reconsider your business model and side with those that want to give you the option to choose.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sounds like a shrewd move...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
FilmOn
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cablevision Frog Soup
Speaking of short sided, the networks need to open their eyes and realize that they are their own worst enemy? They have spent a small fortune to once again fight technology and innovation only to shove a concept down the throats of the American people that families should sit down to watch "Must See TV Thursdays," as if anyone these days turns on the TV to watch 3 hours of continuous network programming from one channel. Nielson says the world does is this way, so the networks buy into it.
What they don't recognize are two very important points. First this is the direction their viewers want to go. If they are so worried about failing then stop trying to hold on to obsolete technology and sell the world more buggy whips. If you want to remain relevant in business, you need to give the people what they want. The people have spoken and voted with their wallets. They want IPADS, they want DVRs, and they want On Demand Programming.
The second thing they should recognize is that while they make 60 cents per household, the majority of their income is from advertising. It is a simple concept. The more viewers you have, the more you can charge for advertising. So if you have more viewers viewing from streaming devices, you can charge more for advertising. Wow. Increased revenue. Not to mention, they would have access to much better analytics in a real time format from streaming services through such devices like the Roku, Apple TV, or Google TV. Then as a successful network executive, you wouldn't end up cancelling all the popular television shows anymore because you will actually have good data about the number of viewers you really have and not relying on the hokum produced by the Nielson rating system.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]