Judge To Aereo: Hey, Didn't The Supreme Court Make It Clear That You Guys Are Dead?

from the not-looking-good dept

When the Supreme Court ruling in the Aereo case came out, we noted that beyond the bizarre "looks like a duck" test that the Supreme Court made up on the spot, it also appeared to leave open the possibility that Aereo could survive if it simply added a mere delay to its streaming. That's because a key part of the "looks like a duck" test to make Aereo's service a "public performance" was that the shows were streamed "contemporaneously." As Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissent, without any further clarification in the majority ruling, it certainly sounds like Aereo could just function as a remote DVR and be fine.

Back in the district court this week, however, the same judge who had originally ruled in Aereo's favor, now seems to believe that the Supreme Court's decision completely wiped out Aereo's chances altogether. This is the problem with these kinds of Supreme Court rulings, where they rule with a focus on one particular aspect (in this case "contemporaneous" viewing) and lower courts interpret it to mean all of Aereo was ruled illegal. This same sort of thing happened with the Grokster case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Grokster was guilty because of its related actions that "induced" infringement, and the RIAA/MPAA and others simply assumed that the court said all file sharing is illegal.

In this case, Aereo went before Judge Alison Nathan to present it with a few different arguments over how the company could stay in business -- either by paying licenses as a cable operator or by time shifting, etc. -- and the judge didn't seem to think any option was available to the company. As the Hollywood Reporter notes, her response was:

"Just as a matter of finality, how many bites at the apple does one get?"

I would think that the answer is as many bites as is legal, no? All of the proposed alternatives by Aereo are clearly in direct response to the Supreme Court's specific "looks like a duck" ruling. Aereo isn't trying to challenge that, it's looking to work within the rules the Court established. Yet, once again, we see people taking Aereo's efforts at complying with the specific law as laid out by the courts, and interpreting it as somehow circumventing the law.

Either way, Aereo has the stigma of "lost at the Supreme Court" attached to it, and it appears that any attempted solution to actually comply with the Supreme Court's ruling will be seen as not being allowed because it's merely trying to get "another bite at the apple."

Filed Under: cable, contemporaneous, copyright, looks like a duck, remote dvr, streaming, supreme court
Companies: aereo