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.

Filed Under: copyright, remote dvr, tv broadcasters
Companies: aereo, cablevision