Cablevision Systems released a white paper titled “Aereo and the Public Performance Right” that lays out in full detail the company’s legal position on the controversial Aereo service. It asserts that the Aereo service violates the copyright laws because it retransmits broadcast content without a license – “a fact that has the major television broadcasters justifiably upset.”
Cablevision, however, strongly rejects anti-Aereo arguments made by broadcasters including ABC, CBS and FOX – in their petition before the Supreme Court as both overreaching and damaging.
In that petition, the broadcasters attempt to overturn the important principles of federal copyright law confirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in its 2008 Cablevision remote-storage DVR (RS-DVR) decision.
Cablevision offered the following statement:
“The broadcasters’ overreaching copyright arguments would, if accepted, cause grave harm to consumers, cloud-based technology and future innovation. In a case about Aereo, the broadcasters go well beyond Aereo and attack the legal underpinning of all cloud-based services, everything from the Apple iCloud to Cablevision’s own remote storage DVR service. In short, the broadcasters are asking the Court to throw the baby out with the bathwater – a move that could cripple cloud-based innovation in the U.S.”
The broadcasters’ arguments, if accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court, would imperil consumers’ rights to use innovative technologies, such as popular digital locker services like the Apple iCloud, Amazon Cloud Player and Google Play Music, as well as any cloud-based DVR service like Cablevision’s “multi-room” RS-DVR and similar services being developed by other leading cable operators. Through the amicus briefs of their various trade groups, a broad array of leading technology and network companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Verizon, Apple, Cisco, and AT&T agreed with Cablevision’s legal arguments in the original Cablevision RS-DVR case.”
“The broadcasters’ radical arguments are completely unnecessary,” says Cablevision. As explained in the white paper, there are narrower – and more persuasive – grounds for invalidating Aereo, which focus solely on the Aereo service and technology, and not on cloud services generally.
RBR-TVBR observation: Broadcasters wanted a 360-degree attack on everything Aereo with their petition to the High Court. They want to cover all bases and show how the copyright infringement of illegally streaming their copyrighted material is being parlayed to DVR service, which helps to justify why their service has value. Without the DVR service, they wouldn’t have as many subscribers. The High Court, if it proceeds, will likely not overturn previous decisions that could harm a whole host of DVR/Cloud services out there. It would be too overreaching. Without the right to stream live, copyrighted, over-the-air content, Aereo will not be very viable as a DVR-only service. It would still need rights to distribute the content in the first place to do so, as the companies mentioned above currently have. The content can be stored, but the source it came from has to have a right to distribute it.
