
The Next Chapter - sc90
http://blog.aereo.com/2014/11/next-chapter/
======
twelvedigits
I don't think many people had the opportunity to use Aereo. They had a decent
presence in New York City, and as the company expanded across the country
reporters cited customer numbers in the mid five figures.

As an Aereo user, let me tell you what you missed out on: one of the most
amazing products I've ever used.

Aereo "worked." It worked like magic.

First, it lived up to its claim. You could stream live, broadcast television
to your phone or computer, and you could AirPlay it to your television.
Everything was in HD. It worked incredibly well. So many video products fail
to deliver on the user experience, or the video is choppy, or it crashes all
the time. Aereo's software had its struggles, but it worked far more often
than not. I could have people over and stream the Super Bowl and never worry
that Aereo would crap out.

Aereo also worked remarkably well during Hurricane Sandy. I live in Brooklyn,
and Aereo's Brooklyn HQ was less than a mile from my apartment, but we
streamed Aereo until we went to sleep that night. Considering reports that
their antennae sucked a ton of power, that's incredible on a night when power
was out all across the city.

I also interviewed with the company in 2013 for a business development role.
Everyone that I met was really great. They treated me well during the process
while clearly balancing a million things, including their legal concerns. I
really, really wanted to work there, but it wasn't a fit for a lot of reasons,
their uncertain future being one of them.

When my girlfriend told me that they were filing for bankruptcy, I was sad.
This is innovative technology that worked for consumers, squashed by
antiquated government regulation and a highly litigious, innovation-resistant,
influential media industry.

Progress, halted.

A winning product that could have delighted millions, squashed.

~~~
rayiner
What is antiquated about the idea that you don't get to use other peoples'
valuable content without paying for it?

Look: the valuable product here is the content. All the technology can do is
get in the way. It's great Aereo's technology got in the way less than its
competitors, but that still doesn't mean people found the technology itself
valuable. The content is what matters. The content is what delights consumers.

Given that reality, I think it's absurd to say that regulations protecting the
people who create the content, the product without which the whole downstream
ecosystem of streaming services and content consumption devices are utterly
irrelevant, it's absurd to say those regulations are antiquated.

~~~
twelvedigits
Keeping in mind that this content is being broadcast over public spectrum,
you're right: the content is the most valuable product.

As a consumer, I want to access that content in an efficient, functional
manner. My tax dollars are paying for it. So, I bought an antenna. It couldn't
pick up any stations in my apartment, and this is a very common problem in
NYC. Even if it picked up stations, I'd have to buy a separate device to
record shows so that I can watch them on my schedule.

With Aereo, I was renting an antenna. The company built capital-intensive,
power-sucking data warehouses in every city in which it operated and filled
them with antennae for every customer. Aereo provided me with a cloud-based
antenna, no different than buying one from Best Buy or Amazon.

Only:

(a) the signal was clear and reliable, not fuzzy. My friend has a long coaxial
cable connected to his television and he tapes a 12" x 12" antenna to his
window. Kind of ridiculous.

(b) they included a cloud-based DVR that allowed me to watch what I want, when
I want. They improved the relationship that I had with broadcast content.

Aereo was very clear about the fact that they built a solution that adhered to
the law because everyone had an individual antenna. This solution was very
expensive, but it worked and though it was described as a Rube Goldberg
machine, it made sense.

And here's the ultimate rub for content companies: now I don't watch your
content at all. I don't see your ads. I have someone else's cable password,
and I watch things sporadically, but I don't discover new shows like you want
me to.

~~~
harryh
Your tax dollars are paying for TV show production?

~~~
tapsboy
No. But our eyeballs watching those paid ads on free broadcast TV are enabling
payments + profit for the production of that content. The numbers may vary by
broadcaster and program, but the business model is clear, or atleast was.

~~~
harryh
The people that make TV shows make money in several different ways. Paid ads
are only a portion of their business.

------
DevX101
I listened to a talk by an Aereo exec at SXSW and he made it clear then that
there was no plan B. This was an all or nothing fight.

Unfortunately the Supreme Court squashed them, but they really could have
changed the world had the ruling gone the other way. ABC, NBC, CBS, and all
the other broadcast networks would have had to change their business model and
adapt or slowly die like the Blockbusters of the world.

Despite the fact that it didn't work out, I respect teams like this with
ambitious goals that put everything on the line without compromise. Kudos to
the team and investors that supported Aereo.

~~~
rayiner
Yes, changed the world by making it legal to build a business off someone
else's content that you got for free through a legal hack. Tragic it didn't
work out.

The Blockbuster analogy is frankly insulting to people who built real
technology for video delivery. Blockbuster went bankrupt because technology
made their middle-man position obsolete. In contrast, there is nothing
obsolete about making content. Even in the face of modern technology that
makes content creation cheap, peoples' demand for high-quality studio content
is higher than ever.

~~~
kevincennis
_DISCLAIMER: Former Aereo employee. Views do not reflect those of my former
employer. Blah blah blah._

This all goes back to the core of the argument though: Is Aereo a content
provider or an equipment company?

Obviously SCOTUS disagreed with several lower courts and determined that we
were infringing. But to paint it as a black and white issue strikes me as a
gross oversimplification.

Just out of curiosity (I'm legitimately not trying to start an argument), do
you think Cablevision* should have been overturned? If not, how do you
reconcile the fact that their RS-DVR doesn't publicly perform, but Aereo did?

*I seem to recall seeing you comment on Aereo stuff a bunch in the past and knowing a fair bit about the case, so I assume you're familiar with the Cablevision decision. Apologies if I misremembered or assumed incorrectly.

~~~
brianfitz
I'm having trouble understanding the ruling, so maybe those here with more
knowledge can help.

As a thought experiment, assume I live in a building that gets spotty OTA
reception on my antenna. However, there is an apartment for rent on the top
floor, and I decide to rent it for the sole purpose for storing property. If I
set up an antenna in that apartment, but do not live in the space, and run a
long cable from the top floor to my apartment, am I in violation of the law? I
do not own the apartment that the antenna resides in, and I do not physically
live there.

If this is not illegal, does it become illegal when I cut the cord between the
apartments and instead encode the signal and stream it to my laptop?

So, said a different way, does the legality depend on whether I live in the
same physical space as the antenna, or the fact that I have digitized the
content between my two rented spaces?

It would seem that the courts view a company such as SlingMedia as a hardware
provider and Aereo like the landlord of my second rented apartment. However, I
can't resolve at what point what I do with my rented space and equipment
becomes illegal.

Can anyone explain?

~~~
kevincennis
SCOTUS never really addressed this. The majority opinion was basically just a
bunch of vague hand-waving that amounted to "if it looks like a duck...".

That was one of the most frustrating things for me when the decision came out.
Obviously we all understood that we might lose, but to have a decision handed
down that was so completely devoid of any sort of definitive logic or
reasoning was really, really demoralizing.

They effectively just said "You look like a cable company, and even though we
accept that legally you are most certainly _not_ a cable company, we still
find that you publicly perform... because cable companies publicly perform".

~~~
harryh
Aereo argued that what they were actually doing in their datacenter mattered.

American Broadcasting Companies argued that the equipment you were running was
irrelevant and what mattered was the service you were selling (streaming
unlicensed TV over the internet).

I don't think the latter point is unreasonable. And I don't think your company
thought it was unreasonable either (except when trying to win court cases).
When trying to market your product to customers this is what your website
said(1):

"Watch Real, Live TV on the Internet. Finally. With Aereo you can now watch
live broadcast television online. No cable required."

The customer doesn't care about what's going on in your datacenter. Why should
SCOTUS?

1\.
[http://web.archive.org/web/20130302160437/https://aereo.com/](http://web.archive.org/web/20130302160437/https://aereo.com/)

~~~
kevincennis
I think the latter point _absolutely_ is unreasonable.

That marketing tagline you pulled could just as easily have come from Sling
(i.e. "Put an antenna in your house and hook it up to a Slingbox"). But nobody
seems to think that would be a public performance.

By your logic, Aereo should have been legal if the website said "User-
controlled, individually assigned remote antennas and DVRs in the cloud".

The way you market yourself has nothing to do with copyright law. You need to
look at what's _actually happening_ under the hood – not just base your
decision on whatever the "user perception" is of the service.

~~~
harryh
You missed my point.

I didn't say that Aereo was legal or not based on its marketing, I said that
there was a common cause to both Aereo's lack of legality and the marketing
the company chose to sell the product.

------
bhouston
Not surprising. This played out in Canada back in 1999/2000 in a similar
fashion:

\-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICraveTV](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICraveTV)

\-
[http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1999/12/33093](http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1999/12/33093)

\-
[http://news.cnet.com/2100-1033-237450.html](http://news.cnet.com/2100-1033-237450.html)

ICraveTV was less ambitious than Aereo as well, as it had no DVR
functionality, and it still got taken into the courts until they gave up.

~~~
yaur
The biggest difference with Aero is that a bunch of their staff was lawyers
and they had the financial backing to bring it to the supreme court. Without
that any Aero like service is a non-starter.

------
corbinpage
This is such a shame.

Aereo was an important part of my cord cutting strategy here in NYC.

I can still get a lot of content from Roku + Chromecast but can't get the
nationally broadcast channels (antennas won't work for my apartment location).
Seems so backwards to me.

I can't wait for an Aereo replacement if anyone knows of one.

~~~
colinbartlett
Seems like that's the point: There is no legal replacement.

Now, I'd love to hear about some kind of non-legal replacement. Like some kind
of crowd-sourced antenna array that makes it difficult to target and shut
down.

------
lnlyplnt
The best case for aereo was that they used their hack of the copyright system
to eventually lobby to change the laws and become "legit". IMO there were
always pretty slim chances of that happening. Still sad though, I hate the
current copyright system as much as anyone.

------
yonran
It seems that the Supreme Court took issue with the fact that Aereo operated
not only the hardware, but also the DVR software (with similar functionality
to that offered by the cable companies) that transmitted the copyrighted
performance to subscribers. I wonder whether it would be legal to offer
nothing but VMs in the cloud that happened to have a tuner attached, and let a
separate company sell DVR software that records the TV show and transmits it
privately. There must be some line between renting out one’s hardware and
infringing copyright; Aereo just went a bit too far.

------
davidholmesnyc
Aereo was great when I used it. I even tried applying to work there because I
was super interested in their service. I only had one bad experience and it
was trying to watch the SuperBowl using Aereo. It wasn't bad but wasn't great
(freezing,buffering,slow speeds on a fios Connection) . I completely
understood that it was a big national event and didn't hold it against them.
It probably wasn't even their fault but their bandwidth providers was probably
being hammered also.Unfortunately, because of that I ended up canceling and
getting Fios TV.Mainly,because I hosted a Superbowl part at my house and
everyone was upset at the stream so I ended up getting Fios TV that way for
future events/parties I didn't have to worry about a buffer or people being
upset again. Regardless I love what they stood for and used the service a lot
when I had it. It's sad there's no real alternative.

------
guyzero
Anyone who wants a similar product/service can check out Tablet TV:
[http://tablet-tv.com/](http://tablet-tv.com/)

A $100 device that transcodes OTA signals and sends them to your tablet.

They're launching next month in the Bay Area.

------
laichzeit0
Did Aereo as part of it's technology have the ability to strip out ads from
content? Because honestly that's the only reason I haven't watched tv/cable
whatever in years. Can't be bothered to waste my time on non-content when it's
easier to just download a torrent and watch it via Plex. Or is this more aimed
at sport, which necessarily needs to be "live" mostly?

~~~
look_lookatme
And do you send the "tv/cable whatever" companies a check for whatever you
think the content is worth? Otherwise you are just a thief.

~~~
gareim
I hope you don't use Adblock.

~~~
look_lookatme
I don't.

------
mp99e99
This is very sad for US consumers.

------
geographomics
I wonder if they could have got away with it, had they not included the DVR
feature and just strictly rebroadcast in real-time. As it was, they were too
akin to something like The Pirate Bay to not get some sort of legal bruising.

------
afxjzs
Pretty awesome example of greed and money beating out innovation and common
sense.

------
alexggordon
Sad news. I'm not sure what their next business step will be, or if this is
it, but I really do hope they open source anything they decide won't be a part
of their future products.

------
thiagoperes
Meanwhile, live and on-demand HD online streaming is already a thing for YEARS
in Peru:

[http://play.tuteve.tv](http://play.tuteve.tv)

------
DenisM
A Napster moment for TV?

Having squashed a single company they could deal with, the TV industry may end
up having to contend with some sort of P2P TV rebroadcast.

------
gergles
This is yet another title change that removes context and makes it less
difficult to understand why I want to read the article or comments. I really
wish there was something beyond a mechanical "original titles only beep boop
robot here" method for article titles.

~~~
dang
It might help to consider the domain name part of the title. When I read this
one that way, it doesn't seem to me to lack context.

I understand why the title changes sometimes seem mechanical, but in reality
that is far from the case. Sample bias plays a huge role here, and rightly so,
because titles and title edits shouldn't be the locus of attention.
Unfortunately, though, when most of the data goes unnoticed, the remaining
sliver of cases creates a misleading picture. I'm not sure what we can do
about this.

------
throwaway1592
While I applaud aereo's challenging of the law and twist on the law to create
something. The outcome is correct! I read every day on hacker news; copyright
laws are wrong, too long, not fair... I do not see it the same way. The hacker
news community is a community who creates many things themselves; many of the
community has chosen the path to give open licenses to their creation. This is
their right and thankfully they do it. But. All things are not equal; while i
think the giving open licenses to software benefits everyone. I do not see
mandating open licenses and wide use of "The Arts" to do the same.

Creation needs to be a struggle. Taking someone else thing and modifying it is
an easy path to create something. It also damages the original creation.
Software and Art are NOT the same thing. Because software industry has chosen
a different path should not mandate everything do the same.

Taking the collection of Marvel comic's characters and Tolkien's "Lord of the
Rings" and creating a movie would also be cool, but it damages the original.
It also by-passes the true meaning of greatness; Original. We as a society
have in the last few decades valued bullshit Art over copyright and
originality. Why? because it is easy and gives a short amount of pleasure.

Great things to not need marketing. Tolkien does not need marketing. He and
his family (example) should be compensated forever. there should be no
termination to it and his family should profit from it forever.

We should never take away the rights of the people who create things. If is
their choice to give openness to them.

~~~
look_lookatme
Wow downvoters, it's ok to have an opinion like this!

~~~
vidarh
It's ok, and I didn't downvote, but it's an extreme viewpoint, so it is
unsurprising that he's been downvoted.

He is promoting a view of copyright that extends far past the rights granted
by _any_ extant copyright system, in a forum where a lot of us are very aware
of how much of culture is constant remixing and borrowing, or outright
"stealing" of past content that has only been possible because copyright law
is not nearly as exclusionary as the property law principles he seems to
believe should apply (and as I pointed out elsewhere, in his other comments he
hints at support for a degree of control which does not even apply to any
property law system in the world) .

