

Inside the tech aiming Aereo through TV's legal hoops - Varcht
http://www.cnet.com/news/inside-the-tech-that-tossed-aereo-through-tvs-legal-hoops/

======
efnx
While reading this I could stop thinking how wasteful it all seems. Here we
are creating a complicated solution to a very simple problem. All the
workarounds needed to navigate around copyrights violations is costly - for
the earth! If Aereo could just record it once and distribute it out we'd be
saving energy. Broadcast companies can just let them build it out and then buy
the idea and make a nice press release about improved service.

------
gtCameron
Reading that makes me wonder how they actually make any money. $8 a month per
subscriber seems pretty low for the hardware and bandwidth involved per
stream.

Even if you count on only a certain percentage of people watching at any given
time you need to account for the high volume events where 80% of your customer
base would be watching the Super Bowl for example.

The more I think about it the more it seems like the company's purpose is more
about forcing this court case than actually building a sustainable business.

~~~
evan_
They say "subject to capacity" all over their site so I have a feeling if
everyone in town is trying to watch the Super Bowl some people aren't going to
be able to.

I have a feeling they're hoping that long-term they'll be able to ditch the
one-antenna-per-stream nonsense. With that one tiny (!) little tweak it
suddenly becomes wildly profitable.

~~~
rayiner
> I have a feeling they're hoping that long-term they'll be able to ditch the
> one-antenna-per-stream nonsense. With that one tiny (!) little tweak it
> suddenly becomes wildly profitable.

For a short time, maybe. But such a court ruling would basically declare open
season on broadcast content, such that anybody would be able to quickly start
an Aereo competitor and retransmit OTA television. With AWS, it would be a
cinch. So the price of the service would quickly drop to nothing.

~~~
acjohnson55
I strongly disagree that this would be "a cinch". If AWS were suitable for
this, why would Aereo themselves be using rooms full of transcoders instead of
the cloud? I think the only people willing to make the investment in Aereo-
like infrastructure are existing cable and satellite TV companies, looking to
escape retransmission fees. But they it seems unlikely they'd want to unbundle
that from their non-OTA content.

~~~
rayiner
Aereo has to maintain the pretense that they're just "renting out" a time-
shifting DVR. That's why they need rooms full of transcoders. But the premise
of the comment 'evan_ made is what if the law was changed so they didn't need
to maintain that pretense? In that case, Aereo's costs would go down, but it
would also become ridiculously easy to start a competitor.

~~~
acjohnson55
I don't think anyone is under the impression that anything about the model of
charging retransmission fees for one-to-many streaming is going anywhere. If
it did, then sure, cable companies could do what they do today and simply not
pay fees. But that possibility isn't even on the table right now.

I don't think DVR fundamentally has anything to do with the transcoding. You
could just store and time-shift the native stream and get rid of the
transcoders. I suspect that the transcoding is done primarily to conserve
bandwidth.

To me, the DVR is pretty much a settled question under Cartoon Network vs.
Cablevision [1]. The real question is whether Aereo is allowed to rent you an
antenna.

[1] [http://betanews.com/2009/06/29/cable-dvrs-are-legal-
supreme-...](http://betanews.com/2009/06/29/cable-dvrs-are-legal-supreme-
court-denies-appeal-of-cablevision-decision/)

------
rayiner
> The result: thousands of customers in 11 cities watching broadcast TV -- the
> most popular channels on television -- at a fraction of the subscription
> price of a cable or satellite package (monthly Aereo fees are as low as $8).
> But those customers are in jeopardy of losing their service.

This is the heart of the issue, isn't it? Aereo can provide this service for
so cheap because it's using someone else's content for free. They don't
themselves create or provide anything users actually want to buy--they just
distribute the work of other people, and do so without compensating the people
who created the products that are actually in demand.

I don't really buy Aereo's claim that somehow this implicates cloud computing.
Lawyers and technologists can argue about how Aereo's array of individual
antennas interacts with the public performance aspects of the Copyright Act,
but I think ordinary users wouldn't view Aereo as a "cloud computing service"
akin to Drop Box, but simply a website where they can stream TV shows for very
cheap (ala Hulu).

~~~
evan_
> Aereo can provide this service for so cheap because it's using someone
> else's content for free. They don't themselves create or provide anything
> users actually want to buy--they just distribute the work of other people,
> and do so without compensating the people who created the products that are
> actually in demand.

Imagine I pay Geek Squad, or some other handyman service, to come to my house
and set up an antenna on my roof and hook it up to a DVR. I can't imagine
anyone saying that either I or my handyman has done anything wrong.

What is Aereo doing that's different? The _only difference_ is that the wire
between the DVR and my television is longer.

> its Rube Goldberg machinations are clearly just away to sidestep the law.

It would be a whole lot easier for everyone involved if they could just use
ONE antenna. The whole Rube Goldberg machinations are to _comply_ with the
law.

~~~
rayiner
> The only difference is that the wire between the DVR and my television is
> longer.

Hardly. The major difference is who owns and controls the equipment, and what
other equipment they own and control. By your reasoning the _only_ difference
between inviting my friends over to watch a DVD and a movie theater is that
the latter involves a bigger screen and more "friends." It's the kind of
reductionist argument that lawyers and engineers love but ring hollow in terms
of common sense.

~~~
evan_
> The major difference is who owns and controls the equipment, and what other
> equipment they own and control.

OK, I rent my DVR from the cable company, surely you're as upset about that as
you are about Aereo? Since the equipment is owned and controlled by a
corporation that's not paying for the production of the television?

> By your reasoning the only difference between inviting my friends over to
> watch a DVD and a movie theater is that the latter involves a bigger screen
> and more "friends."

I don't see how this makes any sense or is relevant at all, sorry.

~~~
rayiner
> OK, I rent my DVR from the cable company, surely you're as upset about that
> as you are about Aereo? Since the equipment is owned and controlled by a
> corporation that's not paying for the production of the television?

By that reasoning, a leased car is the same as a taxi.

> I don't see how this makes any sense or is relevant at all, sorry.

My point is that you're focusing on one dimension ("the length of the wire")
and saying that two situations are analogous because they differ only in the
quantity of that one dimension. But that's not the only way in which the two
situations differ. Along other dimensions, there's a huge difference between a
handyman installing an antenna in your house and Aereo streaming TV shows over
the internet.

~~~
evan_
> Along other dimensions, there's a huge difference between a handyman
> installing an antenna in your house and Aereo streaming TV shows over the
> internet.

And yet you can't seem to articulate what the difference is, other than that
DVDs are the same as taxis, or _something_.

~~~
rayiner
A DVR, whether leased or purchased outright, as a piece of equipment totally
under the control of an individual user, and present on the individual user's
personal premises. Aereo does not provide "equipment rental." It provides a
service using equipment that it owns and totally controls. In that sense, the
difference between a rented DVR and Aereo's service is very similar to the
difference between a leased car and a taxi cab.

Similarly, while you say that the "only difference" between Aereo's service
and having your own antenna is the "length of the wire" that statement ignores
all the other dimensions along which the two situations differ, and is
reductionist in the same way as saying that the "only difference between a
movie theater and watching a DVD with friends is the size of the screen and
the number of friends. It's overly reductionist. The positioning in the market
of the two experiences is totally different. The ownership structure and
profit motive is totally different.

Your whole position depends on drawing these reductionist analogies and saying
two situations are the same. Applying similar reasoning to other situations,
however, shows that such reasoning leads to conclusions that defy common
sense. Of course a leased car is not the same as a cab, and of course a movie
night with friends is not the same as running a movie theater. But if you
ignore ownership and control of the equipment and the market structure of the
operation, as you are doing by analogizing Aereo to an "antenna with a long
wire," then you can make such counterintuitive conclusions.

~~~
DanBC
Does it help tonsay that Disney resisted the advent of home video because they
would not be able to tell how many people were in the room watching the movie
and thus would not be able to charge them?

So some people felt that a movie night with friends is exactly the same as
running a cinema and wanted to charge everyone who was watching a screening.

------
harryh
Here's my question: why do the TV networks still broadcast over the air? If
they weren't doing that none of what Aereo is doing would be possible.

Do they really make that much money from showing commercials to people with
rabbit ears? Maybe I live in a bubble but everyone I know that watches TV gets
cable or somehow watches over the internet.

~~~
acjohnson55
In 1996, 58.4% of American households had cable [1], but 96.7% of American
households have at least one TV. Assuming that this difference is made up
mostly of people watching OTA TV (not satellite TV, fiber, other, or non TV
watchers), that still leaves a pretty massive audience. I wish I had numbers,
but my understanding is that retransmission fees are currently not the
majority of income for broadcasters. Certainly, they are quite significant and
growing, though.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_United_States)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_States)

~~~
harryh
Presumably that 58.4% has gone up some in the last 18 years?

~~~
acjohnson55
Sorry, 2006, as said in the link. Too late to edit.

------
ForHackernews
I still don't really understand the point of Aereo. Are there people who have
high-speed internet (i.e. not in remote areas) but who can't just put up an
antenna?

The only reason I can imagine is international viewers who want to watch US
broadcast TV.

~~~
chrisoverzero
You have to be physically located in the market whose content you wish to
receive. Sending NYC broadcast television to anywhere but NYC is not in
Aereo's business model, and they actively attempt to prevent doing so. If they
were caught doing it, they'd be shut down without a question.

~~~
ForHackernews
Wow, that makes it even _less_ valuable than I realized. Thanks to digital
broadcasting, I get a perfectly clear picture with a $10 rabbit ear antenna
from a thrift store.

How does Aereo charge $8/month for this?

~~~
oddevan
And I _don 't_ get a picture at all with a $50 amplified antenna. The local
ABC affiliate hasn't put any transmitters in my area, so I'm SOL without cable
or a service like Aereo.

(more info: I'm in Greenville, SC, which is part of a TV market that covers a
large, mountainous area and has 4 cities in it. The stations actually based in
my city (NBC, Fox) come in very clear; the stations based farthest from my
city (ABC) don't come in at all.)

~~~
maxerickson
You may have better luck with a direction antenna than an amplifier. This one
is a good compromise between size and expense and so forth:

[http://www.channelmasterstore.com/Digital_HDTV_Outdoor_TV_An...](http://www.channelmasterstore.com/Digital_HDTV_Outdoor_TV_Antenna_p/cm-4221hd.htm)

It does sort of demand a permanent installation. I guess similar designs are
good too, I think the Channelmaster is actually better, but it is
discontinued.

------
rasz_pl

      "drove to a Home Depot and bought those PVC pipes that ordinarily the cheap terrorists would use for making explosive"
    

Wow, Chet Kanojia, founder and chief executive of the TV-streaming company is
really ...stupid?

