

In Aereo, Supreme Court Rightly Skeptical About Becoming Technology Regulators - gasull
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/aereo-supreme-court-rightly-skeptical-about-becoming-technology-regulators

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pbreit
I wish this case had been more focused on what Aereo specifically is doing. I
found the concerns about cloud computing to be a needless distraction.

IANAL but it looked to me like Aereo made a serious error in not simply
arguing that it is an antenna with a (very) long cord. I guess they thought
they could scare the court into allowing Aereo in order to avoid some
unintended consequence but I just don't see that. Coupling it with the DVR
functionality also seemed like a needless mistake.

I'd like to know what the court would think about a service that really is not
much more than an antenna with a long cord. But doesn't seem like we will get
that here.

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URSpider94
_I 'd like to know what the court would think about a service that really is
not much more than an antenna with a long cord. But doesn't seem like we will
get that here._

So, an antenna with a long cord. A cable, you might say. We could call it
"cable television." And therein lies the rub -- if cable TV providers pay for
the right to retransmit local television stations, then the "long antenna"
defense might not get them very far.

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tesseract
You might even call it "community antenna television". The difference seems to
be that in CATV, the community shares the one antenna.

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SeanLuke
Perhaps an EFF news release isn't the most unbiased source for a factual claim
of the type made in your link headline.

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nitrogen
That is the headline used on the EFF original site.

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alexkiritz
They're suggesting that EFF is biased in this.

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Natsu
Which is silly in a number of ways. The only editorializing is the part saying
they're "rightly" skeptical. I don't think anyone is disputing that they asked
some skeptical questions and said questions are quoted therein.

That aside, being harshly questioned is _not_ necessarily predictive of which
way they will vote. If anything, they're harder on the side they rule against
and are using the questioning to find the strongest arguments to put in their
rulings.

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diziet
Is the EFF helping Aereo in this case?

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bertil
I believe they have been in the recent past: [https://www.eff.org/cases/wnet-
v-aereo](https://www.eff.org/cases/wnet-v-aereo)

They also mention an _amicus_ brief in the article, something that isn’t
technically a legal defense but generally is the closest thing to it.

From what I gather, EFF reports on cases that they care about, and would
provide legal support if needed in addition to coverage.

To answer a question that you haven’t asked: that would tend to support the
idea that their coverage is biased. However, their bias is fairly transparent
and well-known to HN readers; more importantly, I’m not familiar with a source
providing that level of understanding with less bias (since Growker stopped
blogging and Jay Zittrain hasn’t commented on this).

