#supremecourtcase

Recently, Aereo Supreme Court case has been heavily discussed and covered by the news. The case started with Aereo, a startup company that allowed people to view and record over-the-air TV broadcasts over the Internet. Aereo was launched in New York back in 2012 - and it became controversial weeks after it was introduced as broadcasters sued Aereo, saying that Aereo was streaming their content without permission. The copyright infringement case ended up in the Supreme Court as Aereo disagreed, saying that their customers were just renting individual antennas that allow them to watch content that they are legally entitled to view.

The case was heard by the Supreme Court this Tuesday. The case was extremely important because it relates to the Internet economy. During the hearing, the Supreme Court expressed skepticism directed towards Aereo. As oral arguments were taking place, the justices asked how Aereo compared to other services as they wanted to know it Aereo was a cable service, a record store or something completely different.

Paul Clement, a representative from ABC, which sued Aereo said that in his view Aereo claims to help its users with managing what already belongs to them, but in reality: they give their customers stuff that they did not own before. Clement said that worrying about legal implications for cloud storage was not a main issue to solve, because cloud storage is different from what Aereo provides.

Malcolm Stewart from the Obama administration echoed Clement's words, pointing out what there is a difference between a company that provides content in the first instance and the company that gives its consumers access to content that they already have (ex. Amazon Cloud Player or Dropbox).

Aereo's attorney, David Frederick spoke sat as the justices wanted him to confirm that thousands of tiny antennas that Aereo owns were introduced in order to avoid paying fees to broadcasters. Frederick refused to acknowledge that, saying that using thousands of tine antennas helped Aereo with scaling its service up quickly.

The justices did not buy Frederick's words as Chief Justice John Roberts said that companies often tend to circumvent legal prohibitions with their technological models.

Frederick emphasized that Aereo was renting antennas and video recording equipment to its customers, so the customers were the ones who made copies of programs and privately viewed them, therefore any liability related to unauthorized copies would go back to the customers - not to the company.