The much anticipated Supreme Court decision came out today. The US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that Aereo infringed on the copyrights of major TV networks when it transmitted their contents to its subscribers. Aereo rented out a miniature antenna to a subscriber who then received broadcast signals from major TV networks.
Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer found that Aereo was essentially acting like a cable company, not like “an equipment provider.” He further rejected Aereo’s argument that its transmission to each subscriber via his rented antenna does not amount to public performance of copyrighted works, which is illegal without permission under the Copyright Act.
The decision is not likely to impact the major TV networks financially, but the decision might have affected the industry negatively down the road if Aereo had won because the TV networks plan to stream their contents over the internet.
Moreover, many believe that the Aereo decision may threaten the viability of other services like Google Music and Drop Box that use cloud storage technology which greatly advanced since Cartoon Network LP, LLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc. where Cartoon Network brought an infringement suit against Cablevision for allowing its customers to record its contents. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the determinative question is at whose volition the recording was performed. Because it is the subscribers who determined which program to record or replay, they must deal with the copyright infringement issue, not the service providers.
Even though Aereo’s legal argument heavily depended on the Cablevision decision, today’s majority opinion circumvented addressing the volition doctrine in the Cablevision case. Further, the Court carefully narrowed down the scope of its decision to Aereo’s technology in an attempt to avoid stifling any technological innovation.
With the Cablevision decision not reconciled or overruled by the Court, one commentator said, “the Supreme Court has created a mess that will take lower courts years to clean up. Online services that are similar to Aereo in some respects and different in others are more likely to face lawsuits, and the lower courts will have to sort out which services are similar enough to Aereo to face copyright liability.”
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