Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0108 Aereo TV

Are you familiar with 'Aereo'??

Aereo is a service where your local, over the air, television broadcasts are captured as a DVR recording, stored in the cloud, then made available to stream to any device you wish.

Sounds pretty amazing right?

Well it may not be legal and television broadcasters are up in arms about it.  Legal challenges have now gone all the way to the United States Supreme Court that will be reviewing the case today.  I'll post an update once the news breaks.

Here are two articles that explain what is going on here:

http://www.cnet.com/news/why-the-aereo-supreme-court-case-over-tvs-future-is-too-tough-to-call/

http://recode.net/2014/04/21/why-the-aereo-case-has-cloud-computing-companies-worried/

I think the 2nd of those articles is the most interesting as it shows the threat to cloud computing in general this ruling may have an impact on.

Here is a snippet from one of those:

Here's the problem: Aereo doesn't pay the broadcast TV companies for storing and delivering their hit shows to consumers. And that has the broadcasters furious -- and afraid (Disclosure: CNET is owned by CBS, one of the broadcasters suing Aereo). Aereo says it is simply setting up antennas and DVRs on behalf of customers and plugging them into the Internet for their convenience. The only difference between Aereo and the same setup in a customer's own home is the length of the cord, the company says.

Here is one more to read:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101599314

More soon.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

**UPDATE #1**
The Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments pro and con today.  The decision isn't expected for several weeks.  Aereo claimed they are merely hardware providers while:

"...counsel for the broadcasters said Aereo's attempt to argue that it doesn't publicly perform programming is "like magic.""

Here is a link to the entire story:
http://www.cnet.com/news/with-aereo-supreme-court-digs-into-copyright-nuances/

**UPDATE #2**
ArsTechnica has a good write-up of the back and forth between the Justices and the lawyers.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/at-oral-arguments-supreme-court-isnt-sold-on-aereo/

Here is one bit from that:

[Justice Breyer] "And then what disturbs me on the other side is I don't understand what the decision for you or against you when I write it is going to do to all kinds of other technologies."

Next update will be the resolution unless I find something compelling to include in here.