<story><title>Appeals court upholds legality of Aereo’s “tiny antennas” scheme</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/appeals-court-upholds-legality-of-aereos-tiny-antennas-scheme/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DannyBee</author><text>The dissent on this bothers me as a lawyer.
It basically says the whole thing is a sham to use a perceived &quot;loophole in the law&quot;.&lt;p&gt;IE By complying with the exact requirements of the law, they are committing a sham.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s a policy argument, not a legal one.&lt;p&gt;A sham is doing something like &quot;i&apos;ll sell my brother my house for $1&quot;. That&apos;s a sham. You are doing something to try to trivially comply with contracts law (which requires adequate consideration), but the $1 you are giving is really trying to cover up the fact that it&apos;s really a gift.&lt;p&gt;But that&apos;s not the argument the dissent makes, the argument it makes is &quot;i don&apos;t like this behavior, so i will villify it&quot; and act like it&apos;s a sham.  The law imposes plenty of technical barriers to doing things.
I could make an amazing wireless system if i could use whatever transmitter power i liked, but the law prevents me.
The fact that they could use one large antenna is exactly right, but it changes nothing, because &lt;i&gt;the law appears to prevents them from doing so&lt;/i&gt;. 
Following the technical requirements of FCC law is not a sham, it&apos;s &quot;what the law requires you do&quot;.
Following the technical requirements of copyright law is not a sham, it&apos;s &quot;what the law requires you do&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>As a lawyer, it was the majority&apos;s approach that bothered me. Simply, this hyper-technical approach makes for bad law. The court would&apos;ve been better served here just saying it was fair use because the ads were preserved and the streams contained content that could be watched for free over the air anyway. Throw in the additional public consideration in this case, which is that the content owners are taking advantage of public airwaves to air this content in the first place, and the need to perpetuate this bizarre loophole disappears.&lt;p&gt;The problem here is: what does &quot;public performance&quot; mean in the context of internet broadcasts? Cablevision just covers that consideration with mud. The answer is probably: the distinction of &quot;public performance&quot; is completely meaningless when talking about internet streams.</text></comment>
<story><title>Appeals court upholds legality of Aereo’s “tiny antennas” scheme</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/appeals-court-upholds-legality-of-aereos-tiny-antennas-scheme/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DannyBee</author><text>The dissent on this bothers me as a lawyer.
It basically says the whole thing is a sham to use a perceived &quot;loophole in the law&quot;.&lt;p&gt;IE By complying with the exact requirements of the law, they are committing a sham.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s a policy argument, not a legal one.&lt;p&gt;A sham is doing something like &quot;i&apos;ll sell my brother my house for $1&quot;. That&apos;s a sham. You are doing something to try to trivially comply with contracts law (which requires adequate consideration), but the $1 you are giving is really trying to cover up the fact that it&apos;s really a gift.&lt;p&gt;But that&apos;s not the argument the dissent makes, the argument it makes is &quot;i don&apos;t like this behavior, so i will villify it&quot; and act like it&apos;s a sham.  The law imposes plenty of technical barriers to doing things.
I could make an amazing wireless system if i could use whatever transmitter power i liked, but the law prevents me.
The fact that they could use one large antenna is exactly right, but it changes nothing, because &lt;i&gt;the law appears to prevents them from doing so&lt;/i&gt;. 
Following the technical requirements of FCC law is not a sham, it&apos;s &quot;what the law requires you do&quot;.
Following the technical requirements of copyright law is not a sham, it&apos;s &quot;what the law requires you do&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>I think its useful as an exercise to point out the challenges in Copyright law.&lt;p&gt;Using 22nm MEMs technology I could imagine that I can get 1,000,000 antennas on a die which are clearly articulated when viewed in an electron microscope. Then I can sell these chips for $10,000 each to companies that want to use this &quot;loophole&quot;.</text></comment>