US Supreme Court Rules That Aereo Infringes Broadcasters’ Copyright

The US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 majority decision, has ruled that Aereo, Inc (Aereo) infringes the copyright of a broadcaster when it sells a service that allows subscribers to watch television programs over the Internet. The Supreme Court overturned the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had ruled that Aereo does not perform publically because it does not transmit content “to the public”. Since 2012, Aereo has provided a service that allows subscribers to watch and record broadcast television via the Internet. Aereo’s system is comprised of servers, transcoders and thousands of dime-sized antennas housed in a central warehouse. When a subscriber selects a show from Aereo’s website, Aereo’s server selects an antenna which is then tuned to and receives the broadcast. A transcoder translates the signals received into data, and the data is saved in a subscriber-specific folder on one of Aereo’s servers. The server then steams the copy of the show over the Internet to the subscriber. A number of television producers, marketers, distributers and broadcasters sued Aereo in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York for copyright infringement. The plaintiffs relied on section 106 of the Copyright Act, which gives copyright owners the exclusive right to perform the copyrighted works publically, and the Copyright Act’s Transmit Clause, which defines the public performance right as the right to “transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work…to the public, by means of any device or process…” Within their claim, the plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction. Both the trial and appellate court denied the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction request, finding that Aereo’s streams were individualized and therefore not “to the public”. The majority of the Supreme Court disagreed with the lower courts, and found that Aereo “performs” the television broadcasters’ copyrighted works, and that those performances are indeed “made to the public”. In arriving at that conclusion, the majority considered the similarity of the commercial objectives of Aereo and cable companies, as well as the similarity of the viewing experiences of their subscribers. The majority underlined that its decision is limited in nature and that Congress, while intending the Transit Clause to apply broadly to cable companies and equivalents, did not intend to discourage or control the emergence or use of different kinds of technology. The full reasons for judgment, American Broadcasting Cos, Inc v Aereo, Inc, Case No. 13-461 (US Supreme Court, June 25, 2014), are found here. Summary by: Adam Lis