On Tuesday, justices of the US Supreme Court are showing conflict over a request from television broadcasters to shut down Internet startup Aereo over grounds of copyright violations, The New York Times reported.
The broadcasters argued that Aereo's business model has threatened the economic viability of their businesses in a way that it endangers a major source of their income, which is in retransmission fees cable and satellite systems pay for the obtaining rights to distribute programming to networks and local stations. Broadcasters have said that Aereo's business model challenges their own model, which might force them to abandon the airwaves.
Aereo, on the other hand, defended its business model and said that its service aids its subscribers to do what they can legally since rabbit-ear antennas first came into fashion - watch free broadcast television programs over public airwaves.
The service, which costs up to $12 monthly, is only available in around a dozen cities, the Times said. Should a subscriber combines Aereo's service with other Web services like Hulu and Netflix, the costs of having a television diet could be much more lower than the cost of a cable bill.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr expressed in court how Aereo's service he thinks was made on the basis of how the company cleverly bypasses laws. He told Aereo's defense lawyer, "Your technological model. is based solely on circumventing legal prohibitions that you don't want to comply with."
Justice Stephen Breyer, on the other hand, had echoed the sentiments of the other justices in the court today, and said, "What disturbs me on the other side is, I don't understand what a decision (against Aereo) should mean for other technologies, (notably cloud computing)."
Aereo has been using farms of small antennas to capture public airwaves and stream television programs to subscribers for watching and recording on their mobile gadgets, the Times said. Although broadcasters have said that this "theft" violates copyrights laws, the business model of Aereo is similar to cloud computing.
