It is a sad day for cable cord-cutters today, as a US Supreme Court ruling has shut down Internet television service Aereo.
According to the court ruling, Aereo, which has been transmitting broadcast television channels over the Internet to its subscribers, is just like any other cable television service, and must pay licensing fees to broadcasters for showing the latter's copyrighted programs. Aereo has argued in its defense that it is only in the business of renting out tiny, dedicated broadcast antennas to its thousands of subscribers, of whom the latter had the right to watch the said programs.
The plaintiffs in the case saw their stock prices soaring following the landmark ruling, Yahoo News said. The group, led by Sinclair Broadcasting and CBS, saw their shares increase by 15% and 6% respectively. More-diversified network owners Walt Disney, Twenty First Century Fox and Comcast were up about a single percent each.
Yahoo News added that should the ruling was in favor of Aereo, it would have upset the current system that currently has cable providers paying billions of dollars in annual fees to broadcasters for their programs. The cable business would most like undergo a quick change, with cable providers emulating Aereo's business model.
On the other hand, Aereo customers would not need to worry about their services with the company at the moment, as the high court ruling would be winding its way back through the lower courts. On the other hand, the ruling would clearly have an impact on the Internet and cloud-storage services, as the court had went out of their way to differentiate Aereo from other Internet services.
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the court's majority decision, "We agree that Congress, while intending the Transmit Clause [of the Copyright Act of 1976] to apply broadly to cable companies and their equivalents, did not intend to discourage or to control the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies. But we do not believe that our limited holding today will have that effect."
