(Apr 21, 2014) On Tuesday the Court will hear arguments on the legality of the disruptive wireless technology that brings broadcast TV to smartphones.
For two remarkable years the tiny company Aereo, which delivers broadcast TV to smartphones, tablets, and PCs, has walked through the valley of the shadow of death.
Armies of litigators, hired by the nation’s largest media giants, have bombarded it with lawsuits, accusing it of flagrant copyright infringement. All the while, Aereo has protested its innocence. It’s been cleverly engineered, it insists, to slip through the cracks of the copyright regimen the broadcasters are invoking, and — superficial appearances notwithstanding — it is therefore operating completely on the up-and-up.
On Tuesday Aereo will finally plead its case to the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices who will determine its fate. There, Walt Disney’s (DIS) American Broadcasting Company, CBS’s (CBS) CBS Broadcasting, Comcast’s (CMCSA) NBCUniversal, 21st Century Fox’s (FOX) Fox Television Stations, and a half dozen other broadcasting behemoths will ask the Court to pull Aereo’s plug. Ominously for Aereo, the U.S. Solicitor General’s Office — expressing the views of the U.S. Copyright Office and other government agencies — is siding with the broadcasters.
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