POSTED BY Mayra Neimerck
Innovators are revolutionizing the U.S. pay-television market. If you could get your TV over the Internet and have access to all your favorite shows, without a cable or satellite subscription fee, what would you do? Just about any person would choose to cut the cord. The term cord-cutters refers to people who cancel their traditional pay-television subscriptions for internet-based TV. Cable viewers are irritated with constantly increasing prices, excessive fees, and promising bundles. Therefore, a growing number of people are watching online, whether on Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Amazon or over-the-air TV.
In American Broad. Companies, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2498 (2014),the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Aereo, a television streaming service, violated copyright law by illegally retransmitting broadcasting TV over the Internet. Aereo developed a system that allowed customers to watch live programs over the Internet, for a fraction of the cost of cable. Customers could go to Aereo’s website and select the programming, at which point, Aereo would tune a coin-size antenna to the station, capturing the signal, and retransmitting the signal to the particular customer who requested it. The customer could then watch the program on any device, or have it stored by Aereo for later streaming.
Aereo threatened the many million-dollar business of broadcasters, which receive from cable companies the right to retransmit over-the-air programming. The Supreme Court’s ruling against Aereo comes with serious consequence to cord-cutters. Aereo substantially impacted the growth of cord-cutters by providing users access to live TV, along with DVR services. Gizmodo’s Blog stresses the importance of Aereo, “[l]ose it, and we’re still stuck tethered to a cable system that’s broken and unfair.”In the meantime, without Aereo and without access to broadcast TV signals via a digital antenna, cord-cutters will be forced to come up with a new Internet alternative or reconnect to pay-TV services.
Bio: Mayra Neimerck is currently a 2L at Suffolk University Law School and a Staff Member of the Journal of High Technology Law. She holds a B.A in Crime and Justice, cum-laude, from Suffolk University. Mayra speaks Portuguese fluently and is proficient in Spanish.
