Aereo to broadcasters: Supreme Court? Bring it on
Aereo will not oppose broadcast networks' petition for the US Supreme Court to rule on the service's legal merits, but a getting to the Supreme Court is still a long shot.
(Credit: Aereo)
Aereo said Thursday that it will not oppose broadcast television companies' petition for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of the online service that streams over-the-air programming.
'While the law is clear and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and two different federal courts have ruled in favor of Aereo, broadcasters appear determined to keep litigating the same issues against Aereo in every jurisdiction that we enter,' Chief Executive Chet Kanojia said in a statement. 'We want this resolved on the merits rather than through a wasteful war of attrition.'
Television broadcasters in October petitioned the US Supreme Court to get involved in their fight against Aereo.
Aereo, which is backed by IAC Chairman Barry Diller, uses tiny individual antennas to let consumers watch live, local broadcasts on some Internet-connected devices and store shows in a cloud-based DVR. Television giants including Disney's ABC, CBS (the parent of CNET), Fox, and Comcast's NBCUniversal sued Aereo, alleging that the service violates their copyrights and that Aereo must pay them.
In their petition, the broadcasters asked the court to decide whether the performance of their copyrighted programming via Aereo is 'public' and therefore prohibited by the copyright law, or if Aereo is engaged in tens of thousands of 'private' performances to paying strangers, as the online company has argued successfully.
Even though Aereo isn't opposing petition, that doesn't make a Supreme Court case on the matter a sure thing. All petitions to the Supreme Court have a long shot of being granted. Of the roughly 10,000 petitions received every year, the court grants and hears oral arguments for about 75 to 80, less than one percent.
The court tends to select cases that lower courts have ruled on in different ways or those that address issues of national importance. So far, the Aereo litigation has resulted in what is known as a 'circuit split,' where two courts reach diverging opinions, and it's a stretch to consider this issue to be one of national social significance.
This is a developing story and CNET will update.
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