Aereo is a rather obscure start up that you may or may not have heard of. Other than this piece, and others like it in the days ahead, you probably won't be hearing much about them at all. That is because they recently lost their court battle with ABC, which went all the way to the Supreme Court. With the stroke of their pen, they have destroyed Aereo. The problem is, that in doing so, they have cast a dark cloud over much of the internet.
What Happened
First, a bit of background. Aereo is, or rather, was a way for subscribers to watch TV, streamed over broadband. The way it worked was, you purchased a small antennae from them, and for the low subscription fee of $12 a month, you got unlimited access. This is a bit like watching programming from your DVR. There are no broadcast schedules here. You pick your show from the shows available via the service, and stream it. If this sounds a lot like what you do when you stream something from Netflix or Amazon Prime, you'd be right. There are similarities that make them uncomfortably close cousins.
The case ultimately came down to whether or not Aereo's service constituted a public, or a private performance. A public performance would be like selling tickets to a rock concert where thousands of people view it all at once. A private performance would be like you renting a movie from Netflix and watching it at home.
Aereo's contention was that they're like Netflix. It can't be a public performance, since each user individually decides when they want to watch, and each user is getting their own copy of the program sent to them via the service. This seems to be the very definition of a private performance.
Things To Come
The courts disagreed, ruling that it constituted a public performance, and reversing two lower court decisions on the matter. In a word, Aereo's toast. The fear is, what happens next? This same argument could be used to rule Amazon Prime is illegal, or other video streaming services. Barring that, the Supreme Court's decision essentially paints an enormous target on the way that cloud based services work in general. If Aereo is illegal, then it would be fairly easy for someone with an ax to grind to claim that cloud based service providers are also illegal.
Given how quickly cloud based computing has seeped into every pore of the internet, and given how much we've already come to rely on it, with explosive growth ahead for years to come, that's a dark turn of events indeed. Unfortunately, that's the end of the line for Aereo. There's no one left to appeal to. The Supreme Court Justices have already given us ample evidence that they're not the most tech savvy people on the planet. It is disappointing in the extreme that these nine people hold so much sway over something as important as our digital society. Disappointing, and more than a little worrying.
