Summary Of The Aereo Case

With that being said, this sets the table for the Aereo case. Justice Breyer of the United States Supreme Court presented the opinion briefed on the case. The actual facts residing behind the case are as follows. On March 1st, 2012, American Broadcasting Companies filed a complaint upon the accusation that the company Aereo’s services were in direct violation of the copyright act. Their exact retransmissions of American Broadcasting Company’s broadcasts were not paying out in reciprocation with the American Broadcasting Company. Nevertheless, federal judge Alison Nathan eventually ruled in favor of Aereo. Soon after, on January 10th, 2014, the Supreme Court said that they would hear the case and make a decision. Judge Nathan’s decision was …show more content…
The differences in the concurring frameworks exists within the interpretations of what constitutes “publicly performing.”
Dissenting from the opinion of the court was Judge Scalia, joined by Judge Alito and Judge Thomas. The main argument of the dissenters stems from determining who exactly is guilty of ‘performing.’ The metaphor of the function of a copy shop was used to express the dissenting opinion in layman’s terms. The copy shop rents out its photocopiers to its customers. Whether or not their customers print something a famous artist has produced, obviously constituting an infringement on copyright laws, is not under the copy shop’s definition of ‘performing.’
In my opinion, the integral aspect of this case causing the most disagreements is within the interpretation of Aereo’s services. I think that it is fairly obvious that Aereo was created in anticipation of facing grief from outside companies, so the company was structured in a way that could successfully avoid being victim of a lawsuit. The concept of creating unique transmissions for every single transmission should be established as one that does not infringe on any