Audio Video News

The judicial murder of Aereo—just in case you had any doubt about where our sympathies lie—leaves a cloud over cloud computing.

The Supreme Court ruled six to three that the feisty little antenna-TV-over-Internet service violated copyright law. But doesn’t that also mean cloud computing, operating in similar fashion, does the same? That would put the court at loggerheads with heavy hitters like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, who have sunk fortunes into their cloud initiatives. The majority opinion said Aereo had to be shut down because it was tantamount to a cable system that wiggled out of paying copyright holders for their wares. The majority said their ruling did not affect cloud services and that questions about the cloud should await another case. But the minority opinion asserted that the majority opinion was imprecise, results-driven, and may well affect the cloud.

Meanwhile, Aereo rival FilmOn, formerly Aereokiller, hastily retooled its business plan to include a paywall and payments to the networks. And Fox used the Aereo ruling, without success, as ammunition in its ongoing legal battle to shut down the Dish Network’s ad-skipping Hopper DVR.