Here's a kindof follow up on the story about Aereo, the company in New York that wants to record over the air TV broadcasts and send them over the internet. It's a slightly different context, and a different continent, though. Also a different scale of player, as Optus, an Australian mobile phone company, offered to stream over the air TV broadcasts to their customer's phones.
The court's ruling in this case is that Optus is doing the recording, not their customers. So you can see the important moral point here--splitting hairs about the nature of data is somehow meaningful and useful. More like one entrenched interest has staggered the legal playing field to their advantage, but whatever.
Point being--you can buy a f*cking phone with a TV tuner in it. By offering to stream the over the air broadcasts--put out there for anyone to see capture for free--Optus is doing their level best to help the broadcasters reach their audience, and make it bigger.
The only reason broadcasters should fight this is to fight some idiotic notion that they need to "defend their prerogatives". Which, if you've ever tried that in a bar, is a great way to get killed.
Keepin' it real.
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