"A remarkably tech-savvy decision"
It is beyond dispute that the transmission of a broadcast TV program received by an individual’s rooftop antenna to the TV in his living room is private, because only that individual can receive the transmission from that antenna, ensuring that the potential audience of that transmission is only one person. Plaintiffs have presented no reason why the result should be any different when that rooftop antenna is rented from Aereo and its signals transmitted over the internet: it remains the case that only one person can receive that antenna’s transmissions.
Judge Christopher Droney, Second Circuit Court of Appeals
Rights’ owners want to be paid per metre of antenna “cable.” The distance from the aerial to the receiver is another part of the bridge these trolls squat beneath.
But Aereo hasn’t finished messing with RF business models.
UPDATE: An April Fool’s joke which completely got me…