Providing a service to the public vs. doing something privately, in law, is generally about doing the service commercially via an arms-length transaction in the general marketplace, not about the ratio of inputs to outputs. So, its not "redefinition" at all.
So, as others pointed out, renting an antenna should be violating the public performance restriction. Or renting a house with antenna for example, since it's commercial activity. It doesn't make sense though.
> So, as others pointed out, renting an antenna should be violating the public performance restriction. Or renting a house with antenna for example, since it's commercial activity.
Offering antennas or houses for rent may be a service to the public, but if you the service doesn't involve any of the things that count as performance under the relevant provisions of the copyright act but only the tools to do it, its not a public performance.
If Aereo was literally only renting physical attennas, the situation would be rather different than the actual service they were offering.
So what constitutes a mere tool, and what constitutes a performance then?
> If Aereo was literally only renting physical attennas, the situation would be rather different than the actual service they were offering.
Then there is an easy workaround. Let them rent out hardware explicitly. And users can control that hardware anyway they want (for example install some video streaming tools there, may be made by the same Aereo, and stream to themselves). What level of involvement from Aereo makes it a performance?
harryh's point, and the point of this legal decision, is that the text of the law is not really relevant. Anything that appears to any halfway reasonable person to abide by the text of the law, but which upsets powerful groups, will be prohibited, because the goal of our IP legal system is to protect those groups.
It's not that the text is irrelevant. It's that there is also the "spirit of the law" that goes along with that text. When you have to go around the text of the law by jumping through convoluted hoops (which Aereo has definitely done), it's likely you're violating the spirit of the law.
While Aereo's setup is undoubtedly clever, I am glad our legal system doesn't treat the raw text of laws as gospel. Laws are created for a purpose, and it would be impossible to foresee every possibility to get around the intent of a law when you are drafting it.
> It's that there is also the "spirit of the law" that goes along with that text.
Sure, and my point is that the "spirit" of these laws is simply to please IP lobbies. I don't think it's a good thing.
> When you have to go around the text of the law by jumping through convoluted hoops (which Aereo has definitely done), it's likely you're violating the spirit of the law.
How is what they've done convoluted? It's extremely simple.
That's not my point at all. That is, in fact, a gross misstatement of my point. Rather than assuming that everyone on the other side of this is an idiot and/or corrupt you'd be better served to step back a bit and try to work from the assumption that there are reasonable people on the other side of this.
