Aereo Decision Protects Creators and Distributors

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Annie Dwyer; 202-331-2765
 

WASHINGTON, June 25 – This morning, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the online-streaming company Aereo in ABC v. Aereo Inc.The court held that federal copyright laws protect ABC and other owners of broadcast television programs from unauthorized, uncompensated retransmissions.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) co-authored an amicus brief in the case with the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE) arguing in support of ABC and the other creators. Below is a statement by Ryan Radia, CEI’s associate director of technology studies and a co-author of the amicus brief.

Today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of network television programming and the rights of its creators and distributors. Companies like Aereo, who had essentially been free-riding on broadcast content, will have to stop operating without permission," said Ryan Radia, CEI’s associate director of technology studies“But, this isn’t the end of online television, since companies like Hulu, Netflix, iTunes all pay the networks for their content and share it in a legal way.”

“People should not worry that this decision will halt innovation in online entertainment; this case was about protecting companies’ original content from unauthorized resell,” said Radia. “It also does not endanger cloud computing; as the Court said, this decision does not render companies such as Dropbox and YouTube liable for uploads posted by individual subscribers.”

CEI & ICLE Amicus Brief in Aereo is here.

CEI & ICLE blog post “A Supreme Court ruling against Aereo won’t spell the end of cloud computing” is here.
 

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