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Comment by troupe | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a lot less clear than just a yes or no. Imagine you have a library where you can't touch the books so you have to look at them through glass and turn the pages with some type of robotic arm. That probably wouldn't be an issue. What if you replace the glass with a computer monitor? So you are sitting in a room next to the book you are viewing. Then what if you extend the wire and sit in the building next door? What if you replace the wire with the internet? At what point did you start infringing on the copyright?

Imagine a video rental service where you can go in, and they will play whatever movie you want on a DVD player in the back room. How long can that wire be between the DVD player and the person watching before it starts being copyright infringement?

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Aereo tried essentially this, with thousands of TV antennas for their "broadcast TV over the internet" scheme. They lost, and no longer exist.

Zediva tried essentially this. DVDs, players, internet.

Aereo was significantly different, because there was no copyrighted material being rented. They were renting out servers, and the servers made per-user recordings. Aereo got super screwed over too, because the supreme court said they were 'basically' a cable company, and then they weren't able to get cable company style mandatory licensing either.

> Imagine a video rental service where you can go in, and they will play whatever movie you want on a DVD player in the back room. How long can that wire be between the DVD player and the person watching before it starts being copyright infringement?

I imagine it would be when you put a Y on the wire so that two people can watch from two different monitors.

nope, aereo didn't have a Y in the wire, still found to be infringing.

of course this gets to the core of the problem: rights on paper are one thing, but they are easily taken away by a plaintiff with money. if you don't have the money to defend the right, you don't have the right (and in fact stand a good chance of getting the right taken away for everyone else too).

Didn't Aereo lose because they were basically found to be a cable company which then subjects them to a specific set of different rules?

Yes, but that doesn't change the setup. They had a separate antenna and a separate server making separate copies of the shows for each user.

But, even after the Supreme Court said they were operating more like a cable company https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/supreme-court-pu... they were not allowed to actually operate like a cable company. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/in-win-for-broad...

Sounds like they had bad lawyers (or bad judges). Shouldn't be simultaneously possible to be a cable company and not.

But as IA isn't to my knowledge doing controlled digital lending with broadcast television, is there any plausible argument they would be found to be a cable company?

IA is doing a whole lot of digital lending other than television and that’s part of what this lawsuit is about iirc.

I’m not sure what you’re asking - they lost because the “we just host personal antennas for subscribers, it’s 1:1 between antennas and subscribers with no Y therefore it’s not rebroadcasting” was found to not be a viable argument, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Like this is a weird “that’s not true, weren’t they actually…” that recites all the same reasons I just said they were found to be infringing?

Do you want my interpretation of the law, or what I think it should be?

Let me put it this way: You should very much be able to rent a DVD from across the world and control it by wire, and the only limit we need to prevent abuse is how often that DVD can change hands, since micro-renting could cause legitimate problems.

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