Today, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in ABC v Aereo, finding that the TV-antenna-rental service provided by Aereo is a copyright violation.
The majority decision was written by Bryer; Scalia authored a dissent, joined by Thomas (shocking!) and Alito. And I find myself in the somewhat uncomfortable position of agreeing with Scalia. Check this bit from the dissent:
I share the Court's evident feeling that what Aereo is doing (or enabling to be done) to the Network's copyrighted programming ought not to be allowed. But perhaps we need not distort the Copyright Act to forbid it. As discussed at the outset, Aereo's secondary liability for performance infringement is yet to be determined, as is its primary and secondary liability for reproduction infringement. If that does not suffice, then (assuming one shares the majority's estimation of right and wrong) what we have before us must be considered a "loophole" in the law. It is not the role of this Court to identify and plug loopholes. It is the role of good lawyers to identify and exploit them, and the role of Congress to eliminate them if it wishes. Congress can do that, I may add, in a much more targeted, better informed, and less disruptive fashion than the crude "looks-like-cable-TV" solution the Court invents today.
Well, OK, that last bit about Congress being able to do something is crazy talk, but still...
No comments:
Post a Comment