[HN Gopher] A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and th... ___________________________________________________________________ A $795M analogy: Locast, broadcast copyright, and the fall of big antenna Author : bluecheese33 Score : 62 points Date : 2021-09-17 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (ravik.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (ravik.substack.com) | enzanki_ars wrote: | What infuriates me the most about this ruling is that long term | effects of it. Locast did what they did and inserted ads every 15 | minutes because they knew nobody would not contribute to hosting | costs without some reason. Had they made it so it was | interruption at the start only, _maybe_ it could have held up | better in court. And I agree on that front. Remove the donate | video from showing every 15 minutes, and only show it at the | start. Encourage funding through better on screen messages and | make it more clear that it's voluntary. | | But the big part of the ruling was that it wasn't just how they | requested funding, but the why. The ruling argued that collecting | funds to expand more throughout the US was not valid for their | non-profit status for some reason that made no sense. And as a | result, it appears that a replacement will never exist, because | the cost of pulling all of these channels with careful and | specific antenna placement in a city, the hardware to pull all of | those channels in real time, re-encoding the feed from MPEG2 to | HLS/MP4 for the web, potentially making different qualities to | account for network conditions (can't remember if the M3U8 | playlists from Locast did that or not), and the networking costs | of transmitting video are expensive. | | And the lawsuit was stupid too. US TV channels are crammed to the | max with advertisements, so much so that it feels more like an ad | delivery mechanism than an entertainment delivery system. Locast | could have been advantageous as they would have actual data of | who is watching what when and where. Ad companies love that data, | and with traditional OTA feeds, they don't have that. Instead, | all of these OTA companies actively refuse offering the ability | to watch their streams online for free. Other than local news | content, everything else is locked behind a paywall of having an | active cable subscription. Why should I, as a consumer, pay $100 | a month to watch this same OTA content, just so I can watch it | online, especially for a medium so jam packed with ads? | | I live in the edge of Columbus, Ohio in an apartment. I'm still | within 10 miles of the transmitters for the big 6 stations (the | local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CW, and PBS collectively | only use 4 transmitters.). My apartment is luckily facing sort of | line of site to most of those transmitters. But even then, I | still have bad signal issues with those channels, and in some | cases leading to an unwatchable recording. The signal was bad | enough that my recording of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Opening | Ceremonies was bared by loss of 2 to 5 seconds of video and audio | every 2 minutes. My only alternative was to play $65 to $100 a | month to cable or cordcutting subscription to watch that | broadcast online. And out of spite for continuing to shutdown any | free way to watch their OTA content online, I will _never_ pay. | Our laws regarding OTA broadcasts and how people can use and view | them need to change ASAP, otherwise what is the point of having | them if is not accessible to all. | commandlinefan wrote: | > actively refuse offering the ability to watch their streams | online for free | | They probably have exclusivity contracts with the cable | providers. They're sliding into irrelevance already, but will | probably make their services completely available on the | internet a few years after their slide into total irrelevance | is complete. | LocalH wrote: | Regulatory capture at its finest. I presume you're aware of | retransmission consent, the mechanism that allows local | stations (whether network-owned or not) to demand payment for | carriage of their signal, that carries 90% or more content that | the station does not own, but merely has license to broadcast. | This would be fine if most stations weren't part of large | station groups that own dozens of stations. These large station | groups demand higher and higher fees from operators (and both | sides of every argument are always presented as "[the other | side] wants to take your [network] away because they [want too | much/won't pay enough], call them to demand they stop doing | that", when the average person who would see those messages | does not have the knowledge to understand how it works, because | they quite rightly have more important things to worry about). | | The networks can be shitty to their non-owned-and operated | stations too. The long-term local ABC affiliate got shafted a | few years back. They'd been an affiliate since 1969. ABC | demanded a substantially larger amount of money to renew the | affiliation than they had in the past. The station initially | tried to negotiate the amount down, ABC refused to budge. After | careful consideration, the station decided to nonetheless agree | to ABC's demands. After all that, ABC still turned around and | basically said "nah, forget it" and went with their direct | competitor in the market, who already operated the CBS | affiliate. ABC and CBS are now subchannels of the same | broadcaster, who happens to be owned by one of the larger | station groups. The networks do this because it gives the | stations more leverage to demand more from operators, and the | station groups have more capital than smaller independently- | owned stations. The networks also directly benefit, as the | stations in the larger, more flagship markets tends to be | network owned and operated (O&O). A station group that says "we | own X number of stations and unless you pay us more money, | we'll restrict your carriage of _all of them_ " has a lot more | pull than a company that owns one station. | | There is actually a choice, but it's on the broadcaster's end. | A station can elect to choose "must-carry" status, where the | operator transmits the signal with no compensation (which | generally only applies to a station's primary subchannel), or a | station can demand payment for retransmission. | | If cable was invented today, the networks would have it shut | down in a hot minute. | gamblor956 wrote: | _The ruling argued that collecting funds to expand more | throughout the US was not valid for their non-profit status for | some reason that made no sense._ | | The law granting them the exception from copyright law that | would have allowed them to stream in the first place strictly | limited the way funds could be raised and spent by entities | claiming the non-profit exemption. | | The law is several decades old, and predates the internet. It | wasn't the subject of regulatory capture by the cable | companies, who were in their infancy when the law was first | passed. | | Locast chose not to operate like a non-profit, and made a | profit on their streaming services, in violation of the law. | It's really that simple. | enzanki_ars wrote: | Edit: Not a lawyer, and what follows is intended to be more | of outlining my understanding and trying to ask clarification | on what I'm clearly missing. Sorry if it sounds a bit | defensive. Just a very strange lawsuit, specifically in how | the service was forced to shutdown instead of being allowed | to continue to operate. | | Isn't that a valid use of the non-profit status? That as long | as the funding from donations was going towards that | expansion only, it can still be considered a non-profit? | Looking at the quick Wikipedia definition, that seems to be | the case, if you consider Locast's mission is to provide | retransmission of OTA broadcasts to all people in the US. | | > "A second misconception is that nonprofit organizations may | not make a profit. Although the goal of nonprofits isn't | specifically to maximize profits, they still have to operate | as a fiscally responsible business. They must manage their | income (both grants and donations and income from services) | and expenses so as to remain a fiscally viable entity. | Nonprofits have the responsibility of focusing on being | professional, financially responsible, replacing self- | interest and profit motive with mission motive." [1] | | PBS is also a non-profit, but PBS does something similar in | that certain content is locked behind their "PBS Passport" | subscription. If this ruling that requiring donations view | without interruption, then PBS is also violating non-profit | status based on your statement regarding "Locast chose not to | operate like a non-profit." But Locast attempted to resolve | that and remove the interruptions entirely, but was still | required to completely shutdown and was given 0 chance to | adjust... My understanding about hte reasoning for shutting | down is that using collected funds, via any means, expansion | across the US isn't allowed for some questionable reason | under the section of the law Locast was using. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization#Man | agem... | gamblor956 wrote: | 1) This isn't about their 501 non-profit status, it's about | their use of the non-profit exemption for re-transmission | of copyrighted materials through a service that would | otherwise be classified as violating copyrights. | | 1) No, it's not a valid use of the money under the | restrictions of the non-profit exemption from copyright for | re-transmission. The law is quite clear on this point: | revenues derived from the violating service _must not | exceed_ the actual costs of providing that service. | Expansion costs are not related to the costs of providing | _existing_ service, therefore they are not permitted under | the exemption. | | 3) PBS is not even remotely the same thing, because it's | not the non-profit status that is at issue. PBS _owns and | /or licenses_ the content they broadcast and stream, so it | does not need an exemption from copyright laws. Locast does | not own or license the content it streams, so it does need | the exemption, and it violated the explicit requirements | for the exemption it needed. | | 4) _But Locast attempted to resolve that and remove the | interruptions entirely, but was still required to | completely shutdown and was given 0 chance to adjust | Historically, using someone 's IP without their permission | resulted in statutory damages, and Locast should consider | themselves lucky they're not on the hook for those, as | statutory damages for copyright law can be as much as | $150,000 _per violation* for willful violations of | copyright law. * Tech was able to get away with the ask for | forgiveness business model for 3 decades, but generally the | law does not operate on "ask for forgiveness" basis. It's | irrelevant that they got "0 chance" to adjust since the | onus was on them to plan their activities in a way that | complied with the law. | WarOnPrivacy wrote: | I like how much of this is due to ever-racheting copyright laws | that America never, ever asked for - laws that were almost | certainly passed in response to seemingly endless campaign | donations. | WarOnPrivacy wrote: | _CHIEF JUSTICE SCALIA: But his question is, is there any reason | you did it other than not to violate the copyright laws?_ | | It's awesome how Aereo's efforts to _obey the law_ are what the | court didn 't like. | tyingq wrote: | For anyone that was using it personally, and was sad to see it | go: | | I had a decent experience switching to using the Tablo Dual Lite. | It's a local TV tuner and DVR. Mine has 2 tuners, but they also a | 4 tuner device. | | It does, unlike Locast, require fiddling around with an antenna, | but I guess the upside is that nobody can sue it into oblivion. | | It does require a subscription for the guide ($5/month) and for | the built-in commercial skip (another $5/month), which isn't | terrific. But, the UI and the DVR seem more polished than what I | was getting using Locast with Stremium (cloud DVR) before. It | does take a few seconds to tune into a channel also, which can be | annoying. | magwa101 wrote: | Here's another one, I rent a movie online and have only 24/48 | hours to watch it. Where does that come from?? | kmeisthax wrote: | This article is making the engineer's mistake regarding reasoning | about copyright infringement and the law. | | The courts do not care _how_ the copy was made, they care about | what markets the copying would allow someone to get into. "Cloud | DVRs are OK but only if the kernel, filesystem, and hardware take | great pains to ensure separate physical storage locations for and | no compression on each customer-created copy" is absurd and no | judge is going to go for that. | | No, the courts aren't saying "if you waste a bunch of money on | extra hard drives, you can infringe copyright", either. Their | concern is providing a demarcation line between "things the | customer has done with your service" and "things your service | provides on it's own". Yes, this line is going to be fuzzy, but | it's fuzziness has nothing to do with how the bits are stored. It | has to do with the context of the markets in which works are | ordinarily sold. | | >I originally thought the strangeness of digital copyright | outcomes reflected a lack of technical literacy in the courts. | But for the most part, I find the Aereo discussion shows general | digital competency, and an appropriate aesthetic disgust for the | "identical bits are different" problem. | | Remember how after the Napster lawsuit, everyone was parroting | the thought-terminating cliche "the law needs to catch up to | technology"? Yeah... no. In reality the law is almost always | three steps ahead of technology, because the law is written in a | programming language that executes what you intended to write, | not what you actually wrote. | zerocrates wrote: | Engineer-types certainly do try to loophole their way around | the law in a way that's not how the law actually works, but | this article is not really engaging in that I don't think (for | one, it calls out the practice). | | _Cablevision_ is absolutely by its terms hugely reliant on the | nitty-gritty technical details of how the DVR service there | worked. The court had to kind of wind itself up in knots to | work around the existing _MAI v. Peak_ precedent (copies to RAM | are actionable infringing copies) and the fact that the service | existed just to make these copies, so it gets very in the weeds | on how things are stored and the amount of time things are in | buffers and so on. | | Ultimately, it's probably true the most important thing was | that Cablevision were an established player in an existing, | uncontroversial market and they were making an iteration on the | already allowed and understood "time-shifting" recording | systems. But other players in the market shouldn't really be | faulted for taking the court at its word that the details | actually mattered. Sometimes they really do! | | _MAI v. Peak_ , mentioned in the article and above in my | comment is a great example of that: the 9th Circuit holds that | a computer copying the OS into RAM is a "copy" for the | Copyright Act, thanks to the statutory definition of a work | being "fixed." Result: a repair technician violates copyright | by turning on the computer because he doesn't have a license. | This is kind of the polar opposite type of decision to, say, | Aereo's case: it's actually quite disruptive but hinges more on | the literal definitions in the law and things like the computer | not being on already, thus requiring the "copy" to be made. | Congress actually changed the Copyright Act to counter this | decision but in an extremely specific way, so the general | "stuff in RAM is fixed and therefore a copy" principle remains | and comes up often. | | Aereo lost because they would upset the applecart of | retransmission fees, Locast similarly though for nominally | quite different reasons. It can be quite difficult to tell in | advance if you're going to get a "letter of the law" decision | from the courts or something more results-oriented, even from | the same court. | | An often-unappreciated wrinkle is the more or less total | dysfunction of Congress leading to court decisions taking on | ever more importance. The courts themselves aren't blind to | this, leading probably to more results-oriented decisionmaking | than there might be otherwise. | laserlight wrote: | > "Cloud DVRs are OK but only if the kernel, filesystem, and | hardware take great pains to ensure separate physical storage | locations for and no compression on each customer-created copy" | is absurd and no judge is going to go for that. | | Reminds me of Aereo, the company that rented remote antennas to | customers so that they can stream over the Internet what their | antennas captured. Supreme court decided that they were | violating copyright law [0]. | | [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/supreme-court- | pu... | laserlight wrote: | I just noticed that Aereo was already part of the discussion. | Nasrudith wrote: | To put it in other terms it didn't fall, it was slammed to | the ground. | bluecheese33 wrote: | Thanks for the read (post author here)! | | As I mentioned, I am willing to admit that I came into this | expecting to find technical illiteracy, and I didn't find much. | I agree that the mindset to look for hacks and oversights in | laws is a naieve engineer tendency. | | > No, the courts aren't saying "if you waste a bunch of money | on extra hard drives, you can infringe copyright", either. | | I agree no court wants this, and I didn't intend to imply | otherwise in the post. Regardless, as a result of these cases, | this is the current state the DVR industry is in as I | understand. Wasting money on storage does insulate you from | infringement, and people do it to be safe. | | > a programming language that executes what you intended to | write, not what you actually wrote | | This is a great analogy. It does clearly get more complex when | the court is executing "what you would have intended had you | known about the internet" though. | | Edit: On, | | > The courts do not care how the copy was made | | In Cablevision, they did for two reasons: | | 1. To figure out whether buffering was copying, which is a very | technical discussion. See the footnote on MAI Systems | | 2. To figure out WHO was making the copy, for the volition | based infringement test | | My point here is that it really does get into the technical | weeds. I know your point was mostly to just dismiss the | deduplication discussion, which is reasonable. If one of my | posed problems made it to court, the court would probably just | do the "right thing". However, since they haven't made it to | court yet, companies don't necessarily want to be the first to | gamble on it. | rektide wrote: | It's possible that the courts/law are so absurd that they could | be wrong. Rarely is that considered. | jjoonathan wrote: | In theory, that's what the legislature is for. | | In practice, the process for this is completely broken, so we | have a system where the judicial branch pretends to divinate | intent from the tea-leaves of legislation, even when it's | clear that there could not possibly have been any informed | intent because major relevant details were simply not known | at the time. | | It's not great, but it's better than a system where the | judicial branch just does anything it wants. | | All this said, instant communication and computers almost | certainly introduced better forms of judicial and legislative | process that haven't been experimented with because of | inertia. I wouldn't volunteer our system as the guinea pig, | but I hope that somebody gets around to experimenting with | this, because our system sucks hard in a bunch of ways that | seem like they are probably fixable. | madars wrote: | > Since congress included [the non-profit] exemption, presumably | there is some way to qualify for it, otherwise it wouldn't exist. | | Puffer is probably that: https://puffer.stanford.edu/ | projektfu wrote: | I think the issue is that the public hasn't been invited to | participate in the discussion of what we want copyright law to | look like in a very long time. Considering the last major change, | the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, was 23 years ago, | and essentially written by the industry and never seriously | debated in the public interest, I don't have good hopes for the | future in this area. | | I think the Supreme Court is going to continue to rule that neat | hacks are not really going to get you out of what the law says, | but also that the "content producers" are not going to be able to | arbitrarily restrict a reasonable service as in the Cablevision | case. | | What the public really wants is a way to enable the thing they | want without either exorbitant costs or heavy annoyances. We're | not getting that because the system is not set up for automating | micropayments or microdonations and the big operators are writing | all the rules. For example, if I pay for a streaming service and | listen only to one obscure band, I would expect that my monthly | fee would go to them. Instead it goes to the top 100 and a tiny | fraction goes to my obscure band, who really don't benefit at all | from being on the service. If I had a micropayment platform, my | consumption could be going to that band with a fraction going to | support the platform. | | In other words, record companies are killing music, and it's | legal. That's what we need to fix. | gamblor956 wrote: | _In other words, record companies are killing music, and it 's | legal. That's what we need to fix. _ | | Record companies are paying for the music. It takes a lot of | money to produce tracks. Most artists never get enough fans or | sales to pay off the investment the record company made in | them, so the hits very much pay for the failures. | shadilay wrote: | The world no longer needs conglomerate record companies. | Their antiquated business model is not a valid reason | government should step in to protect them. The barrier to | entry for artists making and releasing/monetizing music has | never been lower. The artists can just make music at home and | bootstrap themselves, no investment needed. | gamblor956 wrote: | Artists have always been able to make music and perform by | themselves. But all of that other stuff needed to make it | big is expensive (marketing, paying for venues, logistics, | recording and producing masters, distribution, etc.), and | few artists have the trust fund money needed to handle | those costs themselves. | | Even Justin Bieber, Lorde, and Billy Eilish depended on | record labels to actually _profit_ from their music, though | they all broke out on social media platforms on their own. | mschuster91 wrote: | > The artists can just make music at home and bootstrap | themselves, no investment needed. | | The barrier has never been lower indeed, but it's _the | barrier to get started_ and it 's still easily a many- | thousand-dollars affair - a good recording and Soundcloud | isn't everything you need to make money, especially not on | a scale you'll be able to make a living from. Production of | physical media (especially currently en vogue vinyls) is | expensive plus there is a very real "inventory risk" (aka, | the risk of being stuck with a truckload of vinyls no one | wants to buy). Events and concerts are expensive AF to set | up if you want more than your local community center or | pub, touring is even harder to pull off (and the bigger the | venue the more expensive the upfront, non-refundable costs | go). | | Most small cover and indie bands barely make ends meet, | most work full-time jobs to finance their band hobby and | spend sometimes their entire weekends and vacation time | because they have to do lighting, rigging and sound system | setup themselves wherever they get a gig. And corona has | raided everyone's funds dry. | | Not to say big studios aren't a bunch of unscrupulous, | exploitative vipers _because they are_ , but unfortunately | their business model is far from dead. | | (Source: know people still in this business, did myself a | stint as a stagehand and as a renter of my small scale | sound/light setup a couple years ago) | shadilay wrote: | A few thousand dollars is no barrier for someone with a | regular job and music for a hobby. As for vinyls and | other physical products artists can always take | refundable preorders. Not everyone can or should be a | full time professional artist. Nor is the the role of | record companies to decide what the public likes. | AlbertCory wrote: | I sympathize with the guy who had line-of-sight issues. Or anyone | who lives in a multi-unit building, or far from the Big Antennas. | | However, I just got an antenna ($80) and had it installed on my | roof. 40 miles or so to Twin Peaks' antennas, no obstacles. Boom: | 800 channels (some paywalled), many in languages other than | English. | | Next is to roll my own DVR. Should be easy, right? | nickysielicki wrote: | Look into TVHeadend for this with xmltv for epg. It's awesome. | I'm more into enigma2 because most of what I consume is DVB-S, | but for ATSC you can't beat TVHeadend. | flatiron wrote: | i pay for plex (it was $75 when i got it years ago) and it has | a very good dvr and hd homerunner support. it is closed source | for profit but runs well on linux | | i was using locast as my "antennae" until weeks ago. my wife | refuses to let me put an antennae on the roof or inside for | aesthetics so its back to cable card from the darn cable | company. | kesslern wrote: | It's not as good as a roof antenna, but attic antennas are a | decent option. | techsupporter wrote: | > I sympathize with the guy who had line-of-sight issues. Or | anyone who lives in a multi-unit building, or far from the Big | Antennas. | | > However... | | I don't mean to be uncharitable, but the "however" you wrote is | doing a lot of the work here. A lot of people are saying that | Locast is pointless or not a big deal because, well, _they_ put | up an antenna and it worked so no problem. | | Except that it is a problem. I used Locast from the day it | became available in Seattle because, try as I might, I could | not get reception from all of the TV channels. Standalone | house, apartment, low to the ground, high up, didn't matter. | There are three broadcasting sites in Puget Sound and the best | I could do was 1 reliable, 1 iffy, and 1 not at all. | | > Should be easy, right? | | Should be, but isn't if you can't get signal. Locast offered | that signal (Comcast charges about $19 a month for the | privilege of having a plan with just local channels but also | charges $19 a month as a broadcast channels surcharge) for a | nice donation. | AlbertCory wrote: | > "I don't mean to be uncharitable, but the "however" you | wrote is doing a lot of the work here" | | You are, though. I'm so sorry this happened to you. It must | be awful for you. I'll try to never mention anything good | that happened to me, ever again. | pxl wrote: | For $80/yr the Channels DVR is a great option | https://getchannels.com/plus/. I'm using it along with a | HDHomeRun and it just works great! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-17 23:02 UTC)