Broadcasters appeal Aereo video-streaming ruling

Story originally appeared on USA Today.

Major broadcasters, including PBS, Fox and Univision, are asking a federal appeals court to reconsider a decision that allows TV-streaming start-up Aereo to proceed with its business.

The continued existence of Aereo, which streams over-the-air TV broadcasting to paying subscribers in and near New York City, "threatens to cause massive disruption to the television industry, and will adversely impact the public's access to the quality and diversity of programming," the broadcasters claim in the Monday filing.

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Earlier this month, a panel of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York affirmed a court decision that Aereo doesn't violate broadcasters' copyrights by streaming their programming via the Internet. With their latest appeal, the broadcasters are asking for consideration of the ruling by the full appeals court.

"Unless reversed, that decision will wreak commercial havoc by allowing new and existing distributors to design around this license requirement and profit from the delivery of copyrighted programming while paying nothing for it," the filing read.

Consumers who want better access to network TV programming without buying cable have cheered on start-ups such as Aereo. But broadcasters say that costs them advertising revenue and also the retransmission fees that cable companies pay to carry their channels.

Backed by longtime media mogul Barry Diller, Aereo retransmits broadcast TV content using a farm of mini-antennas in Brooklyn. Each antenna receives the TV signal, and allows a subscriber to view or record the content through Aereo's streaming technology. Subscribers need an Internet connection and then pay Aereo fees ranging from $1 a day to $80 a year.

Aereo says it does not infringe on broadcasters' copyrights because its mini-antennas are individually leased by the subscribers. That, says Aereo, makes the subsequently streamed content a "a private performance" for each paying subscriber and is not subject to licensing agreements.

Broadcasters say that all services that retransmit broadcast programming to the public are engaged in "public performances" that require licenses from copyright owners.

In a dissenting opinion to the appeals court ruling issued on April 1, Judge Denny Chin of the Second Circuit sided with broadcasters. Calling Aereo's technology "a sham," Chin argued that the company has no reason to use a multitude of tiny antennas rather than one central antenna other than to make its copyright argument. "The system is a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance, over-engineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law," he wrote.

Aereo has announced plans to expand its service this year to 22 markets, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston and Washington, D.C.