Because the Aereo antenna actually capturing the broadcast isn’t at your house — it’s at an Aereo data center.
And the flip side of American broadcast airwaves licensing (must be free to the public) is that no third party can charge to show the content of that broadcast either.
So the nets argued that Aereo was rebroadcasting the fruits of their free signal and charging for it.
You know how sports bars can’t (legally) charge people an entrance fee and show the big game on CBS? It’s because they’re charging a fee for what is by federal regulation supposed to be a free broadcast.
The nets convinced the Supremes that Aereo is doing the same thing as a sports bar.
The Court manages to reach the opposite conclusion only by disregarding widely accepted rules for service-provider liability and adopting in their place an improvised standard (”looks-like-cable-TV) that will sow confusion for years to come. - Scalia.
He nails it. I wouldn’t, as a matter of course, want to be on the winning side with Breyer or Ginsburg. Did you see Roberts over there in the majority?
What Roberts and Kennedy stand for is the status quo elites.
The idea that broadcasts are “free” to watch once they hit the airwaves is not exactly hard law. Look at all of the restrictions placed on NFL games. And the issue is not charging to watch them, but rather just showing them.
If I get too many friends together to watch an NFL game on a screen larger than 55”, all of a sudden its a copyright infringement.