Supreme Court deals death blow with 6-3 verdict.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Chet Kanojia and his controversial start-up, Aereo TV, have lost their battle against the major US television networks in the country’s highest court.
US Supreme Court Justices ruled 6-3 in favor of CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox in the American Broadcasting Companies vs. Aereo case on Wednesday, saying that the technology that allows Aereo to hijack television signals and stream to them to subscribers’ mobile devices for a monthly fee does, in fact, infringe on copyrights.
Aereo TV was launched by Kanojia in 2012, and immediately became a lightning rod for controversy. The company uses a small antenna, about the size of a postage stamp, that can be attached to any mobile device to stream TV signals directly from the airwaves to your iPad, smartphone, laptop, and so on.
Big TV immediately got irate, saying Aereo was stealing their content, but lower courts defended Aereo, saying that these broadcast signals fell into the domain of “public performances,” and were therefore not protected by copyright laws. When the US 2nd District Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in Aereo’s favor, it went on to the Supreme Court.
Now, the major TV channels are all heaving a collective sigh of relief, as the implications for what could happen to their industry if Kanojia had won are almost impossible to fathom. In an age where TV networks are already struggling to keep up with new innovations like DVRs, Netflix, and Hulu, Aereo TV could have been disastrous – why tune in at a specific time and be tied to your television itself, when you can stream and record your content to a mobile device?
‘We’re gratified the Court upheld important Copyright principles that help ensure that the high-quality creative content consumers expect and demand is protected and incentivized,” said ABC’s parent firm, The Walt Disney Corporation – which also owns TV heavyweight ESPN, and lays claim to popular entertainment franchises like Marvel Comics and Star Wars – in a statement.
Kanojia, meanwhile, has promised not to go down without a fight, continuing this modern-day David vs. Goliath saga.
”We are disappointed in the outcome, but our work is not done. We will continue to fight for our consumers and fight to create innovative technologies that have a meaningful and positive impact on our world,” Kanojia announced, also in a statement.
Kanojia had initially tried to join hands with Big TV, saying that the Aereo TV technology could be used to help TV channels get their content across multiple platforms, but that idea was shot down. Now that the highest court in the US has come down against Kanojia, it will be interesting to see what he does next.
As an entrepreneur who came from the squalor in India to a multi-millionaire lifestyle in the US, Kanojia knows how to beat the odds. He is best known the man behind Navic Systems, an IT startup that he sold to Microsoft in 2008 for a sum of $250 million, according to various reports. Born and brought up in Bhopal by English-speaking parents, he came to the US for his post-graduate studies, earning a master’s degree from Northeastern University in computer sciences.
Kanojia and Aereo TV have not, however, announced what their next move will be.