<p>Well, if Aereo founders expected the broadcast industry not to fight tooth and nail, they have now been disabused of that notion by the U.S. Supreme Court.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how this will affect the ever evolving market for digital content. But I can guess that it won’t slow the trend of declining broadcast viewership. The real question is, as always, what will the broadcasters do to keep themselves viable (avoid becoming a niche product)?</p>
<p>I read the dissent and glanced at the majority. IMHO, the dissent by Scalia showed an extraordinary lack of understanding about technology. His main example is a copy shop: that you the person at the machine decide whether to photocopy illegally and that provision of the copy machines is not “performance” because the act of copying itself is the illegal “performance” under the law. That this isn’t the same seems to me clear: you set up Aereo specifically for the one purpose of enabling the “performance”, which is not like providing photocopiers but instead providing a service specifically for the duplication of copyright materials. That you push the button to select the channel is about as mechanical a form of reasoning as I can imagine. I wasn’t impressed with the rest of the opinion either. </p>