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Court Battles over Digital Television Distribution

By Sheri Qualters

Aereo Inc.'s pitch is this: With one of its tiny antennas, no bigger than a dime, viewers can watch television through the Internet. But this is erupting into a litigation nightmare for broadcasters. Appeals are pending in two federal courts over this type of technology, and at least one of the cases could well reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Aereo's is not the only new way people watch TV in this age of Hulu, Netflix and multiple smartphone apps. Yet the law over how this works is unsettled, and other companies with similar streaming technology are facing suits from traditional media. In essence, the law over these issues hasn't changed that much since the U.S. Supreme Court addressed it almost 30 years ago. The fight boils down to whether the broadcasters' copyrights for their shows give them control over how the shows are distributed. “Whenever a new technology gets into the owner-to-reader-to-watcher stream, there's a question of how the copyright statute deals with it,” says Jessica Litman, a University of Michigan Law School professor who teaches copyright law.

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