Adios Aereo, and take your illegal technology with you

By Bill Snyder | InfoWorld Posted on July 03, 2014
 
To the barricades, shouts Chet Kanojia, CEO of the Aereo streaming service that the Supreme Court declared illegal last week. We don't deserve to die and we want you to demand that Congress write a law to bring us back because we're the consumer's best friend.
Baloney -- although Aereo used clever technology and offered an attractive service, the company ripped off others' intellectual property. As a consumer advocate, my heart was with Aereo, but as a content creator, my head is with the broadcasters and the Supreme Court on this one.
As you probably know, Aereo is a startup that uses tiny antennas to capture broadcast airwaves and stream the signals to users who pay about $8 a month for the service. Now the innovative little company is effectively dead, done in by a decision that said Aereo is in violation of copyright law.
I was glad to hear it. Anyone who cares about their intellectual property -- whether it's a TV program, an article, an app, or a million lines of code -- has a real stake in patent and copyright protection. Our patent system is generally a mess, but the principle is worth upholding: You can't simply repackage somebody else's work and sell it as your own.
 
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