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If you've been waiting for Aereo to hit your city but have been worried that lawsuits are curtailing the company's expansion plans, it looks like you can stop worrying. Last week the online TV service rolled out to San Antonio, and next week Austin, Texas, will come on line.
The service——which provides over-the-air TV stations, plus a virtual DVR, to subscribers via the Internet—is already available in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, and San Antonio in that state, as well as in parts of Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Denver, Detroit, Miami, and New York City. But the company recently had to shut down the service in Denver and Salt Lake City as a result of a District Court decision, the first lawsuit the company has lost.
Aereo has been sued multiple times by media companies, which contend that the service violates their copyrights, since they don't receive payment from Aereo. But until this most recent decision, the courts have sided with Aereo, primarily because every subscriber gets his or her own micro-antennas, which are housed at an Aereo warehouse. Aereo's argument is that it's really just renting antennas. The service seems to be popular with consumers; the company recently ran out of capacity in Atlanta and New York, a problem it quickly remedied.
Right now Aereo's battles have been more at the local and state level, but all that will change in mid-April when the Supreme Court will ultimately hear arguments on the legality of the service. Until then, it appears that Aereo will continue to open new markets. We'll be following the case, so keep checking back for all the latest details.
—James K. Willcox
Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, filed an amicus brief in Aereo's appeals court case. Consumers Union argued that consumers require lawful access to content and freedom of choice in how to use it; technology such as Aereo's serves a fundamental public interest.
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