Supreme Court Says Aere-No to Aereo, Dooms Popular Broadcast DVR Service

It's official: The Supreme Court of the United States says you can't DVR broadcast TV.

At least, you can't do it through Aereo, the cloud-based DVR service that has been the center of a major legal battle against broadcasters. That legal battle all but ended today after the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in favor of broadcasters, saying that Aereo violates copyright agreements in its current form.

Aereo provides users with a small antenna that takes in and records digital feeds from local broadcast networks like CBS, NBC and ABC, and then uploads the shows that users record for viewing on mobile devices, computers or media players like the Roku.

If that sounds a lot to you like what your DVR box through Comcast, Time Warner Cable or TiVo does, you wouldn't be wrong. However, the legal issue with Aereo stems from the fact that the service takes in digital feeds that are broadcast for free over the air and creates a digital copy for viewers.

Interestingly, there was something of a precedent for this case, as a decision over the Betamax determined that people weren't in violation of copyright for recording shows onto Betamax (or, later, VHS) as long as they weren't disseminating those tapes to other people. Aereo attempted to argue that their service was essentially the same thing: individual users having copies of broadcast TV for their own uses.

However, the Supreme Court didn't buy that argument, saying instead that Aereo's service constituted a public performance of other people's work. Additionally, there's the question of usage fees that other cable providers and DVR services pay for their ability to save digital copies of broadcast TV for users to view, while Aereo avoided paying those fees.

While the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo was only in copyright violation "in its current form," it's unlikely that the company will be able to weather this decision. Chet Kanojia, the CEO of Aereo, said he was "disappointed" in the decision, but noted that "our work is not done." But with few legal options left, and considering the fact that the ruling makes Aereo's whole reason for existing illegal, it's likely that you'll have to say goodbye forever to Aereo very soon.