Thanks. That's an interesting and pretty nice legal tactic: embrace the ruling that you are essentially a cable company and then apply for the necessary permits (and pay the fees) to become one. Have to admire their gumption.

Thanks for the link! After some reading I get the courts reasoning. From what I can tell the antennas are not located at the subscribers location but at the providers location. That makes it retransmission. So, it looks like I am incorrect! If they would send you an antenna and a box with an internet connection That could solve the issue.

Thanks for the clarification.

Here's a brief on the matter, including the decisions at a fundamental level:
http://www2.bloomberglaw.com/public/desk...

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings, but I think the thing that gets me in the end is that unlike cable programming in which the original licensee gets paid for retransmission of broadcasts, Aereo was not paying license fees to the original broadcasters - despite the fact that they were acting as a conduit not for the public in general but for specific viewers.

I do agree, however, that the current cabal running the TV market needs a change to allow for a la carte programming. I never watch live TV anymore except for sports broadcasts - mostly because I refuse to pay $100/month for 1000 channels of which 99.5% are junk.

I think we are all on the same page here except for the original post which said the court got it right.... I think they got it wrong. VUDU type operations are selling me something besides storage space. Aereo is selling storage space with an app that makes it easy to store my off air video. That is a good thing, I think this really needs to be revisited by the court.

Aereo is not distributing anything- they are recording what the customer is receiving off-air and saving it for them to watch at a later time. Much like TIVO only the storage space is in the cloud not in the set top box. VUDU is selling me a copy of the the digital image. With VUDU I can import videos I have purchased from other sources and replay them there so it is just like going to Wally World, purchasing a DVD, take it home upload the DVD to my local digital storage medium then push it up to my cloud library.

That would be redistribution. That is what the court said was being done. but my opinion is that the people using the service are doing nothing but recording for their own usage. Now if the service was allowing people to copy from one persons account to another persons account, that would also be redistribution and not permissible. I should probably not used the term "public domain" but should qualify that as freely available to access (and easily recorded if I cared to). Like a book, I cannot reprint and sell a book with out paying a royalty but I can still sell the book when I'm done with it as long as I don't make copies of it for further usage or distribution. If someone takes my copy and gives it to someone and keeps a copy for themselves that is not right but not my problem.
VUDU is already doing this. I buy television shows and movies from them and they keep them in my library. I could also record shows from an off air broadcast push them up to my google cloud account and watch them when ever I wanted to from wherever I am. I don't see a problem here as long as it is for my personal usage.

Would that include uploading anything broadcast over public airways to YouTube or other internet sites?

In my opinion, anything broadcast over public airways is in the public domain. I can use it as I see fit so long as I am not directly making a profit from resale.

I don't think a recording you make of copyrighted material is yours to use however you please. Recording rights extend only to personal non-commercial use.