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The Telecom Digest for January 12, 2014
Volume 33 : Issue 7 : "text" Format
====== 32 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
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Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 21:45:44 -0800 (PST)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: OTT and 4K: Vaporware and a field of dreams
Message-ID: <55a441e9-86d0-4e7e-91e4-04469f83ca62@googlegroups.com>
By Josh Wein, FireceOnlineVideo, January 8, 2014
| Headlines from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas are
| heralding the arrival this year of two would-be milestones in
| online video: a full-fledged online pay-TV service and
| streaming 4K. For separate reasons, neither may ever
| materialize into mainstream consumer products.
|
| I hope they do. As a consumer, I'd like to be able to buy (and
| cancel) pay-TV service with the same ease and convenience of
| adding or dropping a Hulu or Spotify subscription. And 4K
| sounds great. I haven't seen the demos yet, but reports seem
| genuinely impressed with its quality and prospects. In that
| way, it differs from the 3DTV, which elicited far more
| skepticism.
|
| To mix metaphors a bit, 4K is a field of dreams while the
| online pay-TV service is still vaporware.
Continued:
http://www.fierceonlinevideo.com/story/ott-and-4k-vaporware-and-field-dreams/2014-01-08
Neal McLain
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 04:28:55 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Supreme Court to weigh in on Aereo
Message-ID: <laqha7$11u7$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
As widely expected, the U.S. Supreme Court announced today that it
would review /ABC v. Aereo/, one of a number of cases involving
Aereo's remotely-operated-broadcast-tuner service and similar
offerings from other companies which have been covered in this
newsgroup previously. Oral argument should be scheduled for this
spring.
Justice Alito is recused from the case. If, after oral argument, the
eight remaining justices divide 4-4, the result will be to uphold the
decision below, which Aereo won, but without setting a binding
precedent for the other circuits. However, given that there are other
petitions pending that present the same issue, the justices apparently
expect that they will be able to resolve this issue precedentially --
otherwise they would have agreed to review a different case in which
Justice Alito was not recused. Usually such recusals are the result
of a justice either having a personal connection with the case (e.g.,
when the court reviews a case decided by Justice Breyer's brother,
Justice Breyer recuses himself), or when a justice has a financial
interest (such as stock ownership) in one of the parties; the justices,
however, rarely give reasons for their recusals.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2014 18:38:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Aereo: Supreme Court Bound!
Message-ID: <e8758738-5561-4513-9f5f-e84b43df7ad3@googlegroups.com>
By Harry Cole, CommLawBlog, January 10, 2014
Poster's note: as I indicated in a previous message, "Cert" = certiorari, an
order issued by the U.S. Supreme Court to a lower court (typically one of
the Courts of Appeals) indicating that the Supreme Court will accept a case
for further review. The Court issued cert in the Aereo case today. Alito
recused himself, thus opening the possibility of a 4-4 split decision. If
that were to happen, the Second Circuit's decision favoring Aereo would stand.
| Broadcasters' cert petition is granted; Alito recuses himself,
| Kagan doesn't
|
| The Supreme Court has decided that now would be a good time to
| consider the arguments arising from the Second Circuit's Aereo
| decisions to date -- so the Supremes have granted the petition
| for certiorari filed by the broadcaster parties to the Second
| Circuit case. While this could ordinarily bode well for the
| broadcasters -- after all, if the Supreme Court thought the
| Second Circuit got it right, they could just deny cert and let
| the Second Circuit's action stand -- you can probably expect
| Aereo to claim something of a victory here because, as we have
| previously reported, Aereo itself urged the Court to take the
| case.
|
| As of this writing the briefing and argument schedules haven't
| been posted on the Supreme Court's website. Since the Court
| will be hearing arguments until the end of April, it seems
| reasonably likely that the Aereo case will be briefed and
| argued this term, which would mean that a decision from the
| Court by the end of June would be a near certainty.
Continued:
http://www.commlawblog.com/2014/01/articles/broadcast/aereo-supreme-court-bound/
Neal McLain
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