Source: https://casetext.com/case/am-broad-cos-v-aereo-inc-1
Timestamp: 2020-08-08 18:26:12
Document Index: 763783448

Matched Legal Cases: ['§106', '§101', '§101', '§111', '§101', '§1', '§1', '§101', '§101', '§106', '§101', '§512', '§9', '§101', '§501', '§106', '§512', '§512', '§106', '§106', '§106', '§106']

Am. Broad. Cos. v. Aereo, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2498 | Casetext Search + Citator
BWP Media U.S. Inc. v. Polyvore, Inc.
Applying Cartoon Network LP, LLLP v. CSC Holdings, Inc. , 536 F.3d 121 (2d Cir. 2008) [hereinafter "…
In a separate case, the Supreme Court ultimately validated this Court's conclusion that the Copyright Act…
Full title:AMERICAN BROADCASTING COMPANIES, INC., ET AL., PETITIONERS v. AEREO, INC.…
134 S. Ct. 2498 (2014)
24 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 913
60 Comm. Reg. (P & F) 1156
holding that a transmission is performed publicly, regardless of whether the public is not situated together “spatially or temporally ”
Summary of this case from Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. FilmOn X LLC
April 22, 2014, Argued. June 25, 2014, Decided
The Copyright Act of 1976 gives a copyright owner the “exclusive righ[t]” to “perform the copyrighted work publicly.” 17 U. S. C. §106(4). The Act's Transmit Clause defines that exclusive right to include the right to “transmit or otherwise communicate a performance . . . of the [copyrighted] work . . . to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance . . . receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.” §101.
Respondent Aereo, Inc., sells a service that allows its subscribers to watch television programs over the Internet at about the same time as the programs are broadcast over the air. When a subscriber wants to watch a show that is currently airing, he selects the show from a menu on Aereo's website. Aereo's system, which consists of thousands of small antennas and other equipment housed in a centralized warehouse, responds roughly as follows: A server tunes an antenna, which is dedicated to the use of one subscriber alone, to the broadcast carrying the selected show. A transcoder translates the signals received by the antenna into data that can be transmitted over the Internet. A server saves the data in a subscriber-specific folder on Aereo's hard drive and begins streaming the show to the subscriber's screen once several seconds of programming have been saved. The streaming continues, a few seconds behind the over-the-air broadcast, until the subscriber has received the entire show.
Held: Aereo performs petitioners' works publicly within the meaning of the Transmit Clause. Pp. ___ - ___, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 485-493.
(a) Aereo “perform[s].” It does not merely supply equipment that allows others to do so. Pp. ___ - ___, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 485-489.
(1) One of Congress' primary purposes in amending the Copyright Act in 1976 was to overturn this Court's holdings that the activities of community antenna television (CATV) providers fell outside the Act's scope. In Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U. S. 390, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176, the Court determined that a CATV provider was more like a viewer than a broadcaster, because its system “no more than enhances the viewer's capacity to receive the broadcaster's signals [by] provid[ing] a well-located antenna with an efficient connection to the viewer's television set.” Id., at 399, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176. Therefore, the Court concluded, a CATV provider did not perform publicly. The Court reached the same determination in respect to a CATV provider that retransmitted signals from hundreds of miles away in Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 415 U. S. 394, 94 S. Ct. 1129, 39 L. Ed. 2d 415. “The reception and rechanneling of [broadcast television signals] for simultaneous viewing is essentially a viewer function, irrespective of the distance between the broadcasting station and the ultimate viewer,” the Court said. Id., at 408, 94 S. Ct. 1129, 39 L. Ed. 2d 415. Pp. ___ - ___, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 485-487.
(2) In 1976, Congress amended the Copyright Act in large part to reject the Fortnightly and Teleprompter holdings. The Act now clarifies that to “perform” an audiovisual work means “to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible.” §101. Thus, both the broadcaster and the viewer “perform,” because they both show a television program's images and make audible the program's sounds. Congress also enacted the Transmit Clause, which specifies that an entity performs when it “transmit[s] . . . a performance . . . to the public.” Ibid. The Clause makes clear that an entity that acts like a CATV system itself performs, even when it simply enhances viewers' ability to receive broadcast television signals. Congress further created a complex licensing scheme that sets out the conditions, including the payment of compulsory fees, under which cable systems may retransmit broadcasts to the public. §111. Congress made all three of these changes to bring cable system activities within the Copyright Act's scope. Pp. ___ - ___, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 487-488.
(3) Because Aereo's activities are substantially similar to those of the CATV companies that Congress amended the Act to reach, Aereo is not simply an equipment provider. Aereo sells a service that allows subscribers to watch television programs, many of which are copyrighted, virtually as they are being broadcast. Aereo uses its own equipment, housed in a centralized warehouse, outside of its users' homes. By means of its technology, Aereo's system “receive[s] programs that have been released to the public and carr[ies] them by private channels to additional viewers.” Fortnightly, supra, at 400, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176.
This Court recognizes one particular difference between Aereo's system and the cable systems at issue in Fortnightly and Teleprompter: The systems in those cases transmitted constantly, whereas Aereo's system remains inert until a subscriber indicates that she wants to watch a program. In other cases involving different kinds of service or technology providers, a user's involvement in the operation of the provider's equipment and selection of the content transmitted may well bear on whether the provider performs within the meaning of the Act. But given Aereo's overwhelming likeness to the cable companies targeted by the 1976 amendments, this sole technological difference between Aereo and traditional cable companies does not make a critical difference here. Pp. ___ - ___, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 488-489.
(b) Aereo also performs petitioners' works “publicly.” Under the Clause, an entity performs a work publicly when it “transmit[s] . . . a performance . . . of the work . . . to the public.” §101. What performance, if any, does Aereo transmit? Petitioners say Aereo transmits a prior performance of their works, whereas Aereo says the performance it transmits is the new performance created by its act of transmitting. This Court assumes arguendo that Aereo is correct and thus assumes, for present purposes, that to transmit a performance of an audiovisual work means to communicate contemporaneously visible images and contemporaneously audible sounds of the work. Under the Court's assumed definition, Aereo transmits a performance whenever its subscribers watch a program.
What about the Clause's further requirement that Aereo transmit a performance “to the public”? Aereo claims that because it transmits from user-specific copies, using individually-assigned antennas, and because each transmission is available to only one subscriber, it does not transmit a performance “to the public.” Viewed in terms of Congress' regulatory objectives, these behind-the-scenes technological differences do not distinguish Aereo's system from cable systems, which do perform publicly. Congress would as much have intended to protect a copyright holder from the unlicensed activities of Aereo as from those of cable companies.
The text of the Clause effectuates Congress' intent. Under the Clause, an entity may transmit a performance through multiple transmissions, where the performance is of the same work. Thus when an entity communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to multiple people, it “transmit[s] . . . a performance” to them, irrespective of the number of discrete communications it makes and irrespective of whether it transmits using a single copy of the work or, as Aereo does, using an individual personal copy for each viewer.
Moreover, the subscribers to whom Aereo transmits constitute “the public” under the Act. This is because Aereo communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to a large number of people who are unrelated and unknown to each other. In addition, neither the record nor Aereo suggests that Aereo's subscribers receive performances in their capacities as owners or possessors of the underlying works. This is relevant because when an entity performs to a set of people, whether they constitute “the public” often depends upon their relationship to the underlying work. Finally, the statute makes clear that the fact that Aereo's subscribers may receive the same programs at different times and locations is of no consequence. Aereo transmits a performance of petitioners' works “to the public.” Pp. ___ - ___, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 489-492.
(c) Given the limited nature of this holding, the Court does not believe its decision will discourage the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies. Pp. ___ - ___, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 492-493.
Paul D. Clement argued the cause for petitioners.
History makes plain that one of Congress’ primary purposes in amending the Copyright Act in 1976 was to overturn this Court’s determination that community antenna television (CATV) systems (the precursors of modern cable systems) fell outside the Act’s scope. In Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U. S. 390, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176 (1968), the Court considered a CATV system that carried local television broadcasting, much of which was copyrighted, to its subscribers in two cities. The CATV provider placed antennas on hills above the cities and used coaxial cables to carry the signals received by the antennas to the home television sets of its subscribers. The system amplified and modulated the signals in order to improve their strength and efficiently transmit them to subscribers. A subscriber “could choose any of the . . . programs he wished to view by simply turning the knob on his own television set.” Id., at 392, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176. The CATV provider “neither edited the programs received nor originated any programs of its own.” Ibid.
Asked to decide whether the CATV provider infringed copyright holders’ exclusive right to perform their works publicly, the Court held that the provider did not “perform” at all. See 17 U. S. C. §1(c) (1964 ed.) (granting copyright holder the exclusive right to “perform . . . in public for profit” a nondramatic literary work), §1(d) (granting copyright holder the exclusive right to “perform . . . publicly” a dramatic work). The Court drew a line: “Broadcasters perform. Viewers do not perform.” 392 U. S., at 398, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176 (footnote omitted). And a CATV provider “falls on the viewer’s side of the line.” Id., at 399, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176.
“Broadcasters select the programs to be viewed; CATV systems simply carry, without editing, whatever programs they receive. Broadcasters procure programs and propagate them to the public; CATV systems receive programs that have been released to the public and carry them by private channels to additional viewers.” Id., at 400, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176.
Instead, CATV providers were more like viewers, for “the basic function [their] equipment serves is little different from that served by the equipment generally furnished by” viewers. Id., at 399, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176. “Essentially,” the Court said, “a CATV system no more than enhances the viewer’s capacity to receive the broadcaster’s signals [by] provid[ing] a well-located antenna with an efficient connection to the viewer’s television set.” Ibid. Viewers do not become performers by using “amplifying equipment,” and a CATV provider should not be treated differently for providing viewers the same equipment. Id., at 398-400, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176.
In Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 415 U. S. 394, 94 S. Ct. 1129, 39 L. Ed. 2d 415 (1974), the Court considered the copyright liability of a CATV provider that carried broadcast television programming into subscribers’ homes from hundreds of miles away. Although the Court recognized that a viewer might not be able to afford amplifying equipment that would provide access to those distant signals, it nonetheless found that the CATV provider was more like a viewer than a broadcaster. Id., at 408-409, 94 S. Ct. 1129, 39 L. Ed. 2d 415. It explained: “The reception and rechanneling of [broadcast television signals] for simultaneous viewing is essentially a viewer function, irrespective of the distance between the broadcasting station and the ultimate viewer.” Id., at 408, 94 S. Ct. 1129, 39 L. Ed. 2d 415.
The Court also recognized that the CATV system exercised some measure of choice over what to transmit. But that fact did not transform the CATV system into a broadcaster. A broadcaster exercises significant creativity in choosing what to air, the Court reasoned. Id., at 410, 94 S. Ct. 1129, 39 L. Ed. 2d 415. In contrast, the CATV provider makes an initial choice about which broadcast stations to retransmit, but then “‘simply carr[ies], without editing, whatever programs [it] receive[s].’” Ibid. (quoting Fortnightly, supra, at 400, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176 (alterations in original)).
In 1976 Congress amended the Copyright Act in large part to reject the Court’s holdings in Fortnightlyand Teleprompter. See H. R. Rep. No. 94-1476, pp. 86-87 (1976) (hereinafter H. R. Rep.) (The 1976 amendments “completely overturned” this Court’s narrow construction of the Act in Fortnightly and Teleprompter). Congress enacted new language that erased the Court’s line between broadcaster and viewer, in respect to “perform[ing]” a work. The amended statute clarifies that to “perform” an audiovisual work means “to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible.” §101; see ibid. (defining “[a]udiovisual works” as “works that consist of a series of related images which are intrinsically intended to be shown by the use of machines . . ., together with accompanying sounds”). Under this new language, both the broadcaster and the viewer of a television program “perform,” because they both show the program’s images and make audible the program’s sounds. See H. R. Rep., at 63 (“[A] broadcasting network is performing when it transmits [a singer’s performance of a song] . . . and any individual is performing whenever he or she . . . communicates the performance by turning on a receiving set”).
Congress also enacted the Transmit Clause, which specifies that an entity performs publicly when it “transmit[s] . . . a performance . . . to the public.” §101; see ibid. (defining “[t]o ‘transmit’ a performance” as “to communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent”). Cable system activities, like those of the CATV systems in Fortnightly and Teleprompter, lie at the heart of the activities that Congress intended this language to cover. See H. R. Rep., at 63 (“[A] cable television system is performing when it retransmits [a network] broadcast to its subscribers”); see also ibid. (“[T]he concep[t] of public performance . . . cover[s] not only the initial rendition or showing, but also any further act by which that rendition or showing is transmitted or communicated to the public”). The Clause thus makes clear that an entity that acts like a CATV system itself performs, even if when doing so, it simply enhances viewers’ ability to receive broadcast television signals.
This history makes clear that Aereo is not simply an equipment provider. Rather, Aereo, and not just its subscribers, “perform[s]” (or “transmit[s]”). Aereo’s activities are substantially similar to those of the CATV companies that Congress amended the Act to reach. See id., at 89 (“[C]able systems are commercial enterprises whose basic retransmission operations are based on the carriage of copyrighted program material”). Aereo sells a service that allows subscribers to watch television programs, many of which are copyrighted, almost as they are being broadcast. In providing this service, Aereo uses its own equipment, housed in a centralized warehouse, outside of its users’ homes. By means of its technology (antennas, transcoders, and servers), Aereo’s system “receive[s] programs that have been released to the public and carr[ies] them by private channels to additional viewers.” Fortnightly, 392 U. S., at 400, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176. It “carr[ies] . . . whatever programs [it] receive[s],” and it offers “all the programming” of each over-the-air station it carries. Id., at 392, 400, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176.
This is a critical difference, says the dissent. It means that Aereo’s subscribers, not Aereo, “selec[t] the copyrighted content” that is “perform[ed],” post, at 4, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 495 (opinion of SCALIA, J.), and for that reason they, not Aereo, “transmit” the performance. Aereo is thus like “a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card.” Post, at 5, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 496. A copy shop is not directly liable whenever a patron uses the shop’s machines to “reproduce” copyrighted materials found in that library. See §106(1) (“exclusive righ[t] . . . to reproduce the copyrighted work”). And by the same token, Aereo should not be directly liable whenever its patrons use its equipment to “transmit” copyrighted television programs to their screens.
In our view, however, the dissent’s copy shop argument, in whatever form, makes too much out of too little. Given Aereo’s overwhelming likeness to the cable companies targeted by the 1976 amendments, this sole technological difference between Aereo and traditional cable companies does not make a critical difference here. The subscribers of the Fortnightly and Teleprompter cable systems also selected what programs to display on their receiving sets. Indeed, as we explained in Fortnightly, such a subscriber “could choose any of the . . . programs he wished to view by simply turning the knob on his own television set.” 392 U. S., at 392, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176. The same is true of an Aereo subscriber. Of course, in Fortnightly the television signals, in a sense, lurked behind the screen, ready to emerge when the subscriber turned the knob. Here the signals pursue their ordinary course of travel through the universe until today’s “turn of the knob”—a click on a website—activates machinery that intercepts and reroutes them to Aereo’s subscribers over the Internet. But this difference means nothing to the subscriber. It means nothing to the broadcaster. We do not see how this single difference, invisible to subscriber and broadcaster alike, could transform a system that is for all practical purposes a traditional cable system into “a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card.”
Next, we must consider whether Aereo performs petitioners’ works “publicly,” within the meaning of the Transmit Clause. Under the Clause, an entity performs a work publicly when it “transmit[s] . . . a performance . . . of the work . . . to the public.” §101. Aereo denies that it satisfies this definition. It reasons as follows: First, the “performance” it “transmit[s]” is the performance created by its act of transmitting. And second, because each of these performances is capable of being received by one and only one subscriber, Aereo transmits privately, not publicly. Even assuming Aereo’s first argument is correct, its second does not follow.
We begin with Aereo’s first argument. What performance does Aereo transmit? Under the Act, “[t]o ‘transmit’ a performance . . . is to communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent.” Ibid. And “[t]o ‘perform’” an audiovisual work means “to show its images in any sequence or to make the sounds accompanying it audible.” Ibid.
In terms of the Act’s purposes, these differences do not distinguish Aereo’s system from cable systems, which do perform “publicly.” Viewed in terms of Congress’ regulatory objectives, why should any of these technological differences matter? They concern the behind-the-scenes way in which Aereo delivers television programming to its viewers’ screens. They do not render Aereo’s commercial objective any different from that of cable companies. Nor do they significantly alter the viewing experience of Aereo’s subscribers. Why would a subscriber who wishes to watch a television show care much whether images and sounds are delivered to his screen via a large multisubscriber antenna or one small dedicated antenna, whether they arrive instantaneously or after a few seconds’ delay, or whether they are transmitted directly or after a personal copy is made? And why, if Aereo is right, could not modern CATV systems simply continue the same commercial and consumer-oriented activities, free of copyright restrictions, provided they substitute such new technologies for old? Congress would as much have intended to protect a copyright holder from the unlicensed activities of Aereo as from those of cable companies.
Moreover, the subscribers to whom Aereo transmits television programs constitute “the public.” Aereo communicates the same contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds to a large number of people who are unrelated and unknown to each other. This matters because, although the Act does not define “the public,” it specifies that an entity performs publicly when it performs at “any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered.” Ibid. The Act thereby suggests that “the public” consists of a large group of people outside of a family and friends.
We also note that courts often apply a statute’s highly general language in light of the statute’s basic purposes. Finally, the doctrine of “fair use” can help to prevent inappropriate or inequitable applications of the Clause. See Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574 (1984).
We cannot now answer more precisely how the Transmit Clause or other provisions of the Copyright Act will apply to technologies not before us. We agree with the Solicitor General that “[q]uestions involving cloud computing, [remote storage] DVRs, and other novel issues not before the Court, as to which ‘Congress has not plainly marked [the] course,’ should await a case in which they are squarely presented.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 34 (quoting Sony, supra, at 431, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574 (alteration in original)). And we note that, to the extent commercial actors or other interested entities may be concerned with the relationship between the development and use of such technologies and the Copyright Act, they are of course free to seek action from Congress. Cf. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U. S. C. §512.
In sum, having considered the details of Aereo’s practices, we find them highly similar to those of the CATV systems in Fortnightly and Teleprompter . And those are activities that the 1976 amendments sought to bring within the scope of the Copyright Act. Insofar as there are differences, those differences concern not the nature of the service that Aereo provides so much as the technological manner in which it provides the service. We conclude that those differences are not adequate to place Aereo’s activities outside the scope of the Act.
There are two types of liability for copyright infringement: direct and secondary. As its name suggests, the former applies when an actor personally engages in infringing conduct. See Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417, 433, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574 (1984). Secondary liability, by contrast, is a means of holding defendants responsible for infringement by third parties, even when the defendants “have not themselves engaged in the infringing activity.” Id., at 435, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574. It applies when a defendant “intentionally induc[es] or encourag[es]” infringing acts by others or profits from such acts “while declining to exercise a right to stop or limit [them].” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U. S. 913, 930, 125 S. Ct. 2764, 162 L. Ed. 2d 781 (2005).
Most suits against equipment manufacturers and service providers involve secondary-liability claims. For example, when movie studios sued to block the sale of Sony’s Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR), they argued that Sony was liable because its customers were making unauthorized copies. See Sony, supra, at 434-435, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574. Record labels and movie studios relied on a similar theory when they sued Grokster and StreamCast, two providers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software. See Grokster, supra, at 920-921, 927, 125 S. Ct. 2764, 162 L. Ed. 2d 781.
The Networks’ claim is governed by a simple but profoundly important rule: A defendant may be held directly liable only if it has engaged in volitional conduct that violates the Act. See 3 W. Patry, Copyright §9:5.50 (2013). This requirement is firmly grounded in the Act’s text, which defines “perform” in active, affirmative terms: One “perform[s]” a copyrighted “audiovisual work,” such as a movie or news broadcast, by “show[ing] its images in any sequence” or “mak[ing] the sounds accompanying it audible.” §101. And since the Act makes it unlawful to copy or perform copyrighted works, not to copy or perform in general, see §501(a), the volitional-act requirement demands conduct directed to the plaintiff’s copyrighted material, see Sony, supra, at 434, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574. Every Court of Appeals to have considered an automated-service provider’s direct liability for copyright infringement has adopted that rule. See Fox Broadcasting Co. v. Dish Network LLC, 747 F. 3d 1060, 1066-1068 (CA9 2014); Cartoon Network, supra, at 130-131 (CA2 2008); CoStar Group, Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc., 373 F. 3d 544, 549-550 (CA4 2004). Although we have not opined on the issue, our cases are fully consistent with a volitional-conduct requirement. For example, we gave several examples of direct infringement in Sony, each of which involved a volitional act directed to the plaintiff’s copyrighted material. See 464 U. S., at 437, n. 18, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574.
An unpublished decision of the Third Circuit is to the same effect. Parker v. Google, Inc., 242 Fed. Appx. 833, 836-837 (2007) ( per curiam).
The Networks muster only one case they say stands for a different approach, New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U. S. 483, 121 S. Ct. 2381, 150 L. Ed. 2d 500 (2001). Reply Brief 18. But Tasini is clearly inapposite; it dealt with the question whether the defendants’ copying was permissible, not whether the defendants were the ones who made the copies. See 533 U. S., at 487-488, 492, 504-506.
The volitional-conduct requirement is not at issue in most direct-infringement cases; the usual point of dispute is whether the defendant’s conduct is infringing ( e.g., Does the defendant’s design copy the plaintiff’s?), rather than whether the defendant has acted at all ( e.g., Did this defendant create the infringing design?). But it comes right to the fore when a direct-infringement claim is lodged against a defendant who does nothing more than operate an automated, user-controlled system. See, e.g., Fox Broadcasting, supra, at 1067; Cartoon Network, supra, at 131. Internet-service providers are a prime example. When one user sends data to another, the provider’s equipment facilitates the transfer automatically. Does that mean that the provider is directly liable when the transmission happens to result in the “reproduc[tion],” §106(1), of a copyrighted work? It does not. The provider’s system is “totally indifferent to the material’s content,” whereas courts require “some aspect of volition” directed at the copyrighted material before direct liability may be imposed. CoStar, 373 F. 3d, at 550-551. The defendant may be held directly liable only if the defendant itself “trespassed on the exclusive domain of the copyright owner.” Id., at 550. Most of the time that issue will come down to who selects the copyrighted content: the defendant or its customers. See Cartoon Network, supra, at 131-132.
Congress has enacted several safe-harbor provisions applicable to automated network processes, see, e.g., 17 U. S. C. §512(a)-(b), but those provisions do not foreclose “any other defense,” §512( l), including a volitional-conduct defense.
The distinction between direct and secondary liability would collapse if there were not a clear rule for determining whether the defendant committed the infringing act. See Cartoon Network, 536 F. 3d, at 132-133. The volitional-conduct requirement supplies that rule; its purpose is not to excuse defendants from accountability, but to channel the claims against them into the correct analytical track. See Brief for 36 Intellectual Property and Copyright Law Professors as Amici Curiae 7. Thus, in the example given above, the fact that the copy shop does not choose the content simply means that its culpability will be assessed using secondary-liability rules rather than direct-liability rules. See Sony, supra, at 434-442, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574; Cartoon Network, supra, at 132-133.
They are not. Unlike video-on-demand services, Aereo does not provide a prearranged assortment of movies and television shows. Rather, it assigns each subscriber an antenna that—like a library card—can be used to obtain whatever broadcasts are freely available. Some of those broadcasts are copyrighted; others are in the public domain. The key point is that subscribers call all the shots: Aereo’s automated system does not relay any program, copyrighted or not, until a subscriber selects the program and tells Aereo to relay it. Aereo’s operation of that system is a volitional act and a but-for cause of the resulting performances, but, as in the case of the copy shop, that degree of involvement is not enough for direct liability. See Grokster, 545 U. S., at 960, 125 S. Ct. 2764, 162 L. Ed. 2d 781 (Breyer, J., concurring) (“[T]he producer of a technology which permits unlawful copying does not himself engage in unlawful copying”).
In sum, Aereo does not “perform” for the sole and simple reason that it does not make the choice of content. And because Aereo does not perform, it cannot be held directly liable for infringing the Networks’ public-performance right. That conclusion does not necessarily mean that Aereo’s service complies with the Copyright Act. Quite the contrary. The Networks’ complaint alleges that Aereo is directly and secondarily liable for infringing their public-performance rights (§106(4)) and also their reproduction rights (§106(1)). Their request for a preliminary injunction—the only issue before this Court—is based exclusively on the direct-liability portion of the public-performance claim (and further limited to Aereo’s “watch” function, as opposed to its “record” function). See App. to Pet. for Cert. 60a-61a. Affirming the judgment below would merely return this case to the lower courts for consideration of the Networks’ remaining claims.
Because I conclude that Aereo does not perform at all, I do not reach the question whether the performances in this case are to the public. See ante, at 10-15, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 488-492.
The Court’s conclusion that Aereo performs boils down to the following syllogism: (1) Congress amended the Act to overrule our decisions holding that cable systems do not perform when they retransmit over-the-air broadcasts; (2) Aereo looks a lot like a cable system; therefore (3) Aereo performs. Ante, at 4-10, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 485-489. That reasoning suffers from a trio of defects.
See Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 415 U. S. 394, 94 S. Ct. 1129, 39 L. Ed. 2d 415 (1974); Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U. S. 390, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176 (1968).
First, it is built on the shakiest of foundations. Perceiving the text to be ambiguous, ante, at 4, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 485, the Court reaches out to decide the case based on a few isolated snippets of legislative history, ante, at 7-8, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 487-488 (citing H. R. Rep. No. 94-1476 (1976)). The Court treats those snippets as authoritative evidence of congressional intent even though they come from a single report issued by a committee whose members make up a small fraction of one of the two Houses of Congress. Little else need be said here about the severe shortcomings of that interpretative methodology. See Lawson v. FMR LLC, 571 U. S. ___, ___, 134 S. Ct. 1158, 188 L. Ed. 2d 158, 186 (2014) (Scalia, J., concurring in principal part and concurring in judgment).
Second, the Court’s reasoning fails on its own terms because there are material differences between the cable systems at issue in Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 415 U. S. 394, 94 S. Ct. 1129, 39 L. Ed. 2d 415 (1974), and Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U. S. 390, 88 S. Ct. 2084, 20 L. Ed. 2d 1176 (1968), on the one hand and Aereo on the other. The former (which were then known as community-antenna television systems) captured the full range of broadcast signals and forwarded them to all subscribers at all times, whereas Aereo transmits only specific programs selected by the user, at specific times selected by the user. The Court acknowledges this distinction but blithely concludes that it “does not make a critical difference.” Ante, at 10, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 489. Even if that were true, the Court fails to account for other salient differences between the two technologies. Though cable systems started out essentially as dumb pipes that routed signals from point A to point B, see ante, at 5, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 486, by the 1970’s, that kind of service “‘no longer exist[ed],’” Brief for Petitioners in Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Teleprompter Corp., O. T. 1973, No. 72-1633, p. 22. At the time of our Teleprompter decision, cable companies “perform[ed] the same functions as ‘broadcasters’ by deliberately selecting and importing distant signals, originating programs, [and] selling commercials,” id., at 20, thus making them curators of content—more akin to video-on-demand services than copy shops. So far as the record reveals, Aereo does none of those things.
The Court observes that “[t]he subscribers of the Fortnightly and Teleprompter cable systems . . . selected what programs to display on their receiving sets,” but acknowledges that those choices were possible only because “the television signals, in a sense, lurked behind the screen, ready to emerge when the subscriber turned the knob.” Ante, at 10, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 489. The latter point is dispositive: The signals were “ready to emerge” because the cable system—much like a video-on-demand provider—took affirmative, volitional steps to put them there. As discussed above, the same cannot be said of the programs available through Aereo’s automated system.
Third, and most importantly, even accepting that the 1976 amendments had as their purpose the overruling of our cable-TV cases, what they were meant to do and how they did it are two different questions—and it is the latter that governs the case before us here. The injury claimed is not violation of a law that says operations similar to cable TV are subject to copyright liability, but violation of §106(4) of the Copyright Act. And whatever soothing reasoning the Court uses to reach its result (“this looks like cable TV”), the consequence of its holding is that someone who implements this technology “perform[s]” under that provision. That greatly disrupts settled jurisprudence which, before today, applied the straightforward, bright-line test of volitional conduct directed at the copyrighted work. If that test is not outcome determinative in this case, presumably it is not outcome determinative elsewhere as well. And it is not clear what the Court proposes to replace it. Perhaps the Court means to adopt (invent, really) a two-tier version of the Copyright Act, one part of which applies to “cable companies and their equivalents” while the other governs everyone else. Ante, at 9-10, 16, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 488-489, 492.
The rationale for the Court’s ad hoc rule for cable-system lookalikes is so broad that it renders nearly a third of the Court’s opinion superfluous. Part II of the opinion concludes that Aereo performs because it resembles a cable company, and Congress amended the Act in 1976 “to bring the activities of cable systems within [its] scope.” Ante, at 8, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 488. Part III of the opinion purports to address separately the question whether Aereo performs “publicly.” Ante, at 10-15, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 488-492. Trouble is, that question cannot remain open if Congress’s supposed intent to regulate whatever looks like a cable company must be given legal effect (as the Court says in Part II). The Act reaches only public performances, see §106(4), so Congress could not have regulated “the activities of cable systems” without deeming their retransmissions public performances. The upshot is this: If Aereo’s similarity to a cable company means that it performs, then by necessity that same characteristic means that it does so publicly, and Part III of the Court’s opinion discusses an issue that is no longer relevant—though discussing it certainly gives the opinion the “feel” of real textual analysis.
Two other criteria come to mind. One would cover any automated service that captures and stores live television broadcasts at a user’s direction. That can’t be right, since it is exactly what remote storage digital video recorders (RS-DVRs) do, see Cartoon Network, 536 F. 3d, at 124-125, and the Court insists that its “limited holding” does not decide the fate of those devices, ante, at 16-17, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 492-493. The other potential benchmark is the one offered by the Government: The cable-TV-lookalike rule embraces any entity that “operates an integrated system, substantially dependent on physical equipment that is used in common by [its] subscribers.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 20. The Court sensibly avoids that approach because it would sweep in Internet service providers and a host of other entities that quite obviously do not perform.
That leaves as the criterion of cable-TV-resemblance nothing but th’ol’ totality-of-the-circumstances test (which is not a test at all but merely assertion of an intent to perform test-free, ad hoc, case-by-case evaluation). It will take years, perhaps decades, to determine which automated systems now in existence are governed by the traditional volitional-conduct test and which get the Aereo treatment. (And automated systems now in contemplation will have to take their chances.) The Court vows that its ruling will not affect cloud-storage providers and cable-television systems, see ante, at 16-17, 189 L. Ed. 2d, at 492-493, but it cannot deliver on that promise given the imprecision of its result-driven rule. Indeed, the difficulties inherent in the Court’s makeshift approach will become apparent in this very case. Today’s decision addresses the legality of Aereo’s “watch” function, which provides nearly contemporaneous access to live broadcasts. On remand, one of the first questions the lower courts will face is whether Aereo’s “record” function, which allows subscribers to save a program while it is airing and watch it later, infringes the Networks’ public-performance right. The volitional-conduct rule provides a clear answer to that question: Because Aereo does not select the programs viewed by its users, it does not perform. But it is impossible to say how the issue will come out under the Court’s analysis, since cable companies did not offer remote recording and playback services when Congress amended the Copyright Act in 1976.
We came within one vote of declaring the VCR contraband 30 years ago in Sony. See 464 U. S., at 441, n. 21, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574. The dissent in that case was driven in part by the plaintiffs’ prediction that VCR technology would wreak all manner of havoc in the television and movie industries. See id., at 483, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574 (opinion of Blackmun, J.); see also Brief for CBS, Inc., as Amicus Curiae, O. T. 1982, No. 81-1687, p. 2 (arguing that VCRs “directly threatened” the bottom line of “[e]very broadcaster”).
The Networks make similarly dire predictions about Aereo. We are told that nothing less than “the very existence of broadcast television as we know it” is at stake. Brief for Petitioners 39. Aereo and its amici dispute those forecasts and make a few of their own, suggesting that a decision in the Networks’ favor will stifle technological innovation and imperil billions of dollars of investments in cloud-storage services. See Brief for Respondents 48-51; Brief for BSA, The Software Alliance as Amicus Curiae 5-13. We are in no position to judge the validity of those self-interested claims or to foresee the path of future technological development. See Sony, supra, at 430-431, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574; see also Grokster, 545 U. S., at 958, 125 S. Ct. 2764, 162 L. Ed. 2d 781 (Breyer, J., concurring). Hence, the proper course is not to bend and twist the Act’s terms in an effort to produce a just outcome, but to apply the law as it stands and leave to Congress the task of deciding whether the Copyright Act needs an upgrade. I conclude, as the Court concluded in Sony: “It may well be that Congress will take a fresh look at this new technology, just as it so often has examined other innovations in the past. But it is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written. Applying the copyright statute, as it now reads, to the facts as they have been developed in this case, the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be [affirmed].” 464 U. S., at 456, 104 S. Ct. 774, 78 L. Ed. 2d 574.
holding that company that streamed broadcast television programs to subscribers publicly performed those programs
Summary of this case from Dish Network L.L.C. v. TV Net Solutions, LLC
concluding that Aereo's performed publicly within the meaning of the Transmit Clause when it transmitted copyrighted television programs near-simultaneously with the original broadcast
cautioning against using "a few isolated snippets of legislative history" from a committee report "as authoritative evidence of congressional intent even though they come from a single report issued by a committee whose members make up a small fraction of one of the two Houses of Congress"
using legislative history to clarify statutory purpose
making clear that multiple parties may proximately cause direct infringement
noting that the Court's cases "are fully consistent with a volitional-conduct requirement," the purpose of which "is not to excuse defendants from accountability, but to channel the claims against them into the correct analytical track" as claims for secondary liability
Summary of this case from BWP Media USA Inc. v. Polyvore, Inc.
discussing Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists Television, Inc., 392 U.S. 390, and Teleprompter Corp. v. Columbia Broad. Sys., Inc., 415 U.S. 394
Summary of this case from Filmon X, LLC v. Window to the World Commc'ns, Inc.
discussing services provided to users of personal computers, tablets, and smart phones
Summary of this case from Synchronoss Techs., Inc. v. HyperLync Techs., Inc.
In ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2498 (2014), the Supreme Court held that Aereo publicly performed plaintiffs' television programs by streaming those programs over the internet to "large numbers of paying subscribers who lack[ed] any prior relationship to the works."
Summary of this case from China Ctr. Television v. Create New Tech. (HK) Ltd.
relying on legislative history and context of 1976 Copyright Act to justify finding copyright liability for online television streaming service
Summary of this case from Cal. Inst. Technology v. Hughes Commc'ns Inc.
applying copyright laws customarily imposed upon cable companies to a new type of distributor
defining ‘streaming’ as ‘[t]he process of providing a steady flow of audio or video data so that an Internet user is able to access it as it is transmitted’
Summary of this case from In re Certified Question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit
Summary of this case from Deacon v. Pandora Media, Inc. (In re Certified Question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit)