Aereo: Too clever by half gets you nowhere, fast

[Commentary] Since 10:17 a.m. on June 25, 2014, hundreds, if not thousands, of articles and blog posts have been written explaining, dissecting, and analyzing the Supreme Court’s decision in ABC v. Aereo.

The basic point I want to make is that Aereo is a broadcast policy and communications law opinion; it is not a copyright opinion. I am generally not a proponent of outcome-oriented decision-making. But in this case, Aereo’s technology and business model so clearly sought to bypass (or, at best, simply ignored) so many important policy issues that what amounts to a summary dismissal of the company’s theory of operation seems entirely warranted.

[Hurwitz is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law, where he teaches telecommunications law, cyber law, law and economics, and other regulation-related subjects]