I agree, and the judge saying 17 USC 111(c)(5) doesn't specifically allow expansion is definitely bogus in my non-legal opinion since it doesn't specifically prohibit it either. It's likely most or all non-profits started out fairly small and expanded as the need for their services and/or products grew. As I've said elsewhere, PBS didn't hit the ground running with ~330 stations...
Broadcasters want to get paid. Most want $ per subscriber when someone rebroadcasts their signal. Even if refusing to have their signal carried loses viewers, they would rather be paid. The networks are pushing their affiliates to get paid more and give the networks a bigger cut. Paths that lead to not getting paid (other than their required OTA transmission) are not what most stations want.
I disagree with the concept that a non-profit cannot expand. As long as they were not repaying investors the financial argument seems weak.
Since that was the focus of the judge's ruling, I would guess the future expansion of Locast is what is really in jeopardy, more so than continuation of service in existing markets.
That's old, wrong thinking. People are leaving CATV and SAT every day. In part due to the high retransmission fees. Dish demonstrated that people will opt out. OTA broadcasting has lost a lot of spectrum to Cell and it may continue as their numbers decline. Any business that fights technology becomes a dinosaur.
Just because it's old, or wrong for users, doesn't make it wrong for the networks. They want to get paid. They don't want broadcasting without permission. It might not make a lot of business sense in 2021, but I don't pretend to completely understand the model. Like a lot of thing around broadcasting which many of their standards were created in first the radio era and later in the early TV era, th
Actually, Locast would be completely within the law if they charged reasonable fee to support the operation and maintenance of the service rather than depending on donations. In my opinion, the donations always were voluntary. Want to use the service uninterrupted? Pay up. Don't want to pay up? Don't use the service or put up with the interruptions. Your choice...
In my non-legal opinion, the judge was wrong. His contention that the law doesn't specifically allow expansion of the service fails, I believe, since the law doesn't prohibit expansion either. Since the case is based on a US law, the 10th amendment to the US Constitution comes to mind: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." (emphasis added).
Have you tried rabbit ears?
FULL ARTICLE HERE
I'm not surprised by this either.
Nor am I, though I am disappointed. The bottom line is that no matter how Congress intended to allow nonprofits to retransmit these signals, these corporate media empires will fight it in court, every time, and never lose because they have the lawyers and a judiciary handpicked by the politicians they have bought, all the way up to the US Supreme Court. The game is rigged and Corporate America never loses.
I wonder if PBS would send me a tote bag if I didn't donate? Charging for access would be an issue in my "non-legal" opinion. But one could probably come up with a long list of not for profit companies where a donation is required prior to receiving whatever service they provide (or at least presented in a way similar to Locast where "if you donate, you get service").
I agree with the decision but I don't agree with the logic presented (although all I have seen are media reports, not the actual judge's opinion). Copyright laws and using copyright to allow stations to withhold carriage without paid permission is a situation we are in due to a supreme court opinion that has not been overturned. The intent of the loophole that Locast claimed was not for a company to set up nationwide service (one market at a time) to millions of consumers. The intent was to allow true not for profit entities to provide service on a much smaller scale.
Rabbit ears don't work, I only get a few locals, most don't work. I'm going to try an antenna in the attic and see if that goes. Problem with YTTV, Hulu and most of the others are the RSNs, they don't have them. So if the rabbit ears solution doesn't work, I'll probably head back to DirecTV
Do we *know* Congress didn't intend to allow that to happen? Seems to me the idea was to allow signals that are *free* over-the-air to reach people for free when transmitted by an appropriate non-profit. And I don't see where Congress said the non-profit has to be local, market by market. I don't read that in the law.
Which, of course, is exactly what they want -- not only do people often pay $100 a month or more for this, but they can also hold viewers hostage and withhold their programming in order to extort more and more money out of the rebroadcasters.
Can you give a reference to exactly where in their license stations are required to do as you suggest? Stations are required to use their licenses (cannot be off air for more than a year) and are expected to use all of their license (full transmit power as licensed within 10% below or 5% above licensed power, IIRC) but OTA stations are not licensed or required to provide service to X number of people or X% of a defined area. They are licensed to transmit at a certain height and power. As long as they do that without interfering with other licensed services reception is the problem of the viewer. (There are other requirements, such as educational programming, political programming, etc. But I'll confine the statement to how a station is required to use their transmitter.)
A cease and desist order (restraining order) needs to be followed. They can go back to the judge and say "hey, we have removed the nag screen and our signal is now freely available separate from donation". But they CANNOT continue to operate without the judge changing the order.
