CBS: ABC v. Aereo: Will the Supreme Court change the way we watch TV?

David Sohn, CDT General Counsel and Director of Digital Copyright, speaks with CBS reporters on the issues at stake in the ABC v. Aereo case. CDT filed a brief with the Supreme Court, urging them to consider the impact court rulings can have on the cloud computing industry.

Back in 1982, Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti employed some dramatic rhetoric to convince Congress that home VCR recordings ran afoul of the 1976 Copyright Act and posed a dire threat to his industry: “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone,” he told a congressional panel.

Two years later in Sony v. Universal Studios, the Supreme Court rejected the idea that video recordings constituted copyright infringement. By 1986, videocassettes had become the motion picture industry’s largest source of revenue.

Three decades later, the court is once again considering whether a new technology — one that relies on cloud computing to store programming — violates the Copyright Act. And as in decades past, there are parties on both sides warning of the huge economic consequences that could come from the court’s ruling.

On Tuesday, the court considers those arguments in ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc.
Read the full CBS story here.