• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer, March 3, 2014

TV broadcasters' arguments against Aereo could end up setting back cloud computing, a coalition of trade groups and the Center for Democracy & Technology warn in new court papers.

The groups say in a friend-of-the-court brief, filed on Monday, that the Supreme Court should reject at least some of the broadcasters' arguments. They are urging the court to “take care not to analyze the present case in a manner that would undercut, ignore, or reject” the principle that consumers are allowed to access material they've placed in the cloud.

“Certain approaches to this case,” the organizations write, “could overturn or subvert ... principles upon which cloud computing relies.”

Aereo enables paying subscribers to stream over-the-air TV shows to their iPads, iPhones and other devices. The company also allows users to “record” shows for later viewing. Aereo says that it merely enables legal activity -- using antennas to watch TV, and DVRs to time-shift programs.

TV broadcasters see things differently. They argue that Aereo is equivalent to a cable system, and that the company infringes copyright by transmitting programs without licenses.

Aereo counters that it's legal due to its architecture, which relies on tiny antennas to capture and stream shows to users. The company says its streams are “private” performances -- which don't require licenses -- because made on an antenna-to-user basis.

The broadcasters say that the streams are “public,” arguing that Aereo's “simultaneous retransmission” of programs shouldn't be considered private.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide in June whether Aereo's streams are public -- and, therefore, infringe copyright -- or private, in which case they're legal.

Today, the Center for Democracy & Technology and trade groups -- including CTIA - The Wireless Association, United States Telecom Association and Digital Media Association -- warn in their friend-of-the-court brief that the answer to that question could place many cloud services at risk. Specifically, they argue that the broadcasters' view of “public” performances is too broad. “[Broadcasters] appear to argue instead that separate transmissions of the same work over the same technological system should automatically be aggregated and treated as a single act of public performance,” the groups write. “Taken to its logical conclusion, this interpretation could suggest that a public performance would occur if fifty of the fifty thousand subscribers to a music locker service recorded a performance of a song, uploaded the recording to their locker, and then directed the service to play the song back to themselves.”