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Television United States Entertainment Technology

Locast, a Free App Streaming Network TV, Would Love to Get Sued (nytimes.com) 156

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Want to watch the Super Bowl and other network TV for free? A start-up called Locast will let you, and (so far) the big broadcasters aren't trying to stop it. From a report: On the roof of a luxury building at the edge of Central Park, 585 feet above the concrete, a lawyer named David Goodfriend has attached a modest four-foot antenna that is a threat to the entire TV-industrial complex. The device is there to soak up TV signals coursing through the air -- content from NBC, ABC, Fox, PBS and CBS. Once plucked from the ether, the content is piped through the internet and assembled into an app called Locast. It's a streaming service, and it makes all of this network programming available to subscribers in ways that are more convenient than relying on a home antenna: It's viewable on almost any device, at any time, in pristine quality that doesn't cut in and out. It's also completely free.

If this sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Aereo, the Barry Diller-backed start-up that in 2012 threatened to upend the media industry by capturing over-the-air TV signals and streaming the content to subscribers for a fee -- while not paying broadcasters a dime. NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox banded together and sued, eventually convincing the Supreme Court that Aereo had violated copyright law. The clear implication for many: If you mess with the broadcasters, you'll file for bankruptcy and cost your investors more than $100 million.

Mr. Goodfriend took a different lesson. A former media executive with stints at the Federal Communications Commission and in the Clinton administration, he wondered if an Aereo-like offering that was structured as a noncommercial entity would remain within the law. Last January, he started Locast in New York. The service now has about 60,000 users in Houston, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas and Denver as well as New York, and will soon add more in Washington, D.C. Mr. Goodfriend, 50, said he hoped to cover the entire nation as quickly as possible. "I'm not stopping," he said. "I can't now." The comment is basically a dare to the networks to take legal action against him. By giving away TV, Mr. Goodfriend is undercutting the licensing fees that major broadcasters charge the cable and satellite companies -- a sum that will exceed $10 billion this year, according to the research firm Kagan S&P Global Market Intelligence. For cable customers, the traditional network channels typically add about $12 to a monthly bill.
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Locast, a Free App Streaming Network TV, Would Love to Get Sued More

Locast, a Free App Streaming Network TV, Would Love to Get Sued

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  • but the lawyers won't. Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

    • copyright is the ability of an owner to refuse someone else using their material in an unintended way.

      Film the new release of starwars on my cell phone in the theater, copyright is what prevents me from distributing it.

      Thus it's not a question of "can I do it" or "is it east to do". These waves are being broadcast freely. But the intended distance for viewing is the intended distance of the broadcast. not replication by extraordinary means.

      THe rationale for copyright is that by restricting acces it creat

      • Since OTA (over the air) TV is ad-supported, and since Locast does not alter or remove the ads, it would seem that the channels get broader ad exposure when they appear on Locast, and therefore could make a case that their ad time is more valuable. Therefore, I would think the broadcasters would be in favor of Locast.

        Now, trouble would arise when the broadcaster secures the right to show a movie OTA, but then the rights holder of the movie objects to further broadcast beyond OTA. This equates to your '

        • Since OTA (over the air) TV is ad-supported, and since Locast does not alter or remove the ads, it would seem that the channels get broader ad exposure when they appear on Locast, and therefore could make a case that their ad time is more valuable. Therefore, I would think the broadcasters would be in favor of Locast.

          But it's the broadcaster not locast who gets to make that decision.

          and to give an example of the hypothetical case you describe, In the case of sporting events there are commonly local blackout restrictions. these are copyrights not of the broadcaster but of the content owner. The broadcaster in turn must use copyright restrictions to enforce those.
          thus it isn't just about ad revenue.

        • All of this is nice but irrelevant. Congress specifically made rebroadcasting illegal so bars would have to pay to show broadcast TV games.

          That's what tripped up the earlier company. It thought it could get around that by literally giving you your own antenna on their site and you paid them to transfer it through the Internet. But the same law requires cable companies to pay to carry it, too. The antenna being "yours" was not enough.

          These guys are doing the same thing but are hoping that, by not chargin

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Since OTA (over the air) TV is ad-supported, and since Locast does not alter or remove the ads, it would seem that the channels get broader ad exposure when they appear on Locast, and therefore could make a case that their ad time is more valuable. Therefore, I would think the broadcasters would be in favor of Locast.

          Only if Locast makes it available to people in the area only. If they let someone from Los Angeles watch a New York stream, the ads are completely irrelevant and worthless.

          Even worse, the ads a

          • Why would a Budweiser ad in New York be irrelevant to a viewer in Los Angeles? They have Budweiser in both markets, and it's the same product in both markets.

            Same logic goes for any other advertising for a national brand; by and large most television advertising is purchased by these national brands.

            Your point stands for any local businesses buying the advertisements, unless they also sell via a web site.

            • Typically broadcast TV has space for "national" and "local" commercials. Probably hard to notice in a major metro area, but in low population areas the low production quality of "local" commercials is a dead giveaway as to when in the break it switches. A commercial for Pepsi is typically in the national section (beginning of the break) and the commercial for your local Ford dealer / personal injury lawyer / county fair / nightly news will be in the local (end) section of the break.

              I remember at the Unive

              • Actually, there's a bigger problem... AFAIK, when an ad agency licenses the rights to use a copyrighted song in a commercial, they pay a lower rate if it's only going to be shown in a regional TV market instead of nationwide. If an advertiser knowingly ran the ad (after paying 'regional' rates) on an affiliate who was known to make it readily available to viewers nationwide, the advertiser itself could be sued by the music's copyright holder.

                That's why local affiliates who rebroadcast to viewers out of area

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        THe rationale for copyright is that by restricting acces it creates market place and thus actually more goods and services will be produced. Any one item will be reproduced less but the profit and creative control of the producer creates and environment we all benefit from. it doesn't matter that its free to copy. it harms the marketplace. so it is a stealing from the common good even if you are giving it away

        No. The rationale for copyright is to advance learning. It was right in the first copyright act, which had the full title of,

        An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        And was also put in the American Constitution as,

        To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their resp

        • So you accept everything at face value then?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            Yes, rereading your post, I may have taken it the wrong way at first. I will add that the balance of copyright has been broken with too much stress on the marketplace and little stress on the public domain, where works can do the most good in promoting advancement of learning. It is hard to judge how you meant that part as it seemed to me you were stressing the marketplace more then anything.

            • you are right that there copyright is a drag on the system. Sometimes friction is good, sometimes it's bad. the tragedy of the commons is a well known case where making people pay to use common lands they collectively already own promotes healthier sustainable use of the land for everyone. But obviously if the rent is too high it also deoptimizes that objective too. In general light regulation enable markets to form. Markets are good. So regulation is good. But heavy regulation also is a toll too. Th

  • truly amazing (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    wow, this is inspiring, thank you slashdot for telling me about this bodacious use of technology

  • Where did the story come from? (Score:3)

    by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Thursday January 31, 2019 @01:57PM (#58051180)

    Thanks.

  • It's just not big enough yet to get enough attention to make it worth a lawsuit. The only way to avoid the same fate as the last guys who did this is to not grow.

    So, have at it guys... Just make sure you have a way to isolate yourself and your personal assets from the company's assets so when you go bankrupt they won't be able to leave you in the poor house.

    • Given that the guy running this is a lawyer, I suspect it's all just a strange sort of advertisement for himself. He figures the lawsuit will get his name in the news and attract some paying clients who want him to defend their equally obviously illegal activity.

  • where's the money? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31, 2019 @02:00PM (#58051208)

    How is the operation paying for itself? TANSTAFL [wikipedia.org].

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It looks like they take in donations from people who live in locations that aren't currently being served, with the implied promise that this will help fund efforts to bring the service into those peoples' areas. Given the iffy prospect of this organizing getting sued into oblivion, it sounds like throwing money down a rat hole to me, but eh, who am I to say what other people waste their money on?

      Even if they were to win their future legal battle with the media networks, I don't feel particularly excited...

    • How is the operation paying for itself?

      First you generate eyeballs.

      Later you figure out how to monetize them.

      An obvious source of revenue would be to insert additional ads into the video stream. But you need to grab market share and get people hooked first. Never monetize too early.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trogre ( 513942 )

      Why do you think there is a significant cost associated with this?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sad_ ( 7868 )

      it works with an app, need i say more?
      probably loaded with more spy and adware then you can count.

  • Aero Decision Flawed (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Each Aero subscriber had his own antenna. When buy I an antenna, no one complains about that. Why can't I rent one?

  • a VPN that shows its location as being in one of the target cities?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aitikin ( 909209 )
      I was just thinking about trying that. Maybe this weekend when I have some spare time.
    • Simpler than that -- on the desktop, it appears Firefox (or other browser's) Location Services, which can trivially be spoofed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by doogles ( 103478 ) *

      a VPN that shows its location as being in one of the target cities?

      I was curious about the same, so I tried it just now -- worked fine after I made myself appear to be coming from New York. Appears they are doing your run-of-the-mill geolocation based upon IP address.

      • No VPN needed. Browser location services reports location based in your IP. Spoof the location without changing your IP, and it will still likely work.
        • I have a weird problem with the Roku app, Locast claims it is in NYC. It can't be entirely IP based since the PC browser and phone apps on the same network correctly identify as Philadelphia.

  • I'm all for sticking it to cable companies but if this makes a serious dent in content creator's revenue we're going to see a serious decline in the quality (well, what little quality exists) and quantity of new programming available for traditional TV. Locast's success would be its end.

    • How would this make a dent in "content creator's revenue"?

    • Does anyone really believe that broadcast medias quality can drop any farther?

    • if the adverts are there.

      I suppose the sports team are upset, but as a tax payer currently paying interest on bonds for 3 or 4 stadiums they can bite my shinny metal ass.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by anegg ( 1390659 )

      I'm all for sticking it to cable companies but if this makes a serious dent in content creator's revenue

      I'm beginning to think the dude doing this is right that everyone has forgotten that terrestrial broadcast TV is free for the public to receive and always has been. When local broadcast TV was first carried on local cable systems, it was a matter of convenience so that people didn't have to wire up both their own antenna and the cable box at the same time; this made the cable channels appear a more seamless part of the TV. For some people who lived in fringe reception areas, it made their picture better.

  • Why not share MY antenna? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Local people sharing would eliminate possible legal troubles that come from a centrally owned system. Having a multi-node system would also eliminate the problems with traffic throttling due to a single ISP. Just need the hardware and spare network bandwidth by volunteers. ... Re-reading this kind of sounds like TOR with a new front end.

  • The irony of his talk of "FREE" (Score:3)

    by aitikin ( 909209 ) on Thursday January 31, 2019 @02:26PM (#58051342)
    While the story is being covered by the, often paywalled, New York Times...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ssyladin ( 458003 )

      Don't diss the NYT for spending real money on real journalists to do fact-checked real reporting. This real activities cost real money, and they are entitled to collect it any which way they want. I don't have a subscription, but I do admire them for their choices, when most of the "news" these days are half-assed bloggers, junk-ad filled "You won't believe what happened next" image click lists, or other time-wasting drivel.

      How is NYT paywalling any different than charging $0.35 for the daily paper?

  • You need to create an account to login via email or FB.

    On the plus side it does not seem to care from where you are watching.

  • ...but it only serves places awash in local signals. When (as if) it serves places no signals reach, then it might be of some interest.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Also the summary had WAY too many words. The poster just clipped bits from the article, which was written by someone who seem to think that people love words for the sake of words.

      It would be nice if the summary would...you know...SUMMARIZE the story. Get to the point, dammit! Three paragraphs were used to state what could have been stated in three sentences.
         

    • In any 'market area' served by one or more television stations, there are always 'dead zones' for the signal(s): your house has a hill in the way. Or you live where there's a HOA that bans antennas on your house. Or you live in an apartment complex and cannot have an antenna at all except indoors, and it doesn't work worth a damn. Or, maybe, you don't own a TV at all. A service like this fills in those gaps in signal coverage.
  • If they relay the commercials too, what's the problem?
  • IcraveTV tried to do this back in 1999. I still have a business card from their compression engineer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • After many years of not using broadcast TV, trying out this service leads me to conclude that not only have I not been missing anything, but that free is too high a price for me to watch broadcast TV.

    I wish them luck though! Surely someone will crack the legal nut that is re-transmission of public broadcasts.

    • As usual you're a prime example of what NOT to be and what NOT to say. Keep being awesome.

      • So someone who likes to watch ads, and only can enjoy shows when they are broadcast at a particular time is the superior person.... RIIIIIIIGHT. Enjoy your TV cave, neanderthal man.

    • I agree. Years of using on-demand streaming services has spoiled my appetite for scheduled, commercial-laden television.

  • Sportsball (Score:3)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday January 31, 2019 @02:55PM (#58051460) Journal

    This could be really good. I've moved around the country a bit and it's always a hassle being a fan of sports teams in cities where I no longer live. I wouldn't mind being able to watch the Astros or Rockets or Bears or Blackhawks without having to invest in an expensive package.

    I think I'm gonna try this locast. Plus, on a day like today, it would be fun to watch a local news broadcast from Chicago, where it's -8 F while wearing shorts and sitting on my porch.

    • I got a present for you!

      Reddit has dedicated streaming forums for all the major leagues. A few hours before a game starts people [sic bots] will begin posting links to live streams, sometimes you'll have to switch streams when it gets shutdown mid-game. But overall it's not a huge headache.

      The stream sites are ... contagious ... use a browser with a condom: Adblocker+NoScript+uMatrix

      NHL:
      https://www.reddit.com/r/NHLStreams/ [reddit.com]

      MBL:
      https://www.reddit.com/r/MLBStreams/ [reddit.com]

      Google the others.

      • Thank you, friend. I've used these Reddit forums before and they've been very helpful. It would still be nice to have a legit service though. Not that I care so much about the legit part, but the less-than-kosher streaming sites can get a little wonky. Also, the only malware I've gotten in the past several years came from one of these sites, so I'm always a little squirmy when I go to them.

  • I am using it on Roku (Score:3)

    by Blinkin1200 ( 917437 ) on Thursday January 31, 2019 @03:02PM (#58051490)

    I'm behind a small hill, just big enough to interfere with broadcast signals coming from Philly. After replacing a couple of small cable boxes with Roku sticks I found this and installed it. It's good enough. If my cable supplier starts charging for their streaming app, I'll drop their tv stuff and go all streaming.

    Got it on my phone too...

    • I just tried it for the first time, and it works great.

      1. Go to https://www.locast.org/ [locast.org] and register and have it note that I live in Bethlehem, PA. It picked Philly as my local station and I went along with it.
      2. Downloaded the Locast add-on for Kodi and entered my Locast username and password.
      3. Watch any broadcast station in Kodi.

      Double bonus since I have Kodi installed on my nettop computer hooked up to my Livingroom TV.

  • I don't see the problem, really (Score:3)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Thursday January 31, 2019 @03:14PM (#58051550) Journal
    From the locast [locast.org] website:

    Locast is a public service to Americans, providing local broadcast signals over the Internet in select cities. All you have to do is sign up online, provide your name and email address, and certify that you live in, and are logging on from, one of the select US cities (“Designated Market Area”). Then, you can select among local broadcasters and stream your favorite local station.

    Locast.org is a “digital translator,” meaning that Locast.org operates just like a traditional broadcast translator service, except instead of using an over-the-air signal to boost a broadcaster’s reach, we stream the signal over the Internet to consumers located within select US cities.

    Ever since the dawn of TV broadcasting in the mid-20th Century, non-profit organizations have provided “translator” TV stations as a public service. Where a primary broadcaster cannot reach a receiver with a strong enough signal, the translator amplifies that signal with another transmitter, allowing consumers who otherwise could not get the over-the-air signal to receive important programming, including local news, weather and of course, sports. Locast.org provides the same public service, except instead of an over-the-air signal transmitter, we provide the local broadcast signal via online streaming.

    You need a broadband Internet connection for optimal performance. Using a laptop, smartphone, or computer connected to the Internet, point your browser to www.Locast.org to sign up. You then can choose which local broadcast station to watch from your Internet-enabled device.

    This service is essentially no different, really, than what the earliest days of cable TV services were: a way for everyone in a market area to receive the television stations in that market area without having to have an antenna. I, myself, in the 70's and 80's in a housing tract where the HOA did not allow you to have an antenna on your roof; it was using the cable TV service or have an antenna in your attic or inside your house. We opted for cable TV. 'Locast' is, as it states, an internet-age updated version of that early 'antenna service'. So long as they can ensure within reasonable bounds that people outside the markets it's serving can't receive those stations, then I don't see a problem, really. They're not editing out commercials or inserting commercials, they're not recording content (if you don't count an AV data stream, even transcoded-on-the-fly, as 'recorded', that is) and they're not really 'selling' the signals themselves, they're selling a service to facilitate reception of stations within the market area to people who geographically-speaking should be able to receive it, but may not be able to do so for extenuating circumstances. So I can see why they'd want to be sued: if they win they create the legal precedent for services like this to be legally allowed.

    I think broadcasters should welcome a service like this, if they want to save the OTA broadcast industry as a whole. I'm not saying they should ditch their megawatt transmitters and huge broadcast antennas, but they should allow services like this to exist as a supplement to OTA signals for the reason specified by Locast and companies like them: to fill in the gaps in signal coverage.

    Are there going to be technically-inclined people who will find a way around technologically-enforced restrictions on who can stream what markets' stations? Yes, of course. But that will always be a minority; there's always going to be 'pilfering' of some kind with just about anything, and trying to stop 100% of it is an endless game of Whack-a-Mole, as the RIAA and MPAA damned well know, and as such it's not worth doing. There is a need for a service like this, which differs from 'streaming' services like Spotify or Hulu and their ilk, and I think it's time has come. The broadcast televsion industry would be wise to welcome it instead of fighting against it.

  • Don't see how this is different from Aereo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday January 31, 2019 @03:16PM (#58051552)
    Copyright law doesn't say commercial distribution is prohibited while free distribution is allowed. It says the copyright holder has complete authority over distribution of their work. In fact that's why Aereo lost. Aereo wasn't actually charging for the broadcast TV content. They were charging you to rent an antenna from them (they went so far as to give each user their own individual antenna with their own encoder to generate their own individual stream, instead of using the signal from a single antenna to encode a single video stream broadcast to all their users). They were technically providing the TV broadcasts for free; you were only paying for equipment rental.

    The Supreme Court ruled against them because the copyright holder has ultimate say over how their content is distributed, paid or free.

    • Re:Don't see how this is different from Aereo (Score:4, Informative)

      by jbmartin6 ( 1232050 ) on Thursday January 31, 2019 @03:21PM (#58051578)
      RTFA:

      The copyright code has an exemption for nonprofits.

      • AFAIK, that exemption is only for non-profit educational use in a face-to-face classroom setting. Being non-profit is not carte blanche to distribute whatever copyrighted works you want to anyone you want. It still has to fall under fair use. A judge may be more likely to determine distribution to be fair use if it's done by a non-profit rather than a for-profit entity. But other guidelines still apply - the amount of the work reproduced, the type of work being distributed, and the effect of the distrib

  • Good luck with SB (Score:5, Informative)

    by jbmartin6 ( 1232050 ) on Thursday January 31, 2019 @03:19PM (#58051562)
    Good luck to locast users watching the Superbowl. The playoffs were so laggy via Locast that I gave up watching them.
  • It seems unlikely to last in the current state:

    he has collected $10,000 in donations so far, mostly in $5 increments. He took out a high-interest loan, at around 15 percent, to fund the operation, which to date has cost more than $700,000.

  • So I think they will get their wish. The MAFIAA thinks they have a right to royalties from all music, all video, forever. So yes, they will sue.

  • I notice in the website that they very clearly state that they are a not-for-profit service, which means they CAN make a profit (it's just not the goal of the enterprise), it does put limits to certain things (IANAL), but it's not as restrictive as a non-profit.

  • Admittedly I haven't read the actual article but if he is only allowing people in the city that he has an antenna in to access that stream and isn't altering the content in any way (e.g. isn't stripping the commercials from the feeds) then is there really anything the broadcasters have to be upset with? If the feeds are unaltered and limited to the area the antenna is in then it is the same signal anyone with an antenna could get. This just guarantees that there is a strong signal and the feed isn't getting

  • If the guy can provide vieweship & demographics numbers, the networks can ask for more ad revenue from their respective advertisers. I don't know at which point the additional ad revenue will make up for the lost cable fees but those may be lost already. People are cutting the cord. Networks could be losing out to netflix, amazon, etc but this way they can still show ads to the cordcutters. Maybe the long play for them
  • Vote for Seattle; let's get some Locast broadcast TV access going in the Seattle area! I threw in $100 - what will you put in?
  • They'd need to pay me to watch that.
  • So when will we have a DVR version of this?
    Then it would become truly useful.

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