The troll mods may have had something to do with these gems:

Not only that, but the EUSSR doesn't seem to understand that an American corporation has nothing to do with European communists.

They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.

My point is that the EU is a bunch of arrogant idiots who have no business telling an American company to split up.

"uber-feminist country?" Do you know a damn thing about Sweden or any of her neighbors? Have you ever visited or even bothered to peruse the internet on the subject of Swedish culture, customs, or her legal processes? It's awesome that you're willing to shit all over the criminal justice system of a country that I suspect you know nothing about, a country that Mr. Assange thought was just lovely until he happened to be accused of a crime by some of its citizens.

Frankly I don't know if he is a rapist or not. I do know that he's received due process of law in both Sweden and the United Kingdom and that there appears to be enough evidence to warrant a trial. I also know a thing or two about the judicial systems of the Nordic Countries; were I accused of a crime I didn't commit in one of them I would be willing to surrender myself and believe that I would receive as fair of a shake as I would get in my own country.

That's personal use; I do the same thing with my TiVo. What Aereo did would be analogous to you selling access to that dropbox'ed song to anyone willing to pay.

This is patently false. Prosecutors love to take down high profile political targets. Have you heard the name Rod Blagojevich? Tom DeLay? Duke Cummingham? Those are just from memory. Want a whole list? Here's a list of Federal politicians. Here's one for State and Local politicians.

I've read it; I've also read the US Federal Code and my own State's Penal Law. I don't commit three felonies a day. I don't commit one felony per day. That claim is massively overstated, just like everything else you've rambled about.

The most effective way the Feds have of getting the "innocent" is by jamming them up for obstruction. They ask you an incriminating (or just embarrassing) question that they already know the answer to, you lie to a sworn Federal Law Enforcement Officer, and presto, you're under Federal Indictment. This technique ensnared Martha Stewart, amongst others. Thankfully it's easily avoided by invoking your right to remain silent; alas, many people are too arrogant for that and think they'll get away with lying to the Feds. Repeat after me: "I do not wish to make a statement without consulting with counsel. Am I free to leave now?"

For better or worse Federal Law says you need the broadcaster's permission before you can retransmit their signal. In your examples you would be fine until the final paragraph where you strung a wire across the street. The apartment example is trickier, there are regulations governing shared antennas in such a scenario, meaning the landlord can mount a single antenna that each apartment has access to; you wouldn't need 50 antennas. Most shared antenna systems have fallen into disuse, because of CATV, but the regulations are still on the books.

To answer your last question, I think it became an Aereo rebroadcast when they sent the signal on a trip through the cloud. The single antenna argument was spurious but even if I bought it I would still think they were rebroadcasting. To contrast with TiVo, they charge their service, the guide data and so on; they've got nothing to do with getting the signal to you and what you do with it after that is arguably fair use.

No, it's the only TV I watch; I don't have the room in my budget for an $60/mo-$100/mo cable subscription and wouldn't pay for it even if I did. I can receive broadcast for free by putting up an antenna (this is what I did) or by paying a modest ($4.95/mo) fee to the local cable company. The cable company is required to get permission from the broadcasters to retransmit those signals under Federal Law and is further obligated under New York State law to make the broadcast tier available at cost. In this instance Aereo was taking the signals without agreement from the broadcasters and reselling them for profit. The word 'leech' comes to mind.

Which makes them a cable company, thus subject to the Federal Law that requires them to get permission before they can retransmit a third party broadcast. That law may be poorly thought out but it's a legitimate exercise of Congressional power so why is everybody pissed at SCOTUS for enforcing it? If you don't like the law write your Congressman and United States Senators....

They don't; so long as you're processing them in a manner that's consistent with your own personal use you can do anything you want with them under the Fair Use doctrine. Aereo wasn't doing this; they were piggybacking off those signals and selling them for a profit. I time shift and stream my OTA channels all the time, through a combination of one of these and one of these. Nobody cares. I'm pretty sure they would care if I started distributing my recordings to the masses for a monthly fee....

If you knew anything about our political system you'd know that US Senators have zero power to actually make good on those threats. They can't go after him judicially, that's the job of the Executive Branch (via the Justice Department) with checks and balances from the Judicial Branch. Nor can they go after him extra-judicially (*); intelligence agencies are also under the control of the Executive, with checks and balances from the Legislative Branch (that's the Senate). The Legislative can rein in the intelligence agencies if they so choose, via the oversight and funding process, but they can't issue them marching orders.

(*) They could actually go after him extra-judicially, in the same manner as any citizen could, i.e., walk up to him on the street and put a bullet in his head. I rather doubt any of them have the stomach for that, much less the time they'd get to spend behind bars for such an act....

The problem here is you're using logic and they're using emotion. He's a hero to them, David standing up to Goliath. It's the techie version of the rabid sports fan who refuses to believe his team's star player might just be capable of rape.

I've tried to explain numerous times in these stories that the judicial precedent in the United States almost certainly precludes charges from being brought against him. The United States has no Official Secrets Act; a normal citizen (i.e., a reporter) who comes into possession of classified material can do whatever the hell they want with it. Only those that have a duty to protect said information (e.g., people with security clearances) can be held accountable for the leaking thereof. So long as Assange simply received the information he is in the clear, just as the New York Times reporters who published the Pentagon Papers were in the clear. If Assange actively encouraged Manning to break the law he could have a problem but I've seen no evidence of that. The chat logs with Manning and Lamo left me with the impression that Manning came up with the idea without any outside influence.

In one of these stories I had the privilege of reading a rather lengthy summary of the Swedish legal system. The author of this post did no editorializing for or against Assange, they simply explained the process of how charges are brought and disposed of in Sweden. In any other context it would have been +5 informative but because it was in an Assange story it was -1 troll. Emotion drives these discussions and facts no longer matter.

They were taking OTA signals and retransmitting them across the internet for profit without paying the broadcaster a dime. You don't see a problem with this?

Cut 'em some slack; it's not as though they're attending an Ivy League law school where they'd learn fancy schmancy legal concepts like standing.

You stopped eating over a decade ago?

Tough shit. That's how it works with at-will employment. I quit a hated job once upon a time via e-mail, on Monday morning, 15 minutes before my shift was due to begin.

Give your employees a contract if you don't want to deal with the possibility of them leaving unexpectedly. Of course a contract usually requires you to offer them something tangible in return, i.e., guaranteed employment for a specified amount of time, which is why employers generally prefer at-will even though it's a PITA to deal with people who leave.

If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.

You paid for WinZip? That bloated piece of crap? When there's only about three dozen different free compression applications? You don't even have to resort to classical freeware, there are FOSS programs that will do the job quite nicely, with a polished GUI for those who don't like CLIs.