If you've ever had your provider get in to a deadlock contract with an OTA station; you'll realize retransmission fees are a scam.
According to the law; a TV station has two options; they can negotiate a retransmission fee for a cable system; or invoke "must-carry", in which the cable provider is *required* to carry them. The station does not have to pay for a "must-carry" station; they are however required by law to carry them. That's bad for the cable company because they have to dedicate QAM space to a channel they may not want. However, if a cable provider negotiates a retransmission fee; they are allowed at that point to insert "local" ads over OTA stations.
In reality; the stations are only screaming about *potential* loss of profits here. The real losers are the local advertisers; who are paying the bills to keep the station's OTA signal running. Thier ads will only get seen by people with OTA; and those times when a local company isn't inserting ads over airtime.
This is why it's common in some areas for a cable/satellite provider to lose the right to carry a local channel. The station wants more money to reach it's demographic; and when a deal cannot be struck, the channel becomes unavailable. If it's a network affiliate; you lose that network entirely. FCC laws prohibit an "outside" station to be piped in to another market. Ironically; this law was made to protect local advertisers, ensuring they had a better chance to be seen in a market where their ads are already possibly being covered over with whatever promotion your provider is running this month.
The ruling that Aereo is legal was upheld by an appellate court already. They found the place-shifting technology (which is what this is); did not constitute public performance. Likewise; since there was an individual receiver and antenna for each user; there was no breaking of any law.
A2B TV does a similar thing; only with satellite TV. And they've even changed since I first found them. Used to be they'd get you set up with a cable TV account at whatever provider was local to the datacenter, along with a slingbox and "hosting space"; thier new model seems to use satellite TV and you have to send them a receiver. I own a Slingbox (two of them actually); and it's perfectly legal to have them hooked up to my TV's; of course I do pay for a TV service. But what about the Slingbox I sent to my friend in Texas with an OTA receiver so I could watch my favorite football team? Legally, it's my receiver and my hardware; so it *still* falls under placeshifting; and it's still not public retransmission.
Networks are going to complain and bitch because they're "getting thier business model stolen"; they seem to forget thier original business model was providing a service for free that was funded by advertisers; that's shifted in to a service that's still provided free, but paid for by cable and satellite companies. I can't blame advertisers for wanting to pay next to nothing; would *you* want to pay top-dollar for advertising knowing the majority of your demographic on cable or satellite might not see it? Of course not.
Again, it's just the networks sitting there looking at the potential profits they're losing because a lousy business model they created failed; one that was doomed for failure in the first place. What were they doing all those years when analog C-Band was still dominate; and they did not scramble the network fee? All those people were watching network TV without local inserted ads. What were they doing before the 1992 act and cable providers could literally pipe in any OTA channel their antenna farm could pick up; you know, back when the FCC mandated providers had to carry locals. Complicate the matter by the fact the FCC has allowed cable broadcasters to begin encrypting OTA feeds; which were once required to be left unencrypted.
The real issue is if they get this declared illicit; what's to stop them going further? They could begin saying multi-room DVR is illegal; worse yet, they could begin saying those of us who pay for a TV service are no longer allowed to stream them in manners that 100% comply with the law now.
Networks don't care about *you*; they care about *money*. They care more about money than they do about eyes; which is funny, because usually more eyes on the channel equates to more money. Oh, wait; they kind of killed the whole making money off local advertisers. I guess it's convenient the digital switchover caused a decrease in reception range over analog; people on the fringe have to get cable now.
The entire point behind cable TV was to get local OTA channels in to areas that suffered from reception issues. In fact, it was started by a TV shop owner who wanted to sell more TV's in a mountainous area where reception was spotty for some of his customers. In those cases; it wasn't even retransmission; it was simply hooking someone up to an existing antenna. CATV stands for "Community Antenna TeleVision"; not "CAble TeleVision".
The only losers in this are the consumer and possibly people who create placeshifting devices. One can only hope if the the networks leave OTA; they too will fail. I'm sure the FCC wouldn't be too happy if OTA broadcasters left either; but I offhand don't remember the regulations on all that. The best solution would be to repeal the 1992 regulation and let it go back to being a free-for-all. I'd love to be able to watch Baltimore locals again.