I’m torn on the recently issued injunction against Locast. On one hand, as a user, I was deeply impressed by the Locast team. What is Locast? Locast is a nonprofit that streams broadcast content (ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS, etc.) and delivers it to end users. In a world that is increasingly streaming focused, this seems like a natural “extension” to me of OTA (over-the-air) guidelines. Federal regulations require that broadcast stations offer OTA for free. However, the Big 4 claimed in their lawsuit that Locast’s distribution of streams was theft.
While things were tight financially for many Americans in 2020, Locast actually made their service available to users at no additional cost. It has always been free, but they did bug you repeatedly (by interrupting your stream) for donations. Locast asks for $5 donations annoyingly often during the streams, but they waived that in 2020 so people could still access their broadcast stations. I do think it is very important for people, regardless of their income, to have access to broadcast stations.
That being said, the judge’s ruling makes sense. For instance, Charter Communications (or any cable distributor) cannot redistribute the Big 4 broadcaster’s content for free to end users even if we wanted to do it. The judge also reviewed Locast’s 2020 financials and did find they made more money than was probably required to run their services. I would argue in Locast’s defense that they were trying to expand into additional geographic markets (broadcast station affiliates often host local programming — it’s not just the prime time shows), but the judge disagreed.
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