The Supreme Court has decided the Aereo case! And the answer is (dramatic drum roll): The Supremes, in a 6-3 vote, have reversed the Second Circuit’s decision – which means that the broadcasters have won this round.
You can read the two opinions (those would be Justice Breyer’s majority and Justice Scalia’s dissent) here. We are hunkering down here in the CommLawBlog bunker to take a careful look at the opinions, which run to 35 pages in toto; we’ll be posting our analysis once we’ve had a chance to digest it. (In the meantime, feel free to read the inevitable accounts in the Main Stream Media, but don’t take them as gospel. Wait for us to chime in.)
For all of you who were, in anticipation of the decision, engaging in intra-office competitions (in the nature of “pools”, but purely recreational and not amounting in any way to “gambling”), here are some aspects of the decision that may be of interest:
The majority opinion was written by Justice Breyer.
The nine justices split 6-3, with a total of two separate opinions (including the majority). The line-up was, in the majority (i.e., for the broadcasters): Breyer, Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan; and dissenting (i.e., for Aereo), were Scalia, Thomas, Alito.
And finally, by our count the word “cloud” appears a total of four times in both opinions.
