The Media Institute filed an amicus brief Nov. 12 asking the Supreme Court to hear broadcasters' appeal of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals' refusal to block Aereo while a trial court determines if the TV station online distributor is violating copyright laws.
"If a picture tells a thousand words, a thousand antennas tell the picture," the brief states. "Aereo's bizarre engineering, employing thousands of antennas to do the work of one, reveals to all what is really going on." Aereo's practices amount to "manipulative technological exploitation," the brief says.
The institute argues that Aereo both violates copyright and poses "a massive threat to the settled economic and legal arrangements that undergird the broadcast industry."
Amicus briefs in the appeal were due Nov. 12.
The Institute is a D.C.-based First Amendment think tank supported by various media companies.
