Mark Cuban is Team Aereo. The Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank investor wrote a blog post last weekend touting the innovation behind the Boston company’s DVR-in-the-cloud service, and with good reason. Cuban came up with a similar idea while at Broadcast.com in 1999.
Aereo’s future isn’t looking so bright. In late June, the Supreme Court decided the startup had copyrighted content from broadcasting giants the likes of NBC, Disney and FOX, among others.
Aereo succumbed to the Court’s ruling, paused its service and refunded users before officially switching up its strategy and claiming it was indeed a cable company in the lower courts. Last week, the startup received yet another knock when the lower courts said its chances of receiving the cable company license, which is necessary to stream TVs from broadcasters in exchange for fees, are slim.
But hey, at least Aereo has Cuban on its side. Penned the businessman:
Aereo deserves a lot of credit for their effort. It was a long and expensive shot to do what they went for. But they went for it. And they attempted to pivot after their SCOTUS loss.
“The technology has obviously gotten better on all sides of the equation, but sometimes a good idea is a good idea. Even if it is hard to make work,” reasoned Cuban.
Broadcast.com received pushback on the idea, too. (You can peep the memorandum on Cuban’s blog.)
Said Cuban wisely in closing, “Everything old is always new again in tech.”
Think about that one, Boston.
