After a short reprieve, Aereo’s service in Utah and Colorado shut down this morning at 10. Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit refused to overturn a preliminary injunction against Aereo granted two weeks ago by a Utah District Court Judge Dale Kimball. With that last appeal exhausted, Aereo was left with little choice but to stop serving customers within the Tenth Circuit.

In an email to affected subscribers, Aereo founder Chet Kanojia  wrote, “Consumers have a fundamental right to watch over-the-air broadcast television via a modern antenna and to record copies for their personal use. The Copyright Act provides no justification to curtail that right simply because the consumer is using modern, remotely located equipment.” As Kanojia has repeatedly said elsewhere, the case boils down to the length of the wire from the antenna to the viewer. (An edited version of that subscriber note now greets visitors to Aereo’s Denver home page.)

The subscriber note continued, “We are unwavering in our belief that Aereo’s technology falls squarely within the law and we look forward to continuing to serve you.” If we all get lucky and the US Supreme Court confirms Aereo’s right to stream OTA TV, Denver viewers might be able to watch it again this summer. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

© DepositPhotos / AlphaBaby

Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton wrote that the reason Aereo is still available in Colorado and Utah is that the Utah judge that blocked them there had yet to rule on Aereo’s request for a stay of his injunction.

A short time that article hit the web, Eggerton added an update that US District Court Judge Dale Kimball denied Aereo’s request but would give Aereo a temporary 14-day stay while it appealed his decision to a federal appeals court.

Kimball wrote: “While Aereo’s paying customers benefit from Aereo’s infringement in the form of lower subscription rates, the court assumes that they are mostly unaware of whether Aereo is abiding by governing copyright laws and paying the appropriate licensing fees to engage in such business. This confusion in the marketplace is part of the intangible harms to Plaintiffs.” What garbage! Find me a study of Aereo subscribers that suggests they believe Aereo is paying retransmission consent fees.

Kimball continued: “The court also recognizes that harms are accruing to Plaintiffs every day and enforcement of the copyright laws is a clear public benefit to the public as a whole. The court, however, finds some benefit in allowing Aereo’s customers uninterrupted service pending the Tenth Circuit’s decision on an emergency motion to stay. Therefore, notwithstanding the many factors weighing against a stay, the court, in its discretion, grants Aereo a temporary 14-day stay.”

Given that Kimball wrote that today, that would suggest that we Aereo viewers in Denver have until March 11 or whenever the appeals court rules, whichever comes first. We have that much more time to enjoy it while we can.

© DepositPhotos / Elnur

A couple of days ago, Utah district court judge Dale Kimball granted a preliminary injunction for Fox against Aereo, that spunky online streaming service for over-the-air TV. Kimball’s injunction covers all the states in his district, including Colorado. Which means that, here at FTABlog World Headquarters in Denver, my days of watching Aereo are probably winding to an end.

I was a little surprised that I’m still able to watch 36 hours after the injunction. When I asked the hardest working man in Washington, Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton, he followed up with another note, writing, “Turns out that decision does not become final until after Fox posts a $150,000 bond with the court, which Fox said it planned to do sometime late Thursday or Friday.”

To tell the truth, I’m afraid that this will only change Aereo’s Denver shutdown date by a few months. The Supreme Court will rule on Aereo’s legality this summer, and its post describing the question to be decided matched the broadcasters’ filing as opposed to Aereo’s. That would be very disappointing, forcing every viewer who wants to DVR his OTA channels to set up his own antenna with Windows Media Center or buy a Simple.TV or a Tablo or a ChannelMaster DVR+. Aereo is/was an inexpensive, $0-to-start alternative. As I say all too often about the free-to-air TV world, if it goes away, at least it was nice while it lasted.

Update: Now I hear that Fox might not get around to posting that bond until Monday, giving Aereo another full weekend of life in Utah and Colorado. Fox sure isn’t displaying much urgency in issuing the check that will give it relief from the “irreparable harm” it said it was suffering.

Update 2: Eggerton sent word that Fox finally posted that bond, but Aereo had filed for a stay of the injunction. Until that stay request is decided, Aereo continues to serve Salt Lake City and Denver.

You know what FilmOn needs? A blog.

If our favorite free streaming TV provider had a blog, it could add a post every time something new happened in one of its lawsuits. The FilmOn blog could have noted, as did Wendy Davis of MediaPost, that a couple of weeks ago broadcasters had filed an “emergency motion” to block FilmOn’s appeals until the US Supreme Court rules on the similar Aereo lawsuit. Then FilmOn could have added another post today when, over FilmOn’s objection, a court agreed with that emergency motion and put FilmOn’s appeals on ice, as reported by Colin Mann of Advanced Television. And during legal quiet periods, which now seem likely for a few months, FilmOn founder Alki David could direct his flow of pronouncements and opinions into a regular column in the blog.

One more legal note, the organization behind Chicago PBS station WTTW countersued FilmOn last week, according to yet another fine story by Wendy Davis. FilmOn had asked the courts there for a declaratory judgment that it’s not infringing copyright; this was WTTW’s answer that it strongly disagrees. More about WTTW in a moment.

As much as I’d love to see all these legal proceedings collected under one roof, the main reason I wish FilmOn had a blog is that it might use it to explain what the heck it’s doing with its channels, particularly US over-the-air broadcast channels. A couple of weeks ago, its free service added almost 40 new OTA stations, including superstations, digital sub-channels, and a dozen PBS affiliates. (Some of the new channels have a cute Linux desktop frame, as shown above.)

There’s so much to enjoy about these new channels, mainly because they don’t duplicate programming from the Big Four broadcast networks. There are a dozen CW affiliates, including superstations WGN, KWGN, KTLA, and WPIX. The dozen PBS affiliates, including WTTW, often run local programming too. There are three true independents, from Tampa FL, Atlanta (Peachtree) and Los Angeles. And there are affiliates of the little networks: My Network, MeTV, The Cool, Cozi, Bounce, PBS Kids, PBS World, V-Me, ion (or is it ion Life?), and Qubo.

For a few days last week, FilmOn also offered most of the OTA stations and sub-channels from the Los Angeles market, minus the Big Four affiliates. Today, they’re all gone, an example of why I hesitate to write about new FilmOn channels that can vanish as quickly as they appear. Why did they leave? Will they come back? An official blog could answer those questions.

FilmOn appears to be delivering this prime array of supplemental OTA TV to everyone regardless of market, as opposed to the Big Four affiliates in New York, which are only visible to NYC area viewers. It’s an amazing resource. I wonder how long these will last, or what FilmOn will do next. Sure wish they had a blog to tell us.