Aereo Is ‘Temporarily’ Shutting Down Their Services

Image via Aereo on Facebook

If you were planning on sitting on the couch all day watching content on your iPad using Aereo, you’ll have to find something else to do.

Just days after the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo infringed on the copyrights of major television networks, the company sent a letter to subscribers letting them know they were ceasing operations—for now.

Starting at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, Aereo will no longer provide customers with streaming content, and DVR’d material will be unavailable.

“We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps,” said company CEO Chet Kanojia, a Newton native, in a statement posted to the company’s blog.

Kanojia said subscribers, who pay a small monthly fee to rent a tiny, remote antenna that transmits the signal from live television events to their electronic devices, and allows them to record and store it in a cloud-based system to watch at a later time, will be refunded for their most recent payment due to the sudden service suspension.

Aereo’s announcement about halting operations was the result of a Supreme Court decision last Wednesday that said the company, which has offices in South Boston, violated the Copyright Act by plucking content from the airwaves and sending it to its customers.

“For a monthly fee, Aereo offers subscribers broadcast television programming over the Internet, virtually as the programming is being broadcast. Much of this programming is made up of copyrighted works. Aereo neither owns the copyright in those works nor holds a license from the copyright owners to perform those works publicly,” the court wrote in a 6-3 decision that brought the company to a standstill.

The Supreme Court decision sends Aereo’s battle back to the lower courts, where they intend to keep fighting to reinvent the way people consume media.

“The spectrum that the broadcasters use to transmit over the air programming belongs to the American public and we believe you should have a right to access that live programming whether your antenna sits on the roof of your home, on top of your television, or in the cloud,” said Kanojia. “Our journey is far from done.”