> In the case of DropBox, you stipulate that you have the legal right to view the file, so that answers the question.
I have the legal right to accept OTA broadcasts in New York. I also have the right to store personal copies for time shifting (see Cablevision). It is exactly an analogous situation to using Dropbox to store copyrighted material solely for your own use.
You have a file with rights to use it. You upload the file to DropBox; then you download the file from DropBox. At all points along the way you have rights to the file.
Aereo has the right to view and time shift NY OTA content for their own use. But they upload their file to their system for your use. In doing so, they are attempting to transfer viewing and time-shifting rights from them to you.
This is not exactly the Court's reasoning, but it examines the differences in the context of file rights.
> Aereo has the right to view and time shift NY OTA content for their own use. But they upload their file to their system for your use. In doing so, they are attempting to transfer viewing and time-shifting rights from them to you.
Practically what changes though if I have to log into a server and push a button or two to explicitly start an upload from the antenna to my storage space? How much work do I have to do manually before it becomes legal? What about me doing it manually makes it legal, fair, or better for society.
As an end user you are allowed certain rights like fair use, viewing OTA broadcasts for free, time shifting content, etc. Your rights extend to cover the property you own.
The concept of property ownership is potent in legal reasoning. If you do things with an antenna and DVR that you own, then you are the legal entity doing those things.
If you pay a fee to a company to do those things, then both you and the company are doing those things. The legal status of the company is a service provider, which is different from an individual end user. Aereo was a service provider, but tried to assert that they were merely an extension of each subscriber's personal property. The Supreme Court said no to that interpretation.
As for society, a legal system that provides revenue opportunities for creative works encourages the flow of capital to invest in those creative works. LOST or Breaking Bad would not be possible if the companies producing them did not have some way of making money to pay back their investors.
I have the legal right to accept OTA broadcasts in New York. I also have the right to store personal copies for time shifting (see Cablevision). It is exactly an analogous situation to using Dropbox to store copyrighted material solely for your own use.