A media stock analyst thinks the U.S. Solicitor General...

A media stock analyst thinks the U.S. Solicitor General got it wrong on Aereo, when the solicitor general told the Supreme Court Monday (CD March 5 p9) that the service is illegal while Cablevision’s remote-storage DVR (RS-DVR) isn’t. It’s “impossible” to reconcile that, wrote Richard Greenfield of BTIG Research in a note to investors Wednesday. “Nothing happens in the Aereo system unless the consumer using the system activates it and tells the system to record and stream the content to them -- as in Cablevision, the copies are clearly made by the consumer.” Excluding the issue of whether Aereo controls the antennas getting the broadcast-TV signal and then streaming it on the service, “from the capture/storage/streaming aspect, the functioning of Cablevision’s RS-DVR, Google Drive and Aereo are indistinguishable,” wrote Greenfield. “We have no doubt Aereo is illegal if Cablevision is overturned, however, if Cablevision’s RS-DVR is legal and online cloud storage services built on the Cablevision RS-DVR are legal, then the storage/streaming aspects of Aereo must be legal.” The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cablevision ruled that that RS-DVR service is legal.