Über

[Bluedog]

Uber is matching buyers and sellers of transportation services outside of an established, regulated business model. Aereo matched buyers and uncompensated sellers of broadcast TV outside of an established, regulated business model. Air BnB is matching buyers and sellers of lodging services outside of an established, regulated business model.

The cabbies and hoteliers will contend that the sellers of the transportation and lodging services aren't entitled to be providers of those services. This is all the broadcasters did to Aereo.

Kind of. But the key difference with Aereo is that they provide content created by others and distribute it without compensating the broadcasters. That would be like Uber providing an app to get Yellow Taxi, Yellow Taxi providing the service of a ride, and Uber taking all the money. Instead, Uber provides an ALTERNATE avenue to obtain the service. The analogous company to me in the TV-world is Netflix with its original series. They are competing with traditional broadcasters, not taking their content and redistributing it without providing them compensation. Uber is doing the same, competing with traditional cab companies but not stealing content/services and redistributing them. I agree that taking on regulated industries in a more unregulated fashion is the rub, but saying that it's like Aereo isn't true in my mind at all. Air BnB is a more apt comparison as is VRBO.

[YmoBeThere]

Kind of. But the key difference with Aereo is that they provide content created by others and distribute it without compensating the broadcasters. That would be like Uber providing an app to get Yellow Taxi, Yellow Taxi providing the service of a ride, and Uber taking all the money. Instead, Uber provides an ALTERNATE avenue to obtain the service. The analogous company to me in the TV-world is Netflix with its original series. They are competing with traditional broadcasters, not taking their content and redistributing it without providing them compensation. Uber is doing the same, competing with traditional cab companies but not stealing content/services and redistributing them. I agree that taking on regulated industries in a more unregulated fashion is the rub, but saying that it's like Aereo isn't true in my mind at all. Air BnB is a more apt comparison as is VRBO.

I agree Air BnB and VRBO are better comparisons, however they are raising less of a stink from their competitors. At least from my understanding. Better to piss off hoteliers than cabbies I guess. From a comparison standpoint, one model(Uber, Lyft) has raised insurance issues that I have to pay attention to, the other(Air BnB and VRBO) hasn't as we've had to deal with part-time rentals of primary residences for years. So, there isn't much predictive value at this point from the latter. (And perhaps limited value from Aereo but I've been searching for contemporary comparisons that have gone further down the conflict path.)

Netflix is an interesting case, content delivery is a mess particularly now with Comcast taking over NBC Universal and Netflix paying Comcast for preferential treatment. Then there is Hulu+ and Amazon and yada, yada, yada.