Barry Diller’s Aereo Loses Final Court Bout

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Barry Diller’s Aereo’s last ditch effort to survive by getting a federal court to order that it be granted the status of a cable company has failed.

On August 1, Federal Judge Alison Nathan dismissed a motion brought by the company which sought an emergency ruling, saying in her decision that it had “jumped the gun in filing, without authorization, its motion for emergency consideration of preliminary injunction issues upon remand.”

Last week a Federal Appeals Court refused to grant the company an injunction to determine if under federal law it had the right to become classified as a cable company, meaning that it would need to wait an undetermined amount of time before the resolution of its court proceedings. Such uncertainty as to its future would, therefore, effectively end the company.

After that ruling, Aereo filed an emergency request to force an expedited ruling on whether or not it could pay broadcasts networks fees for rebroadcasting their transmissions in the same way that cable companies do.

In its motion Aereo stated that, “Unless it is able to resume operations in the immediate future, the company will likely not survive.” It described itself as bleeding to death saying in the filing that, “in the interim, Aereo is currently incurring staggering costs without accruing any revenue. The company is figuratively bleeding to death.”

Aereo ceased operations back on June 28th when the US Supreme Court ruled that it was in violation of American copyright laws for it rebroadcasting of network programming through the Internet. Since then it has had no incoming revenue and even refunded the remaining fees that its users had already paid it.