The major TV broadcasters are growing tired of losing to Barry Diller in court.
On Friday, Disney’s ABC, Comcast’s NBC, CBS and 21st Century Fox petitioned the Supreme Court to shut down the streaming-video startup backed by media mogul Diller, which they allege is stealing their content.
The filing is forcing pay TV operators to choose sides in the battle.
Cable operator Cablevision, which earlier had voiced support for the broadcasters came out against the court petition.
Cablevision said the petition is a “brazen attempt…to go after the legal underpinning of all cloud-based services,” which amounts to a “willful attempt to stifle innovation.”
“If Aereo ends up prevailing, it will serve the broadcasters right,” the company said.
Broadcasters argued in the petition that Aereo, which streams local TV signals over the Web for a fee, without the broadcasters’ permission, violates their copyrights.
The broadcasters are appealing a ruling by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied their request for an injunction on Aereo earlier this year.
The circuit court’s decision “is already transforming the industry and threatening the very fundamentals of broadcast television,” the broadcasters wrote in the petition.
“The longer Aereo is left unchecked, the more it can roll out its service,” David Wittenstein, head of the media and information technology practice at law firm Dow Lohnes told the Wall Street Journal.
“If Aereo gets a lot of customers in a lot of places, it begins to be harder to shut it down,” Lohnes added.
An Aereo spokeswoman had no immediate comment. Aereo has denied that its technology infringes on content owners’ copyrights.
The broadcasters main concern is that if Aereo is allowed to continue its practice, what would stop cable and satellite companies from doing the same thing and avoiding large retransmission fees.
Broadcast stations will bring in $3.02 billion in revenue from retransmission fees from cable and satellite systems this year, and that doubles in 2018 to $6.05 billion, according industry analysts.