It's been clear for some time now: Aereo's fate will ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court. Arguments are scheduled for this April.

Notwithstanding the forthcoming argument at the high court, US District Judge Dale Kimball of Utah has gone ahead and issued a preliminary injunction (PDF), which will ban the Aereo service in Utah as well as the rest of the 10th Circuit, which includes Wyoming, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Colorado.

Aereo is currently operating in two cities in the 10th Circuit, Salt Lake City and Denver.

Kimball ruled that Aereo’s retransmission of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted programs "is indistinguishable a cable company and falls squarely within the language of the Transmit Clause." He didn't buy Aereo's argument that its system of renting a tiny antenna to each customer allows it to avoid the "Transmit Clause" of the 1976 Copyright Act, which determines what kind of "transmissions" of copyrighted material must pay licensing fees.

Cable companies have paid TV networks "retransmission fees" to carry their content for decades now. The networks want to collect a similar toll from Aereo.

The TV networks also filed lawsuits against Aereo in New York and Boston, but didn't succeed. The New York suit rose through the appellate courts, where Aereo won again, and that's the case that is now headed to the Supreme Court.

The key case law that Aereo uses to justify its strategy is the Cablevision precedent, a 2nd Circuit case that allowed for the building of remote-DVR services. In the Utah decision, Kimball flatly disagrees with the case. He isn't bound by Cablevision, which was decided by the New York-based US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Utah is in the 10th Circuit.

In Kimball's reading, the 2nd Circuit saw Congress as attempting to "distinguish between public and private transmissions." Kimball sees no such distinction, believing Congress intended the Transmit Clause to apply to a broad swath of technologies. Copyrighted works watched privately can still be "public performances" under particular circumstances (hotel video-on-demand systems, for instance). "Congress expressly used language throughout the definition section of the 1976 Copyright Act that would encompass all known or yet to be developed technologies," Kimball wrote in today's order.

Like one of the dissenters in the 2nd Circuit, Judge Denny Chin, Kimball believes that Aereo's transmission constitutes a "public performance" under the law.

And an immediate injunction is an appropriate remedy, he decides:

Every court that has considered the question of whether unauthorized Internet streaming of television and other video programming causes irreparable harm to the copyright owners has concluded that it does. Plaintiffs have amply demonstrated that Aereo’s infringing activities threaten to impair Plaintiffs’ control over its copyrighted programs, threaten Plaintiffs’ goodwill and business reputation and relationships, cause Plaintiffs to lose business and standing in the marketplace, and subject Plaintiffs’ copyrighted work to viral infringement and piracy.

While the main part of the Utah case is stayed until the Supreme Court makes a decision, Kimball didn't think it was appropriate to keep the networks waiting for an injunction.

Aereo also asked to move the case to New York; that was rejected by Kimball, too. The plaintiffs include Utah-based CBS and Fox affiliate stations, and that's enough of a link, he writes.

"This is a significant win for both broadcasters and content owners," Fox said in a statement published by The Hollywood Reporter.

"We are extremely disappointed that the District Court in Utah has chosen to take a different path than every other Court that has reviewed the Aereo technology," Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia said in a statement sent to Ars. "Consumers have a fundamental right to watch over the air broadcast television via an antenna and to record copies for their personal use. We are very sorry for the effect on our valued customers in the Tenth Circuit… and we will pursue all available remedies to restore their ability to use Aereo."

Aereo has been expanding rapidly over the course of the last year, and this most recent ruling could put a chill on that expansion (and of course, halt it entirely in the Western states covered by the 10th Circuit). It will allow Aereo's opponents to have a battle flag to wave when they argue their case in Washington DC; they won't have to walk in to the high court with a 3-0 record.

The Supreme Court argument over Aereo is scheduled for April 22. A decision will likely come by June.