The U.S. Supreme Court has just chosen the cases it will hear for the remainder of its term, and one of them could shape the future of streaming TV: ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc.

The dispute in brief: Aereo works by using a litany of antennas to gather the over-the-air TV broadcasts for a given city (yes, it still goes out over the air), then charging users $8 a month to stream this network television from one of those antennas to the user's TV or devices, and record it to a DVR. Unsurprisingly, the powers that be at TV networks see this as infringement—Aereo taking their copyrighted programming and reselling it without their permission. Aereo says it is not illegally rebroadcasting network TV, but simply collecting a resource that's freely available and allowing users to access it on more devices.

This spring, an appeals court sided with Aereo. Today the Supreme Court issued a writ of certiorari for ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. (it agreed to hear the case). Aereo quickly put out a statement welcoming the challenge, in which its CEO and founder Chet Kanojia said: "We said from the beginning that it was our hope that this case would be decided on the merits and not through a wasteful war of attrition. We look forward to presenting our case to the Supreme Court and we have every confidence that the Court will validate and preserve a consumer's right to access local over-the-air television with an individual antenna, make a personal recording with a DVR, and watch that recording on a device of their choice."

This is a case to watch because it's not simply about whether or not you can watch the Oscars on your iPad via Aereo. The Supreme Court's ruling could have repercussions around the tech world and influence the legality of many cloud-based system, since many of them store copyrighted material.

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