Aereo Hit with Preliminary Injunction

NEW YORK: Marking another setback for Aereo, a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction that officially prohibits the embattled video streaming service from transmitting programs from free-to-air channels over the Internet to its subscribers.

U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in New York granted the requests from broadcast networks for a temporary injunction that blocks Aereo's service nationwide. Nathan denied Aereo a license to operate as a cable company, which would have given it permission to resume its service.

"Doing its best to turn lemons into lemonade, Aereo now seeks to capitalize on the Supreme Court's comparison of it to a CATV [community antenna television] system to argue that it is in fact a cable system that should be entitled to a compulsory license," Nathan stated in a 17-page report. "This argument is unavailing for a number of reasons."