Locast is shutting down, and it has some debts to pay down along the way. The flailing streaming app now has to pay the four major broadcast networks copyright damages totaling $32 million.
Upon launching two years ago, Locast claimed it was a non-profit and only streaming an already-free signal over the air. That would have made them immune to retransmission fees, but ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX sued the company in 2019 for those fees.
Locast stood firm in saying it was an established non-profit, but a judge ruled in August that they misused the funds for expansion. The New York ruling stated Locast could only use the money to lessen the costs of operating their service. Instead, Locast used funding for expansion — which they have done in 36 markets nationwide.
Locast served nearly 55% of the country by the time the court ruling shut down the streaming company. It operated in cities ranging from Boston and Baltimore to Phoenix and Puerto Rico.
The streamer has been off the air since September and drew the ire of FOX CEO Lachlan Murdoch.
“Clearly, the court loss for the rogue piracy business, Locast, was an important one for us,” Murdoch said to Streamable. “We will always vigorously defend our intellectual property. And it’s just pleasing to see that a threat out there or someone who thought they could steal our content for free and subvert the business model of television, broadcast television in this country, it’s pleasing to see that threat has been averted.”
Local station feeds are available via an antenna but the right’s wars we so often see come from those retransmission fees. The four major networks charge cable and satellite companies retransmission fees to profit at a larger level.
Locast tried to game the system, but the four major networks wield a lot of power for a reason and proved it’s harder than ever to get away with this type of plan.