Aereo Goes Dark After Major Supreme Court Loss

On Saturday, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia announced that his company would "pause our operations temporarily" after a Supreme Court decision struck a major blow to its business model.

The 2-year-old startup threatened to upend the broadcast television industry by setting up small antennas in about dozen U.S. cities to pick up broadcast TV channels and streams those signals to computers, smartphones and other devices. The service was available for $8 a month.

Those broadcast signals from Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS are available for free to anyone with an antenna, but cable companies like Comcast are required to pay billions in fees for the right to include their channels in cable packages. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling, maintaining that Aereo was infringing broadcasters' copyrights by retransmitted their programming.

The ruling was a big victory for broadcasters and cable companies, who worried that a decision favoring Aereo would open the floodgates for similar businesses that would drive consumers away from high-cost TV packages. Critics contend that services like Aereo gave consumers more choices and that the Supreme Court decision gives broadcasters more power to raise prices.

Read Kanoija's entire blog post below:

"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress." – Charles Kettering, inventor, entrepreneur, innovator & philanthropist

A little over three years ago, our team embarked on a journey to improve the consumer television experience, using technology to create a smart, cloud-based television antenna consumers could use to access live over the air broadcast television.

On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court reversed a lower Court decision in favor of Aereo, dealing a massive setback to consumers.

As a result of that decision, our case has been returned to the lower Court. We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps. You will be able to access your cloud-based antenna and DVR only until 11:30 a.m. ET today. All of our users will be refunded their last paid month. If you have questions about your account, please email support@aereo.com or tweet us @AereoSupport.

The spectrum that the broadcasters use to transmit over the air programming belongs to the American public and we believe you should have a right to access that live programming whether your antenna sits on the roof of your home, on top of your television or in the cloud.

On behalf of the entire team at Aereo, thank you for the outpouring of support. It has been staggering and we are so grateful for your emails, Tweets and Facebook posts. Keep your voices loud and sign up for updates at ProtectMyAntenna.org – our journey is far from done.

Yours truly,

Chet Kanojia

This Is How All Bosses Should Treat Upcoming US Soccer Games

There are good World Cup bosses, and there are bad World Cup bosses.

Here's a how-to guide to "good boss" if you supervise anyone while American hopes are on the line -- like today, as the U.S. men's national soccer team took on Germany:

1. Be a true American like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. After U.S. Coach Jurgen Klinsmann issued an excuse note to the entire nation, Cuomo gave state employees extra time off to watch the game:

#USA, NYS stands strongly behind you. I'm approving an extra hour for lunch today: http://t.co/5G0ys3Zo2E #USAvGER pic.twitter.com/2TVnzqbY1A

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 26, 2014

2. Don't be like this boss, because let's be honest: no one else is doing any work, either.

Devastating! You'll just have to follow the game here!!! #LetsDoThis RT @Easy_L8vin: So I tried to use it.. @ussoccer pic.twitter.com/kE1KoUeQKj

— U.S. Soccer (@ussoccer) June 26, 2014

The U.S. just advanced out of the World Cup's round of group play, and now things are win-or-die -- so bosses of America, take note! THIS is how you handle it.

What Amazon Doesn't Want You To Know

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sure doesn't like to get specific with numbers.

Apart from the phrase "Fire Phone" itself, the phrase "tens of millions" could have been the one he uttered most frequently as he stood on stage in Seattle last week to announce the company's first smartphone.

Here's a sampling from his roughly 90-minute presentation:

"And today we have tens of millions of Kindle owners."

"And today we have tens of millions of tablet owners as well."

"We've got tens of millions of songs you can buy."

"We very quickly had tens of millions of Prime members."

"That's how you get tens of millions of members."

You get the idea. When it comes to numbers, Bezos likes to talk without actually saying anything. "Tens of millions," after all, can be pretty much anything between 20 million and 999 million.

So how many Kindles has Amazon sold? 20 million? 50 million? 100 million? We'll probably never know.

Jeff Bezos standing in front of a chart with ... No actual figures!!! pic.twitter.com/WibrJ1kSvv

— Tim Stenovec (@timsteno) June 18, 2014

It seems that Bezos has been fond of the phrase for some time. The day after last Christmas, Bezos touted in a press release that Prime, the company's annual loyalty program that includes two-day shipping, had reached "tens of millions of members worldwide."

It's a companywide phrase, too. On Monday morning, Amazon sent out a press release that said members of Prime had not only "streamed tens of millions of songs," but also "added tens of millions of songs" to their playlists using the company's new Prime music service.

So what does that mean? Did 1 million of Amazon's "tens of millions" of Prime members each listen to 20 different songs? Did 5 million listen to four songs each? As Re/Code's Peter Kafka put it, "Amazon Says Some People Have Streamed Some Music From Its New Music Streaming Service."

Bezos' lack of specifics when it comes to numbers isn't at all surprising. Amazon is a company that's notoriously secretive and rarely gives out actual figures. It can be entertaining to listen to quarterly investor earnings calls, where answers to analysts' questions tend to include quips like "I can't talk to the specifics of that," "there is not a lot I can help you with there," and "we might or might not do in the future."

Of course, Amazon is not actually required to provide very detailed information on calls with investors or in its public filings.

"The guidelines that are set forth for what has to be disclosed are fairly general," James D. Cox, a professor of corporate and securities law at Duke University, told The Huffington Post. "So there's room for lots of generalizations and, more pejoratively, perhaps even puffery."

Some other tech companies, however, share a bit more. Netflix tells investors how many members it has in the United States and how many it has "internationally," a term that for Netflix covers its operations in Latin America, Canada and the U.K., among other countries. (Investors, journalists and analysts would love to know exactly how many members Netflix has in each country.)

Although Apple is known for its secrecy, it tells investors how many iPods, iPads and iPhones it sells. It doesn't, however, say how many of those iPhones were the more expensive iPhone 5S and how many were the cheaper iPhone 5C.

Representatives from Amazon did not return a request for comment.

But Bezos defended Amazon's technique at the company's annual shareholder meeting in May, saying that rivals like Apple, Samsung and IBM could use any information to their advantage.

“Our primary approach is, we talk when we have something to say,” Bezos said, according to GeekWire. “I never think of us as secretive, I think of us as mostly quiet.”

"We take great care to try and keep our product roadmaps quiet," he said. "I would love to know what Apple’s product roadmap is. That would be very helpful to me."

Juicy Couture Closing All U.S. Stores: Report

Juicy Couture is drying up.

The California clothing brand famous for its rhinestone-bedazzled tracksuits is shutting down all of its U.S. stores by the end of June, according to the fashion news site Racked.

The struggling label's parent company, Fifth & Pacific Companies -– now renamed Kate Spade & Company -– sold it fall to Authentic Brands Group.

More than 60 international stores will remain open, Racked reported. But employees at several locations in Los Angeles told the site that all brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S. are closing down. Juicy's website lists more than 100 boutiques and outlet stores in North America.

Haley Steinberg, a spokeswoman for Authentic Brands Group, did not immediately respond to a call and email from The Huffington Post on Friday requesting comment.

The move comes as Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, the brand’s two founders, are launching a new label, Pam & Gela, out of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Authentic Brands Group struck a deal this week with shoe-making giant Steve Madden to design Juicy’s new line of women’s footwear.

Last November, Kohl’s announced a non-exclusive deal to start selling Juicy clothes. The shift to a big-box retailer was perceived as a death knell for the once-posh fashion brand.

Juicy’s signature terrycloth tracksuits were a staple of women’s casual style in the early- to mid-2000s, alongside UGG boots and North Face fleece pullovers. When Juicy first sold in 2003 to Liz Claiborne Inc. –- as Fifth & Pacific was then known -– The New York Times said the company had been “built from a $200 start-up to a $51 million concern” in just six years.

“We are a lifestyle brand and we have a weirdly large demographic, from kids to 65-year-olds,” Taylor told the Times at the time.

But 11 years later, that demographic appears to have shrunken in the wash.

Sorry, Hipsters: These Mainstream Beers Will Soon Be 'Craft' Too

If you love sipping on a crisp, watery Yuengling lager, you probably don't consider yourself a craft beer connoisseur. Pretty soon that will have to change.

That's because the Brewers Association (BA), which represents the beer industry, made a change in February to its definition of what constitutes a "craft beer" that will soon allow some large beer companies to use the distinction for their brews.

Welcome one of the newest members to the "craft" club.

To use the term "craft beer" in marketing, brewers traditionally had to be three things: small, independent and traditional. The BA also required that brewers use only barley malt for their flagship beer, rather than rice or corn.

The BA lifted the barley malt requirement, and now will also allow breweries that make up to 6 million barrels a year to consider themselves "small." (It was capped at 2 million barrels until 2010.) As a result, bigger brewers including Yuengling, August Schell and Narragansett will all soon be considered "craft."

The BA is conducting its survey of breweries this year and will release its new craft roster by early 2015.

Not everyone is happy with the new standards. As more breweries get the "craft" blessing -- and marketing and lobbying support -- that comes with the certification, some smaller brewers fear that their voices will be drowned out.

"I think the Brewers Association has watered down the meaning of craft beer, and of good beer," Dan Del Grande, owner and brewer of Bison Organic Beer, told NPR in May. "Frankly, those guys don't need the help."

But to these midsize brewers, the definition is only fair. In fact, some of these breweries argue that they use rice or corn additives -- often viewed as cheaper and inferior to barley malt -- because of their history.

When many of the breweries were founded in the mid-1800's, they relied on the regional ingredients that were available at the time. To these brewers, that makes their inclusion of the previously-shunned ingredients traditional.

"Hell, as America’s oldest brewery one would think we matter?" David Casinelli, chief operating officer of Yuengling, said.

He isn't lying. Yuengling, founded in 1829, is America's oldest brewery. The brand's brew is made with barely malt, but corn grits are added to lighten the lager.

Casinelli pointed out that his company did not lobby for the change, and that a new distinction won't change the way Yuengling is marketed.

"It's an organic evolution," Julia Herz, the director of the BA's craft beer program, said in a phone interview. "It's an exciting time to continue to move forward what’s going on in beer, and this takes the subjective element out of what’s considered 'traditional.'"

But many in the beer community fear the widening definition of craft could render the distinction meaningless.

"They’re concerned – rightfully concerned, in my humble opinion – that this will compromise the quality of beer produced and sold under the craft beer umbrella," writes Caleb Houseknecht on the blog for Keg Works, a leading beer equipment seller.

Some of the beers that will soon be considered craft.

Casinelli said the explosion of popularity for craft beers has led to the difficulties in defining the category.

"[The craft definition] is always subject to change based upon the board's desires," he said. "When you now have close to 3,000 actual craft brewers or brew pubs in the USA all making very wide ranges of styles and adding limitless ingredients, it's very hard to have a definition that’s totally inclusive."

The BA agrees that their community should be more welcoming to the companies that pioneered beer in America.

"Some members communicated that a brewer that has been around for over 100 or 150 years not being considered a traditional brewer didn't make a whole lot of sense," wrote Paul Gatza, the director of the Brewers Association, in a recent statement about the change.

"Seems like the BA was finally under pressure to be an inclusive organization of all their members," Casinelli said.

Craft beer's identity crisis comes at a time of exponential growth for beer. In 1978, there were only 89 breweries in the country. Today, there are more than 2,800, according to the BA, and the organization considers roughly 99 percent of those to be craft.

But make no mistake, the non-craft mega breweries like Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors still dominate the beer market. Even in today's craft-hyped environment, craft beer only represents about 8 percent of the total beer market by volume and about 14 percent by dollars. Herz said the BA wants craft beers to represent 20 percent of the total beer market by 2020.

The new distinction should certainly help. "The result is a more inclusive Brewers Association," wrote Gatza.

So the next time you enjoy a refreshing Yuengling or Narragansett, you can know that you'll soon be drinking craft -- beer snobs be damned.

Craft beers only represent 7.8 percent of the beer industry, but this is likely to change with the inclusion of the new craft breweries.

The Time Amazon Stabbed A German Knife Maker In The Back

Amazon has been in the news lately for its tough negotiation tactics, refusing to accept presale orders for certain books from the publisher Hachette as well as some new DVDs and Blu-rays from Warner Bros. as it attempts to get more favorable contract terms with both companies.

This isn't out of character for Amazon. In fact, the mammoth online retailer has a history of playing rough with suppliers. Take the case of Wüsthof, the maker of fancy German knives, whose relationship with Amazon ended in broken promises and threats. Amazon was once the largest U.S. online retailer of Wüsthof knives. Now, Wüsthof won't even do business with it.

Here's why, according to Brad Stone's 2013 book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (which, as it happens, is published by a division of Hachette).

Amazon once bought a lot of knives from Wüsthof, a 200-year-old German company, writes Stone. But in 2006, Wüsthof thought the relationship was no longer worth it, and stopped selling to Amazon.

The problem was that Amazon was selling the knives for below what's called Minimum Advertised Price, or MAP. MAP, Stone explains, requires brick-and-mortar retailers not to go below a certain price in their ads, and requires online stores like Amazon not to post prices lower than those on its product pages.

As Stone writes in The Everything Store, "Wüsthof felt it needed MAP to defend the value of its brand and protect the small independent knife shops that were responsible for about a quarter of the company's sales and were not capable of matching such discounts."

Cover of Brad Stone's book.

After a few years of selling Wüsthof knives, Amazon stopped adhering to the company's MAP, instead discounting the knives heavily. So Wüsthof decided to stop supplying Amazon.

"It was painful for us," René Arnold, then the company's CFO, told Stone. "Those were lost sales, at least in the short term."

Three years later, in 2009, Amazon promised it would play nice with Wüsthof and adhere to the company's MAP. So the knife-maker resumed selling to Amazon.

But once again, Amazon went below MAP.

From The Everything Store:

René Arnold, the CFO, was overwhelmed with complaints from his other retailer partners, whose prices remained 10 percent higher. These small shop owners either lost sales to Amazon or were forced by their customers to match Amazon's price. In their angry calls to Arnold, they threatened to lower their retail prices as well, and now it was easy for Arnold and his colleagues to envision a day when all these retailers would start demanding lower wholesale prices on Wüsthof knives, cutting into the company's profit margins. The economics of its traditional-manufacturing operating in Germany would no longer make sense.

Amazon said it was simply matching the prices of its third-party sellers -- retailers from which you can buy products on Amazon's website, but which aren't actually part of Amazon. The problem was that some of those third-party merchants weren't authorized Wüsthof sellers. Some could even have been selling stolen knives.

So in 2011, Stone writes, Wüsthof again cut ties with Amazon and stopped selling its knives to the huge retailer.

But it didn't end there.

Amazon representatives, according to Stone, not only said that they'd continue to sell Wüsthof knives through other distributors, but also said they'd show advertisements for competing knife companies when a customer searched Amazon for Wüsthof knives.

Wüsthof to this day refuses to sell to Amazon, though you can still find its products on Amazon through third-party sellers.

"We couldn't control our relationship with Amazon.com," Arnold, now the CEO of Wüsthof Trident of America, told The Huffington Post last week. "We have a very strict MAP policy. They couldn't care less about this."

Retailers and vendors constantly tussle over prices. Typically, retailers try to negotiate lower prices from vendors so they can, in turn, have the lowest prices in the market. Walmart is legendary for this.

Amazon, for its part, says it's just trying to get the lowest prices for consumers. But the company has incredibly thin profit margins -- less than one cent for every dollar of revenue, according to Bloomberg. Amazon, whose stock is down 18 percent this year, is under intense pressure from shareholders to make more money.

"When we negotiate with suppliers, we are doing so on behalf of customers," Amazon said in a statement last month about its standoff with Hachette. "Negotiating for acceptable terms is an essential business practice that is critical to keeping service and value high for customers in the medium and long term."

A spokesperson from Amazon would not comment on the company's relationships with Hachette or Wüsthof beyond that statement.