What is "Television on Your Terms?" For some of us, it means watching reality shows and simultaneously tweeting snarky commentary. But according to Barry Diller's new venture, Aereo, which employs "Television on Your Terms" as a tagline, it means streaming live broadcasts to your computer or tablet via a tiny, data-center-stored antenna that eliminates the need for wires or cables. Aereo is about to start selling the service for $12 per month after a 90-day free trial.

But, as anyone who follows IP litigation knows, one person's innovation is quite often another person's copyright infringement, especially in the world of broadcast television. Earlier this month, Debevoise & Plimptonfiled a copyright infringement suit in federal court in Manhattan seeking an injunction on behalf of a coalition of broadcasters that includes ABC, NBC and CBS. This week, Aereo's lawyers at Goodwin Procter hit back with a counterclaim that asks U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan for a declaratory judgment that Aereo's technology does not infringe the broadcasters' copyrights. Apparently convinced that it will succeed in court, Aereo also announced on Wednesday that New Yorkers can begin signing up for the service.

The two sides' positions can be summed up fairly simply. The broadcasters say Aereo is selling their copyrighted material to the public without permission -- and without paying any sort of licensing fee. Aereo says it's doing nothing more than facilitating what people have done with antennas at home for years -- it's just holding the antenna for them in a remote location and providing the type of quality those rabbit ears never could.

The arguments will likely come down to an interpretation of a 2008 ruling by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Cartoon Network v. Cablevision. That case involved Cartoon Network's accusations that Cablevision's digital video recording system permitted Cablevision to essentially resell access to Cartoon Network's programming without paying a licensing fee. Then-U.S. District Judge Denny Chin (who's now on the 2nd Circuit) agreed with Cartoon Network that Cablevision was infringing. The 2nd Circuit said, however, that by allowing customers to save and play television programs, Cablevision was not making unauthorized reproductions or violating the broadcaster's exclusive right of public performance. Storing the show for a few seconds before it was broadcast to a DVR user, the appeals court said, did not constitute illegal copying, and the playback transmissions to Cablevision subscribers weren't a "public performance." Cablevision's remote DVR system "only makes transmissions to one subscriber using a copy made by that subscriber," the appeals court held, and thus the "universe of people capable of receiving" the transmission is just that one subscriber.

But according to Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for Study of the Public Domain at Duke University School of Law, the Cablevision ruling didn't offer the last word on the "unsettled and thorny" question of what exactly constitutes a public performance. The similarities between the Cablevision and Aereo cases are "quite interesting," she said, "and the Aereo technology was apparently developed with Cablevision in mind."

Still, Jenkins said, it's difficult to predict whether the court will expand the Cablevision ruling to encompass the different way that Aereo delivers content to users. The court could find the facts analogous enough to follow Cablevision, she said, or the judge could distinguish Aereo by saying that simultaneously streaming the same show to lots of users amounts to a public performance, even though only one antenna per customer is involved.

Barring settlement, a clarification of the Cablevision decision is likely. Unlike a struggling start-up that might have a difficult time fighting this battle, Aereo has $20.5 million in financing.

David Hosp at Goodwin Procter did not respond to a request for comment. Bruce Keller at Debevoise declined to comment. ABC, CBS and NBCUniversal previously issued a statement that said, "This service is based on the illegal use of our content. Beyond that, we believe the complaint speaks for itself."

(A previous version of this article included this sentence: The similarities between the Cablevision and Aereo cases are "quite interesting," she said, because they both involve "over-the-air programming that people can enjoy free anyway."

It has been removed. Jenkins was referring to the Supreme Court's decision in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, not the Cablevision case.)

(Reporting by Erin Geiger Smith)