If Aereo wins at the supreme court and broadcasters pull TV off the air, so be it | Dan Gillmor

Sure, the streaming service and companies like Airbnb and Uber skirt the law, but that's better than the old-school cartel hoarding a public service

• Plus: Aereo squares off with broadcasters at US supreme court

• Explainer: why the Aereo case could change how we watch TV

In the endless war of incumbents versus insurgents, Tuesday's oral arguments at the US supreme court – America's broadcast TV networks against a video-streaming startup called Aereo – will ultimately be one small battle. But they remained a useful, if complex, illustration of the way a supposedly free-market economy has become so beholden to the needs, and whims, of entrenched interests. And American Broadcasting Companies v Aereo reminds us how innovators in all sorts of arenas so often skirt the edges of legality – indeed, how they regularly skip right over laws and regulations that are designed to protect the business of incumbency as much as, if not more than, to serve the public interest.

For those who are new to the Aereo case, it's all about broadcast-network panic over a service that bypasses telecom control over how and where viewers watch programming. "Free TV" broadcast over airwaves lets you set up an antenna to collect the signal; you're allowed to then stream it from a device in your home to your laptop or other device. In giant clusters, Aereo sets up a tiny antenna for each customer, who can then stream it elsewhere in the same way.