Just this week, the English High Court ordered six of the country's Internet service providers to block access to the Swedish site The Pirate Bay on the grounds that it induced its users to infringecopyright.
Both the Aereo and Dish technologies rely on the 1984 Supreme Court holding in the Betamax case, which made it clear that consumer recording technology, in that case the VCR, is legal if it has uses that do not infringecopyright law.
The bill gives consumers new avenues to unlock their devices and media under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in ways that do not infringe on copyright.