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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed to have conflicting impulses on Tuesday in considering a request from television broadcasters to shut down Aereo, an Internet start-up that the broadcasters say threatens the economic viability of their businesses.
On the one hand, most of the justices seemed to think that the service was too clever by half.
“Your technological model,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told Aereo’s lawyer, “is based solely on circumventing legal prohibitions that you don’t want to comply with.”