SCOTUS sides with Cox in fight with record labels…
The US Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Cox Communications can’t be held liable for piracy by its web service subscribers of songs owned by Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and other labels, ending their billion-dollar-plus music copyright lawsuit.
The 9-0 ruling overturned a decrease court’s determination to order a new trial to decide how a lot the web service supplier owed the record labels for a type of legal responsibility called contributory copyright infringement.
Cox had said a retrial might have produced a verdict against the Atlanta-based ISP of as a lot as $1.5 billion.
The Supreme Court ruled Cox Communications can’t be held liable for piracy by its web service subscribers of songs owned by Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and other labels. AFP via Getty Images
More than 50 labels joined to sue Cox in 2018.
Internet service suppliers like Cox are typically not thought of liable under US law for infringement by their customers if they take affordable measures to deal with it.
But the labels accused Cox, the biggest unit of privately owned Cox Enterprises, of failing to reply to hundreds of infringement notices, cut off web access for repeat infringers or take other piracy-deterrence steps.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas authored the ruling Wednesday discovering that Cox was not liable for copyright infringement.
“Cox provided internet service to its subscribers, but it did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement,” Thomas wrote. “Holding Cox liable merely for failing to terminate internet service to infringing accounts would expand secondary copyright liability beyond our precedents.”
Cox spokesperson Todd Smith called the choice “a decisive victory for the broadband industry and for the American people who depend on reliable internet service,” and said it “affirms that internet service providers are not copyright police and should not be held liable for the actions of their customers.”
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas authored the ruling on Wednesday discovering that Cox was not liable for copyright infringement. Getty Images
A jury in Alexandria, Va., in 2019 discovered that Cox owed the labels $1 billion for consumer infringement of more than 10,000 copyrights.
The jury discovered Cox liable both for contributory infringement and vicarious infringement, two types of secondary copyright infringement legal responsibility.
The Richmond, Va.-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the damages award in 2024.
The 4th Circuit ordered a retrial on the award’s dimension after affirming the jury’s discovering of contributory infringement but reversing its discovering of vicarious legal responsibility.
Contributory infringement entails holding events liable for another person’s infringement because they knew about it and contributed to it.
Vicarious infringement entails holding events liable for another person’s infringement because they’d the flexibility to control the infringement and benefited financially from it.
A jury in Alexandria, Va., in 2019 discovered that Cox owed the labels $1 billion for consumer infringement of more than 10,000 copyrights. An appeals court threw out the damages award in 2024. AP
Cox argued that the place taken by the labels in the case would develop the idea of contributory infringement too broadly.
Cox said this stance would threaten to cut off access for hundreds of harmless web customers including “entire households, coffee shops, hospitals, universities” and others “merely because some unidentified person was previously alleged to have used the connection to infringe.”
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in December.
A lawyer for President Trump’s administration argued in help of Cox.
Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other internet-focused tech corporations supported Cox in the case. Music, movie and e book industry commerce teams backed the labels.
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