Music companies\u2019 strategy of suing internet providers that allow music piracy on their networks will be at stake in a US Supreme Court case to be heard this fall.<\/p>\n
The US\u2019s highest court announced on Monday (June 30) that it will hear Cox Communications<\/strong>\u2019 appeal of a guilty verdict the company was handed in 2019 over repeated copyright infringement by its subscribers.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court also declined to hear an appeal by the record companies that sued Cox \u2013 Sony Music Entertainment<\/strong>, Universal Music Group<\/strong> and Warner Music Group<\/strong> \u2013 asking the top court to greenlight a new trial that would leave in place the guilty verdict and determine the damages Cox would be required to pay, Reuters<\/em> reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n If the Supreme Court were to side with Cox in the matter, it could mean new protections for internet service providers that would shield them from liability for piracy committed by subscribers, according to Bloomberg<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n In turn, that could affect a number of high-profile cases that music companies have brought against internet providers in the US, including a $2.6 billion<\/strong> case<\/a> brought against telecom giant Verizon<\/strong> by Sony, Universal, Warner and ABKCO Music<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The three record majors sued Cox \u2013 one of the US\u2019s largest internet providers \u2013 in 2018, arguing that Cox hadn\u2019t done enough to prevent its subscribers from repeatedly pirating music online.<\/p>\n In 2019, a jury in Virginia found Cox guilty<\/a> of indirect copyright infringement carried out by its users. It awarded damages of $99,830.29<\/strong> for each of 10,017<\/strong> infringed musical works, amounting to slightly over $1 billion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n However, in early 2024, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals partially overturned that verdict<\/a>, deciding that Cox couldn\u2019t be held liable for \u201cvicarious\u201d copyright infringement, because it wasn\u2019t proven that the company directly profited from its subscribers\u2019 piracy.<\/p>\n As a result, the court threw out the $1 billion fine and ordered a new trial to determine what damages Cox should pay.<\/p>\n In August 2024, Cox filed to have the original verdict overturned<\/a> at the Supreme Court, arguing that the jury\u2019s decision, if it were to stand, \u201cwould force ISPs to terminate internet service to households or businesses based on unproven allegations of infringing activity, and put them in a position of having to police their networks \u2013 contrary to customer expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n The company also argued the ruling poses a hazard to businesses. \u201cFrom hotels, restaurants, and coffee shops to hospitals and universities, businesses that offer Wi-Fi to their customers or employees could lose all connectivity because of the unlawful acts of a few.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCox kept supplying the means of infringement\u2026 [and] adopted an express policy of prioritizing profits from subscription fees over compliance with the Copyright Act or the DMCA.”<\/p>\n Record companies, in a filing with the US Supreme Court<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In May, President Donald Trump<\/strong>\u2019s Solicitor General, John Sauer<\/strong>, filed an amicus brief<\/a> in support of Cox Communications, arguing that ISPs don\u2019t become liable simply by failing to terminate accounts after receiving infringement notices. The government brief stated that \u201cwillfulness\u201d required not just awareness of potential infringement, but knowledge that subscriber conduct was actually unlawful.<\/p>\n In a supplemental brief filed in June, the record companies called the Solicitor General\u2019s argument \u201cbewildering.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCox was held liable not because it failed to do enough to police infringement, but because it took no meaningful steps to stop infringement and continued serving specific, identifiable subscribers even after receiving explicit notice of their repeat (and often rampant) infringement,\u201d the music companies\u2019 lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n They painted a picture of a telecom company that sided with pirates and against rightsholders, citing internal communications<\/a> from the company in 2009 in which Cox executives ordered subscribers kicked off the network for piracy to be reinstated immediately, and in which one Cox executive declared \u201cF the DMCA!\u201d in reference to the US\u2019s Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cCox kept supplying the means of infringement\u2026 [and] adopted an express policy of prioritizing profits from subscription fees over compliance with the Copyright Act or the DMCA,\u201d the music companies\u2019 lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n Since their initial victory in the Cox case in 2019, various music companies have pursued copyright infringement cases against ISPs, including a case against<\/a> Charter Communications<\/strong> in 2019, which was settled in 2022<\/a>, and two separate lawsuits<\/a> against<\/a> Altice USA<\/strong>, filed in 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If the top court sides with Cox, it could mean internet providers will be shielded from lawsuits over piracy by their subscribers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":235063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[130670,105756,131632],"class_list":["post-235062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-copyright-lawsuit","tag-cox-communications","tag-us-supreme-court"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}