SCOTUS sides with Cox in fight with record labels – Business News
The US Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Cox Communications can’t be held responsible for piracy by its web service subscribers of songs owned by Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and different labels, ending their billion-dollar-plus music copyright lawsuit.
The 9-0 ruling overturned a decrease court docket’s resolution to order a new trial to find out how a lot the web service supplier owed the record labels for a type of legal responsibility referred to as contributory copyright infringement.
Cox had mentioned a retrial may have produced a verdict in opposition to the Atlanta-based ISP of as a lot as $1.5 billion.
The Supreme Court ruled Cox Communications can’t be held responsible for piracy by its web service subscribers of songs owned by Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and different labels. AFP by way of Getty Images
More than 50 labels joined to sue Cox in 2018.
Internet service suppliers like Cox are usually not thought of liable underneath US law for infringement by their customers in the event that they take affordable measures to handle it.
But the labels accused Cox, the biggest unit of privately owned Cox Enterprises, of failing to answer hundreds of infringement notices, cut off web entry for repeat infringers or take different piracy-deterrence steps.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas authored the ruling Wednesday discovering that Cox was not responsible 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 referred to as the choice “a decisive victory for the broadband industry and for the American people who depend on reliable internet service,” and mentioned 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 responsible for copyright infringement. Getty Images
A jury in Alexandria, Va., in 2019 discovered that Cox owed the labels $1 billion for person infringement of more than 10,000 copyrights.
The jury discovered Cox liable each for contributory infringement and vicarious infringement, two varieties 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 however reversing its discovering of vicarious legal responsibility.
Contributory infringement entails holding events responsible for another person’s infringement as a result of they knew about it and contributed to it.
Vicarious infringement entails holding events responsible for another person’s infringement as a result of they’d the power 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 person infringement of more than 10,000 copyrights. An appeals court docket 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 mentioned this stance would threaten to cut off entry for hundreds of harmless web customers together with “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 different internet-focused tech corporations supported Cox in the case. Music, movie and e-book industry commerce teams backed the labels.
