supreme court
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The Supreme Court on Monday is hearing a billion-dollar case over whether Internet providers can be liable for copyright infringement by their users using their services.
The legal battle has pitted the music entertainment industry against Cox Communications, which provides Internet to more than 6 million residences and businesses.
A coalition of music labels representing artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Givoan, and Douche sued Cox, alleging that the company should be held responsible for copyright infringement by Internet users whom Cox had warned were constantly abusing copyrights.
The coalition argues that Cox was sent multiple notices of specific IP addresses repeatedly infringing music copyrights and that Cox’s failure to eliminate those IP addresses from Internet access means that Cox will have to face damages from Music.
In its brief, the coalition argued that many of Cox’s anti-infringement measures appeared superficial and that the company willingly ignored the violations.
The coalition says Cox had a 13-strike policy to terminate potentially infringing customers, under which Cox took action against a customer based on how many complaints it received about a particular user. The Cox manager, who oversaw the law at issue in the case, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, told his team to “F the DMCA!!!”
“Cox made a deliberate and serious decision to maximize its own profits over compliance with the law,” the coalition claims.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and a jury agreed with the Coalition, with the jury deciding to award the Coalition more than a billion dollars in damages.
Cox argues that it should not be liable for the actions of its customers because it has never encouraged copyright infringement, its terms of service prohibit illegal activities, and it does not make extra money when customers use its Internet to infringe copyrights.
In its brief, Cox specified that less than 1% of its users infringe music copyrights and that its internal compliance measures “stopped 95% of them from less than 1%.” It claims that if the Supreme Court does not side with them, “it could mean taking down entire homes, coffee shops, hospitals, universities, and even regional Internet service providers (ISPs) – the Internet lifeline for thousands of homes and businesses – simply because some unnamed individual was accused of using the connection for the first violation.”
A decision in this case is expected this summer.
<a href