Supreme Court unanimously rules for Cox Communications in Sony copyright case over music downloads

The Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled for Cox Communications in a copyright case brought by Sony over illegal music downloads.The high court ruled that Cox cannot be held liable for not doing enough to disconnect internet service customers who illegally downloaded copyrighted music, The Hill reported.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, saying that a lower court was wrong to hold Cox liable for damages just because it refused to disconnect customers it allegedly knew were repeat infringers. While the decision for Cox was unanimous, two of the liberal justices didn’t sign onto Thomas’s broader reasoning.
“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights,” Thomas wrote. 
Thomas said that music labels must clear a higher bar. In order to be sued, an internet service provider must intend for its product to be used for infringement or tailor the product for illegal activity.
In 2018, Sony and other music labels sued Cox Communications after alerting the company about repeat infringers. Sony argued that Cox didn’t cut off the infringing customers. The lawsuit focused on 57,000 Cox customer accounts that were found to infringe over 10,000 copyrighted works.
In a lower court ruling, Sony won a $1 billion judgment against Cox at trial.
Cox argued that it doesn’t profit from the illegal activity and doesn’t encourage infringement, as its terms of service explicitly prohibit it.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said Thomas had limited liability “without any meaningful explanation.” The two liberal justices sided with Cox on other grounds.
“The majority’s artificial limiting of secondary liability is supported by neither precedent nor statute,” Sotomayor wrote.
The Trump administration sided with Cox, warning that finding Cox liable would threaten universal internet access.
“The decision below does not distinguish between a single user’s account, a family account with multiple members, a university account shared by thousands of students, or a regional ISP that uses Cox’s services to provide internet access to tens of thousands on a single account,” the Trump administration wrote in court filings.

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