Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that internet service provider Cox Communications cannot be held liable for copyright infringement by its subscribers in a closely watched dispute over pirated music.
The high court ruled unanimously in favor of Cox, finding that the company cannot be held liable for infringement that occurred on its network. The decision reverses a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
The case, Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, was brought in 2018 by Sony and other major recording and publishing companies. The music companies argued that Cox was legally responsible for willfully infringing more than 10,000 of their copyrighted works because it continued to provide internet services to known infringers who downloaded and distributed songs without permission. A jury sided with the music companies and awarded $1 billion in damages.
On appeal, the 4th Circuit upheld part of the verdict and found that “supplying a product with knowledge that the recipient will use it to infringe copyrights is exactly the sort of culpable conduct sufficient for contributory infringement.” But the appeals court set aside the $1 billion damages award and sent the case back to the jury for a new trial on damages.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that a service provider like Cox is responsible for piracy by its users “only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement.” Cox, he said, took steps to discourage copyright infringement by its users, including by sending warnings, suspending services and terminating accounts.
“Cox did not tailor its service to make copyright infringement easier,” he wrote. “Cox simply provided Internet access, which is used for many purposes other than copyright infringement.”
Thomas wrote that Cox provided internet service to subscribers but didn’t intend for its connection to be used to commit copyright infringement.
“Holding Cox liable merely for failing to terminate Internet service to infringing accounts would expand secondary copyright liability beyond our precedents,” he said.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed with the outcome of the case but disagreed with the reasoning.
Sony and the other plaintiffs “cannot prove that Cox had the requisite intent to aid copyright infringement for Cox to be held liable on a common-law aiding-and-abetting theory,” Sotomayor wrote in a concurring opinion joined by Jackson.
The Trump administration backed Cox in the case, arguing that an internet service provider doesn’t commit copyright infringement by failing to cut off subscriber accounts that will commit infringement.
