{"id":1777,"date":"2024-07-15T16:39:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T16:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/verizon-music-piracy-lawsuit-filed-by-universal-warner-sony\/"},"modified":"2024-07-15T16:39:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-15T16:39:51","slug":"verizon-music-piracy-lawsuit-filed-by-universal-warner-sony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/verizon-music-piracy-lawsuit-filed-by-universal-warner-sony\/","title":{"rendered":"Verizon Music Piracy Lawsuit Filed By Universal, Warner, Sony"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tThe three major record labels are suing Verizon over allegations that the telecom giant effectively encouraged its internet subscribers to steal copyrighted music on a \u201cstaggering\u201d scale.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a lawsuit filed Friday in Manhattan federal court, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment claim that Verizon has \u201cburied its head in the sand\u201d in the face of repeated warnings about piracy on its network, fostering a \u201csafe haven\u201d for illegal activity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhile Verizon is famous for its \u2018Can you hear me now?\u2019 advertising campaign, it has intentionally chosen not to listen to complaints from copyright owners,\u201d lawyers for the labels wrote. \u201cRather than taking any steps to address its customers\u2019 illegal use of its network, Verizon deliberately chose to ignore plaintiffs\u2019 notices, willfully blinding itself to that information and prioritizing its own profits over its legal obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe financial stakes for Verizon could be very large. The labels accuse the company of infringing more than 17,000 songs; if a judge awarded the maximum penalty for each of those songs, the damages could total more than $2.5 billion. The allegedly-infringed tracks include music by The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Beyonc\u00e9, Katy Perry and hundreds of other top artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new case is the latest in a long line of major lawsuits aimed at forcing internet service providers to take more proactive steps to eliminate piracy on their networks. In one such case, the labels initially won a shocking $1 billion verdict against Cox Communications.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor years, internet service providers typically weren\u2019t held liable for individual infringements by their millions of users, thanks to a \u201csafe harbor\u201d provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But starting in the mid-2010s, music companies began arguing that ISPs had forfeited that immunity by ignoring the DMCA\u2019s requirement that they terminate \u201crepeat infringers\u201d from their network.<\/p>\n

\n\tBeginning with a landmark case filed by BMG against Cox, those arguments have repeatedly proved successful. Major labels have filed similar cases against Cox, Charter, RCN and other ISPs in courts around the country, often winning huge judgments against them.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the new lawsuit filed Friday, the labels turned those same arguments against Verizon. The company has allegedly received \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of notices of illegal file-sharing by specific subscribers, the lawsuit says, but \u201cdeliberately refused to take action\u201d so that it could \u201ccontinue to collect millions of dollars from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cVerizon\u2019s motivation for refusing to terminate or suspend the accounts of blatant infringing subscribers is simple: Verizon valued corporate profits over its legal responsibilities,\u201d attorneys for the labels wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in 2019, a federal jury in Virginia ordered Cox to pay $1 billion in a similar case, awarding the labels more than $99,000 for each of 10,017 separate songs. Though that verdict was later vacated on appeal, Cox could still face a similarly large fine when the total is recalculated in a future trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Verizon of contributory infringement (meaning the company induced or authorized its customers to pirate the music) and vicarious infringement (meaning the ISP profited from illegal downloading it could have stopped).<\/p>\n

\n\tA rep for Verizon did not return a request for comment on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The three major record labels are suing Verizon over allegations that the telecom giant effectively encouraged its internet subscribers to steal copyrighted music on a \u201cstaggering\u201d scale. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[749,303,593,2500,1840,2501,2499,592],"class_list":["post-1777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-filed","tag-lawsuit","tag-music","tag-piracy","tag-sony","tag-universal","tag-verizon","tag-warner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}