{"id":7582,"date":"2025-08-30T03:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T03:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/music-piracy-ruling-threatens-internet-mass-evictions-scotus-told\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T03:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T03:34:10","slug":"music-piracy-ruling-threatens-internet-mass-evictions-scotus-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/music-piracy-ruling-threatens-internet-mass-evictions-scotus-told\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Piracy Ruling Threatens Internet ‘Mass Evictions,’ SCOTUS Told"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tC<\/span>ox Communications is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by record labels over music piracy, warning that it \u201cjeopardizes internet access for millions of users.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe massive copyright case \u2014 in which Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group won a $1 billion verdict in 2019 \u2014 saw a lower court hold Cox itself liable over allegations of widespread illegal downloading by its users.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tIn its opening brief Friday after the court agreed in June to hear the case, Cox told the nine justices that siding with the record labels and upholding the earlier ruling could force ISPs to take aggressive measures out of fear of liability.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf allowed to stand, the [lower court]\u2019s one-two punch will yield mass evictions from the internet,\u201d the company wrote. \u201cISPs confronting steep penalties will have no choice but to terminate the connections of homes, barracks, hospitals and hotels, upon bare accusation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCox said it \u201csimply provided communications infrastructure to the general public on uniform terms\u201d and should not face massive fines merely because record labels believe some users are stealing music.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYour ISP does not purposefully participate in, or try to bring about, what you do online \u2014 any more than your phone company or FedEx do in communications they transmit,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers write. \u201cDeluging the ISP with accusations does not change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUMG, Sony and Warner all sued Cox in 2018, seeking to hold the internet giant liable for alleged wrongdoing committed by its users. The labels said Cox had ignored hundreds of thousands of infringement notices and had never permanently terminated a single subscriber accused of stealing music.<\/p>\n

\n\tISPs like Cox are often shielded from such lawsuits by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). But a judge ruled that Cox had forfeited that protection by failing to terminate people who were repeatedly accused of violating copyright law. Stripped of that immunity, jurors held Cox liable in December 2019 for the infringement of 10,017 separate songs and awarded the labels more than $99,000 for each song \u2014 adding up to a whopping $1 billion.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tLast year, a federal appeals court ordered the award recalculated, ruling that aspects of the verdict were improper. But the appeals court also upheld other parts, and Cox is still facing the potential of a very large penalty when it is reissued.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn June, the Supreme Court granted Cox\u2019s petition to review that ruling. That move came after the U.S. Department of Justice told the justices to do so, warning that the ruling against Cox could \u201ccause numerous non-infringing users to lose their internet access.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Friday\u2019s opening brief, Cox adopted a similar sweeping tone \u2014 telling the high court that the ruling could have ramifications that \u201cextend beyond copyright infringement\u201d into other spheres of American life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUnder the [lower court\u2019s] reasoning, once an aggrieved party sends an ISP a notice asserting any manner of customer wrongdoing, the ISP is a willful accomplice for every subsequent customer misdeed,\u201d the company writes. \u201cThat notion turns internet providers into internet police and jeopardizes internet access for millions of users.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAttorneys for the labels will have a chance to file their own brief to the Supreme Court in the months ahead. The case will likely be argued this fall and could see a ruling early next year.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cox Communications is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by record labels over music piracy, warning that it \u201cjeopardizes internet access for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6706,2222,801,593,2500,686,350,439,1221],"class_list":["post-7582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-evictions","tag-internet","tag-mass","tag-music","tag-piracy","tag-ruling","tag-scotus","tag-threatens","tag-told"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582","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=7582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}