{"id":8203,"date":"2025-10-17T09:37:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T09:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/labels-say-it-wont-kill-internet\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T16:26:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:26:56","slug":"labels-say-it-wont-kill-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/labels-say-it-wont-kill-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Labels Say It Won’t Kill Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tThe major record labels are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold their billion-dollar piracy lawsuit against Cox Communications, blasting the telecom giant for invoking \u201cinnocent grandmothers\u201d in its appeal to the high court.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe massive copyright case \u2014 in which Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group (WMG) 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

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\n\tAfter the justices agreed to tackle the case, Cox argued in August that the lawsuit \u201cjeopardizes internet access for millions of users.\u201d But in their own response on Wednesday (Oct. 15), the labels mocked Cox\u2019s \u201cbreathless\u201d warnings.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhile Cox waxes poetic about the centrality of internet access to modern life, it neglects to mention that it had no qualms about terminating 619,711 subscribers for nonpayment over the same period,\u201d the labels wrote. \u201cAnd while Cox stokes fears of innocent grandmothers and hospitals being tossed off the internet for someone else\u2019s infringement, Cox put on zero evidence that any subscriber here fit that bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUMG, Sony and WMG teamed up to sue Cox in 2018, arguing the broadband provider should be held liable for alleged widespread 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 are typically shielded from such claims 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 piracy. With Cox stripped of immunity, jurors held the company liable in December 2019 for infringing 10,017 separate songs and awarded the labels more than $99,000 per song \u2014 adding up to a whopping $1 billion.<\/p>\n

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\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 its opening brief last month, Cox adopted a similar argument, warning that a ruling for the music companies might force ISPs to take aggressive measures against their subscribers out of fear of huge 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

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\n\tBut in Wednesday\u2019s response, the labels said those arguments \u201cignore the record and distort the law.\u201d Far from random grandmas, the labels say Cox knew<\/em> that the individual subscribers at issue in the case were breaking the law and chose not to terminate them because it \u201cwanted to keep the money flowing in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCox made a deliberate and egregious decision to elevate its own profits over compliance with the law, supplying the means for massive copyright infringement to specific users that it knew were habitual offenders,\u201d the labels write.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case will be argued before the justices at some point in the next few months, with a ruling expected early next year.<\/p>\n

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

The major record labels are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold their billion-dollar piracy lawsuit against Cox Communications, blasting the telecom giant for invoking \u201cinnocent grandmothers\u201d in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2222,582,1423,916],"class_list":["post-8203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-internet","tag-kill","tag-labels","tag-wont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8203","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=8203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8233,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8203\/revisions\/8233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}