Billion-Dollar Music Piracy Ruling Threatens ‘Mass Evictions From The Internet,’ Supreme Court Told

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 “jeopardizes internet access for millions of users.”

The massive copyright case — in which Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group won a $1 billion verdict in 2019 — saw a lower court hold Cox itself liable over allegations of widespread illegal downloading by its users.

In 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.

“If allowed to stand, the [lower court]’s one-two punch will yield mass evictions from the internet,” the company wrote. “ISPs confronting steep penalties will have no choice but to terminate the connections of homes, barracks, hospitals and hotels, upon bare accusation.”

Cox said it “simply provided communications infrastructure to the general public on uniform terms” and should not face massive fines merely because record labels believe some users are stealing music.

“Your ISP does not purposefully participate in, or try to bring about, what you do online — any more than your phone company or FedEx do in communications they transmit,” the company’s lawyers write. “Deluging the ISP with accusations does not change that.”

UMG, 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.

ISPs 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 — adding up to a whopping $1 billion.

Last 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.

In June, the Supreme Court granted Cox’s 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 “cause numerous non-infringing users to lose their internet access.”

In Friday’s opening brief, Cox adopted a similar sweeping tone — telling the high court that the ruling could have ramifications that “extend beyond copyright infringement” into other spheres of American life.

“Under the [lower court’s] 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,” the company writes. “That notion turns internet providers into internet police and jeopardizes internet access for millions of users.”

Attorneys 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.