The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Cox Communications after Sony Music Entertainment and several other labels sued the company for copyright infringement back in 2018. The internet service provider (ISP) actually lost the case back then after the music labels said that the company did not terminate its subscribers despite being repeatedly flagged for downloading and sharing pirated music. This ended with the jury awarding the plaintiffs $1 billion in statutory damages, although this was overturned on appeal, according to Engadget.
“Countless people use the Internet for legal activities, but some use it to illegally share copyrighted works, such as songs and movies…In this case, however, instead of suing those infringers, the copyright owners sued petitioners, Cox Communications, Inc., and its subsidiary, who provided the internet connections that the infringers used,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the decision. “Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will used by some to infringe copyrights.”
