Supreme Court makes it harder for music and movie makers to sue for copyright infringement
WASHINGTON— The Supreme Court made it harder for music and movie producers to sue over online piracy and made it harder for internet providers to sue on Wednesday. generally not responsible for copyright infringement even if they know their users are downloading copyrighted works.
In a 9-0 decision, the justices threw out Sony’s lawsuit and a $1 billion judgment against Cox Cable for copyright infringement.
Lower courts upheld a jury verdict against Cox’s internet service on the grounds that it contributed to music piracy that the company did little to stop.
Sony’s lawyers pointed to hundreds of thousands of examples of Cox customers sharing copyrighted works. Be careful, they said Cox didn’t quite stop this.
But the high court said that wasn’t enough to create liability for copyright infringement.
“Under our precedent, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the public knowing that it will be used by some individuals to infringe copyrights.” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.
Twenty years ago, the court sided with music and motion picture producers and ruled against Grokster and Napster on the grounds that their software was intended to share copyrighted music and movies.
But the court on Wednesday said that “contributory” copyright infringement does not extend to internet service providers based on the actions of some of their users.
“Cox provided Internet service to its subscribers but did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement,” Thomas said. “Cox neither encouraged infringement by its users nor provided a service conducive to infringement.”
In his defense, Cox argued that internet service providers could go bankrupt due to massive lawsuits over copyright infringement, which they say they did not cause and could not prevent.
