A unanimously ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court has put an end to a legal battle that has raged for years between the internet provider Cox Communications, and a number a record labels, with Sony Music taking the lead.
The claim, going back and forth in different courts for eight years at this point, claimed that Cox should have terminated the internet connection for users that repeatedly were flagged for music pirating, with statutory damages of a billion dollars being awarded to Sony, and before that $25 million, both being overturned/appealed despite a jury had found Cox "wilfully infringed" more than 10,000 musical works. The total number of infringements may be a lot higher as the ruling from Supreme Court points to more than 160,000 warnings being sent to Cox via monitoring systems.
The main point of the conflict is whether or not Cox should be held liable for not terminating internet on users that they knew was using it for piracy, and thereby making the internet service provider responsible for what their customers are using their internet connection for.
Supreme Court Justice Thomas Clarence wrote that "merely providing a service to the general public" was not enough to establish responsibility, even "with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights". There was not intent, and the court also pointed out that there was not "active encouragement", nor was it a custom tailored solution that was specifically designed to be used for copyright infringement.
On a broader scale, this means that Internet Service Providers has a much better protection against lawsuits arising from what the users do and that they are not required to police the internet by cutting off access for those that misuse their internet access. This also is in line with the rules in most European countries, where it is the person that does the infringement, and that person alone, that is responsible for the actions.