The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously on March 25 that Cox Communications is not liable for copyright infringement committed by its subscribers, reversing a 2024 appeals court decision that had upheld the ISP's liability. The decision marks a decisive turn in how American law treats the responsibility of internet providers for the piracy happening on their networks.
Cox Communications cannot be held liable for piracy by its internet service subscribers of songs owned by Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and other labels, ending their billion-dollar-plus music copyright lawsuit. A jury in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2019 found Cox liable for both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and awarded the labels $1 billion in damages. That verdict did not survive the court's scrutiny.
The legal framework the court established is lean and unforgiving to copyright holders. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that a provider is not liable "for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights." A provider is liable only if it intended or actively encouraged the infringement, Thomas wrote. The decision applies the same framework the court used in 2005 when it found file-sharing service Grokster liable for promoting piracy.
The labels' case rested on a specific fact pattern: a firm enlisted by the labels to track piracy sent Cox 163,148 infringement notices over a roughly two-year period. Cox terminated just 32 subscribers for copyright infringement during that span. The music industry argued this pattern showed Cox knowingly enabled piracy. The court disagreed, finding that receiving notices and choosing not to act on all of them does not meet the legal threshold for liability.
The ruling carries real weight in policy terms. The decision has enormous implications for the $17.7 billion U.S. recorded music industry, absolving ISPs of responsibility for pirated music. For broadband companies, the decision provides something they wanted: protection from exposure to catastrophic damages awards. For copyright owners, it narrows their path to recovering losses from piracy conducted across ISP networks.
Importantly, the court was not unanimous on reasoning. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, agreed Cox should not be liable in this case but warned that the majority's ruling goes too far. Sotomayor argued that it strips ISPs of any real reason to deal with piracy on their networks, making the DMCA's safe harbour rules pointless. This dissent highlights a genuine tension in the law: how much responsibility should fall on companies providing the infrastructure for millions of people, knowing some will use it to break copyright law?
The Thomas opinion laid out two and only two paths to contributory copyright liability. The first is inducement, where a provider actively promotes its service as a tool for piracy. The second is where a service is specifically tailored to infringement and has no real commercial use beyond piracy. By these strict standards, Cox—which contractually prohibits piracy and terminated at least some infringers—could not be found liable no matter how many notices arrived.
The decision resolves a case that began in 2018 and consumed years of litigation. It provides clarity on one legal question but leaves another open: whether copyright owners can sustain enforcement efforts against individual pirates or whether they must accept piracy as an unavoidable cost of internet commerce. That question will shape the music industry's strategy for years to come.