Supreme Court makes it harder for music and movie makers to sue for online piracy
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it harder for music and movie makers to sue for online piracy, ruling that internet providers are usually not liable 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 jury verdict against Cox Communications for copyright infringement.Lower courts upheld the lawsuit against Cox’s internet service for contributing to music piracy, which the company did little to stop.Sony’s lawyers pointed to hundreds of thousands of instances of Cox customers sharing copyrighted works.
Put on notice, Cox did little to stop it, they said.But the high court said that is not enough to establish liability for copyright infringement, which remains a hot button issue in the music and film industries with the advent of AI tools that have spread the misuse of copyrighted content and sparked lawsuits between studios and AI companies.
Entertainment & Arts High court sides with the entertainment industry in the fight against illegal file sharing.“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 be used by some to infringe copyrights,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.Two decades ago, the court sided with the music and motion picture producers and ruled against Grokster and Napster on the grounds their software was intended to share copyrighted music and movies.But on Wednesday, the court said “contributory” copyright infringement did not extend to internet service providers based on the actions of some of their users.“Cox provided Internet service to its subscribers, but it did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement,” Thomas said.“Cox neither induced its users’ infringeme...