Record Labels File ‘Billion Dollar’ Piracy Lawsuit Against ISP COX

Record Labels File ‘Billion Dollar’ Piracy Lawsuit Against ISP COX


For far more than a ten years, copyright holders have been sending takedown notices to ISPs to inform them that their subscribers are sharing copyrighted material.

Under US legislation, suppliers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in correct circumstances” and progressively they are remaining held to this typical.

Cox Communications has been one particular of the prime targets hence far. A federal court previously requested the ISP to fork out $25 million in damages to music publisher BMG. Although this was overturned on attractiveness, in which a retrial was issued, it is not in safe and sound waters however.

This week Cox’s troubles doubled just after a team of higher profile report labels filed a new piracy liability lawsuit versus the Intenet provider. Sony New music Leisure, EMI New music, Universal New music, Warner Bros Data, and several others accuse the company of turning a blind eye to pirating subscribers.

The labels argue that Cox has knowingly contributed to the piracy actions of its subscribers and that it substantially profited from this activity. All at the price of the history labels and other rightsholders.

“Indeed, for a long time, Cox intentionally refused to just take acceptable steps to curb its customers from utilizing its World-wide-web products and services to infringe on others’ copyrights — even once Cox became informed of distinct clients participating in precise, repeated acts of infringement,” the grievance reads.

To halt the infringing actions, the songs corporations sent hundreds of 1000's of notices to the Internet supplier. This did not support a lot, they claim, noting that Cox actively constrained the range of notices it processed.

“Rather than doing the job with Plaintiffs to curb this massive infringement, Cox unilaterally imposed an arbitrary cap on the selection of infringement notices it would take from copyright holders, thus willfully blinding alone to any of its subscribers’ infringements that exceeded its ‘cap’.”

Cox has earlier pressured that it carried out a “thirteen-strike policy” to deal with the problem. According to the labels, having said that, the BMG lawsuit has presently demonstrated that this was a sham.

The labels anxiety that the ISP never forever terminated any subscribers. As a substitute, it would utilize a so-known as “soft termination” exactly where subscribers’ accounts were being reinstated quickly just after they have been disconnected.

“The rationale for this is very simple: alternatively than halt its subscribers’ illegal activity, Cox prioritized its individual revenue in excess of its authorized obligations. Cox’s income increased substantially as a result of the huge infringement that it facilitated, still Cox publicly informed copyright holders that it required to decrease the selection of staff members it had focused to anti-piracy for price range factors,” the complaint notes.

Considering that the situation revolves all over repeat copyright infringers, the labels only sue in excess of tracks and compositions that ended up infringed by subscribers who’ve been warned in advance of. The grievance even further notes that at minimum 20,000 Cox subscribers can be categorized as blatant repeat infringers, some of whom have been ‘warned’ extra than 100 occasions.

Repeat warnings

According to the file labels, it is apparent that Cox deliberately overlooked these repeated copyright infringements. As these types of, they consider that the ISP is liable for each contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.

As compensation for the claimed losses, the companies desire statutory or actual damages, as very well as protection for their legal professional charges and other expenses.

This could get quite highly-priced. The grievance lists perfectly above 10,000 musical functions, which suggests that the opportunity claim is immense. With a statutory optimum of $150,000 for every perform, the situation could, in concept, expense Cox more than $1.5 billion.

A copy of the criticism submitted at the US District Court docket for the Eastern District of Virginia is available here (pdf).

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Written by David Minister

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