Written by: Haim Ravia, Dotan Hammer
The United States Supreme Court ruled that Cox Communications cannot be held liable for copyright infringement committed by its subscribers, reversing a $1 billion verdict that Sony Music Entertainment had secured against the internet service provider.
The case centered on whether Cox, which serves approximately six million subscribers, bore legal responsibility for users who illegally downloaded and shared copyrighted music. Sony had enlisted a tracking firm, which sent Cox over 163,000 notices over a two-year period identifying subscriber IP addresses linked to infringement. Sony argued that Cox’s continued service to those subscribers made it a willful copyright infringer.
Writing for the majority, Justice Thomas held that an internet provider can only be “contributorily liable” for a user’s infringement if it intended its service to be used for that purpose. Under existing precedent, that intent can be demonstrated in just two ways: either the provider actively induced infringement through specific promotional acts, or the service itself was so narrowly tailored that it had no substantial legitimate use.
Cox met neither standard. The majority found no evidence that Cox encouraged or marketed its service as a tool for piracy. To the contrary, Cox sent warnings, suspended accounts, and ultimately terminated subscribers after repeated violations. And Cox’s internet service — used for countless lawful purposes — plainly could not be characterized as a product designed for infringement.
The ruling reversed the Fourth Circuit, which had held that simply providing a service with knowledge that some recipients would use it to infringe copyrights was sufficient for liability. The Supreme Court called that reasoning a departure from settled precedent and an expansion of secondary liability that Congress never authorized.
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Jackson, concurred in the judgment but wrote separately to criticize the majority’s reasoning. She argued that the Court unnecessarily closed the door on other potential theories of secondary liability, particularly common-law aiding and abetting, without adequate justification. She agreed, however, that Sony’s evidence fell short of proving Cox intended to facilitate specific acts of infringement — a requirement she found fatal to the claims under any valid legal theory.
Click here to read the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.
