Cox: Music Labels Lack Legal Cases Backing Their Infringement Stance
The music labels suing Cox Communications for contributory copyright infringement ignore all the cases holding that there can't be aiding-and-abetting liability unless the defendant engaged in an affirmative, culpable act intending to further the misuse, the cable ISP told the…
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U.S. Supreme Court on Friday in a reply brief (docket 24-171). Cox is challenging an appellate court finding that it contributed to online music piracy by its broadband subscribers (see 2408160034). It said the music label respondents don't have cases supporting their position and are instead urging SCOTUS "to draw a remarkable, and legally impermissible, inference" that Congress is fine with the theory that not terminating an internet subscriber after getting two notices of their copyright violations makes the ISP a willful contributory infringer for all future infringement. But the Digital Millennium Copyright Act expressly prohibits that inference, Cox argued. The music industry's notice-and-terminate regime "would have seismic and dangerous ramifications [and] only Congress has the power to impose a framework with such vast national implications."