“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights.”
So wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in the US Supreme Court decision Cox Communications vs. Sony Music released today that has wide-ranging implications.
A jury in 2019 had reached a $1 billion verdict against Cox, saying that it owed Sony Music and others for infringing on 10,000 copyrights, with both contributory and vicarious infringement. Contributory infringement involves knowing and contributing to an infringing act, while vicarious infringement means the party could have stopped it but instead benefitted.
The Trump administration backed Cox, while music, film and book publishers backed Sony.
This is a huge ruling, as it reaffirms that ISPs do not have liability for what their customers do. Just because someone transmits a torrent across an ISP’s network does not mean the ISP can be sued. If this ruling had gone the other way, it would have inevitably lead to mass surveillance, because every time someone logged on to the Internet, they were opening the ISP up to billions in damages.
raindog308 is a longtime community LETizen, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, raindog308 runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, raindog308 has a life-long love of German Shepherd Dogs, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, playing guitar, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
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