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Cox Is Liable For Pirating Subscribers, Ordered To Pay $25 Million (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A federal jury reached a verdict that Cox Communications must pay $25 million to BMG Rights Management for failing to disconnect subscribers accused of online piracy. TorrentFreak reports: "During the trial hearings BMG revealed that the tracking company Rightscorp downloaded more than 150,000 copies of their copyrighted works directly from Cox subscribers. It also became apparent that Cox had received numerous copyright infringement warnings from Rightscorp which it willingly decided not to act on.The case was restricted to 1,397 copyrighted works and a six-person jury awarded $25 million in damages. The award is lower than the statutory maximum, which would have been over $200 million."
If the Electric Power company is told by unofficial third parties (BMG et al) that their electricity is being used to power Cox Equipment on both the user and carrier side that is being used to download copyrighted materials, is the Electric Company also just as liable to tens of millions in damages for clearly supplying power to both the alleged perp and to the Cox internet connection utility?? It is the Same insane Logic! This is essentially a case of the gun maker being held responsible versus the person holding it and using the gun... This case will be overturned on appeal.
Cox should attain common carrier status. Then they would be immune to this. And their customers would benefit significantly.
They are not supposed to be the content police. Do you not see the obvious problem with this kind of logic? If they are liable for not blocking pirating users, then they are liable for not blocking pedophile users, and liable for not blocking ISIS users. All of a sudden, COX is now financially responsible for what each of its users does. This is a terrible precedent to set.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.