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Record Labels File 'Billion Dollar' Piracy Lawsuit Against ISP Cox (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: This week Cox's problems doubled after a group of high profile record labels filed a new piracy liability lawsuit against the Internet provider. Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Universal Music, Warner Bros Records, 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 activities of its subscribers and that it substantially profited from this activity. All at the expense of the record labels and other rightsholders. "Indeed, for years, Cox deliberately refused to take reasonable measures to curb its customers from using its Internet services to infringe on others' copyrights -- even once Cox became aware of particular customers engaging in specific, repeated acts of infringement," the complaint reads. To stop the infringing activities, the music companies sent hundreds of thousands of notices to the Internet provider. This didn't help much, they claim, noting that Cox actively limited the number of notices it processed.
"Rather than working with Plaintiffs to curb this massive infringement, Cox unilaterally imposed an arbitrary cap on the number of infringement notices it would accept from copyright holders, thereby willfully blinding itself to any of its subscribers' infringements that exceeded its 'cap.'" Cox has previously stressed that it implemented a "thirteen-strike policy" to deal with the issue. According to the record labels, it is clear that Cox intentionally ignored these repeated copyright infringements. As such, they believe that the ISP is liable for both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. As compensation for the claimed losses, the companies demand statutory or actual damages, as well as coverage for their attorney fees and other costs. Since the complaint lists over 10,000 musical works, and there's a statutory maximum of $150,000 per work, the case could in theory cost Cox more than $1.5 billion.
"Rather than working with Plaintiffs to curb this massive infringement, Cox unilaterally imposed an arbitrary cap on the number of infringement notices it would accept from copyright holders, thereby willfully blinding itself to any of its subscribers' infringements that exceeded its 'cap.'" Cox has previously stressed that it implemented a "thirteen-strike policy" to deal with the issue. According to the record labels, it is clear that Cox intentionally ignored these repeated copyright infringements. As such, they believe that the ISP is liable for both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. As compensation for the claimed losses, the companies demand statutory or actual damages, as well as coverage for their attorney fees and other costs. Since the complaint lists over 10,000 musical works, and there's a statutory maximum of $150,000 per work, the case could in theory cost Cox more than $1.5 billion.
They should sue the road owners for helping piracy
You mean the electrical companies for providing electrons.
Their lawyers must have forgotten the concept of safe harbor as part of the DCMA act/
Firstly, having a right to select which traffic goes through the network does not limit your common carrier status. Only acting on that right limits your common carrier status. Secondly, traffic shaping is not even close to what they are talking about with common carrier status; they are talking about censorship and controlling messaging.
None of that is the case any longer.
It used to be true, as that was the case back in the 90's when the FCC classified companies as telecommunication carriers, which are the same laws that provided for common carrier classification as well.
All of the laws that let the FCC make such classifications were very recently repealed earlier this year, so no longer apply.
With the massive FUD campaign intentionally confusing what laws existed and what laws would disappear, I can understand the reason you would be unaware of this.
There were thousands of people paid to spread FUD, and millions more that were willing to do so for free.
They would say laws allowing classification as a telecom aren't needed to classify something as a telecom, yet there is now no such classification to apply or not apply. They also intentionally mislead people about how old the laws were, typically claiming "those laws dated in the 90s were only just made in 2015" when that was proven false before and after.
So no, COX and all other ISPs in the USA are not telecommunication providers under the law anymore, and there is no such thing as common carrier to fall under or to not fall under, it simply doesn't exist as a concept in law anymore.
So it doesn't at all matter what COX situation is, or what their actions are, there is no common carrier status to be assigned or not assigned, thus they are not common carriers.
They are fully and wholly responsible under the law for the actions of all of their customers now.
If the label can prove in court that the customer infringed copyright, that's all that's needed for COX to be found guilty of "secondary infringer of copyright"
There is also "accomplice to copyright infringement" that they are no longer shielded from.
This would require a separate court case against the ISP, but ironically due to the name, does not actually require the accused copyright infringer to be found guilty.
"accomplice" is different from "accessory" in that accessory requires direct action to assist in the crime, or to be physically present (which the latter part I don't believe applies), where accomplice does not require any specific actions to be made to qualify, but the penalties for accomplice are supposed to be FAR lesser.
But since both accomplice and accessory take additional work to prove, while secondary infringer does not, that is what they are going after now.
Secondary infringer can be liable up to the same amount as the primary infringer, and guilt is assumed based off the primary infringer, requiring an appeal case to change.
When it was possible to classify companies as telecommunication carriers, there was additional protections in place for the company to not be automatically liable unless very specific conditions were met. This tended to be quite a high bar so wasn't an option exercised often, and even when it was it didn't succeed often either.
Now that those protections no longer exist things fall back to just what is under title 17 which are far easier to get a successful conviction for.
To qualify for safe harbor under the the DMCA, an isp must implement a reasonable policy regarding repeat offenders. Quoting from the complaint:
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Specifically, the Court concluded:
Cox did not implement its repeat infringer policy. Instead, Cox publicly purported to comply with its policy, while privately disparaging and intentionally circumventing the DMCAâ(TM)s requirements. Cox employees followed an unwritten policy put in place by senior members of Coxâ(TM)s buse group by which accounts used to repeatedly infringe copyrights would be nominally terminated, only to be reactivated upon request. Once these accounts were reactivated, customers were given clean slates.
5. The Court further found that starting in September 2012, Cox abandoned its tacit policy of temporarily suspending and reactivating repeat infringersâ(TM) accounts, and instead stopped terminating accounts altogether. Id. at 655-58.
7. The Fourth Circuit affirmed this Courtâ(TM)s holding, explaining that although âoeCox formally adopted a repeat infringer âpolicy,â(TM) . . . both before and after September 2012, [Cox] made every effort to avoid reasonably implementing that policy. Indeed, in carrying out its
thirteen-strike process, Cox very clearly determined not to terminate subscribers who in fact
repeatedly violated the policy.â 881 F.3d at 303. The former head of Coxâ(TM)s Abuse Group,
Jason Zabek, summed up Coxâ(TM)s sentiment toward its DMCA obligations best in an email
exclaiming: âoef the dmca!!!"
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According to the complaint, Cox chose not to follow the DMCA requirements for safe harbor, and literally wrote "f the dmca!!!"
I'm sure Cox has their side of the story, but they already told the side of the story in court and after hearing thier side the judge already ruled that they did not in fact implement a reasonable policy.