The landmark US Supreme Court ruling in the Cox Communications case continues to have a significant impact on the music industry’s other copyright legal battles, most obviously those involving internet service providers like Cox, but more generally too. And even in the music industry’s AI legal battles.
After initially securing a billion dollar win against Cox in 2019, based on the argument the ISP was liable for contributory copyright infringement for failing to deal with customers who were pirating music, the majors sued a plethora of other internet providers. But last month the Supreme Court overturned the earlier Cox ruling, endorsing a narrow definition of what constitutes ‘contributory infringement’.
If Cox isn’t liable for contributory infringement, despite providing internet access to music pirates, chances are the other ISPs aren’t either. And that includes Verizon, which was only sued by the record companies for failing to deal with music pirates in its customer-base back in 2024.
At the time Verizon noted the initial music industry favouring rulings in the Cox case, but insisted those judgements “were wrong then and are even less persuasive now”. The “less persuasive now” remark was based on a 2023 Supreme Court ruling regarding Twitter’s obligations to deal with terrorism-related content, which also narrowed the responsibilities of internet companies.
With the Cox ruling now overturned, there wasn’t much of a case left against Verizon. Which is presumably why the majors and Verizon yesterday told the court in New York that is overseeing that case that they “jointly stipulate to dismissal of all claims in this matter with prejudice”. Which means that lawsuit is over and the majors can’t make the same copyright claims against the ISP in the future.
Last week another ISP that is still involved in a legal battle with the majors, RCN, made a filing with the court in New Jersey where that litigation is happening to make sure the judge was aware that there was a “new controlling authority” regarding the music companies’ legal claims. That, of course, being the Cox ruling.
It summarised that ruling as follows, “in Cox, the Supreme Court held that the intent required for contributory liability can be shown only if the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement”. Cox didn’t do either of those things and, presumably, RCN would like it to be known that it didn’t either.
But it’s not just music industry lawsuits involving ISPs that are being impacted by Cox. Twitter - or X if you prefer - is trying to get out of a legal battle with a group of music publishers by citing the ruling, and stream-ripper Yout is also trying to figure out if the precedent set in Cox can help in its ongoing legal battle with the Recording Industry Association Of America.
Meanwhile, it was notable earlier this week that the music publishers suing AI company Anthropic voluntarily dismissed with prejudice the contributory infringement claims included in their copyright lawsuit. For its part, Anthropic was quite pissed off that the publishers informed the court of that development the day before it was due to submit a motion seeking summary judgement in its favour.
Presumably the publishers dropped those claims because they anticipated what Anthropic would say in its new filing. The AI company kept that section in the filing, insisting that the Cox ruling was “fatal to publishers’ contributory liability claim” because “there is no evidence that Anthropic took steps to encourage users to generate infringing outputs” and because its Claude AI model “has substantial non-infringing uses”.
Although Cox almost certainly means the music industry can no longer pressure US ISPs to do more to combat piracy, it still remains to be seen to what extent it actually hinders record companies and music publishers when they try to enforce their copyrights in other ways. But with various internet companies trying to persuade judges that Cox is relevant to their respective cases, it’s sure to have some impact.