ISPs Tell Supreme Court They Don't Want To Disconnect Users Accused of Piracy

Joe_Dragon shares a report: Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn't be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks. While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy "would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access." The legal question presented by the case "is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet," they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday. The amici curiae brief was filed by Altice USA (operator of the Optimum brand), Frontier Communications, Lumen (aka CenturyLink), and Verizon. The brief supports cable firm Cox Communications' attempt to overturn its loss in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Sony. Cox petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case last month. Sony and other music copyright holders sued Cox in 2018, claiming it didn't adequately fight piracy on its network and failed to terminate repeat infringers. A US District Court jury in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in December 2019 that Cox must pay $1 billion in damages to the major record labels. Cox won a partial victory when the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated the $1 billion verdict, finding that Cox wasn't guilty of vicarious infringement because it did not profit directly from infringement committed by users of its cable broadband network. But the appeals court affirmed the jury's finding of willful contributory infringement and ordered a new damages trial.

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