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A federal judge has ordered (PDF) Cox Communications to pay a bruising $8 million in legal fees to BMG Rights Management after the ISP lost a landmark case over Internet piracy.
The legal case began in 2014, when music publishers BMG and Round Hill Music took the long-threatened step of actually suing a major Internet provider for its users' infringement, saying that Cox didn't do enough to stop the piracy. BMG and Round Hill were both clients of Rightscorp, an anti-piracy outfit that produces millions of e-mail notices to consumers alleged to have infringed its clients' copyrights by using BitTorrent software. Rightscorp warns ISPs that if they don't forward the notices to subscribers, they're risking a massive lawsuit.
Turns out, in this case, the threat was real. After a year of litigation, the case went to trial in December 2015. Before the trial, the judge had already ruled that Cox unlawfully blew off key provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and so wasn't protected by its "safe harbor" against litigation. The jury found against Cox and ordered the cable company to pay $25 million. That result is now on appeal, but in the meantime, US District Judge Liam O'Grady considered various post-trial motions, including one in which BMG requested legal fees.
O'Grady chose to award BMG $8.38 million in attorneys' fees, which is 80 percent of what the company asked for. BMG's motion for "nontaxable expenses" like travel expenses and expert witness fees, which asked for nearly $3 million, was denied. BMG's request for court costs such as transcripts, copies, and filing fees was granted, with the judge finally arriving at $146,790.76 after making various deductions.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bziman on Tuesday February 21 2017, @02:48PM
When I lived in Northern Virginia, I had Cox as my ISP for almost twenty years, and I never once had to call and negotiate my rates or service, like I do now. They advertised a speed and a price and that's what it was. Well, not even... the speeds were consistently faster than advertised, and every few years they would increase the speeds on all of the plans... and a couple of times they cut prices. I think I started at $50 a month for 5 Mbps, and when I finally moved away, I was getting 50 Mbps for like $35, on the same plan I started with. Oh and they didn't bend over for the MAFIAA. I had really hoped this case would go the other way. If big conglomerates like Verizon and Comcast win, we all lose.