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posted by martyb on Tuesday June 08 2021, @02:17AM   Printer-friendly

$1 billion piracy ruling could force ISPs to disconnect more Internet users:

A jury ruled in December 2019 that Cox must pay $1 billion in damages to the major record labels. Sony, Universal, and Warner had sued the cable ISP in 2018 in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. A district judge upheld the verdict in January 2021, approving the $1 billion judgment and paving the way for to Cox appeal to the 4th Circuit.

[...] "The core question in this litigation is whether an Internet service provider (ISP) was sufficiently aggressive in terminating the accounts of thousands of subscribers, and if not, the consequences of that policy decision," the advocacy groups wrote in their court brief. "The district court's answer misconstrued the law, the actual relationship between ISPs and subscribers, and the public interest. Affirming it would have dangerous consequences far beyond this case."

Terminating Internet service "means withdrawing an essential tool for participation in daily life," and cutting off an account because of the actions of one user "potentially cuts off every household member or—in the case of a school, library, or business—every student, faculty member, patron, and employee who shares the Internet connection," they wrote. "And with little or no competition among broadband ISPs in many areas of the country, those users may have no other way to connect."

[...] "Even for residential accounts, the consequences of terminating Internet access will not be confined to individual repeat infringers," the filing also said. "In other file sharing cases, rightsholders have estimated that 30 percent of the names of account holders identified as infringers were not responsible for the alleged infringement."

[...] In its complaint against Cox, the record labels claimed that Cox "knowingly contributed to, and reaped substantial profits from, massive copyright infringement committed by thousands of its subscribers." The ISP "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," they claimed.

Despite receiving "hundreds of thousands of statutory infringement notices" from record labels, "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,'" the record labels also argued.

At trial, the record labels "presented to the jury a total of 10,017 copyrights that Defendants' subscribers allegedly infringed upon during the claim period" of February 2013 to November 2014, District Judge Liam O'Grady wrote when he approved the jury verdict. "The Court found during summary judgment proceedings that Plaintiffs owned all of the copyrights in suit within the meaning of the Copyright Act, and that Cox had sufficient knowledge of the alleged infringement to satisfy the knowledge element of the contributory infringement claim." The jury ultimately "returned a verdict holding Cox liable for both vicarious and contributory infringement of all 10,017 claimed works," and it awarded the plaintiffs statutory damages of $99,830.29 per work, for a total of $1 billion.

[...] In its complaint against Cox, the record labels claimed that Cox "knowingly contributed to, and reaped substantial profits from, massive copyright infringement committed by thousands of its subscribers." The ISP "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," they claimed.

Despite receiving "hundreds of thousands of statutory infringement notices" from record labels, "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,'" the record labels also argued.

At trial, the record labels "presented to the jury a total of 10,017 copyrights that Defendants' subscribers allegedly infringed upon during the claim period" of February 2013 to November 2014, District Judge Liam O'Grady wrote when he approved the jury verdict. "The Court found during summary judgment proceedings that Plaintiffs owned all of the copyrights in suit within the meaning of the Copyright Act, and that Cox had sufficient knowledge of the alleged infringement to satisfy the knowledge element of the contributory infringement claim." The jury ultimately "returned a verdict holding Cox liable for both vicarious and contributory infringement of all 10,017 claimed works," and it awarded the plaintiffs statutory damages of $99,830.29 per work, for a total of $1 billion.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @09:18AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @09:18AM (#1143070)

    Not incompetent. Corrupt. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but the judges making these garbage rulings are entirely consistent in ruling for the wealthiest and best connected party, facts, law, and precedent be damned. I've heard it suggested that electing judges is the problem, but we have the same problem here in Canada with our appointed judges. Some are honest but others aren't, and there is neither the will nor a way to get rid of the bad ones.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 09 2021, @12:26AM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 09 2021, @12:26AM (#1143338) Journal

    I dunno 'bout all that. A lot of judges, and a lot of lawyers, seem to be simply out of touch with technology. They aren't competent to make tech decisions. They've spent their entire careers with their noses deep in dusty tomes of law. Some of them are pretty smart people, sure, but how are they supposed to know how tech stuff works? They would have to exit their law libraries, and get involved in life to understand tech. Unless he/she happened to minor in some STEM field while getting their law degrees.

    What are the odds of that happening?

    Note that I'm not denying that some lawyers and judges are corrupt. I'm only saying that you can't dismiss incompetence so easily.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday June 09 2021, @05:35AM (2 children)

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday June 09 2021, @05:35AM (#1143443) Journal

      Judges are in a bind. Even when they get it, the problem is that the law doesn't make sense. And that is the fault of the legislators, and the special interests who control them. Most artists refuse to get it, can't believe that they can make a living without copyright. To make a fair ruling, a judge and jury would have to nullify a whole lot of law.

      The law and those who back it demand the impossible: that we all treat the immaterial as if it is material property, as if the Internet really is a series of tubes, like those vacuum tube systems at the typical bank drive thru, through which printed books and stamped CDs and DVDs can be delivered to customers. Artists are still vainly trying to turn back the clock.

      This ownership disease has spread all over the place, from museums who hysterically insist that no photography is allowed, and never mind that their entire collection is so old that everything is out of copyright, to drug companies, agricultural interests both seed companies and equipment manufacturers, to tech companies pushing consumers into walled gardens. At least museums are giving up on that restriction-- seems the cell phone generation has forced their hand on that.

      • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday June 09 2021, @04:41PM (1 child)

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 09 2021, @04:41PM (#1143575) Homepage Journal

        Last I heard in one museum of old art was that the were concerned that light from flash photography would gradually denature the pigments in paint.

        • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday June 09 2021, @06:50PM

          by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday June 09 2021, @06:50PM (#1143639) Journal

          Yes, I have heard that one, that flashes might damage paint pigments. That's the very sort of excuse that should be viewed with great suspicion as a pretext that conveniently forbids photography. And, yes, it is a bs excuse. Tellingly, they still don't like visitors taking photos even if not using a flash. Further, the notion has been tested, and the supposed damage from camera flashes have been found insignificant. Whatever miniscule damage light does, paintings already incur just by being on display. https://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/2936_Does_flash_photography_really_damage_paintings [arthistorynews.com]

          A better reason to forbid flashes is that they are distracting to others.

          Let's also remember that cops wanted videoing of them banned, for every bs excuse imaginable. Might distract the cops, might reveal their methods to criminals, or compromise other sensitive info, violate their privacy, and heck, even violate the privacy of arrestees. Of course we all now know the real reason was exactly as was long suspected, that they didn't want their abuses exposed. Now they all have to wear body cameras, LOL.