The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Wednesday that internet providers are not liable for copyright infringement by their users, delivering an opinion in Cox v. Sony and tossing a $1 billion verdict.
“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion. “Accordingly, we reverse.”
The ruling marks a significant win for broadband providers facing pressure from copyright owners to police subscriber activity.
Cox Communications now cannot be held liable for piracy by its internet service subscribers of songs owned by Sony Music 6758.T, Warner Music Group WMG.O, Universal Music Group UMG.AS and other labels, ending their billion-dollar-plus music copyright lawsuit.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SONY | SONY GROUP CORP. | 20.57 | -0.11 | -0.53% |
| COXCF | COX | _NA_ | – | – |
| WMG | WARNER MUSIC GROUP CORP. | 23.73 | +0.08 | +0.34% |
| UMG | NO DATA AVAILABLE | – | – | – |
The 9-0 ruling overturned a lower court’s decision to order a new trial to determine how much the internet service provider owed the record labels for a form of liability called contributory copyright infringement. Cox had said a retrial could have produced a verdict against the Atlanta-based ISP of as much as $1.5 billion.
“The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion,” the ruling concluded.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, agreed Cox should prevail in this case but rejected the majority’s broader reasoning.
In her separate opinion, Sotomayor wrote that “the majority, without any meaningful explanation, unnecessarily limits secondary liability” and warned that the decision “also upends the statutory incentive structure that Congress created.”
“The facts of this case do not establish the requisite intent needed to hold Cox liable for infringement that occurred on its network,” she concluded.
“Because the majority needlessly curtails secondary liability in a manner inconsistent with both precedent and statute, I concur only in the judgment.”
More than 50 labels joined together to sue Cox in 2018. Internet service providers like Cox are generally not considered liable under U.S. law for infringement by their users if they take reasonable measures to address it. But the labels accused Cox, the largest unit of privately owned Cox Enterprises, of failing to respond to thousands of infringement notices, cut off internet access for repeat infringers or take other piracy-deterrence steps.
A jury in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2019 found Cox owed the labels $1 billion for user infringement of more than 10,000 copyrights. The jury found Cox liable both for contributory infringement and vicarious infringement, two forms of secondary copyright infringement liability.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the damages award in 2024. The 4th Circuit ordered a retrial on the award’s size after affirming the jury’s finding of contributory infringement but reversing its finding of vicarious liability.
Contributory infringement involves holding parties liable for someone else’s infringement because they knew about it and contributed to it. Vicarious infringement involves holding parties liable for someone else’s infringement because they had the ability to control the infringement and benefited financially from it.
Cox argued that the position taken by the labels in the case would expand the concept of contributory infringement too broadly. Cox said this stance would threaten to cut off access for thousands of innocent internet users including “entire households, coffee shops, hospitals, universities” and others “merely because some unidentified person was previously alleged to have used the connection to infringe.”
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in December. A lawyer for President Donald Trump’s administration argued in support of Cox. Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and other internet-focused tech companies supported Cox in the case, too. Music, film and book industry trade groups backed the labels.
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Reuters contributed to this report.
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