Cox petitions Supreme Court to prevent disconnections over piracy
posted Sunday Aug 18, 2024 by Scott Ertz
Cox Communications, one of the largest ISPs in the United States, has petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn a previous ruling requiring the disconnection of users accused of piracy. The original case, brought about by Sony, found that Cox had not adequately worked to prevent its users from breaking the law on their network, particularly by terminating the accounts of those who abuse the service.
The history of the case against Cox
The original lawsuit, which began in 2018, ended when a US District Court jury ruled in favor of Sony, ordering Cox to pay $1 billion in damages. However, the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated the damages award in February 2024 while upholding one of the major copyright infringement verdicts. Specifically, the appeals court affirmed the jury's finding that Cox was guilty of willful contributory infringement but reversed a verdict on vicarious infringement. Cox is now petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court's ruling, arguing that it would force ISPs to disconnect broadband users based on unproven allegations of piracy.
Cox's petition highlights the potential consequences of the appeals court's ruling, which could lead to entire households being kicked off the Internet due to unproven allegations of piracy. Digital rights groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have also objected to the ruling, citing the risk of innocent users losing essential Internet access. By seeking Supreme Court intervention, Cox hopes to clarify the liability of ISPs in such cases and ensure that they are not forced to police their networks or terminate users based on unproven allegations.
The potential issues with upholding the ruling
There are a couple of obvious issues with allowing this ruling to stand. Firstly, US law protects providers from legal obligation for the behaviors of their users on their systems. The law has been applied strangely to new technologies, however this one runs directly to the original intentions.
Imagine there are two people that are on their cell phones discussing and planning a bank robbery. One person uses an AT&T phone and the other uses T-Mobile. The pair discusses all of the details of their plan the night before the heist. The next day, they go through with the robbery, but are caught on their way out of the bank. When their phones are inspected, they see the call the night before. The State Attorney decides to then indict AT&T and T-Mobile for participating in the heist.
The case against Cox is similar. A user on the network is breaking the law using the company's infrastructure, but Cox itself is not involved in the act. By including them in the act, the lawsuit would force Cox to know about every piece of data being transferred across its network. Even if the company wanted to track everything you do online, which many ISPs do, there are easy ways to circumvent that tracking. You could use the Tor browser or Tails, activate
