U.S. Supreme Court Asks DOJ to Weigh in on Billion-Dollar Music Piracy Case Against Cox

Nearly five years after the major labels won a $1 billion music piracy verdict against Cox Communications, the U.S. Supreme Court is signaling that it might jump into the long-running copyright case.

In an order issued Monday (Nov. 25), the justices asked the Justice Department to weigh in on whether the high court should tackle the huge penalty, which Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment (SME) and Warner Music Group (WMG) won back in 2019 over allegations of widespread piracy by Cox’s users.

After an appeals court ordered the award recalculated earlier this year, both sides have asked the Supreme Court to take the case. The labels want the justices to reinstate the original verdict; Cox wants the high court to overturn it entirely.

Such petitions are always a long shot, as the Supreme Court takes less than 2% of the more than 7,000 cases it receives each year. But Monday’s order — a “call for the view of the Solicitor General,” or CVSG, in SCOTUS parlance — is a relatively rare step that indicates that the justices think the issues in the case might be significant enough for the court to tackle.

UMG, SME and WMG all sued Cox in 2018, seeking to hold the internet giant itself liable for alleged wrongdoing committed by its users. The labels said Cox had ignored hundreds of thousands of infringement notices and had never permanently terminated a single subscriber accused of stealing music.

ISPs like Cox are often shielded from lawsuits over illegal downloading by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. But a judge ruled that Cox had forfeited that protection by failing to terminate people who were repeatedly accused of violating copyright law. Stripped of that immunity, jurors held Cox liable in December 2019 for the infringement of 10,017 separate songs and awarded the labels more than $99,000 for each song, adding up to $1 billion.

Earlier this year, a federal appeals court overturned that award, ruling that aspects of the verdict weren’t supported by the law. But the appeals court also upheld other parts, and Cox is still facing the potential of a very large penalty when damages are recalculated.

In taking the case to the Supreme Court, Cox has urged the justices to undo the entire verdict. The company has issued dire warnings, arguing that the “draconian” approach applied in the case “threatens mass disruption” by potentially forcing ISPs to terminate internet service to thousands of Americans.

“The stakes are immense,” Cox’s attorneys wrote. “This court should grant certiorari to prevent these cases from creating confusion, disruption, and chaos on the internet. Innovation, privacy, and competition depend on it.”

Firing back, the labels have called those arguments “disingenuous” and instead urged the court to take up their own separate petition seeking to reinstate the entire verdict.

“This court should take Cox’s concerns about terminating internet access with a healthy serving of salt,” attorneys for UMG, SME and WMG wrote. “During the time period at issue here, Cox terminated over 600,000 subscribers for not paying their bills. When Cox’s money is on the line, Cox clearly has no problem ‘irreparably cutting’ its customers ‘off from society.’”