WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Consumer Choice Center welcomes today’s rare unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment.
“This ruling affirms what the Consumer Choice Center has argued for years: liability must follow bad conduct, not mere proximity to such conduct,” said Yaël Ossowski, deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center. “The music industry wanted to hold Cox responsible for what its customers did, not anything Cox did. That’s not how a sound legal system works, and it’s not how we keep internet access affordable and open for millions of Americans.”
The court found that Cox did not induce or encourage subscribers to pirate copyrighted works, ruling that simply supplying internet access, with knowledge that some users may infringe, is insufficient to establish contributory liability.
The Consumer Choice Center has long warned that expanding secondary liability beyond culpable actors inflates costs across the entire economy, primarily digital services. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates the tort tax already costs Americans $529 billion a year (roughly 2% of GDP), hoovering up financial resources and productive assets that could otherwise drive growth. Deputizing ISPs as copyright enforcers would have added a new layer to that burden, threatening service terminations for hospitals, universities and small businesses based on unverified accusations.
“If this had gone the other way, the US court system would have fully swamped by fringe copyright cases,” Ossowski continued, “When the legal system allows plaintiffs to reach past the actual wrongdoer to sue whoever has the deepest pockets nearby, consumers always end up paying the price in higher costs, and reduced access due to the justice system clogged with frivolous cases.”
The Consumer Choice Center calls on Congress to resist any legislative response that attempts to reinstate ISP liability through the back door. Copyright enforcement is a legitimate goal when aimed at actual infringers, not at the digital waystations connecting them to the wider Internet.
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