The US Supreme Court has ruled that internet service provider Cox Communications cannot be held responsible for music piracy committed by its subscribers, ending a landmark copyright case in which the major record companies had won a $1 billion jury verdict.
The unanimous decision was handed down today (March 25).
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the Court, said that Cox “neither induced its users’ infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement.”
He added: “Cox provided internet service to its subscribers, but it did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement. Holding Cox liable merely for failing to terminate internet service to infringing accounts would expand secondary copyright liability beyond our precedents.”
Commenting on the decision, Mitch Glazier, RIAA Chairman and CEO, said: “We are disappointed in the Court’s decision vacating a jury’s determination that Cox Communications contributed to mass scale copyright infringement, based on overwhelming evidence that the company knowingly facilitated theft.
“To be effective, copyright law must protect creators and markets from harmful infringement and policymakers should look closely at the impact of this ruling. The Court’s decision is narrow, applying only to ‘contributory infringement’ cases involving defendants like Cox that do not themselves copy, host, distribute, or publish infringing material or control or induce such activity.”
The ruling, which you can see here, means that simply knowing some subscribers are pirating music, and continuing to provide them with internet access, is not enough to make an ISP liable for copyright infringement.
Under the standard set by today’s decision, rightsholders must prove either that a provider actively encouraged infringement, or that its service was designed for piracy with no real lawful use. Internet access, the Court said, clearly has many lawful purposes.
“We are disappointed in the Court’s decision vacating a jury’s determination that Cox Communications contributed to mass scale copyright infringement, based on overwhelming evidence that the company knowingly facilitated theft.”
Mitch Glazier, RIAA
The case dates back to 2018, when Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and dozens of other rightsholders sued Cox, arguing the company ignored over 163,000 infringement notices about subscribers illegally downloading more than 10,000 copyrighted songs.
The labels pointed to evidence that a Cox manager overseeing piracy compliance told his team to “F the DMCA.”
A jury sided with the labels in 2019, awarding $1 billion. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals partially overturned that verdict in 2024, throwing out the vicarious liability finding but keeping the contributory infringement ruling and ordering a retrial on damages that could have reached $1.5 billion.
The Supreme Court took up the case last June, heard oral arguments in December, and has now reversed the remaining contributory liability finding entirely.
The Thomas opinion laid out two — and only two — paths to contributory copyright liability. The first is inducement, where a provider actively promotes its service as a tool for piracy, as in the landmark 2005 MGM v. Grokster ruling involving file-sharing software. The second is where a service is specifically tailored to infringement and has no real commercial use beyond piracy.
Cox, the Court found, met neither test. The company had contractually prohibited subscribers from using its service to infringe copyrights, sent warnings, suspended services and terminated accounts.
The opinion stated: “This Court has repeatedly made clear that mere knowledge that a service will be used to infringe is insufficient to establish the required intent to infringe.”
Elsewhere in the opinion, Thomas wrote: “Based on this theory of infringement, respondents, Sony Music Entertainment and other major copyright owners, secured a billion-dollar verdict against Cox. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed that because Cox provided Internet service to known infringers, it was a willful infringer itself.
“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. Accordingly, we reverse.”
“This Court has repeatedly made clear that mere knowledge that a service will be used to infringe is insufficient to establish the required intent to infringe.”
Supreme court Ruling filed on March 25, 2026
It also found that the Fourth Circuit had gone wrong by creating a broader form of liability, holding that “supplying a product with knowledge that the recipient will use it to infringe copyrights” was enough. The Supreme Court said this conflicted with decades of its own case law.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, agreed Cox should not be liable in this case but warned that the majority’s ruling goes too far.
Sotomayor argued that it strips ISPs of any real reason to deal with piracy on their networks, making the DMCA’s safe harbor rules pointless. Those rules require ISPs to cut off repeat infringers in exchange for legal protection.
She wrote that the majority’s decision “completely upends” the balance Congress created and “consigns the safe harbor provision to obsolescence,” adding that “ISPs no longer face any realistic probability of secondary liability for copyright infringement, regardless of whether they take steps to address infringement on their networks.”
