The United State’s Supreme Court has agreed to review a major copyright dispute filed by multiple music labels against Cox Communications.

Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group are among the industry giants who successfully sued Cox for $1 billion dollars – a decision that the internet service provider is now petitioning on the grounds of jeopardizing internet access for millions of customers.  

The upcoming review follows a 2019 court case won by the aforementioned music groups, in which Cox Communications was held liable for permitting their users to repeatedly pirate music through their services. They were initially sued when the ISP knowingly enabled users to violate copyright law, without any termination of service despite these illegal actions. This decision was overturned in February 2024, when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the company did not profit in any way from its customers’ illegal actions. Despite this, the court still found Cox guilty of willfully enabling acts of piracy through their service, leading to the upcoming trial, in which the music industry will continue their campaign for a damages payout.  

In short, the case will help decide whether or not internet service providers can be held responsible for their customer’s illegal music downloads. The labels have specifically accused Cox Communication of two forms of copyright infringement: contributory infringement (in which the accused is aware of and assists in the act of infringing upon another entity’s property), and vicarious infringement (where the accused directly oversees and profits off of the infringed work). Peer-to-peer file sharing through programs like BitTorrent have enabled users to continually pirate music through Cox, who received thousands of copyright infringement notices from over fifty music labels – all of which have allegedly gone ignored. 

Cox has garnered the backing of both President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice, with both claiming that ISPs should not be forced by law to cut off service to any user accused of pirating copyrighted material. Sony also petitioned the Supreme Court’s decision on the grounds of Cox garnering commercial gains through their user’s actions, but was rejected. The case is slated to be heard this October. 

Cox and its political allies square their position away through the point of view of customer freedom, stating that the allegations against the company are unproven and will force ISPs to provide unnecessary monitoring of their user’s everyday activities. Cox stated:

 "[The ruling] would force ISPs to terminate Internet service to households or businesses based on unproven allegations of infringing activity and put them in a position of having to police their networks."

Other broadband providers, such as Grande Communications and Charter Communications, were sued as part of the industry-wide anti-piracy campaign. A similar case between Sony, Warner, and Universal versus Frontier Communications recently ended in a private settlement, continuing the music industry’s aggressive approach to piracy mitigation.