The Supreme Court Just Made Online Copyright Enforcement Harder

A recent Supreme Court decision is a win for internet service providers and those engaged in online piracy. How will it affect other businesses?

Cox Communications provides internet, telephone, and cable television services to over six million subscribers across the country, including in Virginia. Some use its internet service to download music illegally, which is copyright infringement.

To fight this, members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began sending notices to Cox demanding that specific accounts that engaged in piracy be taken down.

Cox responded by giving these subscribers thirteen strikes before temporarily suspending service. Between 2013 and 2014, the RIAA’s monitoring agent sent Cox 163,148 infringement notices. Cox terminated only 32 subscribers. During that same time, Cox terminated 600,000 subscribers for nonpayment.

Fed up, a group of RIAA members sued Cox for failing to diligently disconnect accounts repeatedly engaged in piracy. Eventually, the plaintiffs won a $1 billion judgment.

In March, the Supreme Court reversed this win and held that, under the theory of copyright liability on which the plaintiffs won, Cox wasn’t required to terminate accounts used for piracy.

Piracy is widespread. A 2024 study found that almost half of American adults had consumed pirated content at some point, and around one in three had done so in the previous year. 76% of Gen Zers (born after 1997) admitted to pirating at some point, as did 67% of Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996).

To understand what’s happening, let’s start with some background on copyright law. There are three kinds of copyright-infringement liability: direct, contributory, and vicarious.

You are directly liable if you infringe, such as by making an unauthorized copy of a movie. ISPs such as Cox don’t have direct copyright infringement liability for pirated material that passes through their systems because they don’t make lasting copies of it.

There are two situations in which you can be held liable for the copyright infringement of others based upon your relationship with them: contributory and vicarious liability.

In the Cox case, the RIAA plaintiffs won on both theories in the trial court. The Fourth Circuit invalidated the victory based on vicarious liability, but it upheld Cox’s liability for contributory infringement because the RIAA repeatedly informed Cox of accounts being used for piracy, and Cox didn’t do enough to stop it.

The Supreme Court reversed the finding of contributory copyright infringement and held that Cox had no duty to suspend accounts. It held that mere inaction – its failure to terminate accounts in which it knew piracy was occurring – doesn’t make Cox contributorily liable.

Importantly, the Supreme Court didn’t opine on whether Cox might be liable for vicarious infringement. As mentioned earlier, the Fourth Circuit invalidated the RIAA plaintiffs’ win on that theory.

The Fourth Circuit held that, for there to be vicarious infringement liability, among other things, the defendant must directly profit from the infringing conduct. The court reasoned that Cox received the same subscription fees regardless of whether customers used its internet service legally or for piracy, so there was no direct, causal relationship between piracy and subscription fees received and, thus, no vicarious infringement.

Thus, in the end, Cox is off the hook.

Does this decision mean that ISPs can now ignore notices of piracy passing through their systems and willfully continue serving serial-pirate customers? While some legal pundits say “yes,” ISPs still must worry about vicarious infringement liability.

Remember, the Supreme Court didn’t address that potential basis for liability. While the Fourth Circuit dismissed that theory, other federal courts may disagree, and it’s possible other cases with different facts could lead to such liability.

How will this decision impact other businesses?

First, perhaps it will save you money on internet service compared to what you might have paid if the decision had gone the other way. If the Supreme Court had upheld liability against Cox, that would have pressured ISPs to be more aggressive in terminating accounts used for piracy, and ISPs would likely have had to spend more on processing takedown notices. That would have driven down subscriber bases and raised costs for ISPs, which might have led to higher internet service prices.

Second, if your business is based on creating and monetizing digital copyrighted content (e.g., sports programming, movies, articles, or music), the only alternative is to sue individuals who engage in piracy. Doing so may not be cost-effective, because litigation is expensive, you may not recover much, and the defendant might be a teenager with no money.

The future is unclear. It’s possible further litigation will cause ISPs to fear vicarious infringement liability and consequently act on copyright piracy claims. Or online piracy might increase due to being unchecked, and digital content creators might reevaluate the cost-benefit of some of their production plans.

Written on April 22, 2026

by John B. Farmer

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