Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

In that vein, merely selling a tool even if a predominant use or intention of that tool is infringement, the infringement must be actively induced or invited by the seller. This is also affirmed in detail in the USSC opinion: "The Court has repeatedly made clear—see Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers, 222 U. S. 55, Sony, and Grokster—that mere knowledge that a service will be used to infringe is insufficient to establish the required intent to infringe."

This is the primary part of the opinion, the first 7 of 27 pages. I'm still reading the rest and will update when finished. (Concurring Opinion and Dissents I believe)

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The meat of the opinion has some interesting elements as well:

* "Internet service providers, such as Cox, have limited knowledge about how their Internet services are used and who uses them. They do know which IP address corresponds to which subscriber’s account, but they cannot distinguish one individual user from another...However, because online infringement is so widespread, pursuing each individual infringer does little to stem the tide.": mere IP logs are not enough to establish liability, perhaps. More importantly, it is opined that individual fishing expeditions dont actually serve the end of eliminating infringement. This does not absolve individual liability, but it becomes important later.

* "Holding Cox liable merely for failing to terminate Internet service to infringing accounts would expand secondary copyright liability beyond our precedents ... The Fourth Circuit’s holding thus went beyond the two forms of liability recognized in Grokster and Sony. It also conflicted with this Court’s repeated admonition that contributory liability cannot rest only on a provider’s knowledge of infringement and insufficient action to prevent it.": This points to another case where Circuit and District courts have been ignoring the instruction of higher courts, in this case, inventing new liabilities where none existed. This doesn't go so far as to repudiate entirely the idea of fishing expeditions having teeth, but it places a clear guardrail around expanding liability without laws establishing such.

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The Sotomayor concurrence on judgment states that the Justice does not believe the methods used by the majority opinion are correct, but still agrees with the judgement because of insufficient information presented by Sony. I think the analysis gone into in this section is flawed, but it is also not precedential since it is not the Order part of the opinion. I am also out of time to poke at that part for the moment. It does relate this case to the closest recent big case on secondary liability though, that of Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, so its worth reading even if the justifying analysis I think does not fit.

The big difference I guess is whether you think negative jurisdiction (limiting what the government can do) vs positive jurisdiction (further enabling the government) is more important, but considering HN and the exhortations against divisive commentary, I'd rather not dive into the weeds arguing that part here.

To win, Cox did not need to prove that they sold their product without intent to infringe. To win, the plaintiff would have had to prove that Cox had intent. The difference in burden of proof is in practice massive.

So they try to hold the provider responsible. While I disagree with this, I can at the least understand some rationale behind it, even though this is inconsistent. For instance, if someone uses a gun to shoot down someone, why is the company providing the gun not held accountable here? They should also be forced to pay compensation damage to people being harmed here. But this is besides the point I am trying to make.

The thing is that I do not want to be held accountable under such a law. I believe when it comes to information, courts should not be allowed to restrict me or anyone else in any way, shape or form. I want a free society. That means flow of information can never be restricted by any such actors. Granted, this is not possible right now anywhere on Planet Earth as far as I am aware, and I understand the implication of this too (no more secrets possible), but I want this 100%. Yet I can't have that because courts restrict me, and all those who want the same, arbitrarily so. IMO this also means that such courts must be changed. Right now we have corporate courts where the money addiction flows in. I understand this system and the problems of this system. This is why there must be a transition starting from the society, to no longer make it possible to restrict service providers here in any way, shape or form. The same would apply to democracy - I don't want to accept indirect democracy run by lobbyists. I want to be in charge, in proportion to my vote, at all times, of every decision (I am ok delegating this to representatives, mind you, but not automatically and not always; in indirect democracy you vote for some representative who can then do whatever he wants to. I am not ok with this. How many former Trump voters would, right now, want Trump to be gone from power, or in prison? I think many would, considering the damage he caused and is still causing).

Guns are used to inflict harm. Why would the arms producer not be held accountable? He produced the gun. The gun is the tool to cause harm, injury, potentially death. If service providers are held responsible for users, arms producers must also be held accountable. Financially too.