Two cases show that the Supreme Court does not hold ISPs liable for piracy

two weeks ago, The Supreme Court ruled That ISP giant Cox Communications cannot be held liable for a billion-dollar music piracy ruling in a case brought by Sony. On Tuesday, by Send another status again To a circuit court that included Grande Communications and the music companies, including Sony, to reconsider, the court appeared to reinforce the idea that ISPs cannot be held liable for violating their customers’ copyrights.

The Supreme Court relied on the precedent of the first case to reinstate the second case, which reinforces the previous decision.

Grande Communications is a Texas-based subsidiary of Astound Business Solutions.

A Sony Music representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The two back-to-back cases seem to indicate that copyright holders, such as music companies, cannot expect to be compensated by broadband providers (including, potentially, wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon) that have customers who engage in intellectual property theft across their networks.

What this means for ISPs and customers

These decisions contradict previous cases, says Eric Goldman, associate dean for research and professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.

“The Cox ruling upended decades of fairly well-established precedent without any clear explanation as to why the Supreme Court chose to reset the rules,” he said. “At a minimum, the Supreme Court has made it clear that copyright holders have overstated their copyright claims against ISPs for user-caused infringements. Thus, the Supreme Court’s message to copyright holders is that they need to be more reasonable and less demanding in their dealings with ISPs.”

Goldman said he did not expect the case to have a major impact on online customers. In the face of less resistance, ISPs will likely maintain their current policies and restrictions on piracy.

The only thing that remains to be seen is whether the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of ISPs also extends to web hosts that may be home to sites that engage in widespread piracy of material such as music, movies and video games.

“Indeed” he saidWe have seen a lower court implied “The Supreme Court’s ruling applies only to IAPs and not web hosts, even though the Supreme Court’s opinion did not make that distinction.”