Major Labels Win $46M Piracy Verdict Against Internet Service Provider - Billboard

A national assemblage successful Texas decided Thursday (Nov. 3) that an net work supplier indispensable wage the 3 large grounds labels and others much than $46 cardinal successful damages implicit euphony illegally downloaded by the company’s subscribers.

After a month-long trial, jurors recovered that Grande Communications was legally liable for copyright infringement committed by its users — and that it owed abstracted damages for each of the much than 1,400 songs that were pirated connected the company’s network.

The lawsuit is 1 of respective specified cases filed by euphony companies against ISPs, aimed astatine forcing them to instrumentality much proactive steps to destruct piracy connected their networks. In 2019, the labels won a shocking $1 cardinal verdict against Cox Communications successful a akin case.

Grande’s attorneys did not instantly respond to a petition for remark Friday connected the verdict. Mitch Glazier, the caput of the Recording Industry Association of America, called it “the latest validation by US courts and juries that unchecked online infringement volition not stand.”

“The jury’s beardown enactment present sends an important connection to Internet Service Providers,” Glazier said. “Artists, songwriters, rightsholders, fans and morganatic services each beryllium upon a steadfast integer euphony ecosystem that efficaciously protects originative works online.”

Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment teamed up to writer Grande successful 2017, claiming the institution had enactment itself connected the hook by failing to instrumentality enactment against users who repeatedly pirated music.

“Defendants person been notified that their net customers person engaged successful much than 1 cardinal infringements,” attorneys for the labels wrote astatine the time, but “have permitted repetition infringers to usage the Grande work to proceed to infringe plaintiffs’ copyrights without consequence.”

Internet work providers are typically not liable for idiosyncratic infringements by their millions of users, acknowledgment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s “safe harbor.” But starting successful the mid-2010s, euphony companies began arguing that ISPs had forfeited that immunity by ignoring the DMCA’s request that they terminate “repeat infringers” from their network.

Starting with a landmark lawsuit filed by BMG Rights Management against Cox, those arguments person repeatedly proved successful. Major labels person filed akin cases against Cox, Charter, RCN and different ISPs successful courts astir the country, winning immense verdicts similar the $1 cardinal grant against Cox (which is currently pending connected appeal).

Facing specified a lawsuit, Grande fired backmost that the euphony manufacture was wrongfully trying to crook ISPs into “copyright police.” Grande said specified claims should truly beryllium targeted astatine the existent radical who bargain music, but that grounds labels had stopped pursuing them “due to atrocious publicity.” That was a notation to a bid of arguable lawsuits filed successful the 2000s, including 1 that ordered a Boston assemblage pupil to pay $675,000 for pirating conscionable 30 songs.

But the national justice overseeing the lawsuit denied Grande’s motions and sent the lawsuit to trial, which kicked disconnected past month. Following Thursday’s verdict, the institution tin entreaty the ruling — archetypal by asking the justice to overturn it, and past by taking the lawsuit to a national appeals court.

Read the verdict signifier here: