Cox Denies Liability for Pirating Subscribers, Appeals $25 Million Verdict (torrentfreak.com) 97
Cox Communications insists that it is not responsible for copyright infringements carried out by its subscribers, challenging the ruling by a Virginia federal jury late last year. The court had found Cox Communications guilty and had asked it to pay music publisher BMG Rights Management a sum of $25 in damages. TorrentFreak reports: The verdict was a massive victory for the music company and a disaster for Cox, but the case is not closed yet. After a failed motion for judgment as a matter of law earlier this month, the ISP has now informed the court that it will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Cox denies any wrongdoing and hopes to get a judgment in its favor at the appeals court. Considering the gravity of the case, Cox's move is not surprising. The liability verdict has come as a shock to the Internet provider industry, as it suggests that providers have to actively disconnect repeat infringers. At the moment, many ISPs don't have a solid policy in place where repeat copyright infringers lose their subscription. In fact, the law doesn't prescribe when and based on what evidence an ISP has to terminate an account.
WAIT (Score:2, Funny)
Re:WAIT (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, as Churchill once said, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
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This just isn’t true.
Cox charges more money for lower speeds than Time Warner, Verizon (Frontier), Comcast, AT&T, etc.
And they have the weakest channel/cable subscription offerings of of any of the monopolies. If there’s a new feature or technology being offered by the cable industry, you can bet that Cox customers will get it years after everyone else in the country has it.
In short, Cocks Communications is aptly named.
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Absolutely terrible.
Price was no different, but getting them to fix their dying upstream box took months.
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Well, I've been a Cox customer in the past and I wouldn't know how they compared to other ISPs at the time because my choice was Cox or nothing....or maybe dialup.
At the time I thought their speed was decent - plenty enough for my needs at least - their uptime was flawless. Their channel selection on cable was adequate and I don't remember the price being ridiculously high.
Now granted, this was 10 years ago and I may have been lucky, because they don't treat all markets the same, but this was a choice of s
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This depends on where in the country you have Cox service. I pay $100 ($85 + tax) a month for 200/20 with a 2T cap and 150G cloud storage. I normally get 240 to 280 down. I get great service.
Re:WAIT (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing the point. This ruling against Cox can now be used to hit every other provider of ISP providers. Doesn't matter if the provider is good or bad. If the ruling stands you can expect some draconian measures put into place by the service providers which will ultimately end up denying service from anyone who even looks like they may be violating copyrights. Won't matter whether they are or not. The bar would be set very low by the ISP to insure they don't get fined or sued later. They would also send the copyright holder the information on the customer. Not only would the customer lose their ISP they would also be fending off the copyright owners looking for payment.
Re:WAIT (Score:5, Interesting)
If it is established that in order to avoid liability, providers must disconnect their customers after a certain number of allegations of infringement (because let's face it, it's rarely going to be practical to determine the factual or legal basis of these alleged infringements), then a new business model is opened up for copyright trolls. If they can obtain lists of email addresses of consumers, then they could send letters to those consumers directly, threatening to send a notice of infringement to their ISP unless a certain amount of money is paid. It would often be in consumers' interest to pay up, to avoid the hassle of disconnection from the internet.
Or they could send the letter to the ISP directly, and come up with some mechanism to pressure consumers into giving them money to avoid future notices or to somehow get the original notice rescinded. People won't know whether the activity really came from their IP address or not (e.g. their router might have been hacked), and it won't matter since it will hardly ever be worthwhile to bring it to court.
The threat of taking people to court isn't usually credible, but if a disconnection policy is in place, the threat of disconnection will be very credible. So the trolling business becomes much more lucrative due to higher rates of response. And what are the rules, if any, on sending multiple separate notices for infringements that occurred on the same date? Suppose someone's computer is hacked or they start using a file-sharing application, and they download multiple files on the same day. Could a legal firm send multiple separate notices to the same individual, triggering the disconnection policies of their ISP right away unless the individual were to pay up? It seems very possible.
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There is another disturbing aspect to this:
If it is established that in order to avoid liability, providers must disconnect their customers after a certain number of allegations of infringement (because let's face it, it's rarely going to be practical to determine the factual or legal basis of these alleged infringements), .
What would be the legal liability if they frivolously disconnect someone whose internet connection is connected to security services, medical machines etc and those services are suddenly required. Or simply trying to get legal help to fight a frivolous claim. These days internet access is arguably a utility like electricity and water and the normal phone system which is exempt from liability of the illegal use by there customers. This seems like a mistake on the part of the judiciary and ISP's should fight
Re:WAIT (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole idea of the service provider being responsible is bullshit. The provide the service, they do not control what it connects to or what connects to it. Want legal recourse then sue the customer, prove you case and than the service provider can act. No one can make empty claim and demand the service provider than pay the legal case of proving it occurred in order to justify breaking contract. Until it is proven in a court of law there is no action that can be taken with regard to breaking of the contract. That is quite clear cut and just shows the corruption of the court and judge in question, clearly shows signs of a pay to get elected, pay for the results you want, corrupt legal system.
The claim is question is one of, "We don't need to prove shit, we say so and you are guilty and owe us tens of thousands of dollars", this the shifted to the service provider because, yeah, making claims of tens of thousands of dollars with shitty circumstantial evidence, doesn't work. So corrupt courts, allowing really shitty verdicts and forcing appeals, and more court costs.
They are bound to lose because any ISP must consider how this percent for copyright infringement could spread to real criminal cases and they could become liable for them as well, with bad precedent set (think terrorist communications and holding ISPs liable for aiding terrorism, which means staff and management would become criminally liable).
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I see a lot of people posting here have little to no knowledge of the actual lawsuit and why Cox lost.
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Except that savage doesn't have the extra layer of scum required to throw in a fallacious blame game. Join us next week when we lock up teachers for failing to stop shooters.
You want Cox to win ... (Score:1)
Quick, someone tell me who to root for, I'm so confused.
Cox. You don't want ISPs, web site operators, etc to be liable for user actions. That opens up a nasty box of unintended consequences.
Plus you don't want the Cox subscribers to have to give the record companies $25M. You didn't think the money would somehow come out of corporate funds, executive bonus' and such?
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You don't want ISPs, web site operators, etc to be liable for user actions. That opens up a nasty box of unintended consequences.
On the one hand, I agree. While they desperately want to remain in a different class so they can inject ads and extract money, ultimately I believe internet service will be treated as a common carrier. On the other, while it is near impossible a part of me loves the unrealistic thought of having Comcast and AT&T executives be named in lawsuits as vicarious contributors for every crime that crosses their network. If they are liable for what crosses it, every crime from child porn and murders planned onl
$25 or $25 million (Score:2, Informative)
edit please
Re:$25 or $25 million (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't forget the lawyers! (Score:5, Funny)
BMG will get the undeserved $25, but the remaining $24,999,975 goes to the lawyers—the real victims here.
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Well that was expected (Score:5, Insightful)
As a common carrier they would not be liable for such things.
But ISP's did not want to be a common carrier, they fought it and resisted.
I guess they will have to just sleep in the bed they made.
Re:Well that was expected (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought the FCC classified them as "common carriers" now.
Also I thought wording under the CDA was that "Service Providers" were not liable for content posted by their users.
It sure seems like they would be covered either way.
Re:Well that was expected (Score:4, Informative)
I thought the FCC classified them as "common carriers" now.
A point which is being contested in court, if I recall correctly...
Re: Well that was expected (Score:5, Insightful)
The FCC ought to just make it optional for ISPs to classify themselves as common carriers, which means they have to comply with I.e. net neutrality. If they opt out of it, then they're liable for anything from acts of terrorism to copyright infringement to somebody using their network to solicit murder for hire, and this applies whether the customer uses encryption or not.
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If an ISP is inspecting packets on any level except for the purpose of routing them, then it is no longer a common carrier. Ergo, Cox is guilty.
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I am not sure that is reasonable. Just because they inspect packets, does not mean they can infer intent. If for example they found a packet that looked like a text message with the content "The OP is a go". How should they be required to respond to that?
Likewise, if they intercept packets that look like file headers and see a file named "Latest.Beiberific.POP.Song.Crap.alt.bin.mp3", but the content is someone pretending to be Tha Beebz, how should they react?
The only point I am making here, is that ther
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You are right, but... they should not be inspecting packets.
Like the phone company should not be listening to your calls. "Using a computer" changes nothing.
In other news: Gutenberg sued as users steal books (Score:5, Funny)
Gutenberg has been found guilty of promoting theft of writings, saying that Gutenberg did nothing to stop the users of his presses from printing copyrighted materials.
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Philadelphia cops beat you to that one. (Score:2)
> A better analogy would be if you owned a large apartment complex, and one of
> your tenants was found to be running a prostitution business from one of the
> rooms. Notionally you could be in a place to find out who was running it, where
> they were running it, and you could stop it.
> Whether you should or not is another question. And if you should, the
> mechanism by which you should do so is yet another question.
You may think you're making up stupid shit as a counter-example... but...
1) un
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Yet, if ISPs in their current categorization are required to now police content, which seems out of their scope of responsibilities, then perhaps the recording industry should be paying them for that service!
BTW: Who monitors when my friends cover tunes at a gathering?
Really? (Score:2)
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How is that any different? Most of those songs are not published by the artists/media companies. Sure YouTube will take down a few, but a lot still remain. Are you not doing the exact same thing when you download and view a song on YouTube posted by an un-authorized source as you are doing when you download and view a song from a torrent site?
Honest question. Wouldn't the ISP's have to police this activity too? Who is to say the lawsuit would stop at the ISP's? If this isn't overturned, couldn't the "rights
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't the ISP's have to police this activity too?
No. The ISP is not the police. The ISP does not get to decide what content is legal and what is not. Only a court order can do that.
Rightscorp and their friends are trying to circumvent the expensive court process by going directly after the ISP. That's it.
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Youtube pays money to the artists if it detects their music in a video.
If anything the problem with youtube is that it's too zealous about that- we've had numerous cases where original artists had their works taken down or money from their own music videos redirected to other media companies they had merely licensed the songs too !
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Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was younger, there was no such thing as the Internet. I traded albums/tapes with people who liked the same music as me. :)
Get off my lawn!!!
Re:Units? (Score:5, Informative)
The units are the same... dollars.
Fine them (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pointless to try to remove someone's internet access and ridiculous to assume that an ISP is in any way liable. It's a lot like driving -- the DMV can revoke a license but it doesn't stop people from driving, and you can't call the Dept of Public Transportation and blame them.
Lawsuit should be against the single user.
Gosh, I thought this whole copyright infringement nonsense was settled with iTunes "pay 30 cents more, share it with whomever you like" policy from 5 years ago.
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The domain is still for sale and no goatse picture to be found. Talk about lame trolling.
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APK's not had time to update that bot since 1998. (He's been busy porting HostFiles to 64-bit.)
If it were me ... (Score:4, Funny)
I'd pay the $25.
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Why anyone would use an DSP to perform fine CPU tasks like that?
Those things are meant to perform a crapton of multiply operations and/or shitty youtube videos.
Really quite simple (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wait, wait (Score:5, Insightful)
If Cox Communications is responsible for copyright infringements carried out by its subscribers, then whoever built the roads in my town is responsible for crimes carried out by criminals who used those roads.
How about 3 strikes? (Score:2)
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Well, you just gave people that know how to spoof IPs a shinning new tool to remove who they dislike from the internet.
Cox HAS a three-strikes policy and uses it. (Score:4, Informative)
Trust me. I have two strikes.
On strike 1, they captive portal, and you can press an "I'm sorry, I won't do it again" button and restart your router/computers.
On strike 2, they captive portal, and you have to call customer support and get a lecture, where they tell you about strike three.
On strike 3, it's a one year ban in service.
Re:Cox HAS a three-strikes policy and uses it. (Score:4, Informative)
I guess there's a few more steps...
http://copyright.nova.edu/cox-... [nova.edu]
They don't notify you of most of the, but as a customer, it APPEARS to be a three strike policy.
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]
Then fine Governenments for drug trafficking (Score:1)
Things I can't figure out (Score:3)
Why does loss of safe harbor even matter for an ISP? What law says losing it magically make one culpable for every byte sent over a network?
If transmission sent over the ISPs network makes them liable then why isn't the same applicable to their upstream? Why can't rightscorp go after Tier 1 ISPs for all the evil bytes transmitted over their networks?
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Why can't rightscorp go after Tier 1 ISPs for all the evil bytes transmitted over their networks?
Oh god no! Yesterday someone taught me that there are evil bits. Now you're telling me that there are WHOLE BYTES that are evil? My god, where is the pope? We need to have us a good old fashioned internet exorcism!
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Does every bit of the evil byte have to be an evil bit? Or just the majority of them? What happens if 4 of the 8 bits are evil? Does it fall back to a tie-breaking checksum bit to see if the checksum is evil or not?
infringers (Score:3)
The liability verdict has come as a shock to the Internet provider industry, as it suggests that providers have to actively disconnect repeat alleged infringers. At the moment, many ISPs don't have a solid policy in place where repeat alleged copyright infringers lose their subscription.
FTFY. Who says they've infringed - BMG Rights Management? Why should anyone believe them?
The story behind the loss. (Score:2)
As we move forward in this challenging time we want to hold on to every subscriber we can. With this in mind if a customer is terminated for DMCA, you are able to reactivate them after you give them a stern warning about violating our AUP and the DMCA. We must still terminate in order for us to be in compliance with safe harbor but once termination is complete, we have fulfilled our obligation. After you reactivate them the DMCA ‘counter’ restarts; The procedure restarts with the sending of warning letters, just like a first offense. This is to be an unwritten semi-policy . . . We do not talk about it or give the subscriber any indication that reactivating them is normal. Use your best judgment and remember to do what is right for our company and subscribers. . . . This only pertains to DMCA violations. It does not pertain to spammers, hackers, etc.
-Jason Zabek, Cox’s Manager of Customer Abuse Operations.
there are good reasons why Cox was found to have lost Safe Harbor since they were violating the privisions in the DMCA that afforded them that protection.
https://www.techdirt. [techdirt.com]
Good deal (Score:1)
Satellite Internet on the high seas? (Score:2)
Reminder that copyright infringement is not "piracy".
In fact a recent court decision declared it slander:
https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-... [torrentfreak.com]
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy... [gnu.org]
Easy fix. (Score:3)
Internet Access = Human Right, at least in the modern western west it's basically impossible to live without it (find a job, etc).
As such ISPs need to be common carriers whether they like it or not. Regulated as a utility like power and water.