WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment that Cox Communications is not liable under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for its customers' copyright infringement involving the downloading or uploading of pirated material. The decision delivered a loss to Sony Music Entertainment and fellow record labels Warner and Universal, which had sought to make Internet service providers pay financial penalties for their subscribers' infringement.

The court found that Cox did not induce customers to infringe copyrights and did not tailor its broadband service to facilitate infringement. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that a service provider can be held contributorily liable only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement, and that intent can be shown only if the party induced the infringement or the service was tailored to that infringement. The opinion stated that a company cannot be held liable simply for providing a service to the general public with knowledge that some users may use it to infringe copyrights. The 2005 ruling in MGM Studios v. Grokster was a factor in the decision.

The case followed a 2019 jury verdict that awarded Sony $1 billion against Cox for contributory copyright infringement. In 2024, an appeals court overturned the damages award while finding Cox guilty of contributory copyright infringement. According to court filings, Cox had been informed that users at specific IP addresses were pirating copyrighted material, and the company argued that infringement notices sent by record labels were unreliable and that terminating accounts shared by multiple people would punish innocent users along with infringing ones.

Following the decision, Warner, Universal, and Sony dropped similar lawsuits against other Internet service providers, including Verizon and Altice. Google, Meta, X, and Nvidia have cited the ruling in lower court briefs defending against contributory infringement claims, as has Yout, a website that converts YouTube videos into downloadable audio files.

Christopher Cariello, an attorney with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who represented Cox in Supreme Court briefs, said the ruling reaches beyond Internet service providers. "I think it applies to any technology provider. I didn't see any basis in the opinion or its reasoning for limiting it only to a particular type of technology provider," Cariello said. "I don't see how you could avoid applying Cox in any case with a contributory infringement claim against a technology provider. The opinion says to establish contributory liability, you need to show, effectively, culpable intent," he said. He said artificial intelligence companies should benefit from the ruling because products based on large language models can be used for many noninfringing activities and are not tailored for infringement. "When there is a company in the sort of vast Internet ecosystem that sits between an end-user and a possible rightsholder who believes they're being harmed, Cox applies," he said.

Law professor Bruce Boyden said the ruling narrows contributory infringement liability, requiring that a company's contribution be intentional through active inducement or by designing or tailoring its service for infringement, and he questioned what other theories of infringement might remain available to rights holders. Law professor Laura Heymann said the ruling shows that Internet service providers have limited knowledge about how their services are used and who uses them.