On March 25, 2026, as the pink cherry blossoms drifted down from their trees in the nation’s capital, so too did an industry-changing judgment from the Supreme Court of the United States. The question: “Can an internet service provider be held liable and found to have acted willfully for copyright infringement just because it knew users were infringing and did not terminate user access?”[1] Their answer: a nine-voiced “no.”[2] Let’s roll this back to the start of this trilogy.
On July 31, 2018, Sony Music Entertainment and other music labels (“Sony”) sued Cox Communications, Inc. (“Cox”) for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.[3] Cox is an internet service provider (ISP) with roughly six million subscribers.[4] Each subscriber is associated with a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address.[5] Sony and other major music copyright owners enlisted MarkMonitor to track copyright infringement across the Internet.[6] MarkMonitor’s software detects when copyrighted works are illegally uploaded or downloaded and traces the activity to specific IP addresses.[7] Although Cox claimed to have limited knowledge of how its services are used and contractually prohibits subscribers from using them to engage in copyright infringement, MarkMonitor, over the two-year period in issue, sent Cox over 160,000 notices identifying IP addresses of Cox subscribers associated with copyright infringement.[8] In response to what they perceived as insufficient action, Sony filed suit, alleging secondary liability for continuing to provide internet services to known infringers and for financially benefiting from those infringements.[9] In the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, a jury found in Sony’s favor, awarding them a billion-dollar verdict.[10]
Cox appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the vicarious liability judgment but affirmed the contributory liability judgment, reasoning that supplying a product with knowledge that the recipient will use it to infringe copyrights is sufficient for contributory infringement.[11] Granting Cox’s petition for certiorari, the Court reversed the Fourth Circuit’s judgment, holding that held that the provider of a service is contributorily liable only if it intended that the service be used for infringement, which can be shown by inducement or tailoring the service for infringement.[12] Now let’s narrow the lens.
The judgment opens with the rule from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster: “the provider of a service is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement if it intended its service to be used for infringement.”[13] The Cox Court states that the copyright owner can show the requisite intent by affirmatively showing that the party induced the infringement or sold a service tailored to commit infringement.[14] The Court continues, “although our precedents have recognized specific forms of secondary copyright liability that predated the Copyright Act, we are loath to expand such liability beyond those precedents.”[15] Applying the Grokster precedent to the letter, the Court held that Cox “provided [internet] service to its subscribers, but it did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement.”[16] The Court further limited its approach to liability, stating that “holding Cox liable … would expand secondary copyright liability beyond our precedents.”[17]
Furthermore, the Court stated that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not impose liability on ISPs that serve known infringers but merely creates liability defenses for such providers.[18] The Court also added that failure to comply with the safe harbor rules, according to the DMCA, “shall not bear adversely upon a defense by the service provider that the service provider’s conduct is not infringing.”[19]
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Jackson, concurred in judgment, agreeing that Sony failed to prove that Cox had the requisite intent to aid in copyright infringement.[20] However, the Justices state that the majority is wrong that contributory and vicarious liability are the only two forms of secondary liability for copyright infringement, and that the majority’s artificial limiting is supported by neither precedent nor statute.[21] The concurrence reflects that “far from supporting the majority’s limitation of secondary liability, [Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc.]teaches that the scope of secondary liability for copyright infringement should be defined by reference to other areas of the law.”[22] Sotomayor outrightly states “stare decisis requires this Court to apply [holdings] fairly, not ignore or artificially constrain it.”[23] The concurrence also foreshadows a dystopic future regarding the DMCA: “After today, however, ISPs no longer face any realistic probability of secondary liability for copyright infringement, regardless of whether they take steps to address infringement on their networks and regardless of what they know about their users’ activity.”[24]
Like a blossom landing on a pond’s surface, the decision made a ripple effect everywhere. Two days after the judgment came down, X (formerly known as Twitter), which is currently in a copyright infringement suit with multiple publishers, including Sony Music Publishing, filed a court document with the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.[25] X told the Nashville court that under Cox, “the liability theories that survived X’s motion to dismiss fail as a matter of law,” and “if the Supreme Court had issued this opinion three years ago, X believes this Court would have dismissed Plaintiffs’ contributory-infringement claim in its entirety.”[26] On April 6, the Court also vacated UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Grande Communications, Inc., which had previously held Grande Communications liable for contributory copyright infringement on similar grounds to Cox.[27] The decision also abrogated BMG Rights Management (US) LLC v. Cox Communications, Inc., which had held that Cox was not entitled to the DMCA safe harbor defense because it failed to implement its repeat infringer policy in any consistent or meaningful way.[28]
While copyright litigation is forever prosperous and owners should always fight to protect and enforce their rights, perhaps these were not the right circumstances. Firstly, we must look at the legal context we are in. This decision did not fall out of a coconut tree. The sitting Justices form an originalist Supreme Court that approaches issues conservatively, as shown here and in other cases.[29] This notion is also apparent in Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence, repeatedly stating that the majority artificially limited secondary liability to the text of Court precedents.[30] Secondly, perhaps going after ISPs like Cox was too far of a reach for record labels and interested stakeholders. While it has been increasingly difficult to hold individual copyright infringers liable for their actions, trying to hold ISPs, who provide a near-essential service for the public, may not have been the best move on the labels’ part.
Unlike the consumer products and services at the center of Sony and Grokster, internet access has become essential. We cannot survive or carry out necessary tasks without internet access, especially as companies are now implementing internet-dependent technology in their operations, such as credit card machines. Furthermore, consumers choose whether to sign a contract with an ISP based on price and internet speed for their needs rather than doing what they want. All circumstances considered, this was probably a case that should have stayed on the back burner until there was sufficient evidence of intent or more avenues of liability available to copyright owners.
[1] Cox Commc’ns, Inc. v. Sony Music Ent., Oyez, https://www.oyez.org/cases/2025/24-171 (last visited Apr. 11, 2026).
[2] Cox Commc’ns, Inc. v. Sony Music Ent., 146 S. Ct. 959, 964 (2026).
[3] Sony Music Ent. v. Cox Commc’ns, Inc., 464 F. Supp. 3d 795, 804 (E.D. Va. 2020).
[4] Cox Commc’ns, Inc., 146 S. Ct. 959.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Cox, 146 S. Ct. at 964.
[11] Sony Music Ent. v. Cox Commc’ns, Inc., 93 F.4th 222, 236-237 (4th Cir. 2024)( “supplying a product with knowledge that the recipient will use it to infringe copyrights is exactly the sort of culpable conduct sufficient for contributory infringement… the evidence was sufficient to support a finding that Cox materially contributed to copyright infringement occurring on its network and that its conduct was culpable.”).
[12] Cox, 146 S. Ct. 959.
[13] Id. at 964; See Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005) (Ginsburg, J., concurring).
[14] Cox, 146 S. Ct. at 964.
[15] Id. at 967.
[16] Id. at 968.
[17] Id.
[18] Id. at 969; See 17 U.S.C. § 512(a) (“A service provider shall not be liable for…the provider’s transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections…”).
[19] Id.
[20] Id.
[21] Id. at 970.
[22] Id. at 971.
[23] Id.
[24] Id. at 972.
[25] James Hanley, Elon Musk’s X Seizes on Supreme Court’s Landmark Cox Ruling in Bid to Derail Music Publishers’ Copyright Case, Music Business Worldwide (Apr. 1, 2026), https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/elon-musks-x-seizes-on-supreme-courts-landmark-cox-ruling-in-bid-to-derail-music-publishers-copyright-case/.
[26] Id.
[27] Grande Commc’ns Networks v. UMG Recordings, Inc., No. 24-967, 2026 WL 922501, at *1 (U.S. Apr. 6, 2026).
[28] BMG Rts. Mgmt. (US) LLC v. Cox Commc’ns, Inc., 881 F.3d 293, 305 (4th Cir. 2018), abrogated by Cox Commc’ns, Inc. v. Sony Music Ent., 146 S. Ct. 959 (2026).
[29] See generally Jonathan Gienapp, Why Is the Supreme Court Obsessed with Originalism?, Yale University Press (Oct. 21, 2024), https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2024/10/21/why-is-the-supreme-court-obsessed-with-originalism/.
[30] Cox, 146 S. Ct. at 970.