A federal jury in Virginia ruled a $25 million verdict in favour of BMG Rights Management against Cox Communication in a piracy case that states, that the Internet service provider’s are responsible for the copyright infringing actions for its users.
It took a week long for the verdict to come out in motion after U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady denied summary judgement for Cox, ruling in November that the ISP’s failure to reasonably implement a repeat-infringer policy meant it couldn’t have safe harbour under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The complaint was filed by music label BMG, which has rights to top artists including David Bowie, Bruno Mars and Frank Ocean. It filed suit after its agent Rightscorp detected more than 1.8 million instances of infringement in connection with 1,397 copyrighted works.
“We are unhappy with the decision, will review the ruling in detail and are considering our options, including appeal,” said Cox statement provided toFierceCable.
“We believe this decision sends a message to ISPs that they have a responsibility to act upon and limit the massive copyright infringement using their networks that has been brought to their attention by copyright owners,” said BMG’s counsel, Steptoe & Johnson partner Michael Allan, in a statement.
In this case of Cox, Judge O’Grady cited the allegedly willful aspect of Cox’s conduct, noting that is in an effort to sustain its customer base and the ISP went through proper steps under the DMCA to boot infringing customers off its service, but then let them right back on.
“As we move forward in this challenging time we want to hold on to every subscriber we can,” Zabek allegedly said. “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.”
It is believed that Cox will appeal several of Judge O’Grady’s pre-trial rulings.
