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Court blocks $1 billion copyright ruling that punished ISP for its users’ piracy (arstechnica.com)

submitted 8 months ago by Yglorba@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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One thing that leaps out at me about this ruling is that courts understand the internet a lot better nowadays. A decade or so ago Sony would have probably gotten away with the argument that Cox profited from the users' piracy; nowadays judges themselves use the internet and are going to go "lolno, they probably would have been Cox customers anyway. It's not like anyone pays for internet connection solely to pirate. And in most areas people don't even have a choice of provider, so how is Cox profiting from this?"

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[-] autotldr 21 points 8 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A federal appeals court today overturned a $1 billion piracy verdict that a jury handed down against cable Internet service provider Cox Communications in 2019.

If the correct legal standard had been used in the district court, "no reasonable jury could find that Cox received a direct financial benefit from its subscribers' infringement of Plaintiffs' copyrights," judges wrote.

The case began when Sony and other music copyright holders sued Cox, claiming that it didn't adequately fight piracy on its network and failed to terminate repeat infringers.

Cox's appeal was supported by advocacy groups concerned that the big-money judgment could force ISPs to disconnect more Internet users based merely on accusations of copyright infringement.

If not overturned, this decision will lead to an untold number of people losing vital Internet access as ISPs start to cut off more and more customers to avoid massive damages."

In today's 4th Circuit ruling, appeals court judges wrote that "Sony failed, as a matter of law, to prove that Cox profits directly from its subscribers' copyright infringement."

The original article contains 543 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] Alpha71@lemmy.world -3 points 8 months ago

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[-] cole@lemdro.id 11 points 8 months ago

You know you can just turn off bots in your profile settings... right? That is an option here.

[-] ladfrombrad@lemdro.id 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

:) You do know that bot is banned in lemdro.id right?

And to be fair, it is unsolicited bot spam (I miss BotDefense) although it ultimately is up to the admins and mods in this....instance and there is always the possibility of useful bots. Blanket blocking them via your profile seems a bit, meh, e: especially if you want to invoke one which is always the better way?