Supreme Court Unanimously Sides With Cox in Music Piracy Case

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that Cox Communications cannot be held liable for copyright infringement committed by its internet subscribers, reversing a lower-court decision and narrowing the circumstances in which a service provider can be held responsible for users’ piracy, CBS News reported. The decision in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment was argued Dec. 1, 2025, and decided March 25, 2026, according to the Court’s opinion as posted by Cornell’s Legal Information Institute.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that a provider is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only if it intended the service to be used for infringement. That intent can be shown only by inducement or by a service tailored to infringement, and Cox did neither, the opinion says. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined him.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed that Cox was not liable but not with the reasoning. Sotomayor, writing for both, argued the majority wrongly limited secondary liability and that the plaintiffs could not prove the intent required under an aiding-and-abetting theory, according to the opinion and CBS News.

The case began in 2018, when Sony and other major recording and publishing companies sued, alleging that Cox willfully infringed more than 10,000 copyrighted works by continuing to serve known infringers, CBS reported. A jury in the Eastern District of Virginia found Cox liable for contributory and vicarious infringement, found the infringement willful, and awarded $1 billion in statutory damages, per the opinion. The Fourth Circuit affirmed on contributory liability, reversed on vicarious liability and sent the case back to reassess damages, and the Supreme Court took up only contributory liability.

The Court rejected the Fourth Circuit’s rule that supplying a product with knowledge that the recipient will use it to infringe is enough. “The Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another,” the opinion says, quoting an earlier decision. Thomas wrote that Cox sent warnings, suspended service and terminated accounts, and “did not tailor its service to make copyright infringement easier,” CBS reported. The Court also held that the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not itself impose liability on providers that serve known infringers.

Cox called the ruling a “decisive victory for the broadband industry” and said internet providers are not “copyright police,” CBS reported. Mitch Glazier of the Recording Industry Association of America said he was disappointed and that the ruling is narrow, applying only to contributory-infringement cases against defendants that do not themselves copy, host, distribute or control infringing material. CBS also reported that the Trump administration backed Cox in the case.

The decision leaves the music companies without the $1 billion award, which the Fourth Circuit had already set aside for a new damages trial.