Cox settles copyright dispute with BMG and Rightscorp
Cox Communications has resolved its copyright case with music company BMG Rights Management and Rightscorp that centred on a dispute over thousands of allegedly invalid copyright notices.
Cox dismissed its claims “with prejudice” in a filing made at the US District Court at the District Court of California on Tuesday, 27 July. This means the company is prohibited from refiling a complaint on the same grounds against the companies in the future.
Internet service provider (ISP) Cox filed a lawsuit against Rightscorp and BMG in May, accusing the latter of sending thousands of DMCA notices to an outdated email address: abuse@cox.net address, on behalf of the music company.
No safe harbour?
The ISP argued that by deliberately failing to send the notices to the updated and correct address, this was “a thinly veiled attempt” by the companies to undermine the processes laid out under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA).
Cox contended that it had informed Rightscorp to send notices to the correct address on several occasions over a three-year period because it was unable to process notices sent to the old address. But this request was ignored and Rightscorp proceeded to send more than 75,000 notices to the wrong address in April alone, said the complaint.
As an ISP, Cox is entitled to the protections afforded by the DMCA’s “safe harbour” provisions, which immunise ISPs from monetary damages in secondary infringement claims when it can demonstrate that it has adopted and reasonably implemented a policy that provides for the termination (in appropriate circumstances) of subscribers who are deemed repeat infringers.
Cox insisted that it was the companies’ intention to claim that Cox’s refusal to process these invalid notices rendered the ISP ineligible for the DMCA's protections and to subject it to potentially “astronomical” monetary damages.
Cox held that the companies intentionally engaged in an abusive and unfair campaign with a goal of fabricating “massive copyright infringement claims”.
A ‘corrupt plan’
“Rightscorp’s business plan is simple, and corrupt: it floods an ISP with an enormous number of notices, each of which purports to accuse an internet subscriber of copyright infringement. It demands that the ISP forward the notices to the accused subscribers,” the complaint noted.
This case was the latest in numerous copyright disputes involving Cox. Back in 2015, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that Cox was liable for direct and contributory copyright infringement in its dispute with BMG and that it had willfully infringed BMG’s copyright.
The court ordered the ISP to pay $25 million in damages after it failed to introduce an anti-piracy mechanism in its service. But this decision was later reversed and remanded by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 2018, after which the two companies settled.
