RIAA: Cox Ruling Shows that Grande Can Be Liable for Piracy Too

[samuelthegreat]

RIAA: Cox Ruling Shows That Grande Can Be Liable For Piracy Too

Internet Provider Grande Communications can be held liable for contributing copyright infringement, the RIAA argued at a Texas federal court this week. Responding to the ISP's motion to dismiss, the music industry group submits last week's Fourth Circuit ruling in the Cox case as additional evidence that the ISP failed to meet its obligations.

 

Regular Internet providers are being put under increasing pressure for not doing enough to curb copyright infringement.

 

Last year several major record labels, represented by the RIAA, filed a lawsuit in a Texas District Court, accusing ISP Grande Communications of turning a blind eye on its pirating subscribers.

 

“Despite their knowledge of repeat infringements, Defendants have permitted repeat infringers to use the Grande service to continue to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights without consequence,” the RIAA’s complaint read.

 

Grande disagreed with this assertion and filed a motion to dismiss the case. The ISP argued that it doesn’t encourage any of its customers to download copyrighted works, and that it has no control over the content subscribers access.

 

The Internet provider didn’t deny that it received millions of takedown notices through the piracy tracking company Rightscorp. However, it believed that these notices are flawed and not worthy of acting upon.

 

The case shows a lot of similarities with the legal battle between BMG and Cox Communications, in which the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an important verdict last week.

 

The appeals court overturned the $25 million piracy damages verdict against Cox due to an erroneous jury instruction but held that the ISP lost its safe harbor protection because it failed to implement a meaningful repeat infringer policy.

 

This week, the RIAA used the Fourth Circuit ruling as further evidence that Grande’s motion to dismiss should be denied.

 

The RIAA points out that both Cox and Grande used similar arguments in their defense, some of which were denied by the appeals court. The Fourth Circuit held, for example, that an ISP’s substantial non-infringing uses does not immunize it from liability for contributory copyright infringement.

 

In addition, the appeals court also clarified that if an ISP wilfully blinds itself to copyright infringements, that is sufficient to satisfy the knowledge requirement for contributory copyright infringement.

 

According to the RIAA’s filing at a Texas District Court this week, Grande has already admitted that it willingly ‘ignored’ takedown notices that were submitted on behalf of third-party copyright holders.

 

“Grande has already admitted that it received notices from Rightscorp and, to use Grande’s own phrase, did not ‘meaningfully investigate’ them,” the RIAA writes.

 

“Thus, even if this Court were to apply the Fourth Circuit’s ‘willful blindness’ standard, the level of knowledge that Grande has effectively admitted exceeds the level of knowledge that the Fourth Circuit held was ‘powerful evidence’ sufficient to establish liability for contributory infringement.”

 

As such, the motion to dismiss the case should be denied, the RIAA argues.

 

What’s not mentioned in the RIAA’s filing, however, is why Grande chose not to act upon these takedown notices. In its defense, the ISP previously explained that Rightcorp’s notices lacked specificity and were incapable of detecting actual infringements.

 

Grande argued that if they acted on these notices without additional proof, its subscribers could lose their Internet access even though they are using it for legal purposes. The ISP may, therefore, counter that it wasn’t willfully blind, as it saw no solid proof for the alleged infringements to begin with.

 

“To merely treat these allegations as true without investigation would be a disservice to Grande’s subscribers, who would run the risk of having their Internet service permanently terminated despite using Grande’s services for completely legitimate purposes,” Grande previously wrote.

 

This brings up a tricky issue. The Fourth Circuit made it clear last week that ISPs require a meaningful policy against repeat infringers in respond to takedown notices from copyright holders. But what are the requirements for a proper takedown notice? Do any and all notices count?

 

Grande clearly has no faith in the accuracy of Rightscorp’s technology but if their case goes in the same direction as Cox’s, that might not make much of a difference.

 

 

 

A copy of the RIAA’s summary of supplemental authority is available here (pdf).

 

SOURCE

 

[straycat19]

In the long run these cases might solve the problem because huge awards will put the companies out of business and no one will have the internet in those communities.  And if the number of pirates in those areas are so great as to be singled out then no company is going to want to invest in providing the service for them.  I have seen communities that even Comcast has withdrawn from, just shut down everything and left, because they didn't want to deal with the number of takedown notices they were getting.  Another company took over cable TV but didn't offer internet access, if you wanted that you had to get satellite or phone.

[steven36]

20 hours ago, straycat19 said:

In the long run these cases might solve the problem because huge awards will put the companies out of business and no one will have the internet in those communities.  And if the number of pirates in those areas are so great as to be singled out then no company is going to want to invest in providing the service for them.  I have seen communities that even Comcast has withdrawn from, just shut down everything and left, because they didn't want to deal with the number of takedown notices they were getting.  Another company took over cable TV but didn't offer internet access, if you wanted that you had to get satellite or phone.

The only company  that got sued and sued and lost was COX  so far and they not  went no were  , they just send out notices  now, not a day don't go by  i don't see  someone complaining about getting a notice from COX. Ether the offenders  buy a VPN  or they stop torrenting , witch  don't  mean they stop being  a pirate,  there is plenty of ways to get you're fix  without using  torrents even. 

 

If Comcast left some area it didn't have nothing to do with sending out notices,  they was one of the ones  who volunteered  to  do it  when it started in early 2013, so they have always sent out notices long before COX ever got sued or it became a issue  and long  before they had to send anything out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Alert_System#History

 

As long as they send out notices  and  hand out punishment  they cant be held liable, so the only thing changes  is they all start sending out notices  or they get sued witch has not really worked at all , they get a  warning or 2 and get educated on how to do it and not get caught .  They need  to pass a law  to make it mandatory  to send out notices instead hauling in every isp , instead of suing every isp  that don't send out notices  but thats the kind of screwed up Country the USA is were they don't even pass a law and everyone is sue happy and they  have been trying to sue downloaders for years and never got no money out of it , so now they go after the ISPs who don't send out warnings and sue them,  sooner are latter they going run out of  ISPs  to sue and they all will send out notices without there even being a law .

 

I bet you want never see Comcast in court for this because they been sending out warnings all along and like doing it  and its kind of hard to believe, that  some  place had  Internet from there Cable provider but don't have a Phone provider that has it too . In most places around here if you have cable  in you're area, you have a choice of buying it from them or DSL  from you're phone company,  but the problem is some areas  don't have cable, so they have to  use Internet  from the phone company and buy satellite instead of cable. And just because a company leaves a area don't mean nothing it's happened  around here many times back before High Speed was even a thing,   they leave because they don't find some areas very profitable  as other areas they have .  It's called downsizing  and all big US companies  do it  to cut back on overhead  it's not just ISPs . Its  all companies . It's sort of crazy to think  everywhere  will  go back to the 90s and dailup  days  just because some ISPs refused to send out notices  . They will  do like COX did  and just start sending them out.

 

Companies that announced big bonuses after GOP tax cut are now laying off their workers

https://thinkprogress.org/companies-gop-tax-bonuses-layoffs-fdf07fdf90d2/

 

 Layoffs Hit Ad Sales Unit at NBC Universal

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/currency/layoffs-hit-ad-sales-unit-nbcuniversal/171656

 

Comcast  is  the biggest  cable company in the world  at a time when everyone is cutting the cable so there laying off there workers and  moving away from  some places  they just don't sell Internet there a cable company and IPTV  has took over that market.