Monday, March 30, 2026

Another Supreme Court Knockout

All nine Justices reject an attempt to expand secondary liability

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"provider Cox could be held liable for “contributory” copyright infringement merely because it had knowledge that some of its users were pirating music files."

"“Ordinarily, when Congress intends to impose secondary liability, it does so expressly,” Justice Clarence Thomas writes for the Court. But Congress didn’t do so in this instance, and the Fourth Circuit’s holding “conflicted with this Court’s repeated admonition that contributory liability cannot rest only on a provider’s knowledge of infringement and insufficient action to prevent it.”"

"The provider of a service is contributorily liable for the user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement"

Or "the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement"

"Cox didn’t do either." 

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