Story from TorrentFreak
Cox Communications is liable for the copyright infringements committed by its users and must pay $25 million in damages to music licensing outfit BMG. A federal court in Virginia has denied Cox’s request for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial. On the upside, Cox will not be required to spy on its users using deep packet inspection.
The judgement is here
It is interesting in that it opens the door for porners who have registered their content with the copyright office to collect massive damages not from the actual offenders but from ISPs who fail to act when they know that users are violating copyrights.
I do expect this to be appealed and most likely overturned, but it is interesting to watch if you have an interest in protecting your intellectual property.
3 Responses
A while back a European court threw out a porn company’s claim of copywrite infringement in a case. Porn is just people having sex on camera according to the court and there is no intellectual property.
I remember that one but that was in Germany IIRC in the USA that tactic has been tried and failed every time.
One MIGHT successfully argue that obscenity could not be copyrighted, but in this country only a jury can find a work to be obscene, so the copyright enforcer would have to lose on that front in order to lose on the copyright claim. Obscenity being illegal in the USA, I don’t see this being tested anytime soon.
DPI….sounds kind of kinkE.
….and IT is…oh yes IT really is.
“Deep Packet Inspection”
The wild awl knew screw you up and down series coming soon from Mike Adriano?