Cox Communications asked the Supreme Court on December 1, 2025 to reverse a Fourth Circuit ruling that held the cable internet provider secondarily liable for copyright infringement by its subscribers. The case, No. 24-171, pits Cox against Sony Music Entertainment and other major record labels, who argued that Cox knowingly continued providing internet service to habitual infringers despite receiving millions of copyright notices and, according to the labels, treating the copyright laws and the DMCA with contempt.
The underlying dispute centers on whether an internet service provider can be held contributorily liable for its customers' online piracy simply because it received notice of repeated infringement and did not terminate those customers' accounts. Cox's counsel, E. Joshua Rosenkranz, opened by arguing that the Fourth Circuit's theory had no basis in tort or copyright law, warning that it would force ISPs to cut off entire towns, universities, or hospitals to avoid liability. He contended that continuing to provide internet service, even with knowledge of infringement, is non-feasance rather than a culpable act, and that contributory liability requires either inducement or affirmative conduct directed at fostering infringement — not mere knowledge.
Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart argued as amicus supporting Cox, urging the Court to hold that secondary liability in this context requires a purpose to facilitate infringement, not merely knowledge, and that providing generic internet service to the public at large cannot satisfy that standard.
Paul D. Clement, arguing for the record labels, countered that a classic form of material contribution is providing the means of infringement to a specific known infringer, knowing that infringement is substantially certain to follow. He pointed to what he described as a record chockful of Cox's admissions that it held the copyright laws and the DMCA in contempt, and argued that Cox's position would render the DMCA's safe harbor and its cooperation incentives a dead letter.
The justices probed the practical stakes from multiple angles. Justice Sotomayor pressed Rosenkranz on Cox's conduct, noting that Cox stopped taking meaningful action against a significant portion of flagged infringers and questioning why that did not amount to material contribution. Rosenkranz responded that Cox's anti-infringement program sent hundreds of warnings daily, suspended accounts 67,000 times during the relevant period, and stopped infringement by 98 percent of accused infringers. Justice Kagan challenged the internal logic of Cox's position, observing that if Cox is right that there is no liability in the first place, the DMCA safe harbor would do nothing at all — a concession Rosenkranz ultimately accepted.
Justice Barrett asked what incentive Cox would have to send any notices going forward if it prevailed, and whether Cox's compliance efforts were driven entirely by the desire to maintain safe harbor protection. Rosenkranz acknowledged that Cox would face no liability risk if it won, but maintained the company would continue its anti-infringement efforts as a matter of corporate citizenship. Justice Gorsuch raised the possibility that the narrowest path to reversal might be simply holding that the Fourth Circuit erred by treating knowledge as sufficient to establish purpose, then remanding for a judgment-as-a-matter-of-law analysis under the correct standard — a route both Rosenkranz and Stewart indicated they could accept, though Stewart said he would prefer the Court also specify that for mass-market service providers, purpose can be shown only through inducement or conduct specially designed to facilitate infringement.
Justice Jackson raised the concern that adopting Cox's rule would undermine what she read as Congress's intent, citing House report language stating that Congress wanted to preserve strong incentives for service providers and copyright owners to cooperate, to detect and deal with copyright infringements. Rosenkranz argued that Congress had no settled view of what ISP liability would look like when it enacted the DMCA, and that the statute's text in section 512(l) expressly provides that failure to qualify for a safe harbor shall not adversely bear on liability. The case was submitted at 11:46 a.m.