A gaggle of report labels that embody Common, Capitol, Warner and Sony has filed a lawsuit in opposition to Verizon, accusing it of “contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.” Verizon “knowingly supplies its high-speed service to an enormous neighborhood of on-line pirates,” the businesses stated of their complaint. Apparently, the plaintiffs have despatched the web supplier “a whole bunch of hundreds” of copyright infringement notices over the previous few years, figuring out subscribers who’ve been utilizing Verizon’s community to share copyrighted music through peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks.
Verizon, they stated, acknowledged that it obtained their notices. The corporate allegedly selected to disregard them and continued to supply web providers to “hundreds of identified repeat infringers so it may proceed to gather hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from them.” Because it did not terminate the accounts of the alleged copyright infringers, Verizon “obtained a direct monetary profit” from their “persevering with infringing exercise,” the plaintiffs argued. The labels are asking for damages value as much as $150,000 for every work infringed. Primarily based on the list posted by Ars Technica, 17,335 titles are concerned within the case, which implies Verizon may very well be fined for as a lot as $2.6 billion.
Again in 2018, music labels additionally sued Cox Communications for allegedly refusing to totally terminate the accounts of customers who have been pirating music. A US District Courtroom jury initially sided with the labels and ordered Cox to pay $1 billion in damages. However earlier this yr, an appeals court docket overturned the decision and located that the supplier did not revenue immediately from its customers’ actions. A gaggle of report labels additionally sued Constitution Communications in 2021 over over music piracy and equally accused the corporate of turning a “blind eye” to music piracy.
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