Supreme Court rejects Sony’s attempt to kick music pirates off the Internet

Sony's 1984 Betamax win helps Cox beat Sony in important online piracy case.

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[Eurynom0s]

A good UNANIMOUS ruling? If they're throwing us this big of a bone here I wonder what horror show ruling the Gang of Six are handing down next.

 

[Jeff S]

Now I HATE Sony for making me. . . agree with Clarence Thomas.

"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"

 

[Tactical Finesse]

I was pleasantly amazed at this ruling. Never mind that it was unanimous

 

[Alfonse]

A good UNANIMOUS ruling? If they're throwing us this big of a bone here I wonder what horror show ruling the Gang of Six are handing down next.

Most unanimous SCOTUS rulings are obvious things. It's the 6-3 rulings that represent ratfuckery of some kind.

 

[redbeardthepirate]

This ruling would seem to be good for the Cloudflare-type of services that are are simply dealing with the 'plumbing' and not with the content being delivered.

 

[Hichung]

This is the correct decision because Cox never told or instructed its users how to infringe copyrights, nor did they encourage it.

This case should have never made it to a judgement in the lower courts to begin with and should have been thrown out.

 

[azazel1024]

Most unanimous SCOTUS rulings are obvious things. It's the 6-3 rulings that represent ratfuckery of some kind.

True. I hope this is the death of this kind of crap. My heart did not bleed on Paul Clements argument to SCOTUS that going after individual infringers would be like trying to drain an ocean with a teaspoon.

Tough s***. That is what the law says and SCOTUS has said is required by the laws. His clients wanted others to do that work for them and indiscriminately punish others with no real chance of defending themselves.

One of the vaguely nice things is many unanimous rulings often mean that everyone gets the message and lets this stuff lay low for a couple of decades before they try to push things again.

 

[Topevoli]

A good UNANIMOUS ruling? If they're throwing us this big of a bone here I wonder what horror show ruling the Gang of Six are handing down next.

My first thought was "I must be reading this incorrectly" this feels too logical.

 

[Tactical Finesse]

Most unanimous SCOTUS rulings are obvious things. It's the 6-3 rulings that represent ratfuckery of some kind.

Yea...OTOH ratfuckery is been du jour with the SCOTUS for a decade now. Remember Corporations are People and can spend Unlimited Money on Elections? Never mind all the other more recent egregiously wrong rulings.

 

[dennis.kext]

This ruling would seem to be good for the Cloudflare-type of services that are are simply dealing with the 'plumbing' and not with the content being delivered.

Yeah, unless they suddenly blur the line and start dealing with the content and not with the plumbing: Cloudflare Blog

To be clear /s

 

[ItchyPoo]

Most unanimous SCOTUS rulings are obvious things. It's the 6-3 rulings that represent ratfuckery of some kind.

Agreed, if only most obvious things were unanimous with the gang if nine.

 

[MHStrawn]

A good UNANIMOUS ruling? If they're throwing us this big of a bone here I wonder what horror show ruling the Gang of Six are handing down next.

They're likely to rule mail ballots post marked BEFORE an election date but arriving AFTER an election date are to be thrown out. This will effectively disenfranchise large numbers of people, most notably military members who rely upon mail in ballots at a very high rate.

So yeah....let's take this W and enjoy it while the rest of Rome burns.

 

[carldjennings]

Holy crap! Trump agreed with Cox. I feel like the world's coming to an end.

 

[carldjennings]

They're likely to rule mail ballots post marked BEFORE an election date but arriving AFTER an election date are to be thrown at. This will effectively disenfranchise large numbers of people, most notably military members who rely upon mail in ballots at a very high rate.

Not only that, it incentivizes the Post Office to delay delivery of ballots in certain districts.

 

[Bernedoodle]

“Goldman explained that “Thomas’ opinion defines ‘tailored to infringement’ as ‘not capable of substantial or commercially significant noninfringing uses.’ ”

Does this ruling effectively end the GenAI infringes copyright argument so long as, for example, an LLM rejects user requests to reproduce copyrighted material verbatim?

 

[TaxiZaphod]

"Sony’s win in 1984 thus contributed to its loss today."

Beautiful. This is rich.

 

[Tonkaman]

Not only that, it incentivizes the Post Office to delay delivery of ballots in certain districts.

No, their previous ruling that the post office is not liable for intentionally misdelivering mail already did that. Along with USPS changing their policy on postmarking to only post mark at the processing centers (that may take multiple days to get to) instead of at the local post office.

 

[jhodge]

Not only that, it incentivizes the Post Office to delay delivery of ballots in certain districts.

It won't matter once the Postal Service goes bankrupt: https://apnews.com/article/postal-s...ery-congress-d44d9d156aad4aefb9b867cd415cd5ac

 

[Guramba]

Great news, now go tell Italy

 

[Selethorme]

Tough s***. That is what the law says and SCOTUS has said is required by the laws. His clients wanted others to do that work for them and indiscriminately punish others with no real chance of defending themselves.

Not only that, but we all recognize the importance of the internet. Sony's preferred outcome would have literally locked households off from the internet for a potential sole bad actor. I can I guess see the argument with regard to a parent-child relationship, but imagine you have a roommate pirating things while you're an at-home network developer. You would literally have to move or lose your job.

 

[graylshaped]

Now I HATE Sony for making me. . . agree with Clarence Thomas.

"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"

I'll tag on to that. Sotomayor wrote "the majority also upends the statutory incentive structure that Congress created.” Truth is, Your Honor, the statutory incentive structure Congress created was capital-B Baaaaad. What Congress created was a presumption of guilt.

 

[Mungus the Unhyphenated]

Sotomayor is also being quoted as saying “The majority’s decision thus permits ISPs to sell an internet connection to every single infringer who wants one without fear of liability and without lifting a finger to prevent infringement”

Yes, this is fine. All I want from my ISP is a dumb pipe. Like a telephone line. The provider should not be policing anything.

 

[graylshaped]

Sotomayor is also being quoted as saying “The majority’s decision thus permits ISPs to sell an internet connection to every single infringer who wants one without fear of liability and without lifting a finger to prevent infringement”

Yes, this is fine. All I want from my ISP is a dumb pipe. Like a telephone line. The provider should not be policing anything.

Yep.

They lose this protection the minute they start fucking with traffic prioritization, though.

 

[XSportSeeker]

This is a good result... that is coming DECADES too late.
It's as ridiculous as someone suing a knife maker for being stabbed with a knife from their brand. And I would disagree with the judges opposing arguments based on that.
There shouldn't be any expectation, like a knife maker being obliged to analyze it's costumer profile, make warnings, and act like a knife usage police, just because people use it to commit crimes. They do not and should not have an authority to do that.
And this entire argument also precludes the completely failed anti-trust regulatory body in the US today, because if it was a healthy democratic capitalist regime, all that infringers would have to do is subscribe to another competing service.
In the same manner, ISPs are basic utility providers. You don't force role of police, jury or executioner towards public utility companies because people make bad or criminal use of water, electricity and gas. The state should have no right to force roles that they are responsible for on top of private companies.
The entire thing does not make sense and has never made sense - it was imposed because of corporate lobbying. And the likes of Sony and other corporations profited horribly on top of legal actions promoted by the likes of MPAA and RIAA.
This entire bullsh*t needs to stop yesterday, as it never made sense in the first place.
But it is a comedy of errors, right? It's like, it doesn't even matter anymore when we have a SCOTUS that is this corrupt, a government that tramples over law almost daily, and a happy go lucky mercenary administration willing to spend all taxpayer money in stuff that not only no one is asking for, but that actually damages democracy, the future of American citizens and much more.
Alas, Sony can go f*ck themselves, along with their oh so precious RIAA and MPAA.
The world is going towards a route of self destruction anyways, so let us at least enjoy a bit on the schadenfreude of corporations that deserve it.

 

[adespoton]

(RIAA) said it is “disappointed in the court’s decision vacating a jury’s determination that Cox Communications contributed to mass scale copyright infringement, based on overwhelming evidence that the company knowingly facilitated theft. To be effective, copyright law must protect creators and markets from harmful infringement and policymakers should look closely at the impact of this ruling.”

So, RIAA, if you're reading this and that wasn't just meant to be performative:

When are you going to start policing your members to exclude and refuse to deal with any of them who knowingly facilitated theft? And are YOU liable because you continue to receive money from organizations known to facilitate theft?

 

[Alfonse]

Yea...OTOH ratfuckery is been du jour with the SCOTUS for a decade now. Remember Corporations are People and can spend Unlimited Money on Elections? Never mind all the other more recent egregiously wrong rulings.

That one wasn't even this decade. It's been going on for a while.

 

[graylshaped]

Yeah, but Congress should fix it, not judges.

The judges aren't fixing it. They are not accepting a bad interpretation of how a bad law should be enforced.

 

[mygeek911]

Great. Now will Cox remove the infringement notice I see every time I log into their portal? It was for a song my wife legitimately purchased and owns.

 

[sapphir8]

Hmm, I didn’t see if Sony had a response to this ruling.

 

[teddox00]

Who even pirates music anymore? Music subscription services unlike streaming video services are pretty reasonably priced considering you get access to pretty much all music.

I would think the amount of people putting the time and effort into pirating music is low enough that it wouldn't be profitable for Sony to fight this even if they won.

Now video streaming would be a whole different case where more and more people are returning to pirating movies or using 3rd party apps that rely on torrents.

 

[42Kodiak42]

The logic of the ruling seems to fit with the direction desired by the gun manufacturers lobby as well to prevent their getting sued for homicides.

You do know that gun-stores, rather than the manufacturers, actually have explicit legal duties to run background checks and use appropriate discretion when selling guns, right?

Even without the logic of this case, you were already better off directly arguing for an outright ban on civilian firearm ownership.