The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that internet service providers cannot be held liable for copyright infringement committed by their users, reversing a billion-dollar verdict that had loomed over the broadband industry for years.

The 9-0 decision in Cox v. Sony sends the case back to the lower courts while dismantling the legal theory that record labels had used to extract massive damages from an ISP whose only crime was providing internet access.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion, and he didn't mince words:

"Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights."

How a billion-dollar shakedown reached the Supreme Court

As reported by Fox Business, the saga began in 2018, when more than 50 record labels, including Sony Music, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group, joined together to sue Cox Communications, an Atlanta-based ISP. Their argument: Cox knew that some of its subscribers were using the service to illegally download copyrighted music, and by continuing to provide them with internet access despite receiving thousands of infringement notices, the company was effectively complicit.

In 2019, a jury in Alexandria, Virginia, agreed, finding Cox owed the labels $1 billion for user infringement of more than 10,000 copyrights. The theory held that an internet provider bore responsibility not just for its own conduct, but for the conduct of every subscriber who chose to break the law on its network.

The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the damages award in 2024. While affirming the finding of contributory infringement, the appellate court reversed the vicarious liability finding and ordered a retrial on the award's size. Cox warned that a retrial could have produced damages as high as $1.5 billion.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in December, then went further than the lower court. It didn't just trim the verdict. It reversed it entirely.

The principle that was actually at stake

Strip away the legal jargon, and the record labels were asking the Court to establish something breathtaking in scope: that providing internet service, with the knowledge that some users will inevitably break the law, makes the provider a copyright infringer. Cox pointed out the implications plainly, noting that this logic would have exposed "entire households, coffee shops, hospitals, universities" to liability "merely because some unidentified person was previously alleged to have used the connection to infringe."

Think about that for a moment. Under the labels' theory, your local library offering free Wi-Fi could face copyright damages because a patron streamed pirated content. The hospital where your mother recovers from surgery could be dragged into federal court over a visitor's phone. The legal standard the record industry sought would have turned every entity that offers internet access into a copyright cop or a defendant.

The Court said no. Unanimously.

Where the justices diverged

The result was 9-0, but the reasoning wasn't entirely harmonious. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote separately to concur only in the judgment. She agreed Cox should prevail on these facts but objected to how the majority got there, arguing that the broader reasoning went too far: "The majority, without any meaningful explanation, unnecessarily limits secondary liability."

Sotomayor warned that the decision "also upends the statutory incentive structure that Congress created." Yet even she acknowledged the bottom line:

"The facts of this case do not establish the requisite intent needed to hold Cox liable for infringement that occurred on its network."

The disagreement is worth noting, but not overstating. Sotomayor's concern is that the majority's rule is too protective of platforms and intermediaries. Her preferred approach would preserve more room for copyright holders to pursue secondary liability claims in future cases. The majority chose a cleaner, more protective standard. Both sides agreed that Cox wins.

A win for property rights, not for piracy

Conservatives should recognize this decision for what it is: the Court drawing a clear line between the people who break the law and the infrastructure they happen to use while doing it. This is not a ruling that blesses copyright infringement. It is a ruling that says responsibility falls on the person who commits the act, not on the company that sold them a connection.

That distinction matters enormously. Property rights, including intellectual property, are foundational to conservative economic thinking. But so is the principle that liability should attach to the wrongdoer, not to third parties who had no specific intent to enable the wrong. The record labels weren't just asking for damages. They were asking the Court to create a regime in which every ISP in America would face existential legal exposure for their subscribers' choices.

A lawyer for President Donald Trump's administration argued in support of Cox, recognizing what was at stake for the broader internet ecosystem.

Brandon Butler, Executive Director of Re:Create, framed the stakes in a statement:

"Today's 9-0 decision in Cox v. Sony reaffirms a bedrock principle in American copyright law: liability for copyright infringement should fall on infringers and those who intentionally enable them, not on neutral technologies and platforms essential to our internet infrastructure."

He went further, arguing that the alternative would have produced a surveillance and censorship apparatus incompatible with a free internet:

"Any other ruling would have inevitably led to mass surveillance, censorship, and a chilling effect on both innovation and creativity. As AI and other technologies continue to grow and evolve, creators, innovators, and consumers alike will benefit from the Court's ruling, which insulates lawful technologies from liability for third-party misuse."

The larger pattern

There is a recurring impulse in American law to hold intermediaries responsible for bad actors because intermediaries have deeper pockets and are easier to find. It's the same logic that drives efforts to hold gun manufacturers liable for criminal shootings, or to hold social media companies responsible for every post their users publish. The target shifts from the person who did the thing to the entity that made the thing possible.

It is an appealing theory if you are a plaintiff's lawyer. It is a catastrophic theory if you believe in individual responsibility.

The Supreme Court, to its credit, recognized the difference. Providing a service that some people misuse is not the same as intending that misuse. Knowledge that wrongdoing will occur on a network serving millions is not the same as participation in that wrongdoing. These are distinctions that matter, and the Court preserved them.

The case now returns to the lower courts for further proceedings. But the billion-dollar verdict is gone, and so is the legal framework that produced it. The record labels spent seven years trying to turn an internet provider into a copyright enforcer. Nine justices told them to go find the actual infringers instead.