Ride the Lightning

Court is Not Amused by the Cox “F*** the DMCA” Attitude

November 1, 2016

Thanks to longtime RTL reader Tamber Ray for sending along an entertaining post about an e-discovery opinion in Virginia.

The Eastern District of Virginia opinion recently upheld a jury verdict finding Cox Communications contributorily liable for copyright infringement for failure to abide by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's ("DMCA") repeat infringer guidelines. The decision stemmed from a lawsuit brought by BMG Music alleging Cox knew subscribers were repeatedly infringing copyrighted music by illegally downloading and sharing the music, but either chose not to disconnect such subscribers' service or reconnected their service very soon after disconnecting it. Not only did Cox not use a 3 strikes and you're out policy, it often found a way around its own 13 strikes and you're out policy.

Enjoy the chuckles and read about how Cox used that 13 strikes and you're policy and then reset the clock for infringers while processing only 200 takedown requests each day and only counting one notice per subscriber per day. The "f*** the DMCA" e-mail from the now-former head of Cox's Abuse Group certainly could not have helped Cox's case.

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