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So, if you’re thinking about such things right now, here’s a story to chew on. Reuters:
February 20 – Cable TV and Internet service provider Cox Communications overturns a $1 billion jury verdict in favor of major record labels that had accused the company of failing to curb copyright infringement by its users. persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals to issue a new trial on the issue. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled Tuesday that the damages were not justified and that a federal district court should hold a new trial to determine the appropriate amount. In 2019, a Virginia jury found that Cox, the largest division of privately owned Cox Enterprises, had stolen more than 10,000 copyrights from its customers that belonged to labels such as Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. The court ruled that the company was liable for infringement.
The details of this case are very interesting. A jury has already found Cox guilty of allowing his company’s broadband to be used to steal music, and a dispute is now over how much compensation he should pay to his label. .
But what’s crazy here is the timeline.This judgment was handed down this week — Monday, February 20, 2024 This is based on a 2019 verdict on a case filed in 2018.
So this is a present-tense case for digital copyright infringement, something that technology and media companies spent a lot of time discussing in the 2000s and early 2010s. It was then that there were lawsuits like this. Metallica vs Napsteror MGM vs Groksteror Arista vs. Lime Group. And when Congress proposed a law that said, pipa and sopaAnd when music labels and Hollywood studios were trying to acquire it, Broadband companies help stop illegal downloads.
And I thought most of that was basically resolved at this point. Content companies won lawsuits against “file sharing” companies like Napster and its successors, but anti-piracy laws never moved forward and we were left in the balance. In the United States, you couldn’t legally make money running a content-focused business. circumventing copyright rules; But simply providing Internet access to people who use that access to steal things doesn’t mean there’s a problem.
As it turns out, things aren’t all that settled, and music labels are still arguing, and apparently successfully, that broadband companies can be held liable for bad behavior caused by broadband. It seems that.
All of this is a reminder that the current legal battles over intellectual property and generative AI could last for a very long time.
What that means is another matter. Will the weight of responsibility prevent the OpenAIs of the world from moving as fast as they would like?
Or is it a signal to act fast, break things down, and not worry about the legal calculations decades from now, when the entire industry has already been restructured?