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.
Signal weather
Stable
The story has moved beyond the first headline and now acts as a reliable context anchor.
The Supreme Court today decided that Internet service providers cannot be held liable for their customers' copyright infringement unless they take specific steps that cause users to violate copyrights. The court ruled unanimously in favor of Internet provider Cox Communications, though two justices did not agree with the majority's reasoning. The ruling effectively means that ISPs do not have to conduct mass terminations of Internet users accused of illegally downloading or uploading pirated files. If the court had ruled otherwise, ISPs could have been compelled to strictly police their networks for piracy in order to avoid billion-dollar court verdicts under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The long-running case is Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment. Cox was hit with a $1 billion verdict for music piracy in 2019. Although the damages award was overturned in 2024, a federal appeals court still found that Cox was liable for willful contributory infringement. Read full article Comments
Stay on the signal
Follow Supreme Court rejects Sony's attempt to kick music pirates off the Internet
Follow this story beyond a single article: new follow-ups, adjacent sources, and the evolving storyline.
Story map
Understand this topic fast
A quick entry into the story: why it matters now, who is involved, and where to go next for context.
Why it matters now
Topic constellation
Open the live map for this story
See which entities, story threads, sources, and follow-up articles shape this story right now.
Click nodes to continue
Entity pages
Story timeline
Continue with this story
A short sequence of events and follow-up stories to understand the arc quickly.
How reliable this looks
Signal and trust for Ars Technica
This source works at a rapid pace: 100% of recent stories land in the hot window, and 0% carry visible search signal.
Reliability
92
Freshness
100
Sources in storyline
1
Related articles
More stories that share tags, source, or category context.
Hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will cost more than other AAA games
GTA6 might be an outlier, though—at least for now.
Signal weather
Momentum is building quickly, so this card is a good early entry point into the topic.
Why now
Fresh coverage with immediate momentum.
OpenAI and Broadcom announce chip designed for LLM inference at scale
The silicon race is heating up amid the struggle to keep up with demand.
Signal weather
Momentum is building quickly, so this card is a good early entry point into the topic.
Why now
Fresh coverage with immediate momentum.
13 years and $500 million for a stage adapter? Report justifies NASA cancellations.
"Contract values for these efforts ballooned from nearly $2.8 billion to $5.9 billion."
Signal weather
Momentum is building quickly, so this card is a good early entry point into the topic.
Why now
Fresh coverage with immediate momentum.
US ends hantavirus outbreak response with no answers on draconian quarantines
We still don't know why RFK Jr. overruled CDC expert to order strict quarantines.
Signal weather
Momentum is building quickly, so this card is a good early entry point into the topic.
Why now
Fresh coverage with immediate momentum.
More from Ars Technica
Fresh reporting and follow-up coverage from the same newsroom.
Hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will cost more than other AAA games
GTA6 might be an outlier, though—at least for now.
Signal weather
Momentum is building quickly, so this card is a good early entry point into the topic.
Why now
Fresh coverage with immediate momentum.
OpenAI and Broadcom announce chip designed for LLM inference at scale
The silicon race is heating up amid the struggle to keep up with demand.
Signal weather
Momentum is building quickly, so this card is a good early entry point into the topic.
Why now
Fresh coverage with immediate momentum.
13 years and $500 million for a stage adapter? Report justifies NASA cancellations.
"Contract values for these efforts ballooned from nearly $2.8 billion to $5.9 billion."
Signal weather
Momentum is building quickly, so this card is a good early entry point into the topic.
Why now
Fresh coverage with immediate momentum.
US ends hantavirus outbreak response with no answers on draconian quarantines
We still don't know why RFK Jr. overruled CDC expert to order strict quarantines.
Signal weather
Momentum is building quickly, so this card is a good early entry point into the topic.
Why now
Fresh coverage with immediate momentum.