Judge Rejects Cox Arguments for New Torrent Piracy Trial, Affirms Jury Award

Cox Communications must pay BMG Rights Management $25 million, after a federal judge Monday denied Cox's motion for judgment or for a new trial. A jury in 2015 found against Cox in BMG's lawsuit alleging the cable company failed to penalize its Internet customers who repeatedly infringed copyrighted materials (see 1512180012), with the cable ISP then seeking a new trial and BMG an injunction (see 1602160025). In his memorandum opinion (in Pacer) Monday, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady of Alexandria, Virginia, dismissed Cox arguments that BMG's claim failed from lack of proof, saying the evidence that Cox IP addresses uploaded more than 100,000 copies of BMG works "can form the basis of a distribution claim." O’Grady said Cox is right that there was no evidence on how Cox users ended up with the BMG works, but there was enough proof "from which a reasonable jury could find Cox users violated BMG's reproduction right." There also was sufficient evidence for the jury to decide the operator was aware of the infringing activity and "acted recklessly or with deliberate disregard," O’Grady said. He dismissed Cox arguments with the jury instructions, such as that they didn't require the jury to find the direct infringers acted while using Cox's service. But O’Grady said the jury instructions said BMG had to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Cox internet subscribers used that service to infringe on BMG's copyrighted works.