Network operators can breathe a sigh of relief after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled networks do not face liability simply for carrying content.

A decision in the long-running copyright dispute between Cox Communications and music record labels saw justices rule that internet service providers (ISPs) are not “contributorily liable” simply for continuing to provide service to subscribers it knows have been flagged for infringement.

More than 50 labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group, filed suit against Cox back in 2018, accusing the cable provider of failing to address its subscribers who were illegally downloading music.

The long-running case saw a jury court find Cox liable for $1 billion in damages back in 2019, owning to infringements of some 10,000 related copyrights. That finding was then overturned last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, with a 32-page order finding the amount of damages was not justified and would need to be recalculated.

Both Cox and the record labels would go on to appeal to the U.S.’s highest court. The former sought to overturn whether it was still liable for infringement based on the actions of its users, while the music firms challenged the recalculation consideration, contending Cox was not subject to "vicarious liability" – a legal doctrine which assigns indirect responsibility to one party for the actions of another.

Only Cox’s appeal would go on to be heard, the seven out of the nine justices rejecting the Fourth Circuit's view that “supplying a product with knowledge that the recipient will use it to infringe” was enough.

The majority found the prior court’s ruling to go beyond the two precedent legal forms for identifying liability: that a party either has to have induced the infringement (MGM Studios v. Grokster) or the related service they provided had to be tailored to infringement with no substantial lawful use (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios).

Since Cox met neither bar, the justices found that the ISP had ultimately never encouraged infringement.

It wasn’t all Cox’s way after the ruling could have opened another legal can of worms around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whose safe harbors protect online service providers and platforms' websites from liability for copyright-infringing content uploaded or stored by users.

But in a concurrence, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that if ISPs face no liability exposure at all, the related safe harbor becomes meaningless.

“Congress did not provide that ISPs could never be secondarily liable for copyright infringement," Justice Sotomayor wrote. "Instead, it struck a balance by creating incentives for ISPs to take reasonable steps to prevent copyright infringement on their networks, while also assuring ISPs that they do not need to take on the impossible task of responding to every instance of infringement on their networks. The majority’s new rule completely upends that balance and consigns the safe harbor provision to obsolescence.”

The ruling was a major win for Cox, and a timely one as rights-holders look to tighten their belts to prevent online infringement.

The same can’t be said for Spain, where providers like Cloudflare find themselves having to block access to sites after courts granted the country’s soccer league blanket blocking orders to block any addresses it wants, rather than just specific pirate sites.

As a result, internet users across Spain face almost weekly blackouts when games are played, unable to access sites that use Cloudflare until the final whistle.