Music publishers scored another victory in court against a broadband provider that refused to terminate the accounts of Internet users accused of piracy. In a ruling Wednesday, the conservative-leaning U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided with the three major record labels against Grande Communications, a subsidiary of Astound Broadband.
The appeals court ordered a new trial on damages, saying the $46.8 million damages award was too high, but affirmed the lower court's conclusion that Grande is liable for contributory copyright infringement.
“Here, claimants [Universal, Warner, and Sony] proved at trial that Grande knew (or was willfully blind to) the identities of its infringing subscribers based on Rightscorp's communications, which informed Grande of specific IP addresses of subscribers engaged in infringing conduct. But Grande chose to continue providing services to them instead of taking simple steps to prevent infringement,” said the unanimous three-judge ruling.
Rightscorp is a copyright enforcement company used by the music labels to detect copyright infringement. The company monitors torrent downloads to find users' IP addresses and sends infringement notices to Internet service providers that serve subscribers using these IP addresses.
“The evidence at trial showed that Grande had a simple measure available to prevent further damage to copyrighted works (i.e., terminating repeat infringing subscribers), but that Grande never took it,” the 5th Circuit ruling said . “On appeal, Grande and his amici make a policy argument — that terminating Internet service is not a simple measure but instead a 'draconian overreaction' that is a 'drastic and overly broad solution' — but a reasonable jury could and found that Grande had basic remedies available, including dismissal, and because Grande does not dispute any of the evidence on which plaintiffs relied to prove material contribution, there is no basis for concluding that a reasonable jury did not have sufficient evidence to to come to that conclusion.
