Supreme Court

Unanimous Supreme Court Says Internet Service Provider Not Liable for Internet Users' Illegal Downloads

Plus: What George Orwell thought about Friedrich Hayek.

Damon Root | 3.26.2026 7:00 AM

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Sometimes, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide a big case and almost everybody will seem to take notice. Other times, however, the Court will decide a major case and practically nobody will seem to notice, except for a small subset of experts, practitioners, and all-purpose SCOTUS nerds. I think it is probably safe to say that yesterday's important decision in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment falls within the latter category.

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Cox v. Sony is one of those cases in which the legal stakes were incredibly high, but the underlying legal dispute was technical and dry. At issue was whether "an internet service provider (ISP) can be held liable for 'materially contributing' to copyright infringement merely because the ISP knew that people were using certain........

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