Legal battle ends between “BMG” and “Cox Communications & Rightscorp”

US internet service provider Cox Communications has finally settled its most recent dispute with BMG by voluntarily dismissing a lawsuit it filed against the music company in the month of May. A previous legal battle between BMG and Cox acted as a very significant actor in this settlement. BMG earlier accused Cox of having a deliberately shoddy system for dealing with every copyright infringer among its own user base. BMG further argued that the internet firm should not be protected by the copyright safe harbor and it should be held liable for its users’ infringing ways.

However, BMG won that case. But the ruling was overturned on appeal of Cox because of a technicality that resulted in a subsequent out-of-court settlement. It set a precedent with respect to the liabilities of internet companies with mediocre systems in place to deal with various kinds of copyright infringements and repeat infringers on their networks.

The lawsuit said: “Despite Cox’s public notice [about the email address change], and despite multiple subsequent requests and warnings, Rightscorp persisted in sending on behalf of BMG tens of thousands of notices to Cox’s old address. As Cox advised defendants on numerous occasions, including through outside counsel, Rightscorp’s actions rendered the notices invalid and unactionable as a matter of law”.

“It is clear that defendants have persisted in this blatant non-compliance in a calculated effort to manufacture evidence to support a massive secondary infringement action against Cox”, it stated. “Plainly, defendants intend to claim that Cox’s decision not to process these invalid notices renders it ineligible for the DMCA safe harbor protections and, therefore, subject to potentially astronomical monetary damages”.

Cox then requested the court to confirm that all the takedown requests sent by Rightscorp to the old email address were to be declared invalid. It also asked the court for an order restricting defendants from continuing such kind of abusive practices, awarding monetary damages, and any other such further relief that the court may deem just and proper. However, there is no need for such confirmation or order because Cox has reached an out-of-court settlement with BMG and Rightscorp. Specifics of the settlement are kept confidential yet. We can presume that Rightscorp has finally agreed to update its email address book.