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Complete with an Epstein Frequent Flyer in the White House.

It is like the alternate reality 1998 that sucks a lot more than 1998 did.

The telecommunications lobby is significantly larger and more influential than the recording lobby.

Is it though? Doesn't this mean they'll go back to going after individuals?

I legit thought it was the onion at first

It depends. Is the high way also black?

The lawsuit wasn't about the ISP being liable for all piracy, but for them to be liable if they don't take action against customers who are known pirates.

So it would be like holding the highway patrol liable if they kept letting guys with multiple DUI convictions off with a warning when they blow above the legal limit.

This comment isn't in favor of anti-piracy policies or anything, it's just clarifying what the case was about.

Bands themselves make very little off of sales. That mostly gets eaten up by managers, distributors, and labels. The bands make a lot more money from touring unless they own their own label.

They were going after ISPs who didn't take action against customers who the media companies reported for piracy.

It adds up to the same thing, though.

Reading through the opinion, I wouldn't be surprised to see this ruling come up in defense of chatbots trained on copyrighted works.

A provider induces infringement if it actively encourages
infringement through specific acts. Grokster, 545 U. S., at
942 (Ginsburg, J., concurring). For example, in Grokster,
we held that a jury could find two file-sharing software com-
panies liable for inducement. Id., at 941 (majority opinion).
The companies promoted and marketed their software as a
tool to infringe copyrights. Id., at 926. The “principal ob-
ject” of their business models “was use of their software to
download copyrighted works.”

"Sure, it can rip off copyrighted works, but your honor, we pinky promise that was never our principle object". I could see it flying. Interestingly enough, the US Solicitor General explicitly brought up DMCA safe harbor in its amicus brief (siding with Cox):

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),
Pub. L. No. 105-304, 112 Stat. 2860 (17 U.S.C. 512), gave
service providers, including ISPs, a safe-harbor defense
to claims of copyright infringement. That defense
shields ISPs from liability for copyright infringement
based on, among other things, “the provider’s transmit-
ting, routing, or providing connections for, material
through a system or network controlled or operated by
or for the service provider.” 17 U.S.C. 512(a). To qual-
ify for that safe harbor, the service provider must
“adopt[] and reasonably implement[] * * * a policy that
provides for the termination in appropriate circum-
stances of subscribers * * * who are repeat infringers.”

I'd expect this admin to brief the court in a way that favors Musk et al, and it kind of makes sense that you'd want to bolster safe harbor protections, but I imagine a safe harbor defense of LLMs would require the reasonable policy of not training your LLM on a bunch of copyrighted works without their permission, with the express intent of creating derivative works on demand for your paying clients.

Opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-171_bq7d.pdf

US SG amicus brief: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-171/359730/20250527172556075_Cox-Sony.CVSG.pdf

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for a unanimous court.

No, you woke up today in bizarro world. Welcome.

Yeah and it would be a great precedent - if we could trust SCOTUS AT ALL to rule consistently.