Over the last two years we’ve covered the DMCA-related court case between BMG and American ISP Cox Communications.
Now there’s another case brewing with similar issues. The RIAA – representing Universal Music, Capitol Records, Warner Bros, Sony Music, Arista Records, Atlantic Records and others – has filed a lawsuit against Texas-based ISP Grande Communications.
At issue: alleged copyright infringement by customers of the ISP, and claims of its lax policy against repeat offenders.
“Defendants have been notified that their internet customers have engaged in more than one million infringements of copyrighted works over BitTorrent systems, including tens of thousands of blatant infringements by repeat infringers of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works,” claimed the lawsuit, as reported by TorrentFreak.
As with BMG v Cox, the focus of any court case will be whether Grande Communications’ policies are strong enough to merit its safe-harbour protection under the DMCA legislation.
The music companies claim they are not, and thus it is liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, as well as inducement of copyright infringement too.
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