Several major music companies including Sony, Warner Bros, Universal, and many more have sued the internet service provider RCN for harboring pirated content and enabling “massive” piracy. The music companies claim that the ISP was turning a blind eye towards pirated content and profiting from piracy activities as well.
Legal battles and proceedings such as these are not new; for nearly two decades now, music companies routinely issued takedown notices to ISPs warning them that their subscribers are committing piracy by sharing copyrighted material.
“This is a case about a leading internet service provider knowingly enabling its customers’ massive online copyright infringement of sound recordings,” said the companies.
According to US laws, ISPs are bound to block such users from their networks for curbing piracy. With passing time, the lawmakers and companies have become more stringent about this law and are holding ISPs accountable. The aforementioned case was filed at a federal court in New Jersey.
The music companies have stated that several bit torrent pirates have promoted the high-speed connections offered by RCN and have also leveraged the ISP to extensively carry out pirating activities. Moreover, it was stated that the infringers were aware of the fact that RCN turned a blind eye towards piracy and took full advantage of the situation.
RCN was accused of plainly profiting from the entire string of piracy activities and standing as a mere beholder instead of enforcing the necessary legal directives against copyright infringers.
What’s wild about this case is that the music companies go as far as to argue that because RCN helps to provide faster speeds, it means they’re actually assisting in aiding the piracy of the materials.
“RCN provides its subscribers with a fully functioning system that allows them to engage in copyright infringement on a massive scale using BitTorrent networks, And for those subscribers who want to pirate more and larger files at faster speeds, RCN obliges them in return for higher fees. The greater the bandwidth its subscribers require for pirating content, the more money RCN receives,” read the complaint.
The anti-piracy tracking company Rightscorp had been supplying the music companies with the necessary data to back their claims in the ongoing legal battle. The companies are currently demanding a mammoth figure in compensation which can amount to more than $150 million.
