Back in November, US ISP Cox Communications defended the BitTorrent protocol, claiming that while torrents might be associated with piracy, they can and are used for legal purposes. For example companies like Blizzard use the BitTorrent protocol when it comes to downloading games and updates.
That being said, it seems that at the end of the day, a Virginia federal jury has ruled that Cox Communications is guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement, and because of that they have been ordered to pay music publisher BMG $25 million in damages. Basically they’re saying that despite Cox not actually doing the pirating themselves, they are liable for it.
Kind of like if your friends robbed a bank and told you about their plans prior but you did not report it to the police, you could be held liable. According to the verdict, it seems that Cox Communications had received multiple infringement warnings from Rightscorp (which are usually then passed on to its subscribers to notify them) but did nothing to act on them.
Apparently there were more than 150,000 copies of copyrighted works that had been infringed upon by Cox users, but the case was restricted to 1,397 works, with the statutory maximum being over $200 million. No doubt this will set a rather disturbing precedent for other ISPs. Cox has yet to offer an official statement or reveal whether or not they plan to appeal this verdict.