Last October, the Authors Guild joined a coalition of creators’ organizations in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Cox Communications v. Sony.

The case asked a simple yet consequential question: when an internet provider knows its customers are committing large-scale copyright infringement and refuses to terminate their accounts while continuing to collect fees, should it face consequences?

This week, on March 25, 2026, the Supreme Court answered: not necessarily. The Court ruled that “[t]he provider of a service is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement.”  It is not enough if the service provider knows that users will use the service to infringe copyrights.

The Authors Guild is disappointed with the Court’s decision, which dramatically undercuts copyright owners’ ability to protect their work against vast online piracy.

What The Case Was About

Cox Communications, a major internet service provider, received thousands of notices identifying specific subscribers who were repeatedly pirating copyrighted works, including books, music, and films. Cox could terminate those accounts. It chose not to, because the subscription revenue was too valuable to lose. A jury found Cox liable, and the Fourth Circuit upheld that finding. The Supreme Court has now reversed it.

The Court ruled that a service provider can be contributorily liable for infringement by its users only if it intended the service to be used for infringement. To prove intent, a copyright owner must show either that the service provider affirmatively induced the infringement or that the service provider sold a service “tailored to infringement.”  Finding that Sony failed to establish either element, the Court held that Cox was not contributorily liable.

Why This Ruling Hurts Creators

As the Authors Guild explained in its amicus brief, copyright owners have long relied on theories of contributory liability to hold accountable online platforms that turn a blind eye to widespread infringement by their users, even as they generate massive profits from it. This is not a technicality. Given that it is effectively impossible to sue millions of individual infringers around the world, these doctrines are essential to ensuring that creators have meaningful ability to protect their work in the digital age.

The decision also undermines a critical agreement built into federal law. As Justices Sotomayor and Jackson recognize, the ruling eviscerates the safe harbor that Congress adopted in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to incentivize ISPs to work with copyright owners to take down infringing material. In other words, platforms were supposed to earn their legal protection by cooperating with creators. That bargain has now been gutted, and the carefully crafted balance that Congress intended has been tipped heavily against copyright owners.

For authors, every illegally downloaded book is a lost sale and compensation stolen from m