The Supreme Court threw out a multibillion-dollar judgment against an Internet service provider (ISP) on Wednesday, in a closely watched case that could be severely damaged most Americans’ access to the Internet if it went the other way.
Wednesday’s decision in Cox Communications vs. Sony Music Entertainment it is part of a wider structure. It is one of the few recent Supreme Court cases that threatening to break the internet – or, at the very least, fundamentally harm its ability to function as it has for decades. In each case, the judges took a cautious and liberal approach. And they have often done so on the margins. All nine judges concurred in the findings Coxalthough Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized some of Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion.
Some members of the Court have clearly said that this cautious approach is based on the fear that they do not understand the network enough to manage it. As Justice Elena Kagan said in the 2022 oral arguments, “we don’t know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine biggest experts on the internet.”
of Thomas comments in Cox does a good job of explaining why this case may have raised millions of Americans’ online income. The plaintiffs were major music companies that, in Thomas’s words, “have struggled to protect their copyrights in the age of online music sharing.” It is very easy to pirate copyrighted music online. And the music industry has fought online piracy with mixed success ever since The Napster Wars of the late 1990s.
Before bringing Cox case, the music company plaintiffs used software that allowed them to “detect when copyrighted works are being illegally uploaded or downloaded and track infringing activity to a particular IP address,” an identification number sent to online devices. The software notified the ISP when a user at a particular IP address was potentially infringing copyright law. After the music companies decided that Cox Communications, the main defendant in the Coxdid not do enough to cut off these users’ access to the Internet, they sued.
Two practical problems arose from this case. One is that, as Thomas writes, “multiple users may share a particular IP address” — such as at home, a coffee shop, a hospital, or a college dorm. So, if Cox were to cut off a customer’s Internet access whenever someone using that customer’s IP address downloaded something illegally, it would also end up shutting down Internet access for dozens or even thousands of innocent people.
Imagine, for example, a college dorm where only one student is illegally downloading Taylor Swift’s new album. That student can share an IP address with everyone else in the building.
Another reason is Cox case could fundamentally change the way people access the Internet is that the monetary penalties for violating federal copyright law are often astronomical. Again, complainers inside Cox won a multi-billion dollar verdict in the trial court. If these plaintiffs had won before the Supreme Court, ISPs could have been forced into a strict crackdown on any customer that allowed any internet user to pirate music online – because the costs of failing to do so would be catastrophic.
But that won’t happen. After Coxcollege students, hospital patients, and hotel guests across the country can rest assured that they won’t lose internet access just because someone illegally downloaded “The Fate of Ophelia.” Thomas’ decision not only dismisses the lawsuit against the music industry Coxit pulls it out of orbit.
Coxmoreover, it is many soon of at least three decisions where the Court expressed similar broad skepticism to legal cases or laws seeking to regulate the Internet.
The Supreme Court is an internet company’s best friend
The most surprising thing about Thomas’s majority opinion in Cox is its width. Cox not only dismisses this one lawsuit, it dismisses multiple copyright suits against Internet service providers.
Thomas argues that, in order to win Coxmusic industry plaintiffs would need to show that Cox “intended” for its customers to use its service in violation of copyright. To overcome this bar, plaintiffs would need to show that Internet service providers “promoted and marketed their (service) as a tool for copyright infringement” or that the only use of the Internet is to illegally download copyrighted music.
Thomas also adds that the mere fact that Cox may have known that some of its users were pirating copyrighted material is not enough to hold them responsible for that activity.
As a legal matter, this very broad ownership is questionable. As Sotomayor points out in a dissenting opinion, Congress enacted a law in 1998 that creates a safe harbor for some Internet Service Providers who are sued for copyright infringement by their customers. Under the 1998 law, the lawsuit will fail if the ISP “adopts and effectively implements” a system to stop repeat infringers of federal copyright law.
The fact that this safe harbor exists indicates that Congress believed that ISPs that did not comply with its provisions could be prosecuted. But the Thomas opinion rules out many lawsuits against defendants who do not comply with the safe harbor provisions.
Still, while attorneys may argue over whether Thomas or Sotomayor has the better reading of federal law, Thomas’ opinion was joined by a total of seven justices. And it is consistent with previous decisions of the Court to protect the Internet from lawsuits and laws that could weaken its ability to work.
In Twitter v. Thank you (2023), the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the case holding social media companies accountable for terrorist activities abroad. Twitter it was based on a federal law that allows prosecution against anyone who “aids and aides, by willfully providing substantial assistance” to certain acts of “international terrorism.” Plaintiffs inside Twitter claimed that social media companies were responsible for the ISIS attack that killed 39 people in Istanbul, because ISIS used the companies’ platforms to post recruitment videos and other content.
Thomas also wrote the majority opinion in Twitterand his opinion in that situation reflects Cox the view that Internet companies in general should not be held accountable for bad actors who use their products. “Common traders,” Thomas wrote in Twitternormally should not be held responsible for any misuse of their products and servicesno matter how strained their relationship with the offender is.”
Indeed, several important judges are so protective of the Internet — or, at least, so wary of intervention — that they have taken a liberal approach to Internet companies even when their political party wants to control online discourse.
In Moody v. Netchoice (2024) The court considered two state statutes, one from Texas and one from Florida, that it wanted force social media companies to publish conservative and Republican voices that the companies were supposed to ban or otherwise suppress. As Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott said of his state’s law, it was enacted to stop “the dangerous efforts of social media companies to silence conservative views and ideas.”
Both laws were clearly unconstitutional. The First Amendment does not allow the government to force Twitter or Facebook to fire someone in the same way that the government cannot force a newspaper to publish opinions that disagree with its regular writers. If the Court continues Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Screw (1974), the media have the absolute right to determine the “choice of material” that they publish.
After Moody reached the Supreme Court, however, the justices revealed a procedural flaw in the plaintiffs’ case that would require them to send the case back to the lower courts without testing whether the two state laws are constitutional. However, although the Court overturned the case, it did so with a strong warning that the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which had upheld the Texas law, “was in error.”
Six justices, including three Republicans, joined the majority opinion leaving no doubt that the Texas and Florida laws violate the First Amendment. They protected the sanctity of the internet, even when it was not ethical for them to do so.
This Supreme Court does not usually protect institutions
One reason why the Court’s non-internet approach in Cox, Twitterand Moody It is very surprising that the current majority of the Supreme Court does not show such restrictions in other cases, at least when those cases have high partisan or ideological positions.
In two recent decisions – Mahmoud vs. Taylor (2025) and Mirabelli v. Beautiful (2026) – for example, the Republican majority on the Court placed a heavy burden on public schools, which appears to be designed to prevent those schools from teaching pro-LGBTQ attitudes to students whose parents find gay or otherwise repulsive. I have ever previously he explained why public schools will struggle to comply Mahmoud and Mirabelliand why many may find obedience impossible. None of the comments showed even a hint of the caution that the Court showed Cox and similar cases.
Similarly, in Medina vs. Planned Parenthood (2025), the Court issued a decision that has the potential to render many state Medicaid laws unenforceable. If taken seriously, Medina it overturns decades of Supreme Court decisions shaping the rights of about 76 million Medicaid patients, including a the decision that the Court gave as recently as 2023 – although it remains to be seen if the Republican majority on the Court will be used MedinaA new law in a case that does not involve the abortionist.
The majority of Republicans on the Court, in other words, are rarely cautious. And it is often ready to throw important American institutions such as the public school system or the American health care system into turmoil, especially in extreme situations.
But this Court seems to hold the Internet in the same respect that it holds religious conservatives and anti-abortionists. And that means that the internet is one institution that these righteous people will protect.
