{"id":1058,"date":"2026-08-09T14:39:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T14:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/09\/isp-rcn-urges-new-jersey-court-to-dismiss-major-record-labels-long-standing-piracy-lawsuit-following-landmark-supreme-court-precedent\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T14:39:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T14:39:41","slug":"isp-rcn-urges-new-jersey-court-to-dismiss-major-record-labels-long-standing-piracy-lawsuit-following-landmark-supreme-court-precedent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/09\/isp-rcn-urges-new-jersey-court-to-dismiss-major-record-labels-long-standing-piracy-lawsuit-following-landmark-supreme-court-precedent\/","title":{"rendered":"ISP RCN Urges New Jersey Court to Dismiss Major Record Labels’ Long-Standing Piracy Lawsuit Following Landmark Supreme Court Precedent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internet service provider RCN has officially asked a New Jersey federal court to reconsider a six-year-old ruling and dismiss a major copyright infringement lawsuit brought against it by the music industry’s biggest record labels. In its recent legal filing, RCN argues that the United States Supreme Court\u2019s monumental decision in the Cox v. Sony<\/em> case completely wiped out the legal foundation supporting the labels’ claims. With similar "repeat infringer" lawsuits against other major internet service providers already dropped across the country, RCN contends that it is now facing the very last major label lawsuit of its kind still standing in federal court.<\/p>\n

For many years, major record labels and prominent movie studios waged an aggressive and coordinated campaign to hold United States internet service providers legally and financially responsible for copyright-infringing activities committed by their subscribers. Alleging theories of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, rightsholders consistently argued that ISPs which failed to disconnect subscribers repeatedly flagged for copyright infringement should pay heavily for the legal consequences of that digital piracy. <\/p>\n

This core legal theory, however, collapsed in March when the Supreme Court dramatically reversed a staggering billion-dollar jury verdict against Cox Communications. In that ruling, the nation’s highest court established definitively that an internet service provider is not liable for contributory copyright infringement simply because it continues to provide internet access to subscribers it knows have been flagged for digital piracy by copyright holders or their tracking agents. <\/p>\n

Armed with this fresh precedent, RCN is now urging the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey to apply the Supreme Court’s reasoning to end a contentious legal battle that has been active since 2019.<\/p>\n

No Inducement, No Claim<\/h2>\n

In a formal motion for reconsideration filed yesterday, RCN argued that the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in the Cox litigation completely dismantled the legal foundation of the record labels\u2019 amended complaint. Under the updated interpretation of the law, an internet service provider is no longer considered contributorily liable simply for selling general-purpose internet access while knowing that a subset of its subscribers will inevitably use that connectivity to infringe upon copyrights. Furthermore, failing to cut off the internet connections of those flagged subscribers does not establish the requisite legal intent for contributory infringement either.<\/p>\n

Following the Cox<\/em> precedent, establishing secondary liability now requires concrete proof that the service provider actively encouraged or induced copyright infringement through specific, affirmative acts, or that its internet service lacks substantial non-infringing uses. RCN argues that neither of these stringent conditions applies to its business operations, noting that its own case is "virtually identical" to the litigation previously faced by Cox Communications. <\/p>\n

\"RCN<\/figure>\n

The record labels\u2019 secondary claim, which alleges vicarious copyright infringement, should also be dismissed immediately according to RCN’s legal team. Vicarious infringement legally requires proof that the internet service provider profited directly and specifically from the piracy itself. However, the Fourth Circuit ruled during the Cox proceedings that flat-rate monthly subscription fees do not constitute a direct financial benefit derived from copyright infringement. Even when the record labels attempted to appeal that specific point, the Supreme Court declined to hear the challenge.<\/p>\n

RCN argues that its subscribers pay the exact same flat monthly fee regardless of whether they are downloading copyright-protected music, streaming motion pictures, or simply browsing social media networks. Therefore, these routine subscription fees cannot legally be characterized as a direct financial benefit flowing from acts of online piracy.<\/p>\n

The ‘Last’ Case Standing<\/h2>\n

RCN emphasizes that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, rightsholders across the entertainment industry have systematically dropped every other secondary copyright infringement case pending against internet service providers nationwide. This industry-wide retreat included the movie industry dropping a virtually identical lawsuit against RCN itself.<\/p>\n

As previously reported by legal observers, the major record labels dropped their high-profile lawsuits against telecommunications giants Verizon and Altice within mere weeks of the Cox ruling. Similarly, the major Hollywood film companies behind motion pictures such as The Hitman\u2019s Wife\u2019s Bodyguard<\/em> voluntarily dismissed a near-identical lawsuit against RCN with prejudice, while a parallel case involving WideOpenWest came to an official close about a month later.<\/p>\n

This powerful legal precedent also reached RCN\u2019s sister internet service provider, Grande Communications, as both regional providers now operate under the unified Astound Broadband brand. Formally speaking, the record labels\u2019 separate case against Grande is not entirely closed yet, because Grande has opted to pursue a formal, definitive win on the official court docket. <\/p>\n

By RCN\u2019s accounting, virtually every other secondary infringement lawsuit filed against a United States internet service provider has now concluded, leaving its own ongoing litigation as the sole remaining exception in the country.<\/p>\n

\"RCN<\/figure>\n

A Four-Year Standoff<\/h2>\n

The natural question arising from the prolonged litigation is why this specific lawsuit has remained active in federal court for nearly seven years. According to RCN’s filings, the major record labels never genuinely intended to take the matter all the way to a full jury trial. Instead, the company argues that the lawsuit was originally filed back in 2019 primarily to serve as commercial leverage during broader settlement negotiations with Grande. After those talks failed to yield a resolution, the case remained stagnant due to an extended, contentious dispute regarding internal Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) records and document discovery.<\/p>\n

In May 2022, Magistrate Judge Tonianne J. Bongiovanni entered a formal stay halting all fact depositions until the underlying document discovery disputes could be resolved between the parties. That discovery stay has remained firmly in place ever since, despite the submission of at least twenty separate discovery letter briefs to the court. RCN maintains its belief that the record labels have intentionally prolonged these procedural hurdles for strategic reasons.<\/p>\n

"Instead, it seems that the Labels view the ongoing privilege dispute as a form of leverage. In other words, the Labels seem to believe that RCN might be willing to pay money to avoid a resolution of that issue," RCN stated in its court filings.<\/p>\n

As of now, the record labels have not yet filed a formal response to RCN’s newly submitted motion for reconsideration. In its motion, RCN has asked the federal court to vacate its prior 2020 order, dismiss the plaintiffs’ amended complaint entirely with prejudice, and has formally requested an opportunity for oral arguments before the judge.<\/p>\n

Copies of RCN\u2019s motion for reconsideration and the accompanying supporting memorandum, which were filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, have been made publicly available through legal documentation archives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Internet service provider RCN has officially asked a New Jersey federal court to reconsider a six-year-old ruling and dismiss a major copyright infringement lawsuit brought against it by the music industry’s biggest record labels. In its recent legal filing, RCN argues that the United States Supreme Court\u2019s monumental decision in the Cox v. Sony case […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[935],"tags":[526,937,1322,693,1321,1323,1326,621,1145,755,939,1325,1327,936,35,1324,980,940,938,1320],"class_list":["post-1058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet-privacy-digital-rights","tag-court","tag-digital-rights","tag-dismiss","tag-following","tag-jersey","tag-labels","tag-landmark","tag-lawsuit","tag-long","tag-major","tag-net-neutrality","tag-piracy","tag-precedent","tag-privacy","tag-record","tag-standing","tag-supreme","tag-surveillance","tag-torrents","tag-urges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitjunki.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}