Charter Communications, a Stamford-based telecommunications platform is a popular media company that offers its services to businesses and consumers. According to reports, the company has recently been slammed with a copyright infringement lawsuit by a group of major record labels.
As mentioned in a report by The Verge, the record labels have claimed Charter communications to have failed to address the accusations of flagrant and serial music copyright infringement, as also noted in a report by Engadget.
For those of you who don’t know, copyright infringement is any violation of the exclusive rights of the owner which includes rights of reproduction and distribution of work, in this case, it is music! So, the group of record labels has mentioned in their statements that they have sent over 150,000 legal notices of copyright infringement to Charter communication’s Spectrum, its Internet Service, with no response whatsoever from the other end. The labels are also said to have sent IP addresses of tens of thousands of alleged infringers who are supposedly Charter’s subscribers. But, none of these accusations or notices and notifications got any response from Charter communications. The company’s subscribers have been downloading free music from Spectrum since 2018 and despite continuous efforts from these record labels, Charter did not take any action, whatsoever.
The labels have mentioned in their official statement that Charter Communications was legally obligated to respond to these claims and thousands of notices that have been sent detailing the illegal activity of its subscribers. Charter’s subscribers were illegally involved with copyright infringement as they downloaded copyrighted music of these labels on Charter’s internet service.
Furthermore, it is not the first time that Charter has been accused of something like this. Back in 2019, the same group of record labels sued Charter that its subscribers were illegally using Torrent websites to download copyrighted music a.k.a. music pirating between 2013 and 2016, as noted in a report by Engadget.
The music industry has become more aware of how ISPs are exploiting their business and each year these record labels lose billions of dollars because of content pirating. Internet Service Providers have been held accountable for the actions of their subscribers and that is exactly how it should be.
Charter Communications has not been responding to the notices sent by these record labels and now it is up to law enforcement to give justice to these record labels.
