Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment · ¶54
The second circumstance in which contributory liability may attach is when a party induces another to commit infringement. The Court applied this rule in Grokster, 545 U. S. 913. There, the defendants distributed peer-to-peer file sharing software that had lawful uses but also enabled massive amounts of copyright infringement as users shared copyrighted materials with one another without authorization. Id., at 919–922. Drawing from the common law, the Court held that a party can be liable for the infringements of another if it takes “ `active steps . . . to encourage direct infringement,' such as advertising an infringing use or instructing how to engage in an infringing use.” Id., at 936 (citation omitted). The Court found that the software distributors had done just that by advertising their software to users of previous infringing services, declining to implement flters or other…Read in context ›
preliminary print (page proof)
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.