From our counsel Matthew Hersh: Yesterday in IP Law Daily I wrote about a new copyright infringement lawsuit against Altice, the New York-based cable and internet service provider (you might know it as Cablevision). It’s your typical entertainment company v. ISP lawsuit—there must have been dozens of these by now, mostly winners—claiming that the ISP turned up its nose at demands that it terminate subscribers who regularly use BitTorrent to share music or videos.

What’s interesting is this action now aligns basically the entire U.S. music industry against Altice. Last year music publisher BMG Rights Management, label UMG Recordings, and indie Concord Music Group—they’re always involved in these suits—filed a similar complaint. (The court denied Altice’s motion to dismiss this past May and discover is now underway.) This new complaint brings in labels Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records along with music publishers Warner Chappel and Sony Music Publishing. By my count, Universal Music Publishing Group is the only major on the sideline at this point (anyone know why?).

The complaint is tightly written—typical of Oppenheim and Zebrak, the fast-growing firm behind a lot of music and author cases these days. I was fortunate to get to know Matt and Scott in my young pup days at Jenner & Block.

By the way, how is that we’re still waiting on the Fourth Circuit to hand down its appeal of the billion-dollar jury verdict against Cox Communications that was handed down in 2019?? Oral argument was held in March 2022, but no word yet from the court of appeals. Maybe someone out there knows.

Check out Mestaz Law’s copyright litigation page here and the rest of our copyright blog here.