Largest music companies sue Verizon for $2.6 billion in massive copyright infringement case

NEW YORK ( WJET/WFXP ) — The largest recording companies in the world have filed a massive lawsuit against Verizon Communications, Verizon Services, and Cellco Partnership (aka Verizon Wireless). The plaintiffs claim that they both enabled and profited from the copyright infringement committed by tens of thousands of its subscribers.

“While Verizon is famous for its “Can you hear me now?” advertising campaign, it has intentionally chosen not to listen to complaints from copyright owners” according to the complaint.

The plaintiffs, which include UMG, Warner Music, Sony, and Capital Records (referred to as “the plaintiffs”), claim that Verizon knowingly continues to provide high-speed internet to a massive community of online pirates. Pirates are those who either download and/or illegally distribute music without paying.

They continue to say that despite hundreds and thousands of copyright infringement notices, “Verizon ignored Plaintiffs’ notices and buried its head in the sand.” Thousands of subscribers had received 20 or more notices, more than 500 received more than 100 notices and one subscriber single-handedly received 4,450 infringement notices.

Since early 2020, the music labels have sent more than 340,000 infringement notices to Verizon which advised Verizon of the blatant use of BitTorrent to illegally download, copy and distribute the copyrighted content.

These operations have cost the Plaintiffs’ over $130 billion in lost revenue in 2023 alone.

Included in the court documents was a list of 17,335 songs which they allege Verizon had violated the copyright of. These artists include Prince, Nickelback, Madonna, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, and Fleetwood Mac. The list continues over the 408-page exhibit listing hundreds of other artists.

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The Plaintiffs are seeking as much as $150,000 per infringement. With over 17,000 alleged infringed songs, that totals to around $2.6 billion.

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