Altice hit with lawsuit from major music labels over music piracy

Dec 8 (Reuters) - Warner Music (WMG.O), Sony Music (6758.T) and several of their subsidiaries have sued internet service provider Altice (ATUS.N) in East Texas federal court, accusing it of enabling mass copyright infringement by turning a blind eye to subscribers' music piracy.

The lawsuit filed on Thursday said that Altice USA, a spin-off of French telecom and cable group Altice Europe N.V., has "gone out of its way" to avoid taking action against repeat infringers in order to attract and keep subscribers.

The labels listed hundreds of songs that Altice's users allegedly pirated and requested damages of up to $150,000 per song.

Altice said in a statement that it will "vigorously defend against these claims." The labels' attorney, Matt Oppenheim, declined to comment.

The Thursday complaint follows similar lawsuits brought by major labels against ISPs including Cox Communications and Frontier Communications, as well as a separate ongoing lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group and others against Altice last year.

The labels won a billion-dollar verdict against Cox in Virginia federal court in 2019, which Cox has since appealed.

According to the complaint, Altice has received "tens of thousands of notices" from the labels that its subscribers were illegally downloading and distributing their music through file-sharing services like BitTorrent.

The lawsuit said Altice did not respond to the notices and continued to provide internet service to the infringers, allegedly failing to meet its obligations under U.S. copyright law.

The labels said that Altice, the fourth-largest U.S. broadband company, "decided not to terminate infringers because it wanted to maintain the revenue generated from the infringing subscribers' accounts," and that its inaction made it more attractive as a "safe haven" for pirates.

The case is Warner Records Inc v. Altice USA Inc, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, No. 2:23-cv-00576.