By John Fritze

(CNN) — The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday in a major copyright dispute that internet service providers warn could force millions of Americans offline and turn companies that provide connectivity into “internet police.”

At issue are peer-to-peer file-sharing protocols like BitTorrent that allow users to download pirated music. The nation’s largest record labels are attempting to hold internet providers liable for copyright infringement because they declined to cut off online access to users they knew were downloading bootlegged music.

Cox Communications, an ISP that is fighting that effort at the Supreme Court, warned the justices that making providers liable for the online conduct of customers would lead to a crackdown that would “yield mass evictions from the internet,” terminating connections at “homes, barracks, hospitals, and hotels, upon bare accusation” of copyright infringement by creators.

“That notion turns internet providers into internet police,” the company told the court, “and jeopardizes internet access for millions of users.”

But Sony Music Entertainment and the other music companies that sued Cox say the ISP was more than an innocent bystander and was instead enabling “habitual offenders” to maximize profits. While Cox “waxes poetic” in its brief about the importance of the internet, Sony argued, “it neglects to mention that it had no qualms about terminating 619,711 subscribers for nonpayment over the same period that it terminated just 32” for serial copyright abuse.

“While Cox stokes fears of innocent grandmothers and hospitals being tossed off the internet for someone else’s infringement, Cox put on zero evidence that any subscriber here fit that bill,” the music companies said.

Those companies hold the rights to many of America’s most recognizable singers and songwriters, according to legal papers, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Eminem, Eric Clapton and Gloria Estefan.

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has declined to hold companies liable for aiding and abetting in other civil damages cases. In June, a unanimous court ruled that American gun manufacturers could not be held responsible for cartel violence on the Southwest border, even though their guns are often involved in those crimes.

Two years ago, the court unanimously ruled that Twitter, now X, could not be held liable for aiding and abetting terror attacks just because it had hosted tweets on its platform that were created by the terror group ISIS.

But in the Cox case, a jury sided against the ISPs and awarded the music companies a $1 billion verdict for the infringement of more than 10,000 copyrighted works.

An appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, tossed out the massive award but found Cox had engaged in “willful contributory infringement.” Cox appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

The case has drawn attention from some of the nation’s most recognized internet companies, including Google and X, which are siding with the service providers. X argued in a brief that the appeals court ruling against Cox could “wreak havoc” on the tech industry and specifically on artificial intelligence.

X argued that if content creators are permitted to sue AI platforms when people use their technology to violate copyright law, the tech companies would “have no choice but to constrain their actions” to avoid the potential liability.

Several media companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery, have sued AI platforms alleging copyright infringement. (Warner Bros. Discovery is the parent company of CNN.)

In an interesting twist, the Supreme Court rejected a similar copyright appeal from the entertainment industry more than 40 years ago. In that case, Universal Studios challenged the maker of a new-fangled technology it feared would be widely used by Americans to engage in copyright infringement.

The technology at issue then was the Betamax videocassette recorder, or VCR.

A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled the sale of the equipment did not constitute a “contributory infringement” of Universal’s television programs.

The decision was a huge win for the maker of that technology, Sony Corp. of America — the parent company of the lead label now fighting the internet service providers at the Supreme Court.

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