When Napster was founded in the year 1999 , nobody suspected that the music exchange would turn the industry upside down. What started out as a small project quickly developed into the starting point for free music. Although the consumers liked this, the artists received nothing. So the musicians went to court and have since tried to legally expel the illegal downloads from the Internet. That this is hardly crowned with success even after 20 years And even today there are still a large number of illegal music files to be found on the Internet, seems to be irrelevant . Overall, 57 labels and publishers sued the provider. The reason for this was that the service provider 1999 and 2014 has not prevented the copying of pieces of music. Despite complaints from the copyright owners, the company did not block the responsible pages. As a result of this, Cox Communications for a total of 10. 017 illegally downloaded pieces of music receive compensation of one billion US dollars.

The judges would also have had the option of setting a maximum amount of up to 150. 000 US dollars to be imposed per violation. However, this has apparently been disregarded. The ISP can currently still appeal and contest the imposed penalty. It remains to be seen whether this will succeed.

Cox Communications got off lightly despite the large sum. Had the full fine been imposed, the company would have to pay over $ 1.5 billion to rightsholders.