Verizon is one of the largest Internet providers in the United States. The company earned $134 billion in 2023 and had 114.8 million active customers as of March 31.
The lawsuit contains a list of 17,335 tracks by artists or bands, including Elvis Presley, Matchbox Twenty, Goo Goo Dolls, and Brandy. The labels claim that since 2020, they have sent Verizon more than 340,000 notifications of copyright infringement. However, the company has not taken any action against users who have been repeatedly accused of illegal file sharing.
“Those notices clearly and unambiguously advised Verizon of its subscribers’ blatant and systematic use of Verizon’s Internet service to illegally download, copy, and distribute Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings through the P2P network known as BitTorrent,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit states that the provider ignored the plaintiffs' notices and "buried its head in the sand", continuing to provide its services to thousands of infringers in order to "continue to collect millions of dollars from them.”
According to Universal, Sony, Warner and other plaintiffs, "thousands" of Verizon subscribers have received 20 or more infringement notices. More than 500 Verizon subscribers have been the subject of 100 or more notices, and the labels allege that one Verizon subscriber was the subject of 4,450 infringement notices issued by the labels to Verizon.
According to the plaintiffs, Verizon knowingly facilitated massive copyright infringement by tens of thousands of its subscribers and received significant profits from it.
The labels claim to be entitled to compensation of up to $150,000 for each infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which could amount to up to $2.6 billion.