refused to impose direct liability on the ISP, reasoning that "[a]lthough copyright is a strict liability statute, there should still be some element of volition or causation which is lacking where a defendant's system is merely used to create a copy by a third party." Id. at 1370. Recently, the Fourth Circuit endorsed the Netcom decision, noting that
to establish direct liability under … the Act, something more must be shown than mere ownership of a machine used by others to make illegal copies. There must be actual infringing conduct with a nexus sufficiently close and causal to the illegal copying that one could conclude that the machine owner himself trespassed on the exclusive domain of the copyright owner."
CoStar Group, Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc., 373 F.3d 544, 550 (4th Cir. 2004).
Here, the district court pigeon-holed the conclusions reached in Netcom and its progeny as "premised on the unique attributes of the Internet." Cablevision I, 478 F. Supp. 2d at 620. While the Netcom court was plainly concerned with a theory of direct liability that would effectively "hold the entire Internet liable" for the conduct of a single user, 907 F. Supp. at 1372, its reasoning and conclusions, consistent with precedents of this court and the Supreme Court, and with the text of the Copyright Act, transcend the Internet. Like the Fourth Circuit, we reject the contention that "the Netcom decision was driven by expedience and that its holding is inconsistent with the established law of copyright," CoStar, 373 F.3d at 549, and we find it "a particularly rational interpretation of § 106," id.
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