• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 30, 2017

Internet services provider RCN and music publisher BMG have agreed to end a dispute over alleged copyright infringement by broadband users, according to court papers filed Wednesday.

The court papers came two weeks after the companies told U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Castel in New York that they had reached a settlement. The documents don't reveal any settlement terms.

The move ends a court battle that began last June, when RCN sought an order declaring that it had not infringed copyright. The broadband provider said that since 2012 it had received "millions" of notices from BMG's copyright enforcement agent, Rightscorp.

The initial notices were about alleged piracy by subscribers, but in April and May of 2016 BMG's counsel sent RCN letters accusing the provider of infringing copyright by failing to disconnect allegedly infringing subscribers, according to the complaint.

Those allegations "cast a pall over RCN’s business, placing RCN in the untenable position of incurring a growing potential liability for copyright infringement by continuing to conduct its business," the company said in its court papers.

The dispute between BMG and RCN landed in court several months after a jury sided with BMG in its copyright lawsuit against a different Internet service provider -- Cox Communications. The jury in that case found Cox liable for piracy by subscribers and decided the company should pay $25 million to BMG.

Cox is currently appealing that ruling to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The company has drawn support from a broad array of groups, including advocacy organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, as well as industry associations like the Internet Commerce Coalition.

"Just as a tenant’s water should not ordinarily be cut off when a landlord alleges nonpayment of rent, a subscriber’s connection to the Internet should not be terminated in response to alleged copyright infringement except in the most extenuating circumstances," digital rights groups EFF, Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy & Technology argued in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in November with the 4th Circuit.