RSSProsecutor in Jammie Thomas case joins DoJ
By Angela Gunn | Published February 6, 2009, 10:54 AM
The lawyer who argued the only RIAA case to go all the way through the trial process has been named an Associate Attorney General for the new administration. Donald Verrilli Jr. is a senior litigator with Jenner & Block, a DC firm.
Verrilli, like several other Obama appointees to the Department of Justice, has a history of going after entities for which the entertainment industry does not care. In 2005, he represented the music industry before the Supreme Court in MGM v Grokster, which not only drove that file-sharing service into extinction but dismissed any argument that the service had significant uses other than the swapping of copyrighted works.
More recently, Verrilli is the lead lawyer working on behalf of Viacom in Viacom v. Google, the case filed in 2007 that is attempting to separate Google/YouTube and $1 billion on the grounds that YouTube is allegedly the copyright-infringing host to 160,000 Viacom videos.
Jenner & Block, which specializes in appellate cases, has also supplied the new administration with Tom Perrelli, who will serve as associate attorney general. Most observers of the copyright scene regarded that previous appointment as a loss for fair-use efforts. Perrelli was instrumental in SoundExchange's efforts to raise royalty rates for online music by as much as 250%, has served as counsel on multiple RIAA prosecutions of alleged file sharers, and is understood to have spearheaded Jenner & Block's efforts to solicit the RIAA's litigation business. In October 2008, Perrelli was awarded the Washington Business Journal's 2008 "Top Washington Lawyer" designation in the Intellectual Property category.
Obama has also nominated David Ogden as deputy attorney general (the number-two spot behind newly sworn-in Attorney General Eric Holder). Ogden is a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and has the distinction (from his Clinton-era DoJ days) of not only defending the Sonny Bono Copyright Act before the Supreme Court but of organizing the defense of the Child Online Protection Act, which kicked around the court system in various forms for over a decade before the Court finally settled its hash last month.
The appointment of Neil MacBride, who most recently served as lead counsel at the Business Software Association, raises questions about the BSA's controversial "snitch" program, which offered employees and former employees of companies using illegally installed software financial rewards (not to mention that satisfying feeling of vengeance achieved) for finking on the bosses.
Blogosphere reaction was not so positive, and most commenters pointed out that after three of these appointments, you've got to wonder if this is a pattern -- and who, if anyone, will be nominated from the public-interest side of the debate. At Copyrights & Campaigns, Ben Sheffner agrees with other commenters who say that the picks make clear President Obama's previously somewhat murky stance on IP laws, but reminds the readership that "there's still one more big test" -- the nomination of the "Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator," or so-called "IP czar."
A number of commenters thought they discerned a hidden hand at work: "Anyone who believes avowed RIAA supporter and US vice president Joe Biden didn't have a hand in this must be in living in LaLa land," fumed Jon Newton at P2PNet. (MacBride previously served as an aide to then-Senator Biden.) However, others shrug and point to Obama's strong support in Hollywood as an equally likely factor in his appointment choices.
[Image above from Jenner & Block's Web site.]
*laughing*
You asked for it. Enjoy your new corporate tool. sjc001 should probably start calling him a "libertopian" now.... [smiles]
Oh, the irony...
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|Obama does not care about anything but his private agenda.....
and loss of freedom is at the top of Obama's list.... he is the worst leader we have ever put in office!
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|Gee Angela, we scouped you yesterday with this in the DTV transition delay!
"President Obama is continuing to fill the senior ranks of the U.S. Department of Justice with the copyright industry's favorite lawyers.
Donald Verrilli announced Wednesday that he had been named associate deputy attorney general. Verrilli is the lawyer who pulled the plug on Grokster, sued Google on behalf of Viacom, and represented the Recording Industry Association of America against a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas who's accused of illicit file sharing.
This follows a string of other pro-copyright industry picks that Obama has made. Last month, there was Obama's selection last month of a top RIAA lawyer--currently squaring off in court with Harvard University's Berkman Center--to be third-in-command at the Justice Department.
Donald Verrilli, the lawyer who pulled the plug on Grokster
(Credit: jenner.com)Vice President Joe Biden has long been an ally of the recording industry, urging the criminal prosecutions of copyright-infringing peer-to-peer users and trying to create a new federal felony involving playing unauthorized music. And another senior Justice Department post has gone to the top antipiracy enforcer for the Business Software Alliance, a strong supporter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention rules.
Obama's latest choice, Verrilli, is a senior litigator in the Washington, D.C. offices of the Jenner & Block law firm.
In technology circles, he's probably best known for arguing the Minnesota case called Capitol v. Thomas. In that case, the RIAA convinced the judge to accept jury instructions saying that the "making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network" violated the law, even if none had actually been transferred.
Verrilli won the first round, with a federal jury saying in October 2007 that Thomas had to pay $220,000. But then the judge threw out the verdict, concluding the jury instructions he approved were misleading; the RIAA is hoping to hold on to the initial verdict and is currently appealing.
One reason why this case is especially relevant to Verrilli's new job is that the Justice Department intervened in the Thomas case on behalf of the RIAA."
http://news.cnet.com/the...d=digital-TV+transition
Change? LOL!
Sit back and enjoy the parade.
But I LOVE how the nut below has drunk, no...drowned, in the apologist's spin Kool-Aid!
Next we'll be hearing how politics doesn't enter in appointments either as he only wants the most skilled 'people' - as why in the hell should convictions count. LOL!
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|Actually, I don't really think the appointments mentioned here say all that much, if anything, about Obama's stance on IP issues, as I explain here: http://copyrightsandcamp...-obamas-department.html
Maybe there's some small significance to the fact that Obama isn't so offended by the entertainment industry's recent litigation strategy that he would veto selection of the lawyers who implemented it. But I think the boring truth is that these people were chosen because they're very smart, experienced lawyers with the right political ties -- not at all because of their views on IP issues.
Obama's views on IP issues indeed remain "somewhat murky" (and I suspect he has a few higher priorities than clarifying them).
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