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Declan McCullagh * Font size * Print * E-mail * Share * * As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal adversaries of the recording industry.
As president-elect, one of Obama's first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America's favorite lawyer to be the third in command at the Justice Department.
both announcements on Monday, saying that his picks "bring the integrity, depth of experience and tenacity that the Department of Justice demands in these uncertain times." The soon-to-be-appointees: Tom Perrelli for associate attorney general and David Ogden for deputy attorney general.
Perrelli is currently a partner in the Washington offices of Jenner and Block, where he represented the RIAA in a a slew of cases, including a high-profile bid to unmask file sharers without the requirement of a judge reviewing the evidence first.
eventually prevailed in 2003 when a federal appeals court ruled the record labels' strategy under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was unlawful. Perrelli has represented the RIAA in other lawsuits against individual file sharers.
a current case--quotes Perrelli as telling a federal judge that it would be easy to determine who was using a wireless network to share music. "It is correct that the actual downloader may be someone else in the household," he said, but any errors can be determined easily after a "modest amount of discovery."
article on his law firm's Web site says that Perrelli represented SoundExchange before the Copyright Royalty Board--and obtained a 250 percent increase in the royalty rate for music played over the Internet by companies like AOL and Yahoo. Perrelli previously worked in the Clinton Justice Department.
article in Legal Times titled "Building an Entertainment Beast in DC" says that in 2002, Perrelli used Jenner's reputation as an appellate law firm to "get a meeting with officials at the RIAA, at a time when Internet file-sharing entities like Napster were threatening the music business." A year later, in 2003, the law firm recruited Steven Fabrizio, previously the RIAA's senior vice president for business and legal affairs, and business began booming (the RIAA also used the Jenner law firm to write a friend-of-the-court brief in the copyright extension lawsuit). If confirmed by the Senate, which is unlikely to pose much of a hurdle, Perrelli would oversee the department's civil division, the antitrust division, and the civil rights division.
His department also successfully defended the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act before the US Supreme Court. Ogden's biography at Wilmer Hale says only that he represents the "media and Internet industries, as well as major trade and professional associations," without listing details. The Justice Department, barring exceptional cases, has a duty to defend laws enacted by Congress.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, DC, for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this."
Imalittleteapot January 6, 2009 3:49 PM PST Didn't get my first vote because with Biden I thought he might do something like this, and hasn't even been sworn in and has already lost my second.
Draq Wraith January 6, 2009 4:59 PM PST Oh so you folks are now just seeing the stripes i could smell it from the get go. These people are not about change and neither are any of the other picks obama has.
Travis Ernst January 6, 2009 5:05 PM PST Time to move out of this country during Obama's term the way this is looking. This appointment it sounds like a direction for disaster in privacy. What's NeXT on the agenda, one with nazi views at the NSA?
Michichael January 6, 2009 5:24 PM PST While I'm disappointed in these picks, I'm sure McCain and Palin would have been even worse. We need to ditch Democratic and Republican parties and start from scratch - this two party monopoly has screwed us over long enough. At least it's not a complete screw-over, I could use those tax cuts.
dbargen January 6, 2009 5:28 PM PST Why are any of us surprised? The whole Dem party is beholden to trial lawyers for a LOT of their funding. If the man's going to bow to pressure from the UAW, pandering to other major constituency groups isn't a big leap. Is anyone besides myself laughing at how quickly the buyers' remorse is settling in?
Deal with it, if he said before the election "when im in i will let the people break whatever laws they want to" would you have elected him then ? Stealing copyright is just that its stealing, and thats the law. the elected leader and governments responsibility is to uphold the laws. No matter who you elect, you and US peeps have to NOT break the laws of your country. and dont steal, and you wont have anything to worry about. Become a singer and make a hit song, and get the rewards for your skill and effort, instead of having your work stolen and copied where you get nothing.
ywkhgqo January 6, 2009 8:22 PM PST Maybe if you were here, you would understand it. It's not the fact that these two men are trying to enforce copyright. It's the fact that they are so pro-RIAA, a corperation so spineless it has now given the responsibility of policing the nets to the ISPs. It's the methods, not the means that most people have problems with. You're going to tell me that the cost of making a cd is larger than that of even a b-level movie? The RIAA is scum and anyone who backs them and helps them do their dirty work is scum too. There's a reason the only case the RIAA ever won was turned over. That's not even addressing the idea of what intellectual property is supposed to mean.
Imalittleteapot January 6, 2009 8:22 PM PST They may be enforcing the laws. Well technically they're civil suits, but it's the tactis the RIAA use I hate. Like when a big company like Microsoft busts some chinese outfit selling pirated software for money I usually have a big smile on my face you know. Their methods don't even respect people like human beings. So, with Obama hiring a RIAA lawyer it's basically like he's hiring a dirty cop that everyone knows is dirty and it's probably because someone is lobbying or putting some money in someone's pocket somewhere. Well this is the same thing except it's a dirty lawyer instead. Of course, you're the kind of guy that probably supports dirty cops and lawyers so whatever.
Renegade Knight January 7, 2009 7:09 AM PST Become a singer make a hit song, watch corporate make money all night long. I have the right to sell the song as a first sale right.
Hernys January 6, 2009 8:38 PM PST Folks, he's not the RIAA. And even with all that this implies on itself (which is a requirement for the post) he's not evil because of that. Fact is he's as likely to be on the side of file swappers as he's to be on the side of the RIAA. But he was being paid to sue the swappers and that's what he did. If you don't like that, you don't like the legal profession and that's it. He's a lawyer and I don't like lawyers, but I wouldn't have the justice department ran by an engineer.
Imalittleteapot January 6, 2009 8:48 PM PST That's exactly what I don't want. That is someone that just does whatever they're told as long as someone puts some money in their pocket. If he was on the RIAA's side he's a scumbag, and if he was on the file sharer's side and took money from the RIAA and just did what he was told even though it was against what he believed in then he's a sell out and a scumbag.
kenpm January 7, 2009 4:48 AM PST "An article in Legal Times titled "Building an Entertainment Beast in DC" says that in 2002, Perrelli used Jenner's reputation as an appellate law firm to "get a meeting with officials at the RIAA, at a time when Internet file-sharing entities like Napster were threatening the music business." A year later, in 2003, the law firm recruited Steven Fabrizio, previously the RIAA's senior vice president for business and legal affairs, and business began booming (the RIAA also used the Jenner law firm t...
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