Would you like to rip your CDs for playback on your ipod? Backup your DVDs on a home fileserver? Use the cable company as a central DVR so you don’t have to remember to record your favorite shows? Make a cartoon of Mickey Mouse playing basketball in space?
Four recent Obama appointments should be troubling for proponents of those ideas.
The Department of Justice is apparently better able than I am at separating the lawyer from the client. Obama’s most recent appointment to the Department, Donald Verrilli, Jr. (Yale BA ’79, Columbia JD ’83), co-chair of Jenner & Block‘s appellate-litigation practice, has been nominated to be Associate Deputy Attorney General.
Among Verrilli’s greatest hits are representing the Recording Industry Association of America in Viacom‘s lawyer in the suit against YouTube and filed an amicus brief on behalf of the RIAA, MLB, and a bunch of other distributors/rights holders in a suit against Comcast. In those two cases his clients opposed people’s ability to watch remixes of the Daily Show and remotely hosted recorded TV shows, respectively.
The three other appointees with strong ties to Big Content after the jump.
As popular as Verrilli is with the RIAA, his partner at Jenner & Block Tom Perrelli (Brown AB ’81, Harvard JD ’91) wins the title of the “RIAA’s favorite lawyer.” Perrelli, managing partner of the firm’s DC office, is responsible for such consumer-unfriendly results as successfully defending the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and creating and advocating for the RIAA’s blanket subpoenas, a policy it has since abandoned. Perrelli has been nominated to take the #3 slot at the DOJ, Associate Attorney General.
It just keeps getting worse. Verrilli’s boss will be David Ogden of WilmerHale, who has been nominated to be #2 – the Deputy Attorney General. Ogden was AAG on the Sonny Bono suits, presumably working closely with Perrelli. He also supported the Child Online Protection Act, an antiporn law that has been struck down as unconstitutional on numerous occasions. At least Ogden has one thing going for him: the Christian Right is opposed to his nomination because he has represented Playboy, Penthouse, and other obscenity defendants. So at least it’s not clear where exactly he stands on porn.
The final member of this merry band is Neil MacBride (Houghton BA, UVA JD), who has been appointed as Associate Deputy Attorney General (apparently, a “career” appointment that doesn’t require Senate confirmation). MacBride was most recently general counsel of the Business Software Alliance – the industry trade group that brought you such gems as “Don’t Copy That Floppy!“
As said above, sometimes it’s hard to separate the lawyer from the case, but a healthy dose of skepticism seems warranted here. These are four fairly senior appointments who have repeatedly represented clients with a fairly common theme of broad copyright protection and extension. That’s a position that, unfortunately, runs counter to expansive, creative, derivative expression and use in the digital era. Fortunately, some of those engagements (notably Ogden) were purely political and, most likely, these men won’t be directly responsible for copyright issues in their new roles. Here’s hoping.
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