Wednesday, February 04, 2009

"Excess Copyright" reports that Donald Verrilli, the lawyer who unsuccessfully argued Capitol v. Thomas for RIAA, is appointed to high DOJ post

Just received this report in from Howard Knopf of "Excess Copyright":

Verrilli to DOJ - Three Strikes?

President Obama has just appointed another big time content industry lawyer to DOJ.

Donald Verrilli, of Jenner and Block, who fought and won the Grokster case for the music industry in the US Supreme Court along with many other important cases, has been named as associate deputy attorney general. This follows the recent appointment of Tom Perrelli of the same firm as associate attorney general.
Complete article

1. I take exception to the statement that Verrilli "won" the Supreme Court Grokster case; the decision (a) set the bar very high for secondary copyright infringement, and (b) merely denied summary judgment to the defendants, but did not award victory to the plaintiffs. Thereafter Grokster settled, and Streamcast lost in the lower court.

2. Mr. Verrilli is the lawyer who journeyed to Duluth but failed to convince Judge Davis to adopt a "making available" right in Capitol Records v. Thomas.

[Ed. Note. Let us remember that (1) President Obama has established rules that preclude Mr. Verrilli from working on matters affecting the content cartel he represented in private practice, and (2) this is not a policy job.]

Commentary & discussion:

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Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This just probably means that the RIAA lawyers are seeing the handwriting on the wall, and are getting out as best they can.

2L student

Anonymous said...

How many exceptions to the lobbying rule has Obama already issued?