7 ms·

Obama Nominates RIAA Lawyer for Solicitor General

89 points by yanw 16y ago

kingkilr 16y ago
There are few things that irk me more than judging a legal appointee based on the clients they've represented.
- gcb 16y ago
  really? even when it's a litigation scam like that? i understand about defending the 'guilty' and all, everyone must have their lawful rights to freedom and compensation. But a for-profit scam, c'mon. You ought have some responsibility were you choose to make a living from. it would be completely ethic if they were defending a murder-rapist in trial. but going after people without any kind of evidence, just in the hopes that you will get money for scaring some of them. that's just too unethical to be excusable in any imaginable way.
  - juiceandjuice 16y ago
    Just because the DMCA sucks doesn't mean a lawyer shouldn't be the best lawyer they can be. Now, if he fails to sever contact with the RIAA, or fails to be impartial to any case which may involve the RIAA or copyrights while being solicitor general, that's a different argument.
    - InclinedPlane 16y ago
      Don't fool yourself. No lawyer decides to go to bat for the RIAA in civil court out of a sense of justice, or for any other reason than to bring home giant bags of money.
      - citricsquid 16y ago
        How many people out there work for the desire to achieve vs. bags of money?
        Cadsby 16y ago
        Too many fall into the latter unfortunately. The desire to make money is fine. It's when it becomes a higher priority than basic morality/decency that it becomes something contemptible.
        burgerbrain 16y ago
        A lot.
  - tzs 16y ago
    Could you explain what you are talking about? I'm aware of the RIAA suing people whose IP addresses were used for P2P sharing of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owner, but that wouldn't fit your description, as that is not a scam, as they had evidence against the people they went after in those lawsuits. Hence, I assume you are talking about some other RIAA litigation that I am unaware of.
    - pyre 16y ago
      I think the 'scam' implication comes up because the RIAA's lawyers try as hard as they can to just get people to settle out of court, and once they are brought into court, usually try to back-peddle as fast as they can to get out of there while still leaving open the possibility of bringing suit again in the future. The impression this leaves with people is that it's meant to be a 'shake-down' since the RIAA is less interested in court cases and more interested in settlements.
      - _delirium 16y ago
        I don't like the cases he was involved in either, but I don't think Verrilli was part of those settlement-demand letters, or in litigation against individuals. He's an appellate and Supreme-Court practice attorney, and the cases he's been involved with have been appeals of the RIAA's suits against content-hosting companies and P2P companies. For example, he argued their side in the Viacom v. Google case and in MGM v. Grokster. I don't like the positions he argued in those cases, either, but I don't think representing MGM versus Grokster, for example, was a breach of professional ethics or scammy. In fact it seems the position he argued was correct as a matter of law, according to a unanimous Supreme Court (the main problem is that Congress shouldn't have passed the law in question).
        chopsueyar 16y ago
        I wonder if a similar argument could have been made about slave ownership prior to the 13th amendment? Morality be damned, it is the law.
        16y ago
- ibejoeb 16y ago
  A great lawyer would balance his prowess before the bench with his ethics. Just because a law is on the books does not mean that we have to litigate.
- nhebb 16y ago
  There are few things that irk me more than treating intelligent, highly paid professionals as mindless modules plugged into the system. There is a difference between, say, a criminal defense lawyer who fulfills a role needed to sustain our system of justice, and a lawyer who gets paid to be litigious mercenary. I don't think it's a big leap to assume that lawyers with the qualifications and enough professional stature to get hired by the RIAA have other job opportunities. Little Timmy's not going to go through the winter without shoes because daddy didn't take the RIAA job.
  - intended 16y ago
    I agree. Being intelligent and capable is not sufficient, wisdom and courage are far more important at the levels of leadership he will operate at. A measure of wisdom, is seeing how the pieces fit and a measure of courage is being able to take a moral stand and use your ability for the greater good. A person who may become a member of the supreme court, should definitely have all 3.
- AJ007 16y ago
  Donald Verrilli Jr is replacing Elena Kagan. Elena Kagan is now sits on the Supreme Court. That should shed some light on how important this position is. If the RIAA/MPAA/old media (Donald also represented Viacom in its case against Google/Youtube) wrote its own laws the internet would be a sliver of what it is today. Many entities, for profit, not for profit, corporation, or association work to crush individual rights. Few do so to the degree that the RIAA has pursued. Its sickening and disturbing that any representative, former or current, for such an organisation would be even nominated for such a powerful role in the United States government. Clearly this guy has had a vested interest in crushing innovation and personal freedom in the United States. And you are irked that anyone cares.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    > The internet would be a sliver of what it is today. The American portion of the internet would be a sliver of what it is today. Keep in mind that the world is a bit larger than just the US and that whenever the US decides to shoot itself in the foot like this some other entity will take its place. This will likely continue until the US wises up to that and starts to move with all the resources they've got directed at recovering the lost ground, which I'm sure they'll be able to do fairly rapidly. Software patents, the situation around copyright, it's all the same thing, a temporary disturbance. On a human lifespan scale it looks like things are moving with glacial speed but since the web as we know it is not even two decades old you can bet that given the changes it has already brought about you won't be able to recognize the information landscape in another hundred years or so. This is just a delaying action, in the long run it won't mean anything. Now if we could make it not mean anything in the short run is up for grabs, vested interests will always fight to the death to keep their gravy trains rolling. When Gutenberg made the printing press it took another 100 years or so before the implications were really felt far and wide give it some time. Incidentally it only took very little time after the printing press was invented for the first primitive copyright legislation to follow.
    - AJ007 16y ago
      You would be comfortable with YouTube's alternative hosted in Russia connected to the web by a likely mob influenced ISP? Laws the United States makes have a more wide reaching affect that you seem to realise. Your outlook of online freedom is quite optimistic. Smaller countries follow the lead of larger ones and for profit corporations generally do their best to follow (or write) the laws of the United States. What happens here influences the behaviour of many. After all, no CEO wants to be arrested on a layover in the United States because their company happened to break a US (this has happened.) The reality is that organisations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been fighting hard against our own government, the United States, since the early 1990s to keep the internet as free as possible. Had no one decided to take up that fight your internet would be under control of such gems as 1998's COPA, along with who knows what garbage the RIAA and MPAA would dream up. The rising influence of authoritarian states such as China dim the prospect of an open and free world generations to come. While they may flaunt intellectual property law today, make no mistake when it is their own intellectual property being infringed upon they will happily add infringement to one of their 68 crimes punishable by death. Make no mistake, what happens today will have a decisive impact on how free the world is 50 or 100 years from now. Nominating Donald Verrilli Jr as the Solicitor General of the United States sends a clear message that the Obama administration seeks the same expertise in chilling internet freedoms as the RIAA and Viacom did when they hired him.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  In the context of civil or criminal?
redthrowaway 16y ago
Disheartening, but not surprising. Obama has made it clear where his priorities lie, and that's with Big Content. Look to see more ICE takedowns of "infringing" sites and more COICA-like legislation.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  I am curious to see how this will affect his Administration's relationship with Google and YouTube.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- smalter 16y ago
  i think this is right. (note, i worked at jenner & block, verrilli's firm, but i don't have any inside info.) what you have with verrilli is a lawyer at the top of his profession and who's represented a variety of interests. most lawyers you meet aren't going to frame the representation of the riaa in such stark moral terms as the folks here. for instance, representation of the riaa is nowhere near a breach of professional ethics -- on the contrary, most of the riaa's positions prevailed as a matter of law. lawyers take on work for a variety of reasons and it's notoriously difficult to adjudge a lawyer's personal views based on the arguments he/she has made while representing a client.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Oops, I deleted my post above because I thought better of speculating, but looks like it got a reply before I managed to. =] My speculation was more or less: the RIAAness may or may not have been a factor, but my guess is that the main criterion was a consensus pick that avoids a confirmation battle, because it's not what Obama wants to expend energy on currently. From what I can tell from the law-blog reactions, Verrilli is a well-known / well-regarded lawyer in DC appellate-practice circles, and liked by both conservatives and liberals, which makes him a good choice from an ease-of-confirmation perspective. He already picked up an endorsement from prominent conservative lawyer Miguel Estrada, so if that was the strategy, it seems to be working.
  - nika 16y ago
    You point out that most of RIAA's positions prevailed as a matter of law as an argument against representing them being a breach of professional ethics. I think that these are two different contexts. I don't like the term "ethics" so I'll use the word "morality". There is a difference between something being moral and something being legal. For an extreme example, everything done in tyrannical states, such as north korea or iran are "legal" because they are done under the laws of that country. That does not mean they are moral. A lawyer who defends a reprehensible or immoral character in order to defend a moral legal principle is to be respected. But I'm not sure this is the case here. (and I'n not saying it is not the case either.) My point is to note the confluence of legality with ethics/morals and to point out that they are not the same, and thus one cannot support the existence of the other. That a law exists does not make breaking it immoral, nor does the lack of a law prohibiting something make the act therefore moral.
fingerprinter 16y ago
I came here with 18 comments in the thread expecting to see people talk about why this person is not a great candidate and, honestly, am quite shocked to see people defending this pick. I assure you, had Bush made this pick it would be lampooned as being too corporate etc etc etc. I understand that people want to give lawyers the benefit of the doubt and not judge them by who they represent, but honestly, I find that logic appalling. Would we really be saying that for a lawyer who defended the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal? No, b/c anyone with _any_ integrity would likely walk away from that...or anyone with any political smarts. Same in this case. It seems clear this man is not about ideals or principles but rather money and privilege. Is that who we want in arguably one of the most important non-supreme court law positions in the country? Even if he _is_ about that, he hasn't proven it with his judgement by taking those cases. This should also count in the decision. I'm sorry, but I cannot find the silver lining in this nomination. Perhaps someone can educate me....
- shareme 16y ago
  and you seem surprised? Why? Has not the choice of )Obama to reward bankers who got us into the biggest financial collapse of the world not told you who is boss? There was a coup lately, the companies won we as individuals lost and the US constitution lost
- Prisen 16y ago
  Would we really be saying that for a lawyer who defended the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal? No, b/c anyone with _any_ integrity would likely walk away from that...or anyone with any political smarts. Very poor example... The right for everyone to have a proper defense in criminal trials is a cornerstone of the legal system, and I'm really surprised anyone would argue against it.
  - mbesto 16y ago
    I understand your point, however the role of the Solicitor General has a specific function that leads one to wonder - "The office also determines which cases it will bring to the Supreme Court for review" This is a very dangerous role for someone who has engrained themselves in such a controversial topic. Not to mentioned (according to the article) hasn't been able to argue a consistent punishment for such crimes. I would imagine in the same token anyone else involved in another highly controversial law topic should receive the same scrutiny. Where Obama is heavily criticized is the fact that the general populous has a lynching out for big corporate media companies that are trying to fill their pockets with more money by simply "suing the shit" out of anyone that dares cross their path.
rst 16y ago
FWIW, this doesn't disconfirm what we already knew about the administration's affection for Big Content, but what we already knew was a lot more important. Look at the ACTA talks. It was something of a tipoff that drafts of the agreement were shared with a panel of "big content" lawyers[1], but hidden from the general public, supposedly on grounds of national security. As to substance, leaked drafts required DMCA-type legislative provisions and strongly encouraged "three strikes and you're out" policies for kicking infringers off the net, (they weren't mandated, but were, IIRC, explicitly listed in one draft as a "best practice", with no stated alternatives). And while current drafts back off of that, and some of the other more draconian positions, that's largely due to push-back from other parties, particularly in Europe. The problem with a two-party system is that whichever you pick, they're going to support something that you really don't like. For me, with the Democrats, this is one of the biggies: on these issues, the party positions have been largely dictated by Hollywood for a fairly long time. (Sonny Bono copyright act, anyone?) Then again, the Republicans haven't been all that great on this either; ACTA started under Bush.... [1] The list is here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/these-42-people-are-shaping-us-internet-enforcement-policy.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/these-42-peo... The White House was, for a time, trying to keep even the names secret, again claiming "national security". (How does it compromise national security if people know these drafts are going to lawyers for eBay? I have no idea...)

89 points by yanw 16y ago

kingkilr 16y ago

There are few things that irk me more than judging a legal appointee based on the clients they've represented.

gcb 16y ago
really? even when it's a litigation scam like that? i understand about defending the 'guilty' and all, everyone must have their lawful rights to freedom and compensation. But a for-profit scam, c'mon. You ought have some responsibility were you choose to make a living from. it would be completely ethic if they were defending a murder-rapist in trial. but going after people without any kind of evidence, just in the hopes that you will get money for scaring some of them. that's just too unethical to be excusable in any imaginable way.
- juiceandjuice 16y ago
  Just because the DMCA sucks doesn't mean a lawyer shouldn't be the best lawyer they can be. Now, if he fails to sever contact with the RIAA, or fails to be impartial to any case which may involve the RIAA or copyrights while being solicitor general, that's a different argument.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Don't fool yourself. No lawyer decides to go to bat for the RIAA in civil court out of a sense of justice, or for any other reason than to bring home giant bags of money.
    - citricsquid 16y ago
      How many people out there work for the desire to achieve vs. bags of money?
      - Cadsby 16y ago
        Too many fall into the latter unfortunately. The desire to make money is fine. It's when it becomes a higher priority than basic morality/decency that it becomes something contemptible.
      - burgerbrain 16y ago
        A lot.
- tzs 16y ago
  Could you explain what you are talking about? I'm aware of the RIAA suing people whose IP addresses were used for P2P sharing of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owner, but that wouldn't fit your description, as that is not a scam, as they had evidence against the people they went after in those lawsuits. Hence, I assume you are talking about some other RIAA litigation that I am unaware of.
  - pyre 16y ago
    I think the 'scam' implication comes up because the RIAA's lawyers try as hard as they can to just get people to settle out of court, and once they are brought into court, usually try to back-peddle as fast as they can to get out of there while still leaving open the possibility of bringing suit again in the future. The impression this leaves with people is that it's meant to be a 'shake-down' since the RIAA is less interested in court cases and more interested in settlements.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      I don't like the cases he was involved in either, but I don't think Verrilli was part of those settlement-demand letters, or in litigation against individuals. He's an appellate and Supreme-Court practice attorney, and the cases he's been involved with have been appeals of the RIAA's suits against content-hosting companies and P2P companies. For example, he argued their side in the Viacom v. Google case and in MGM v. Grokster. I don't like the positions he argued in those cases, either, but I don't think representing MGM versus Grokster, for example, was a breach of professional ethics or scammy. In fact it seems the position he argued was correct as a matter of law, according to a unanimous Supreme Court (the main problem is that Congress shouldn't have passed the law in question).
      - chopsueyar 16y ago
        I wonder if a similar argument could have been made about slave ownership prior to the 13th amendment? Morality be damned, it is the law.
      - 16y ago
ibejoeb 16y ago
A great lawyer would balance his prowess before the bench with his ethics. Just because a law is on the books does not mean that we have to litigate.
nhebb 16y ago
There are few things that irk me more than treating intelligent, highly paid professionals as mindless modules plugged into the system. There is a difference between, say, a criminal defense lawyer who fulfills a role needed to sustain our system of justice, and a lawyer who gets paid to be litigious mercenary. I don't think it's a big leap to assume that lawyers with the qualifications and enough professional stature to get hired by the RIAA have other job opportunities. Little Timmy's not going to go through the winter without shoes because daddy didn't take the RIAA job.
- intended 16y ago
  I agree. Being intelligent and capable is not sufficient, wisdom and courage are far more important at the levels of leadership he will operate at. A measure of wisdom, is seeing how the pieces fit and a measure of courage is being able to take a moral stand and use your ability for the greater good. A person who may become a member of the supreme court, should definitely have all 3.
AJ007 16y ago
Donald Verrilli Jr is replacing Elena Kagan. Elena Kagan is now sits on the Supreme Court. That should shed some light on how important this position is. If the RIAA/MPAA/old media (Donald also represented Viacom in its case against Google/Youtube) wrote its own laws the internet would be a sliver of what it is today. Many entities, for profit, not for profit, corporation, or association work to crush individual rights. Few do so to the degree that the RIAA has pursued. Its sickening and disturbing that any representative, former or current, for such an organisation would be even nominated for such a powerful role in the United States government. Clearly this guy has had a vested interest in crushing innovation and personal freedom in the United States. And you are irked that anyone cares.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  > The internet would be a sliver of what it is today. The American portion of the internet would be a sliver of what it is today. Keep in mind that the world is a bit larger than just the US and that whenever the US decides to shoot itself in the foot like this some other entity will take its place. This will likely continue until the US wises up to that and starts to move with all the resources they've got directed at recovering the lost ground, which I'm sure they'll be able to do fairly rapidly. Software patents, the situation around copyright, it's all the same thing, a temporary disturbance. On a human lifespan scale it looks like things are moving with glacial speed but since the web as we know it is not even two decades old you can bet that given the changes it has already brought about you won't be able to recognize the information landscape in another hundred years or so. This is just a delaying action, in the long run it won't mean anything. Now if we could make it not mean anything in the short run is up for grabs, vested interests will always fight to the death to keep their gravy trains rolling. When Gutenberg made the printing press it took another 100 years or so before the implications were really felt far and wide give it some time. Incidentally it only took very little time after the printing press was invented for the first primitive copyright legislation to follow.
  - AJ007 16y ago
    You would be comfortable with YouTube's alternative hosted in Russia connected to the web by a likely mob influenced ISP? Laws the United States makes have a more wide reaching affect that you seem to realise. Your outlook of online freedom is quite optimistic. Smaller countries follow the lead of larger ones and for profit corporations generally do their best to follow (or write) the laws of the United States. What happens here influences the behaviour of many. After all, no CEO wants to be arrested on a layover in the United States because their company happened to break a US (this has happened.) The reality is that organisations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been fighting hard against our own government, the United States, since the early 1990s to keep the internet as free as possible. Had no one decided to take up that fight your internet would be under control of such gems as 1998's COPA, along with who knows what garbage the RIAA and MPAA would dream up. The rising influence of authoritarian states such as China dim the prospect of an open and free world generations to come. While they may flaunt intellectual property law today, make no mistake when it is their own intellectual property being infringed upon they will happily add infringement to one of their 68 crimes punishable by death. Make no mistake, what happens today will have a decisive impact on how free the world is 50 or 100 years from now. Nominating Donald Verrilli Jr as the Solicitor General of the United States sends a clear message that the Obama administration seeks the same expertise in chilling internet freedoms as the RIAA and Viacom did when they hired him.
chopsueyar 16y ago
In the context of civil or criminal?

redthrowaway 16y ago

Disheartening, but not surprising. Obama has made it clear where his priorities lie, and that's with Big Content. Look to see more ICE takedowns of "infringing" sites and more COICA-like legislation.

chopsueyar 16y ago
I am curious to see how this will affect his Administration's relationship with Google and YouTube.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

smalter 16y ago
i think this is right. (note, i worked at jenner & block, verrilli's firm, but i don't have any inside info.) what you have with verrilli is a lawyer at the top of his profession and who's represented a variety of interests. most lawyers you meet aren't going to frame the representation of the riaa in such stark moral terms as the folks here. for instance, representation of the riaa is nowhere near a breach of professional ethics -- on the contrary, most of the riaa's positions prevailed as a matter of law. lawyers take on work for a variety of reasons and it's notoriously difficult to adjudge a lawyer's personal views based on the arguments he/she has made while representing a client.
- _delirium 16y ago
  Oops, I deleted my post above because I thought better of speculating, but looks like it got a reply before I managed to. =] My speculation was more or less: the RIAAness may or may not have been a factor, but my guess is that the main criterion was a consensus pick that avoids a confirmation battle, because it's not what Obama wants to expend energy on currently. From what I can tell from the law-blog reactions, Verrilli is a well-known / well-regarded lawyer in DC appellate-practice circles, and liked by both conservatives and liberals, which makes him a good choice from an ease-of-confirmation perspective. He already picked up an endorsement from prominent conservative lawyer Miguel Estrada, so if that was the strategy, it seems to be working.
- nika 16y ago
  You point out that most of RIAA's positions prevailed as a matter of law as an argument against representing them being a breach of professional ethics. I think that these are two different contexts. I don't like the term "ethics" so I'll use the word "morality". There is a difference between something being moral and something being legal. For an extreme example, everything done in tyrannical states, such as north korea or iran are "legal" because they are done under the laws of that country. That does not mean they are moral. A lawyer who defends a reprehensible or immoral character in order to defend a moral legal principle is to be respected. But I'm not sure this is the case here. (and I'n not saying it is not the case either.) My point is to note the confluence of legality with ethics/morals and to point out that they are not the same, and thus one cannot support the existence of the other. That a law exists does not make breaking it immoral, nor does the lack of a law prohibiting something make the act therefore moral.

fingerprinter 16y ago

I came here with 18 comments in the thread expecting to see people talk about why this person is not a great candidate and, honestly, am quite shocked to see people defending this pick. I assure you, had Bush made this pick it would be lampooned as being too corporate etc etc etc. I understand that people want to give lawyers the benefit of the doubt and not judge them by who they represent, but honestly, I find that logic appalling. Would we really be saying that for a lawyer who defended the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal? No, b/c anyone with _any_ integrity would likely walk away from that...or anyone with any political smarts. Same in this case. It seems clear this man is not about ideals or principles but rather money and privilege. Is that who we want in arguably one of the most important non-supreme court law positions in the country? Even if he _is_ about that, he hasn't proven it with his judgement by taking those cases. This should also count in the decision. I'm sorry, but I cannot find the silver lining in this nomination. Perhaps someone can educate me....

shareme 16y ago
and you seem surprised? Why? Has not the choice of )Obama to reward bankers who got us into the biggest financial collapse of the world not told you who is boss? There was a coup lately, the companies won we as individuals lost and the US constitution lost
Prisen 16y ago
Would we really be saying that for a lawyer who defended the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal? No, b/c anyone with _any_ integrity would likely walk away from that...or anyone with any political smarts. Very poor example... The right for everyone to have a proper defense in criminal trials is a cornerstone of the legal system, and I'm really surprised anyone would argue against it.
- mbesto 16y ago
  I understand your point, however the role of the Solicitor General has a specific function that leads one to wonder - "The office also determines which cases it will bring to the Supreme Court for review" This is a very dangerous role for someone who has engrained themselves in such a controversial topic. Not to mentioned (according to the article) hasn't been able to argue a consistent punishment for such crimes. I would imagine in the same token anyone else involved in another highly controversial law topic should receive the same scrutiny. Where Obama is heavily criticized is the fact that the general populous has a lynching out for big corporate media companies that are trying to fill their pockets with more money by simply "suing the shit" out of anyone that dares cross their path.

rst 16y ago

FWIW, this doesn't disconfirm what we already knew about the administration's affection for Big Content, but what we already knew was a lot more important. Look at the ACTA talks. It was something of a tipoff that drafts of the agreement were shared with a panel of "big content" lawyers[1], but hidden from the general public, supposedly on grounds of national security. As to substance, leaked drafts required DMCA-type legislative provisions and strongly encouraged "three strikes and you're out" policies for kicking infringers off the net, (they weren't mandated, but were, IIRC, explicitly listed in one draft as a "best practice", with no stated alternatives). And while current drafts back off of that, and some of the other more draconian positions, that's largely due to push-back from other parties, particularly in Europe. The problem with a two-party system is that whichever you pick, they're going to support something that you really don't like. For me, with the Democrats, this is one of the biggies: on these issues, the party positions have been largely dictated by Hollywood for a fairly long time. (Sonny Bono copyright act, anyone?) Then again, the Republicans haven't been all that great on this either; ACTA started under Bush.... [1] The list is here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/these-42-people-are-shaping-us-internet-enforcement-policy.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/these-42-peo... The White House was, for a time, trying to keep even the names secret, again claiming "national security". (How does it compromise national security if people know these drafts are going to lawyers for eBay? I have no idea...)