5 ms·

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?

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?