From Cnet news:
http://tinyurl.com/7zedgc

January 6, 2009 2:55 PM PST
Obama picks RIAA's favorite lawyer for a top Justice post

Posted by Declan McCullagh

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal
adversaries of the recording industry. Stanford law professor Larry
Lessig, the doyen of the "free culture" movement, endorsed the
Illinois senator, as did Google CEO Eric Schmidt and even the Pirate
Party.

That was then. 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. And Obama's pick as deputy attorney general, the second
most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the
Copyright Term Extension Act--the same law that Lessig and his allies
unsuccessfully sued to overturn.

Obama made 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.

Campaign rhetoric aside, this should be no surprise. Obama's selection
of Joe Biden as vice president showed that the presidential hopeful
was comfortable with someone with firmly pro-RIAA views. Biden urged
the criminal prosecutions of copyright-infringing peer-to-peer users
and tried to create a new federal felony involving playing
unauthorized music.

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. Verizon initially
lost to the RIAA, but 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. One filed in Michigan accuses a university student of
distributing "hundreds of sound recordings over his system without the
authorization of the copyright owners." A lawsuit against a Princeton
University student makes similar arguments; Perrelli and his
colleagues also tried to force Charter Communications to give up the
names of 93 file-trading subscribers.

A 2004 summary of a Boston lawsuit written by Harvard's Berkman
Center--which opposed the RIAA in this and 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."

An 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.

An article in Legal Times titled "Building an Entertainment Beast in
D.C." 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.

Obama's choice for deputy attorney general--the second-in-command at
Justice--is David Ogden, who's currently a partner at the WilmerHale
law firm.

As assistant attorney general for the civil division, Ogden was
responsible for organizing the defense of the Child Online Protection
Act, or COPA, an antiporn law that has been challenged by the ACLU in
court for more than a decade with no resolution. His department also
successfully defended the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act
before the U.S. 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.

Perrelli, on the other hand, went out of his way to recruit the RIAA
as a very lucrative client: his law firm bills some partners' time at
a princely $1,000 an hour.

During his confirmation hearing, it will be instructive to see if
senators ask whether his zealous anti-file sharing advocacy can make
him an objective civil servant--especially when these same politicians
want the Justice Department to sue peer-to-peer pirates at taxpayer's
expense. (Then again, if that proposal becomes law, Perrelli's surely
the right man for the job.)

It will also be instructive to see if this week's news prompts some of
the RIAA's longtime adversaries to moderate their enthusiasm for
Obama's technology policies.

Tom Perrelli is nothing but a heartless fascist! And all the most of the candidates of the major political parties be it Obama, McCain, Bush, Kerry, Clinton are corrupt!!!!

"That was then. 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. And Obama's pick as deputy attorney general, the second
most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the
Copyright Term Extension Act--the same law that Lessig and his allies
unsuccessfully sued to overturn."

dare I say I warned of this and its just beginning

Time to face the change

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Right now the economy is the only story. Actually, I think the bailouts are the main story. We don't know where all the money went, and they won't tell us. No one is going to pay much attention to copyright matters until the economy gets straightened out. Which could be years, could be never.

The problem is, while the American public and honest politicians are distracted by a bad economy, this could fuel all the more of opportunity for fascist RIAA/MPAA politicians to try and sneak through nasty legislation with a higher likelihood of it going unnoticed until it is too late!!!

I give up.

dare I say I warned of this and its just beginning

McCain could have made him copyright czar. The RIAA already purchased the entire Senate.

But it's certainly not helping them sell records. They can run the entire Dept. of Justice and it won't force people to buy RIAA music any more than suing people did.

As long as they're spending their time doing this instead of coming up with compelling new offerings for our listening pleasure and/or competing for our attention, it's a window of opportunity for the rest of us.

Whatever "protections" the RIAA earns for copyright owners will also apply to the copyrights they don't own.

I've come to the frame of mind to ignore the RIAA, keep recording new music and sooner or later, someone will be compelled to send me money for a copy.

Independents gained one percentage point of market share in 2008. But they're just now starting to count our sales. The retailers just started letting us in. Independents have finally been empowered instead of locked out.

We have not begun to see the effects this change is going to bring. The industry is obviously not meeting the public's musical needs. Everyone that wants one has a copy of The White Album.

So when people go looking for music now, they're most likely looking for something new, maybe even something different.

The RIAA doesn't make that anymore -- they got rid of the majority of their acts over the last 3 years, and some of the acts just decided that they could do better without a label. The audience hates the RIAA and so do many of the artists. That's three major problems they can't legislate away. In fact, every "protection" they invent for copyright owners applies to the independents as well.

As long as they concentrate on the ISP thing and flailing Jim Griffin's "Everybody give us $5 a month" idea instead of thinking about how to make better music, the door is wide open for the Next Big Thing to spontaneously appear, maybe via a viral video or even a totally senseless publicity stunt. Getting arrested or thrown into rehab once a week seems to work for keeping in the public eye, especially in London.

I think we can do better. Now is the time to start doing it.

"But it's certainly not helping them sell records. They can run the entire Dept. of Justice and it won't force people to buy RIAA music any more than suing people did."

But it will cause more trouble for those that we don't get to the kids that have to have that latest radio hit and can't pay for it because there are no jobs, they search and find it on line maybe a p2p maybe a torrent, lets say that the Justice Dept has gotten the ISPs to give all info, block our internet use(see it goes beyond sharing RIAA/MPAA stuff, gammers, DJs, indies uploading catalogs of music) have made it a felony all in the name of the RIAA now we have a country full of felons because a 17 year old wanted to hear a RIAA song on his i pod.. its really scary and sad.

"We have not begun to see the effects this change is going to bring. The industry is obviously not meeting the public's musical needs. Everyone that wants one has a copy of The White Album."

I'm with you on its our turn to get our music out there and as much as possible 100% we need to fill the gap and then over take it. We need to make GREAT music and get terrestrial Radio to play it (there still are a few stations that aren't paid for by the Majors (I think ) the biggest thing I see is getting indie music noticed, being a band and label is a needle in a haystack, with groups of bands/artist getting together and forming a label/publisher co-op type deal, I think theres a better chance to get played, noticed on i-tunes or amazon or what ever distribution we can get into.

seems to me this is the next logical step for indie musicians not a part of an actual indie label... group up with one or get as many bands to group up with you // ?

now we have a country full of felons because a 17 year old wanted to hear a RIAA song on his i pod.. its really scary and sad.

Well, it's not like we haven't tried to tell them. And the entire fucking Senate is behind this criminalization of music. Our biggest advantage is that our music is not included in the Inquisition.

I think theres a better chance to get played, noticed on i-tunes or amazon or what ever distribution we can get into.

Once that's in place, a viral YouTube video could even pay off. Until now, we had to try and sell CDs off our websites.

seems to me this is the next logical step for indie musicians not a part of an actual indie label... group up with one or get as many bands to group up with you // ?

Just become your own label. The benefit is that all the money flows through the same place and everyone can see what everyone else has done, as well as their own results. The greatest disadvantage is that all the money flows through one place which happens the exact place where it is most likely to disappear.

But take a small percentage for doing the paperwork (or data entry) and pay everyone their fair share, honestly and transparently, and this sounds good.

I guess my group of musicians is approaching the same thing by having a trio and a four-piece band with a different vocalist and musically centered in a different place. But I could see preparing and getting to retail the tracks of other artists, just so that they don't have to figure it out.

i hate to say it but i told you so. i said a long time ago a vote for obama was a vote for the riaa. i voted for bob barr.

" hate to say it but i told you so. i said a long time ago a vote for obama was a vote for the riaa.'

Likewise a vote for McCain would have ALSO been a vote for the RIAA. Glad to see that someone understands how to change politics in this country. VOTE. Vote for anything NOT Democratic or Republican.

"Likewise a vote for McCain would have ALSO been a vote for the RIAA. Glad to see that someone understands how to change politics in this country. VOTE. Vote for anything NOT Democratic or Republican."

thats right.. there will be NO Change until every US Citizen gets off the R&D Rail Road

"Whatever "protections" the RIAA earns for copyright owners will also apply to the copyrights they don't own."

I'm not so sure. (Oh, I certainly'd WISH it would be so, but when the RIAA gets to write laws, they NEVER have the true copyright holder in mind. AND, lawmakers are so BLIND to what is right and wrong... *sigh*)

"I've come to the frame of mind to ignore the RIAA, keep recording new music and sooner or later, someone will be compelled to send me money for a copy."

The direction I am begining to take too...

(Like I said, I'm so fuggin' wore out fighting. I ain't no spring chicken no more neither. Time to focus on my OWN damn band.

...if the rest of the musicians out there haven't learned the lesson by now, well, it ain't my fault for lack of trying!)

Baby birds have to get shoved out of the nest and learn to fly SOMETIME!

lol

"I think we can do better. Now is the time to start doing it."

Amen.