MPAA Argues That Sony Emails Shouldn't Be Used As Evidence In Google Lawsuit

from the oh-really? dept

We've already covered some of the details coming out in the flurry of legal filings in the dispute between Google and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (helped along by the MPAA which financed and ran Hood's investigation). However, there is one little tidbit mentioned towards the end in one of the MPAA's many filings resisting subpoenas from Google to turn over internal documents. The MPAA's lawyers at Jenner & Block not only argue that much of the material being requested is "privileged," and thus allowing the requests will lead to lawsuits over the legality of those requests, but further argues that the emails in the Sony hack are similarly privileged and should not be available for use in lawsuits:

Quite apart from the policy concerns that arise if lawyers are allowed to use confidential documents first obtained by hackers, the fact that some privileged documents were published in the wake of the Sony hack will trigger subsequent litigation over privilege assertions. Privileged documents obtained by hackers and later published nevertheless remain privileged. Presumably, given Google’s apparent interest in the documents, Google will contest the privilege assertions.

This seems like a pretty longshot legal argument. It's pretty typical in business settings that once documents are out there in the public, any legal restrictions on them vanish. The idea that these documents, widely discussed publicly and in the press, would magically be banned from use in a legal case that was brought on because of those revelations is a huge stretch.

Filed Under: evidence, jim hood, mississippi, privileged information, sony hack
Companies: digital citizen's alliance, google, jenner & block, mpaa

Hollywood Resists Revealing Details Of Its Cozy Relationship With Mississippi AG Jim Hood, But Glimpses Come Out

from the buddy-buddy dept

The whole legal fight between Google and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has been pretty nasty from the very beginning, but it's been getting even nastier as it drags on. Even in many high stakes lawsuits involving large companies and the government, the filings tend to remain somewhat bland and low key. But this particular fight seems personal to many of the parties involved (going beyond just Google and Jim Hood to the MPAA and the studios it represents). If you don't recall, for a few years now, Hood has been bizarrely blaming Google for the fact that people do bad stuff online, rather than understanding that a search engine isn't responsible for the content that it finds. The reasons for Hood's ignorance became a lot more clear after the Sony Hack, when internal emails revealed that Hood was acting as a puppet for the MPAA whose hand was shoved so far up Hood's behind that it was a bit unseemly.

The MPAA's lawyers ran the entirety of Hood's "investigation." Those lawyers actually wrote the subpoena that Hood sent Google (Hood merely added the opening and his signature). The studios paid for the investigation, and the program itself was explicitly designed not to protect anyone online but to bring down Google (dubbed "Goliath" in the documents). The MPAA hired Hood's best friend, mentor and predecessor to lobby Hood on this... and (coincidentally, I'm sure), Hood hired the very same guy, Mike Moore, to help with the investigation -- which should raise serious conflict of interest questions. As these details were revealed, Hood launched into a bizarre anti-Google rant that was both ill-informed and often flat out incorrect. He insisted perfectly legal things (a news site about dark markets) were completely illegal, he blamed Google for not doing things it actually had done, and he couldn't seem to figure out the first thing about how the internet -- or the First Amendment -- actually work.

With this new info in hand, Google went to court to argue that Hood's demands were illegal, and a clear attempt of abusing the power of his office to attack a business. The courts have overwhelmingly sided with Google up to this point -- putting his demands (written by the MPAA) on hold and saying that it was clear Hood unconstitutionally acted in bad faith in violation of the First Amendment.

The judge also ordered Hood to cough up his communications with the MPAA -- something Hood was refusing to do the last time we checked in on this case about two months ago.

Since then, there has been a flurry of activity in multiple courts as Google, Hood and the MPAA fight it out in increasingly emotional terms. As Hood tried to resist, Google opened up another front in this and sent subpoenas to the Hollywood studios directly for those same communications and more. The studios have resisted strongly, claiming that their own documents are unrelated and they're not a party to the lawsuit. Google, however, has pointed out that since the MPAA was running the government's investigation almost entirely, it seems reasonable to argue that that information should be disclosed:

Each Subpoenaed Party asserts "work product protection," but none can identify any litigation they contemplated at the time the requested documents were created. They claim there is a "First Amendment privilege" shielding their activities from discovery, but they cannot explain how it applies here where they are engaged in lobbying government officials, where that lobbying is a matter of public record, and where their conduct is in no way likely to meet with government reprisal. And they assert "common and joint interest privileges" but cannot articulate any valid "interest" that creates or preserves a privilege. While some responsive documents might theoretically be subject to the attorney-client privilege, the Subpoenaed Parties have not collected or reviewed such documents, let alone provided a privilege log for them.

The studios then hit back angrily at these requests arguing that Google is going way overboard in asking for basically all of its anti-Google documents, even those it never actually sent to Hood (after finally agreeing that they would produce its communications with Hood):

The MPAA and Jenner have already agreed to produce all responsive documents they exchanged with Attorney General Hood prior to Google’s lawsuit; after all, only documents that Attorney General Hood actually saw could conceivably influence him. That should suffice if Google wants to probe the Attorney General’s motives.

Google filed the present motion because it insists on more. Google demands documents that the Attorney General never saw, and that instead include the internal deliberations of the MPAA, its communications with its members, and the legal advice of Jenner, as well as communications with others similarly aggrieved by Google’s conduct, on the misguided theory that such documents somehow are probative of Attorney General Hood’s intent. Moreover, Google’s demands impose very substantial burdens on the subpoenaed parties, not only because they require a wide-ranging search for documents, but more importantly because many of the documents are protected by the attorney-client and First Amendment associational privileges. Not only would the MPAA and Jenner be required to devote countless hours to the creation of privilege logs, but further time-consuming and expensive litigation with Google over the privilege assertions would be a near certainty.

Then, last week, Google hit back in a flurry of additional filings concerning the MPAA and Hood. Many repeat the same basic points, but it's clear that the battle is getting angrier and angrier on all sides. You can sense the exasperation on the part of Google's lawyers as they explain, again, that the studios are clearly trying to hide the details of their plan to use Hood to attack their company in violation of the Constitution:

The Honorable Judge Henry T. Wingate has ruled that Google is likely to succeed against AG Hood under Constitutional and federal law.

It is undisputed that the parties before the Court on this motion — Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. (“Fox”), NBCUniversal Media, Inc. (“NBC”), and Viacom, Inc. (“Viacom”) (collectively “the Subpoenaed Parties” or “the Studios”) — played key roles in AG Hood’s unlawful conduct. The record already shows that as part of a secret plan called “Project Goliath,” they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying state attorneys general to pressure Google to alter its search results and other products in service of their agenda on federal copyright issues. In connection with Project Goliath, lobbyists for the Subpoenaed Parties formulated AG Hood’s demands to Google and ghost wrote AG Hood’s talking points, letters and even the CID that prompted Google’s lawsuit and Judge Wingate’s injunction.

Despite this extensive involvement in the events giving rise to the underlying litigation, the Subpoenaed Parties claim here that: (a) documents regarding Project Goliath, beyond their direct communications with AG Hood, are irrelevant; (b) they should not, in any event, be burdened to produce what they have; and (c) that such materials might be privileged — but it is “premature” to assess that issue. None of these arguments has merit.

And then, after the MPAA revealed some of the requested documents, Google went back to court to highlight that what's been emailed only serves to more strongly support the claims of a questionable relationship between Hood and the studios, which should support their arguments for more information. It starts out with Google outright mocking the MPAA's argument that it's unfair to force them to hand over documents to a court in Mississippi, since they're NY-based companies not operating in Mississippi. Google points out that the MPAA and the studios seemed to have no problem at all going to Mississippi to hang out with Hood, so it seems odd for them to suddenly act as if Mississippi is out of the way.

The MPAA and Jenner claim that Google somehow “dragged [them] into its dispute with [the] Attorney General.” ... The DCA portrays itself as a mere amicus of the Mississippi court, and reassures this Court that it “does not do business in Mississippi.” ... Their rhetoric does not match reality.

The Subpoenaed Parties sought out Mississippi when they co-opted the state’s Attorney General for their anti-Google campaign. Documents withheld by the MPAA until last week reveal a stunning level of involvement in Mississippi’s affairs. The MPAA and Jenner repeatedly travelled to the state to meet with the attorney general; they hosted campaign fundraisers and made contributions for Attorney General Hood (“AG Hood”); and they controlled the pen used to draft AG Hood’s illicit demands and threats to Google. The DCA (funded by the MPAA) likewise visited with AG Hood in Mississippi, established a presence on the ground, and regularly communicated with him — retaining Mississippi’s former attorney-general, Mike Moore, to lobby AG Hood as part of “Project Goliath.” It was Google that was “dragged” into this dispute by the Subpoenaed Parties, and not the other way around.

And then there's more:

The Subpoenaed Parties have made clear that they have no problem acting in Mississippi when it suits their ends. After their years of direct involvement there, litigating objections to a single subpoena in the state could not be an undue burden.

The filing notes that while the MPAA revealed its communications with Hood to Google, it did so only if Google promised to keep them confidential. Google notes that there is no legal reason to do so, but for now it agrees to do so. However, it does reveal the nature of what's in some of them. And what it shows is the MPAA and Attorney General Hood working hand in hand, with the MPAA basically calling the shots.

The Subpoenaed Parties and their representatives made repeated visits to AG Hood’s office in Mississippi to guide his anti-Google work. Even when they weren’t physically at AG Hood’s office, they may as well have been, getting together with him in Denver and Santa Monica and holding a fundraising dinner for him in New Orleans. But those interactions only scratch the surface, as the documents reveal remarkably cozy and constant communications between the Subpoenaed Parties and AG Hood... (MPAA’s Brian Cohen greeting one of AG Hood’s staffers with “Hello my favorite” and offering to send her pictures of his vacation in New Zealand); .... (discussing a meeting with AG Hood’s staff the MPAA’s Cohen gushed “OMG we spent 3 hours.”). This pattern of sustained, intimate contact is hardly the mark of a party that merely “communicated with Attorney General Hood” “previously” as the MPAA characterizes itself.

Despite protesting that Google has “inappropriately grouped” it with the MPAA and Jenner ..., the DCA is no different. It retained Mike Moore, Mississippi’s former attorney general, as a lobbyist to influence AG Hood regarding his Google investigation, even while Moore was serving as a deputized agent of AG Hood in connection with that same investigation. Alongside the MPAA lobbyists, Moore too was in constant contact with AG Hood regarding Google. And he co-hosted the campaign dinner for him that the MPAA put on. ... Similarly, the DCA’s Executive Director, Tom Galvin, was personally involved in discussions with AG Hood, also traveling to Mississippi to meet with him.... Although the DCA claims it “does not do business in Mississippi” ..., its “business” is lobbying and manufacturing press at the behest of the MPAA which heavily funds it. It was extremely active in that regard in Mississippi. The Subpoenaed Parties did not act alone in animating AG Hood with respect to Google, they coordinated their efforts with the major Hollywood studios who make up the MPAA, including Fox, NBCU and Viacom (collectively the “NY Parties”). That coordination continues to this day — the NY Parties are using the same law firm, Jenner, to resist subpoenas from Google, and in the Southern District of New York, they have made relevance, burden and privilege arguments that are virtually identical to those that the Subpoenaed Parties have advanced here.

There's a lot more in the documents being filed (some of which we'll cover in other posts), but suffice it to say this fight is getting even nastier as it continues, and it sounds like the contacts between the MPAA and Jim Hood (the same emails that wanted a ridiculous amount of money to reveal following our public records request) show that the relationship was even tighter than was revealed from the leaked Sony emails.

Filed Under: attorney general, cozy relationship, jim hood, lobbying, mississippi, project goliath
Companies: digital citizens alliance, google, jenner & block, mpaa

More Evidence Revealed Of Hollywood's Chummy Relationship With State Attorney General... Even As He Plays Dumb

from the sometimes-it's-not-that-hard-to-play dept

The saga of the MPAA and it's uncomfortably close relationship with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, continues to unfold. If you don't recall, the Sony Hack revealed that the MPAA had such a close relationship with Hood that it was allotting between $585k and $1.175 million to fund Hood's (misguided and based on faulty premises) investigation into Google, even promising $100k in media support. Hood responded by first denying any serious relationship with the MPAA, only to have it come out that not only had the letter that Hood had sent to Google demanding answers been almost entirely written by the MPAA's lawyer (gotta clear the metadata, guys), but that the MPAA had hired Hood's close friend, political mentor, and predecessor in office Mike Moore to push its agenda to Hood via the Hollywood front group "Digital Citizens Alliance."

Hood, apparently, is not backing down -- though his claims are looking increasingly ridiculous. The Huffington Post discovered that not only had the MPAA's Tom Perrelli written the initial letter, but also that Perrelli prepped Hood for his meeting with Google, telling him what to say to Google. Not only that, but Hood directly called the MPAA, asking for help in going after Google. And, yet, Hood still wants to claim there's nothing there, insisting that he had no idea who Perrelli even worked for.

Really.

First, the damning evidence:

Emails obtained by The Huffington Post show that in January, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (D), president of the National Association of Attorneys General, called a lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Hood was looking for evidence of Google search results leading people to websites with pirated content -- evidence that he hoped to have on hand for an upcoming meeting with the search giant. Besides speaking with the lobbyist, Hood also worked with an outside counsel for the MPAA, a lawyer named Tom Perrelli, who prepped him and other state AGs on what to say during their meeting with Google.

Then the hard-to-believe denial:

Hood said he wan't aware that he was consulting with a lawyer who works with the MPAA on intellectual property issues. He added that he wouldn't find that problematic, if that was indeed the case.

Hood told The Huffington Post that Perrelli has offered to assist his office in its efforts to get search engines to "detect and delist" websites with illegal content and products. He said he did not know that Perrelli is a partner at Jenner & Block, a law firm retained by the MPAA.

"I could not tell you which law firm he works for now," Hood said, adding that he is "not aware" of the relationship between Jenner & Block and the MPAA.

So, Jim Hood would have you believe that he has no idea that Tom Perrelli works for Jenner & Block, or that he's outside counsel for the MPAA, and he expects people to just believe that?

Oh, and some more evidence that Hood absolutely knew he was working with the MPAA and reached out to them for "help":

According to other leaked documents, on January 16 of this year, Vans Stevenson, senior vice president for state government affairs at the MPAA, sent an email titled "STATE ATTORNEYS GENERAL PROJECT: Update on AG Denver Meeting With Google Executives" to representatives from the Recording Industry Association of America and others. The email listed 14 AGs and deputy or assistant AGs who were scheduled to attend that meeting.

In that email, Stevenson wrote: "General Hood called me last night and asked that we provide fresh examples for his planned live 'search' demonstration of illegal site activity, including the availability of motion pictures only in theatrical release, which we are working on with our outside counsel Tom Perrelli’s team."

Note, that earlier this week, Hood had clearly said that he "has never asked MPAA a legal question." Okay, so he insists he's never asked the MPAA a legal question, but called up its government affairs guy and spent hours with the MPAA's top lawyer. And people are expected to believe this?

Watch the spin:

Hood, who told HuffPost he had received assistance from the MPAA but never asked the group any legal questions, noted that Stevenson "is not an attorney, so I would not have sought legal advice from him." He added, "As I said several times, we frequently ask the companies who report intellectual property theft to assist our office in identifying counterfeit items and evidence of how their property is being stolen."

So he called the MPAA "for assistance." Yet, that's not actually what the leaked MPAA emails reveal. Instead, it shows that he called them asking for "search examples" for his staged outrage party directed at Google.

Google has finally spoken out about this and, not surprisingly, the company is not amused, pointing out that this seems like a really nasty way for the MPAA to revive SOPA via Jim Hood. Further, it calls into question the thinking behind the MPAA's campaign:

While we of course have serious legal concerns about all of this, one disappointing part of this story is what this all means for the MPAA itself, an organization founded in part “to promote and defend the First Amendment and artists' right to free expression.” Why, then, is it trying to secretly censor the Internet?

As we noted last time, Hood has a bit of a reputation down in Mississippi for questionable activities, so we can just throw this on the pile. The WSJ once called him a "so-called Attorney General" after a federal judge called Hood out as "so-called law enforcement" for "colluding with [a] trial kingpin to evade a court order." Furthermore, Judge William Acker called out Hood for being "a co-conspirator... and an aider and abetter" You can read all the sketchy details about it here.

Perhaps it's true that Jim Hood meets with high powered lawyers when he doesn't know who they work for. Perhaps it's true that -- without knowing who's paying their bills -- he takes documents from them and sends them off with almost no changes to companies demanding "answers." But if his excuse is, honestly, that he cares so little about the details that he's willing to be a patsy for big corporate lawyers without even knowing who he's now really working for that doesn't make him look good. The choice here seems to be either that Hood is lying about being deeply connected to the MPAA, and the MPAA is practically running his investigation (including the funding and writing the threat letters and subpoenas) or that Hood is so clueless that he doesn't bother finding out who high powered lawyers are working for before accepting their 4,000 word threat letters, signing his name to them and shipping them off.

I'm not sure which scenario makes him look worse.

Filed Under: attorney general, jim hood, mississippi, sony hack, tom perrelli, vans stevenson
Companies: jenner & block, mpaa

The MPAA's Secret Plan To Reinterpret The DMCA Into A Vast Censorship Machine That Breaks The Core Workings Of The Internet

from the how-very-nice-of-them dept

Yes, all the attention these days about the Sony hack is on the decision to not release The Interview, but it still seems like the big story to come out of the hack is the sneaky plans of the MPAA in its bizarre infatuation with attacking the internet. We've already covered the MPAA's questionably cozy relationship with state Attorneys General (to the point of both funding an investigation into Google and writing documents for those AGs to send in their names), as well as the continued focus on site blocking, despite an admission that the MPAA and the studios still don't have the slightest clue about the technology implications of site blocking.

Last week, TorrentFreak noted the various options that were under discussion by the MPAA for blocking sites, and now The Verge has published more information, including the analysis by MPAA's favorite hatchetmen lawyers at Jenner & Block about how site blocking might work in practice [pdf] by breaking DNS.

For years, actual technology experts have explained why DNS blocking is a really bad idea, but the MPAA just can't let it go apparently. It's just, this time, it's looking for ways to do it by twisting existing laws, rather than by getting a new SOPA-like law passed.

To understand the plan, you have to first understand the DMCA section 512, which is known as the safe harbor section, but which includes a few different sections, with different rules applying to different types of services. 512(a) is about "transitory digital network communications" and basically grants very broad liability protection for a network provider who isn't storing anything -- but just providing the network. There are good reasons for this, obviously. Making a network provider liable for traffic going over the network would be a disaster for the internet on a variety of levels.

The MPAA lawyers appear to recognize this (though they make some arguments for getting around it, which we'll get to in a follow-up post), but they argue that a specific narrow attack via DMCA might be used to force ISPs to break the basic internet by disabling entries in their own DNS databases. The trick here is twisting a different part of the DMCA, 512(d), which is for "information location tools." Normally, this is what's used against search engines like Google or social media links like those found on Twitter. But the MPAA argues that since ISPs offer DNS service, that DNS service is also an "information location tool" and... ta da... that's how the MPAA can break DNS. The MPAA admits that there's an easy workaround for end-users -- using third-party DNS providers like OpenDNS or Google's DNS service -- but many users won't do that. And the MPAA would likely go after those guys as well.

At the same time, even this narrow limitation on ISPs’ immunity could have the salutary effect of requiring ISPs to respond to takedown notices by disabling DNS lookups of pirate sites through the ISPs’ own DNS servers, which is not currently a general practice. Importantly, the argument for such a requirement need not turn on the Communications Act, but can instead be based on the DMCA itself, which expressly limits ISPs’ immunity to each “separate and distinct” function that ISPs provide. See 17 U.S.C. § 512(n). A reasonable argument can be made that DNS functionality is an “information location tool” as contemplated by DMCA Section 512(d) and, therefore, that ISPs are required, as a condition of the safe harbor, to cease connecting users to known infringing material through their own DNS servers. Should this argument hold – and we believe that it has a reasonable prospect of success – copyright owners could effectively require ISPs to implement a modest (albeit easily circumvented) form of DNS-based site blocking on the basis of only a takedown notice rather than litigation.

In short, since DMCA takedown notices apply to "information location tools," but not to "transitory network communications," the MPAA would like to argue that just the DNS lookup functionality is an information location tool -- and can thus be censored with just a takedown notice. This is both really slimy (though brilliant in its nefariousness) and insanely dangerous for the internet and free speech. We see so many bogus DMCA takedowns of basic content today, and here the MPAA is looking to effectively, and sneakily expand that to whole sites by misrepresenting the law (badly).

DNS is not an "information location tool" in the sense of a search engine. It's the core underpinning of how much of the internet works. At no point in the 16 years the DMCA has been around has anyone made an argument that the DNS system was covered by the "information location tools" definition. Because that's clearly not what it was written to cover. The MPAA's lawyers (in this "confidential" memo) appear to recognize that this argument doesn't fully make sense because of that, but they seem to think it's worth a go:

To be sure, the argument is not guaranteed to succeed, as unlike a “pointer” or “hyperlink text,” DNS provides a user’s browser with specific information (IP routing information) that the user has requested by other means (alphanumeric internet addresses), as opposed to providing the user with an active interface allowing the user to request information online, as they might from a clickable page of search results. But at least in the literal sense, DNS appears to fit within the list of Section 512(d) functions and a reasonable argument can be made that DNS is more like a “directory” than the provision of “routing” and should be treated accordingly under the statute as a Section 512(d) function rather than a Section 512(a) function.

Pushing this argument would raise many of the problems found with the original DNS-breaking proposal in PIPA/SOPA. It would raise even more serious questions about the First Amendment and prior restraint. Effectively, it would be moving the definition of "information location tool" down the stack, such that rather than requiring the removal of access to the specific infringing content, it would require removal of access to an entire site based on a single accusation of infringement. Someone uploaded an infringing video to YouTube? Under this interpretation, the MPAA can force Verizon to make YouTube disappear from the internet for all users relying on Verizon's DNS. The censorship implications are massive here, especially with no court proceeding at all. This wouldn't require anything in court -- just a single takedown notice, of which copyright holders send millions. Rather than sending all those notices to Google and getting them delisted from search, copyright holders could turn the firehose towards Verizon, AT&T and Comcast, and basically take down half the internet on their say so alone. Yes, sites could counternotice, but ISPs would have 10 business days in which they can keep sites off their DNS entirely.

The results would be insane.

And that doesn't even touch on the technical havoc this would wreak. As we've noted earlier, the MPAA admits it's not clear on the technical implications of this plan, but let's just point back to Paul Vixie's discussion of how SOPA/PIPA would break the internet by mucking with the core DNS functionality, no matter how it was implemented.

What this goes back to is the core purpose of DNS, which is merely to translate a URL into a numeric equivalent to connect. It's not an information location tool for helping people "find" information -- it's just the basic plumbing of how the internet works. It's how basically all pieces of the internet expect to work. If you put in a URL here, then DNS returns the proper IP addresses to follow through there. Breaking that, effectively fracturing the internet, and creating a patchwork of different DNS systems would create a huge list of problems not easily fixed.

And, yet, because the MPAA can't figure out how to adapt to the times, it appears to be willing to give it a shot. Because, hey, it's better than innovating.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dns, emails, information location tools, sony hack
Companies: jenner & block, mpaa

Former RIAA Lawyer At DOJ Will Only Avoid RIAA Issues For A Year

from the ethics? dept

Plenty of folks have noted that the Justice Department has been the landing place for a number of RIAA lawyers. Some have suggested not to get too worked up about this, given that the Obama administration's ethics rules supposedly forbade those lawyers from being involved in issues related to their former work. However, it looks like the limit on these guys is actually quite narrow and for a very short period of time. We'd already noted that the highest ranking former RIAA lawyer, Thomas Perrelli, in his Senate confirmation hearings, said he hoped to use his position to increase intellectual property enforcement from within the Justice Department.

Now, Pro Publica, an online investigative reporting operation, has published the ethics agreements signed by Obama administration appointees, including Tom Perrelli's agreement, which appears to only preclude him from working on issues that impact his former clients for one year. Also, it seems pretty narrowly focused on the specific clients he worked for, but not other aspects of the same industry. In other words, in less than a year, he can certainly start helping the RIAA from within the Justice Department -- and his Senate testimony suggests he's interested in doing so. That's not quite the ethical separation we were led to believe would exist in the administration.

Filed Under: ethics, justice department, thomas perrelli
Companies: jenner & block, riaa

Obama Appoints Former RIAA Lawyer To Associate Attorney General

from the good-lawyer,-bad-client dept

Amidst a number of high profile appointments today was the position of associate attorney general. The high-ranking position has been awarded to Tom Perrelli of the prominent law firm Jenner & Block. By all accounts, Perrelli has led an impressive legal career spanning public service and private practice. However, his most recent tenure in private practice has had him representing the recording industry. Although specifics are hard to come by, according to his official biography, "Mr. Perrelli regularly represents the recording industry in cutting-edge intellectual property, technology, and anti-piracy litigation. He has represented the recording industry in a host of cases arising under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as well as in copyright infringement and digital piracy litigation. He has also represented the record industry and recording artists in a series of copyright royalty proceedings before the Copyright Royalty Board."

Of course, Mr. Perrelli's job was to represent the interest of his clients, but given the questionable legal tactics the RIAA has pursued in its litigation and the problems with the Copyright Royalty Board, there is reason to pause regarding his appointment. But, as Matt Yglesias writes, since the RIAA has relied so heavily on litigation, it's probably a good bet that they chose the best lawyers they could.

Filed Under: associate attorney general, obama, tom perrelli
Companies: jenner & block, riaa