Jenner & Block – running the DoJ?
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- Joe Biden (right) is the vice president of America.
But he’s also rabid supporter of Hollywood and Big 4 record label efforts to turn their customers, the people who keep them alive, into mindless drones who’ll do what they’re told without question when the cartels tell them.
Making this happen includes mind-raping children — catching them young by using school classrooms to train them to become good little corporate consumers.
“It has been just under 100 days since Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was inaugurated as Vice President, and yet he already seems to be making his mark as Vice President, if only on a subject nobody in the Beltway is paying attention to,” says Tiny Mix Tapes. And that’s intellectual property.
“There is much evidence to suggest that he has become the music industry’s point man in the continued war on copyright, leaving their ultimate victory all but certain,” it says.
Not only the music industry. Biden is also an avid and vocal Hollywood enthusiast.
But why would anyone think HoJoe is using his power and influence on behalf of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music?
Because the DoJ is now run largely by RIAA hacks and he’s a well-known RIAA fanboy …
Contrary to controlling law
A “Department of Justice’s motion for leave to intervene, on the side of the RIAA, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Cloud, has been granted,” reports Recording Industry vs The People.
The motion was unopposed, says the story, going on »»»
The Government’s brief argued that the RIAA’s statutory damages theory, which sought as much as $150,000 in statutory damages for infringement of a single MP3 file, survived due process scrutiny under a 1919 Supreme Court case which upheld an Arkansas statutory damages award for $75, awarded under an Arkansas railroad fare overcharge statute.
The Government also argued that the Court should ignore the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in State Farm v. Campbell, which followed its 1996 decision, BMW v. Gore.
“The brief they filed consists of the same, not very well thought out, material the DOJ filed under the Bush Administration,” says RIvTP’s Ray Beckerman, also pointing out the Jenner & Block RIAA lawyers who joined the DoJ are disqualified from having anything to do with any of the RIAA cases.
Can the DoJ RIAA crew divorce themselves? Cynics might doubt that. But whether or not that’s the reality, Beckerman says he isn’t overly concerned.
“The brief they submitted is completely contrary to controlling law, and will not carry the day, rest assured,” he told p2pnet.
1919 decision
Earlier, the Obama administration’s DoJ, “with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions,” has, “shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old,” said Beckerman.
“Its oversized, 39-page brief (PDF) relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held that the 1919 decision — rather than the Supreme Court’s more recent decisions involving punitive damages — was applicable to an award against a Karaoke CD distributor for 44 times the actual damages.
“Of course none of the cited cases dealt with the ratios sought by the RIAA: 2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file.
“And interestingly, the government brief asked the judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial.”
Like bunny rabbits or Tribbles.
On Biden’s role in the proceedings, a reliable, senior legal source, told p2pnet there’s, “No indication Biden had anything to do with the DoJ appointments or any of the interventions in pending cases.”
What was more likely, he said, was the, “first Jenner & Block lawyer begat others — kind of like bunny rabbits or Tribbles”.
Until very recently, the firm boasted Thomas Perrelli as managing partner, and Tiny Mix Tapes takes it from there, pointing out »»»
Thomas Perrelli, nominated as Associate Attorney General on January 5, confirmed March 12. Perrelli’s position is second-in-command in the DoJ, behind Attorney General Eric Holder. He was one of the leading RIAA lawyers on file-sharing DMCA cases. In one case, he argued for the release of ISP customer information without a subpoena.
Donald Verrilli, nominated as Associated Deputy Attorney General on Feburary 4. Verrilli’s position is third-in-command in the DoJ, behind Perrelli. He was the chief RIAA attorney in Jammie Thomas case of last year, which was won by the RIAA before being declared a mistrial.
Brian Hauck, appointed as Counsel to the AAG in February 4. Hauck’s position is to serve as Perrelli’s lawyer. He represented the RIAA in the historic Supreme Court case MGM Studios v. Grokster in 2005, won by the industry. He also donated a combined $1500 to the Obama campaign in 2007 and 2008.
Ginger Anders, appointed as Assistant to Solicitor General Elena Kagan in March. The Solicitor General represents the government in Supreme Court cases. Anders was one of the litigators in last year’s Cablevision case, which the content industry intended to block the cable company from allowing it to store customers’ recorded programs on its servers.
Ian Gershengorn, appointed Deputy Assistant Attorney of the Civil Division of the DoJ on April 13. Gershengorn’s position entails overseeing the Federal Programs Branch, which recently announced support for $150,000 monetary damages for pirated files during a copyright case. He also represented the RIAA in the MGM Studios v. Grokster case.
Matt ‘The Dentist’
But there’s one appointment Tiny Mix Tapes misses – that off Samuel Hirsch, recruited as deputy associate attorney general, as Beckerman points out in Public Knowledge.
And, “Jenner & Block LLP has lured former U.S. Department of Justice attorney Jessie K. Liu back to the firm where she began her career,” says the company proudly.
Nor let us forget Matt ‘The Dentist’ Oppenheim is also a former J&B employee, and Michael DeSanctis, who takes over from Perrelli as J&B managing partner, “regularly represents clients in the music, television and other sectors of the entertainment industry, focusing on copyright issues involving the intersection of creative content and new technologies and the Internet, as well as on more traditional copyright infringement matters,” says Fox Business.
“He currently is representing Viacom, Inc. in its high-profile copyright infringement suit against YouTube and Google,” it states.
And these are only the people we know about.
Tiny Mix Tapes continues »»»
The fact that these lawyers are in key positions not only allows the RIAA to have a major advantage in copyright cases through federal, but could also shift the DoJ’s focus away from matters of national security and interest towards something that is comparatively minor on the national agenda: internet piracy. Matters are only made worse by the fact that Perrelli was once Verrilli’s boss at Jenner and Block. The conflict of interest cannot be overstated here.
‘… like a fatally wounded wild animal …’
How much has Obama to do with this? Not much, says the story.
However, “the one name that makes sense in these major appointments and shift in policy is Vice President Biden,” it says, adding
He sponsored and co-sponsored major pro-copyright legislation, some of which eventually became law. But there are other, quasi-legislative matters that can be noted: Not unlike what is happening now in the DoJ, Senator Biden signed a letter urging the department to prosecute file-sharers, then considered a civil matter, in 2002. On the five-year anniversary of the passing of the DMCA, Biden was one of only four senators invited to an anniversary party hosted by the late MPAA head and copyright champion Jack Valenti.
Biden also has a limited understanding of technology. He refused to answer technology-based questions in the early goings of the campaign. Past legislation included anti-encryption laws that were defeated in the 1990s. But more recently, he made a significant gaffe at the beginning of his term during an interview on CBS’s Early Show: Not only did he inadequately explain the purpose of the website for the recovery stimulus bill, but he could not explain how to do anything on the website itself, at one point calling it a “website number.” The only other display of ignorance of the internet that could match that statement was Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens’s “series of tubes” rant in June 2006.
With such a pro-copyright and anti-technology position, it’s hard to argue the role of Vice President Biden in the appointment of these lawyers as anything but integral. If he did not appoint the lawyers himself, it is likely that he had the majority of influence in the appointment process. This process is likely to continue, with intellectual property not only being a low priority in the Beltway, but a situation that heavily favors the music industry.
It is quite ironic that, despite his reliance on Hollywood, Obama was endorsed by many supporters of more tech-friendly copyright policy, including Google, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, the EFF, and even the American wing of Sweden’s Pirate Party. They hoped that his somewhat neutral stance on copyright would ease to a more reasonable copyright policy.
Apparently, they had forgotten about Joe Biden and how Vice Presidents can wield unlikely power.
The Buck Stops Here
Who’s correct about Biden’s role? The p2pnet source? Or Tiny Mix Tapes?
But it doesn’t really matter because thanks to the RIAA five — sorry, six — the DoJ has been transformed. It’s now top heavy with lawyers from a corporate law firm which, because of its client base, can hardly be said to be impartial.
Meanwhile, as our source says:
“The RIAA is like a fatally wounded wild animal which all trackers will tell you is infinitely more dangerous at close range than a healthy one.”
Whoever is responsible for saturating the DoJ with Jenner & Block lawyers, at the end of the day, it’s Obama’s responsibility to put things right.
The sign on former president Harry Truman’s desk said, “The Buck Stops Here”.
And as p2pnet said recently, it’s long gone time for an official government probe in the activities of the RIAA and its hired operatives, subordinates and associates.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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