p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- In less than a year, ex-RIAA consigliere Tom Perrelli can, “certainly start helping the RIAA from within the Justice Department — and his Senate testimony suggests he’s interested in doing so,” says TechDirt, noting:

“That’s not quite the ethical separation we were led to believe would exist in the administration.”

The DoJ is now run largely by RIAA hacks, said p2pnet recently, naming six ex-RAA button men (including Perrelli) who are now happily ensconced in the America’s Top Cops agency.

Most of them work(ed) for giant law firm Jenner & Block and as a lawyer who’s familiar with the situation put it,  the “first Jenner & Block lawyer begat others — kind of like bunny rabbits or Tribbles“.

Of Perrelli, “accurately described by CNET as ‘beloved by the RIAA’,” not only has he, “been on the wrong side in the courtroom, he’s fingered as instrumental in convincing the Copyright Board to strangle Web radio in its crib by imposing impossible fee structures,” said Corante.

And very senior copyright lawyer told p2pnet in February »»»

As far as I know, Perrelli did not invent the RIAA’s painfully wrongheaded approach of suing its own customers because it was conceived before he assumed his representation of the member companies in these cases.

Instead, he stood forward as willing to commit the full resources of his law firm to implement that tactic – one that failed miserably in achieving its stated goals and that caused serious harm to many regular folks.  The personal impact on the defendants of those attacks were predictable and intentional.

It was an ugly business. Lawyers of his stature and skill know exactly what they are doing.  These were not unintended consequences.

Says Mike Masnick in techDirt »»»

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,” he says.

Stay tuned.

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TechDirt – Former RIAA Lawyer At DOJ Will Only Avoid RIAA Issues For A Year, May 1, 2009