RIAA and BSA's Lawyers Taking Top Justice Posts

An anonymous reader writes "Following the appointment of RIAA's champion Donald Verrilli as associate deputy attorney general, here's a complete roundup of all the RIAA and BSA-linked lawyers comfortably seated at top posts at the Department of Justice by the new government. Not strange, since US VP Joe Biden is well known for pushing the copyright warmongers' agenda in Washington. Just in case you don't know, Verrilli is the nice man who sued the pants off Jammie Thomas."

Comments

Change you can believe in

[Wonko the Sane]

http://i40.tinypic.com/11tqy52.jpg

Found on this thread

Re:Change you can believe in

[Lostlander]

Yes, and we don't want our hunters to start using pointy sticks as they might forget how to kill a buffalo with a club or their bare hands if they get too proficient with the pointy sticks we will have a generation of people unable to bash things with a rock properly. And then we will surely be in trouble and we will all starve.

-Rough translation from a crotchety old caveman

Re:Change you can believe in

[ppanon]

It depends. There's good reason to be able to do some back-of-the-envelope tests of your theories - first order approximations to see if your idea makes sense. You won't be able to do that if you can't do basic arithmetic in your brain. Maybe at some point we'll be able to tie computers directly into our brains so that just thinking an equation provides us with the solution, but until that happens somebody who can do the math in his brain will have an edge. Indeed, unless you always whip out the calculator at the cash register, it could mean you're also an easier mark to rip off.

I'm reminded of a couple of chapters in Vernor Vinge's The Peace War where Wil Wachendon enters a chess tournament where he plays unassisted against computer-assisted chess players. He gets his butt whipped by the computer-assisted players. That changes his attitude regarding using computer assist to solve problems. However I think the reverse would be true as well, the computer-assisted players who had never learned to play without the help of a computer would also be at a disadvantage because some of the pattern recognition abilities required for chess would never have developed as strongly. Sure it's fiction, but good SF writers put some pretty strong reality checks on their fiction

Similarly, while you can use Mathematica to do analytical solving of integration problems or differential equations, if you haven't done some of it by hand then you won't have as good an intuitive feel for what the equations that you are manipulating actually mean. That could seriously limit your ability to make new discoveries. But yeah if your ambition is to work on a road crew, you probably won't need to know all of your times tables up to 12x12 by heart.

Re:Change you can believe in

[mangu]

There's good reason to be able to do some back-of-the-envelope tests of your theories - first order approximations to see if your idea makes sense.

Under a first order approximation the earth is flat. There's no relativity or quantum mechanics.

Using a computer does not preclude understanding basic mathematics. However, *NOT* using a computer will make it impossible to have an understanding of a growing part of mathematics.

Try to get an understanding of non-linear dynamics without a computer. Chaotic systems. Not to mention that computers are being used in mathematical proofs of theorems. The four-color map was proved over 30 years ago, with computers, and still today no one has found a way to prove it by hand.

I don't mean that paper and pencil should be abolished, and doing math in the head is still an essential ability in everyday life. But computers are also essential, there can be no teaching of science and mathematics without computers.

change

[DoofusOfDeath]

Well, at least this is change I can believe in. As in, it's certainly not hard to believe.

Damn.

Re:change

[Hordeking]

Well, at least this is change I can believe in. As in, it's certainly not hard to believe.

Damn.

The more things CHANGE!, the more they stay the same. That's CHANGE! you can HOPE! for.

Re:change

[zappepcs]

I don't think that many people in American (or the world for that matter) thought that 'change you can believe in' meant exactly what you imply that it seems to mean. I think the only real change we got was the name plate on the desk in the oval office.

Re:change

[Anonymous Coward]

forcing a religion on people via the government is gone

The problem isn't the forcing of "religion" on the people, it's the forcing of any belief system. That is far from gone, you're just aligned with this presidents beliefs so you don't feel the sting. Others who were aligned with the last president do feel that they are having beliefs forced on them.

I'm not really for or against the man yet as I haven't seen any real results beyond a feel good cult mentality sweeping the nation but I do like the stopping of torture so I'm hopeful. All that said, you're still being fed and likely always will be one mans belief system rather than an adherence to a small set of immutable principles that govern all equally, which was the original goal of this little experiment we call America. Government has become far to profitable for that to return any time soon so prepare to have your beliefs determined for you and disagreement shouted down from both sides.

Re:change

[Hordeking]

In the last month or so, much had changed.

The US's focus on science is back,

How about that manned space program?

forcing a religion on people via the government is gone

Only to be replaced by forcing secular religion on people via the government, again.

foreign policy changes have already started getting us into better light globally,

Because I'm happy to kowtow to the Republic of Ruritania and give a shit what France thinks of my domestic policy.

a renewed focus on alternate energies

No argument.

and not just on a specific ideology regarding alternate energies, but a focus on a broad swath of alternative energies.

I suppose you have better ideas. Let's have your research, or at least your speculations.

Every president will do good things and bad things. GW did some terrible things with our freedom, and Obama will surely do terrible things to other aspects of our lives. Socialized medicine? What next, momma gub'mint thinking for me? My opinion remains that a president is there to interface to the rest of the world, not run my life (why else would we have the 10th amendment?)

Re:change

[sumdumass]

The problem is that Obama was all things to all people. He was worse then Ron Paul who you could at least look at his speeches and see where he stood. Obama's speeches and history of actions typically were vague and open enough that this wasn't possible and he didn't fizzle out like Ron Paul did.

Anyways, I do find it funny because these issues are important issues to people on this site. Rewarding RIAAs laywers and appointing oppressive lawyers like the BSA to federal judgeship is something that effects geeks on this site more then funding abortions with tax dollars and the other issues he has supposedly changed.

The test of Obama's presidency, at least for a lot of us here, is going to be "does his cons outweigh his pros". And currently it looks like the answer is no. Change and hope was Obama's message- it appears the message wasn't clear enough for many to expect shit like this. It may have very well been a vote changer if it where.

Re:change

[Chyeld]

And currently it looks like the answer is no. Change and hope was Obama's message- it appears the message wasn't clear enough for many to expect shit like this. It may have very well been a vote changer if it where.

If the folk throwing a shit storm were the folk supporting Obama before, I'd agree. But everytime I hear shit, it's from someone who from the start was attacking Obama. I'm sure there were plenty of people out there who let themselves be blinded in their expectations, but most of them are NOT the people bitching and making snide remarks. It's the people who decided that the rest of us supported Obama not on our opinion of his ability to lead but because we somehow were 'culted' into believing he was the next coming of Christ that are bitching.

It's the ultimate straw man arguement. "Ha ha! Where is your messiah now!", when most of us went in clear eyed knowing that he wasing going to match our world view 100%.

I can tell you one thing though, he's a damn sight better a match at seeing the world the way I dothan the previous guy or the guys he was running up against (Dem or Rep).

Re:change

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you retarded? Seriously? Because I don't want to waste my time typing if you're physically incapable of understanding concepts above a 3rd grade level.

Only to be replaced by forcing secular religion on people via the government, again.

Secular == Absence of religion. Absence of religion is not a religion. Atheism arguably is, but secularism is not. It does not have rituals, beliefs, and it does not deal with the metaphysical. It simply states that religion should exist separately from government, which is the principle our country was founded on. It's aim is that people have OMG rational reasons for passing laws instead of "last night my dog farted and it sounded exactly like 'gay marriage is an abomination.' I can only assume God was speaking through my dog's asshole, and we must now follow His will".

foreign policy changes have already started getting us into better light globally,

Because I'm happy to kowtow to the Republic of Ruritania

Not saying "fuck you" to our neighbors every day, for no reason, would be a better description of our new foreign policy. Try doing that to your neighbor and see what happens. If nothing, repeat with every neighbor on your block. We don't live in a bubble -- what other people think matters because, at the very least, we rely on them to respect our property and boundaries. We can't just kill everyone who is not us, either on a local or global stage. And not just because it's immoral; we physically can't do it, and we would get our asses handed to us if we tried. Try to remember back to when we were just some pissants on a "new world" who were so sick of getting told what to do by some foreign asshole Monarch that we decided to kill all of their representatives and supporters in a Revolutionary War. Let's not be those assholes.

and give a shit what France thinks of my domestic policy.

It's not about whether or not France dictates our domestic policy, it's whether they're making good points regardless of who they are. Ignoring good advise because of the source is something kids do with their parents. When adults do it, we generally acknowledge that they're fucktards and will probably end up killing themselves because their european neighbor advised them not to piss on high power lines.

We already HAVE socialized medicine, it's just the least efficient form imaginable. We PAY for people to go to the ER, our insurance rates go up because of it, and our tax dollars are spent helping to cover hospital's losses. Every other industrialized nation has formal single-payer healthcare, and while some do better than others, they almost all do better than the US. This FUD about the government telling you what doctors to see, and when, is just that; FUD. Your HMO/PPO is already that bad (and if it's not, congratulations.. the rest of us aren't so lucky and we can't fucking pick because it's tied to our employer, or we're self employed entrepreneurs (you know.. "Americans") and we can't get ANY health insurance.)

Seriously, step out of whatever isolationist safe-room you live in, breathe some air that hasn't been cycled through your Chemical/Biological/Radioactive protective filters, and take note of the fact that our country isn't great just because we say it is. For a perfect analogy, look at our auto industry. It's basically a mirror of the US compared to the rest of the world. Our cars are of shitty quality, they're horribly inefficient, nobody wants to buy them, and the entire industry is teetering on collapse. Everybody else has improved their designs, created faster, quieter, more comfortable, and more efficient vehicles. The same can be said of our societies as a whole. We've left ours floundering in a deadlock between those who want the status quo, those who want progress, and what we get is something worse than either. We need to compete with the rest of the world, and to do that we need the things EVERY other industrialized nation provides its citizens, including healthcare, a decent grade school education, paid college education, and creating something to export other than entertainment would probably be a good bonus as well.

Wait a minute

[Bakobull]

So the lawyers brought these lawsuits not the RIAA. I didn't realize Donald Verrilli brought these lawsuits to protect his copyrights. I don't blame the lawyers for this anymore than I would blame the soldiers for fighting Bush's war.

Re:Wait a minute

[geekoid]

But you need to look at the lawyers behavior in doing their job.

Look for NewYorkCountryLawyer to reply in this thread. He put's it better then I do.

Re:Wait a minute

[LordKaT]

It's all about influence. The more influence you can inject into a government, the more you'll see laws that favor your business model.

Re:Wait a minute

[JustNiz]

You're right that its the RIAA not the lawyer, but it still marks him an opportunistic worm that has no scruples.

Re:Wait a minute

[dmomo]

These lawyers have a vested interest in keeping this war going as long as possible.

The soldiers of Bush's war probably want to go home and see their family.

Re:Wait a minute

[Yvanhoe]

I think the good question is : what kind of contact, relation and common interest do they still have with their former clients ?

Re:Wait a minute

[Kamokazi]

There's a key difference here, mate:

Commander: Go to Iraq, soldier!
Soldier: No sir, I don't want to.
Commander: Then get out of the military.

RIAA: Hi lawyer, would you like to sue people for us?
Lawyer: No, I only accept legitimate cases.
RIAA: Okay then.

Lawyers can turn down cases and keep their job.

Re:Wait a minute

[The Moof]

The RIAA didn't create the legal tactics with the lawyers being their drones following instruction. The lawyers came up with the tactics and loopholes and abused them to the fullest extent. They also walked a very fine line on the legality of what they were doing. You want someone who practices law like that to be in a position of authority in terms of justice?

Also, the soldier analogy is terrible. Soldiers get arrested for going AWOL. There are a few options to get out of service on a moral basis, but I imagine they're difficult to pull off (interesting approach taken by this guy). There also also repercussions for doing so. Lawyers just turn a client down and don't get paid.

Re:Wait a minute

[bleh-of-the-huns]

There's a key difference here, mate:

Commander: Go to Iraq, soldier!
Soldier: No sir, I don't want to.
Commander: Then get out of the military.

You are incorrect here.. very very incorrect. If you are ordered to do something or go somewhere, and you disobey.. you get a court martial.

You sign up for the military, you do as you are told till your obligation ends, then you get out.

Pattern recognition

[Clever7Devil]

I suppose putting the attack dogs for anti-competitive businesses in the DOJ is better than putting tax evaders in charge of the IRS...

With two lawyers

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

as President and Vice President, what do you expect? Perhaps all of that Hollywood support from actors and musicians bought something from Obama and Biden.....

Re:With two lawyers

[tripdizzle]

So true, we need to start electing engineers. While lawyers focus on ideological agendas, engineers focus on efficiency and effectiveness. (Just an observation, of course there are ideological engineers and efficiency-focused lawyers, but as a whole, lawyers are looking out for themselves and engineers try and see the big picture and how everything is interrelated.)

Re:With two lawyers

[tripdizzle]

He was a farmer, teacher, and career politician. He had a generic science degree, no specialized field of study (or in-depth knowledge of any subject). Not an engineer by any measuring stick I know of.

So, what you're saying...

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Cheney|Halliburton = Biden|RIAA

Re:So, what you're saying...

[evilkasper]

Do you think we can get Cheney to take those nice folks at the RIAA on a hunting trip?

There may be some good come of this

[mcgrew]

With those who've sold their souls in those positions, maybe they'll make things so bad that the public sits up and takes notice and demands reform to our seriously dysfunctional copyright laws.

So I, for one, welcome our new plutocratic overlords. At least, I think I do...

Another excellent decision from Him

[Anonymous Coward]

If our Dear Leader likes these picks, then I like them too.

From all of the negative comments I read, I can only conclude that pirates are racist.

As a Brit...

[Xest]

I'm currently more interested in this as a real test of the Obama administration's sincerity:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7870049.stm

If Obama can't come forward and say to us "Yes, your courts can now open that evidence" then it is evidence of one important fact. Obama is a fraud.

He cannot possibly on one hand talk of bringing those guilty of torture to justice and then prevent us doing so on the other.

I think that it's actually our government that's playing up here because they do not want it coming out in the open that our security services were equally guilty of assisting in torture, but all Obama needs to do to make that clear is come forward. By the sounds of it our foreign secretary hasn't even approached the Obama administration yet and if that's true then it's a local issue, if that's not true then the world has bigger problems.

If he can't then yeah, I think he's a fraud and yeah, I think these RIAA appointments possibly are more than just a case of hiring experienced lawyers (i.e. did they work for the RIAA because they believed the cause, or for the money?).

I truly hope it's not too much to ask to at last have an important world leader that can walk the walk not just talk the talk.

Re:Not a bad move IMHO

[mcgrew]

All art, as all science and engineering, is built on the achievements of those who came before. Engineers have it easy, as patents only last 20 years and I'm told are often easy to get around.

Copyrights are forever when compared to an artist's life. I cannot legally build on any work produced in the last hundred years.

This AP story illustrates the folly of our system.

On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: a pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE

Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, and has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.

The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.

The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

"The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission," the AP's director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement. "AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey's attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution."

There is a comparison of the two works, and it's obvious (to me as a content creator anyway) that the Fairey image is fair use.

As to your incredibly ignorant remark, it is exactly like the guy who said "Looks like the days of drunken bums is over" when they passed prohibition. Copyright law is getting worse and worse, and people are responding by ignoring it, just as they ignored laws against alcohol. It WILL reach a breaking point.

I should not have to pay for a digital copy of Jimi hendrix' work. The man is dead and has been for decades. It should be in the public domain as the Founding Fathers wished and as is written in the US Constitution.

Yeah, things are really going to change

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Not only is the RIAA now apparently synonymous with the Justice Department, but we STILL have renditions and we still have a President that believes he has the authority to spy on us (and by extension of the same logic essentially ignore any law or any provision of the Constitution by the same argument).

It was unacceptable when GWB did it, and it is STILL unacceptable and it is still the responsibility of the citizens of the US to put a stop to it.

But hey, Barak Obama is a great guy, we don't need civil liberties.

Fools.

See the forest, not the trees

[Simonetta]

When grasping the fact that the copyright barons are taking over the Justice Dept, remember that there is fundamental shift happening in the media industry.

The media industry is basically a 20th-century phenomenon. The technology of the 20th-century created a structure where the best musicians of the world sold their musical in the format of fixed recordings through a centralized company. The recordings are the product. Under this structure, the musicians (and actors) become stars or mini-deities.

  The main idea here is that the recordings (of music or filmed performance) are the product that is sold on concept of a fixed price regardless of the 'artist' or the quality of the performance. The unnoticed aspect of this model is that there is NO interactivity between the recordings and the people who buy the recordings.

  The 21st-century entertainment media model is one of increasing interactivity between the recording and the person buying the recording. Starting with crude television-based video games in the 1980s, there has been a strong increase in the amount of interaction between the person 'consuming' the entertainment product and the entertainment product itself. The RIAA/MPAA can't reproduce this interactivity, neither can the companies who create fixed product (audio CDs, films). But this interactivity is becoming the key aspect of the entertainment experience that people (especially young people in their teens and twenties) are willing to pay for.

  The more that the RIAA/MPAA are successful at forcing people away from obtaining low-cost fixed recordings, the more that they drive their core consumer base into interactive entertainment products that they don't control. They don't seem to realize this, primarily because the RIAA/MPAA companies are stuck in the 20th-century. The Slashdaughters generally grasp this concept, but they are mostly young and technologically oriented. They are the demographic most likely to copy RIAA/MPAA product, this is true, but they are also the first people to move beyond RIAA/MPAA product to meet their entertainment needs.

  As the economic structure of the 20th-century fades, then so will the influence (and bullying ability) of the global media companies. As long as the RIAA/MPAA lawyers don't understand or control the emerging fields of interactive entertainment, it doesn't matter if the control the US Justice Department. They will remain 20th-century wolves chasing 20th-century sheep.

Re:Only they are to blame

[prisoner-of-enigma]

There is no glory in fighting and killing is wrong, period.

If someone is bent on killing you and the only means you have to defend yourself is with deadly force, is it wrong to exercise that force? Or would you stand on your morals and be slaughtered like an animal?

Your lofty rhetoric doesn't stand up to real-world scenarios, I'm afraid.

Re:OIW

[sumdumass]

The scary part is that we have more to lose from the government then we do from the BSA and RIAA. This is sort of scary when you consider the type of firepower the government is stocking up on. I mean people who have taken single mothers and blind grandmas to court and dragged them around quite capably. Now we can rest assured that knowing that the government now has people skilled in this area. It sort of balances the power out that has been lopsided towards the people for the last 230 plus years.

Now that's change we can believe in. HOPE and all that shit.

Re:Not a bad move IMHO

[mcgrew]

Patently false, you cannot legally build on someones work without paying for the privilege.

It isn't a privelege, it is a RIGHT spelled out in Article 2 Section 8. Copyrights are only there to "promote the useful arts". What I write or paint or record does NOT belong to me, it belongs to humanity. It is supposed to go into the public domain after a "limited time". All I own is a "limited time" monopoly on its distribution, nothing more.

Besides the longer I can keep some hip hop freakin' idiot from corrupting my work the better as far as I'm concerned..

An archetect might say the same thing, but I have the right to do anything I want to a property I own. And we ALL own ALL intelectual "property". If you don't want some "hip hop freakin' idiot from corrupting" your work, don't do it to begin with.

Art isn't really where the innovations come from anyway

Despite the fact that your statement there has no bearing on the argument, I should remind you that archetecture IS art. You could not build a skyscraper in 1800.

if you think that copyright is stopping progress you are in the wrong business

Copyright itself is a very useful structure when properly implimented, and does indeed promote the arts. When it is poorly implimented, as it is now, it is a hindrance to progress.

tag these "messiah" please

[r00t]

It's perfect.

Prior to him getting into office, Slashdot was full of Obama worshippers. They really thought he was going to be a president for nerds. Suckers!

BTW, since this post surely hits too close to home for many, please keep an eye on the moderation.