President Barack Obama on Monday nominated former Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Donald Verrilli Jr. to serve as the nation’s solicitor general.
If confirmed by the Senate, Verilli, now the White House deputy counsel, would assume the powerful position left vacant by Elena Kagan, who was elevated to the Supreme Court. Obama said he was “confident” that Verrilli, one of five former RIAA attorneys appointed to the administration, would “serve ably.”
The solicitor general is charged with defending the government before the Supreme Court, and files friend-of-the court briefs in cases in which the government believes there is a significant legal issue. The office also determines which cases it would bring to the Supreme Court for review.
Verrilli is best known for leading the recording industry’s legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster’s demise when the US Supreme Court sided with the RIAA’s verdict.
Until recently, Verrilli also was leading Viacom’s ongoing and flailing $1 billion copyright infringement fight against YouTube.
A court dismissed the case last year, a decison Viacom is appealing. Viacom claims YouTube committed copyright infringement because it did not police the video-sharing site for copyrighted works uploaded by its users.
And in 2008, Verrilli told a federal judge in Minnesota that merely making copyrighted works available on file sharing networks amounted to copyright infringement—and that no proof of somebody else downloading those files was required.
That argument came in the first of three iterations of the infamous Jamie Thomas file sharing case brought by the RIAA. The judge eventual declared a mistrial of the jury’s first $220,000 civil judgment for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa.
Two more trials later, a third jury has rendered an almost $2 million verdict against Thomas for sharing the same two dozen tracks.
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