Obama DOJ pick was anti-piracy enforcer

President Barack Obama’s choice for associate deputy attorney general will likely please supporters of tough copyright laws and rile those who favor a more liberal stance.

Neil MacBride was the vice president of anti-piracy and general counsel to the Business Software Alliance. He was known for leading the "Know it, Report It, Reward It" program, which paid out tipsters who called out software pirates.

Obama has already found an associate attorney general in Tom Perrelli, a lawyer who has represented the Recording Industry Association of America on high-profile cases, and Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, has a long history of supporting the RIAA, CNet points out.

CNet also brings up some important copyright issues handled by the Justice Department in recent years: In 2002, the department gave itself the power to prosecute peer-to-peer file sharers. Two years ago, it proposed a bill to allow attempted copyright violators to be prosecuted. The department has even weighed in on one of the RIAA’s individual copyright infringement cases.

Here’s a recent example that’s illuminating, though not directly related to piracy: The Department of Justice is currently considering whether network DVR — a way for cable providers to store recorded programs on their own servers instead of individual set-top boxes — is a copyright violation. The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear the case and left the decision to the Justice Department. It seems this decision will fall to Obama’s recent picks, and the high court could always pass future decisions over to the Justice Department as well.

The Senate has to approve Perrelli and a yet-unnamed "IP Czar," but MacBride’s position does not require the go-ahead from legislators.