Obama sides with RIAA

President Barack Obama is a couple of months into his presidency, and people are still waiting to see who he sides with on certain issues.  Following in the steps of the Bush administration, Obama has sided with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against someone accused of being a peer-to-peer pirate.

There were "harms caused by copyright infringement" and Internet piracy helps limit "a copyright owner’s ability to distribute legal copies of copyrighted works.  The public in turn suffers from lost jobs and wages, lost tax revenue, and higher prices for honest purchasers of copyrighted works," a recently filed legal brief said.

Obama has also picked several former music executives as associate attorney generals in his current administration, which alarmed music industry observers.  Appointing Tom Perrelli Donald Verrilli, who is now serving as associate attorney general and associate deputy attorney, made some analysts believe it was a sign Obama would be more likely to side with the music industry.

Although this was just one specific case, it’s more likely he’ll side with the RIAA and other industry copyright holders in future cases — it should be interesting to see how involved the administration will be in legal matters, such as file sharing and copyright issues.

Specifically, the Justice Department has closely watched the case between the RIAA and Joel Tenenbaum, who is being defended by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson and several Harvard law school students.  Nesson and students say the RIAA relies on Daconian laws that are the equivalent to "essentially a criminal statute," which makes it unconstitutional.