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Internet Whacked: Obama Picks Copyright Enforcer As Solicitor General

01-25-2011 • rawstory.com

During his private practice, Verrilli had been involved in a number of prominent cases involving online file-sharing and copyright infringement, arguing on behalf of the recording and entertainment industry. He represented 28 companies that sued the file-sharing network Grokster for copyright infringement in the US Supreme Court. In 2005, Grokster was forced to shut down its site following a $50 million legal settlement with the movie studios, record labels and music publishers. In 2007, he led a team of lawyers that sued Google for $1 billion on behalf of the entertainment giant Viacom, alleging that Google's site YouTube was involved in massive violations of copyrighted material. In the same year, Verrilli represented the RIAA against a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas, who allegedly made songs available on the file-sharing network Kazaa. During the case, he argued that "making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network" violated the law, "regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown."