Obama's "pro-copyright industry" Department of Justice sides with RIAA's $150,000-per-song penalty

When President Barack Obama appointed two lawyers who had previously defended the Recording Industry Association of America to near-the-top posts at the Department of Justice, copyright pundits correctly anticipated that the Obama administration wouldn't turn out to be as BitTorrent-friendly as some bloggers had hoped.

In a memo sent from the Department of Justice to a U.S. district court in Massachusetts, the DOJ -- which legally refers to its opinion as "The United States of America's response" -- has declared that potential fines of $150,000 per track are not unreasonable in the case of a former Boston University student who allegedly disributed bootleg copies of copyrighted songs by RIAA artists. Joel Tennenbaum, who was a 25-year-old grad student at the time of the alleged violations, is challenging the case. 

Two of Obama's DOJ appointees have past professional ties to the RIAA:

• Tom Perrelli, associate attorney general, third in rank. Perrelli has represented the RIAA in several cases, including an unsuccessful attempt to compel Internet service providers to reveal the identities of accused music pirates without a judge's order.
• Donald Verrilli, associate deputy attorney general. Verrilli represented the RIAA in a high-profile Minnesota court case that resulted in a single mother being fined $222,000 for sharing music files over the Kazaa peer-to-peer network. A federal judge has since declared a mistrial in the case.

The memorandum, typed up by DOJ trial attorney Michelle Bennett and available as a PDF from Wired, says that "Congress acted reasonably in crafting the current incarnation of the statutory damages provision." Under the current wording of the Copyright Act, damages for a single copyright version can range from $750 to $150,000.

The memo was filed on Sunday, according to Wired. 

Bennett further wrote that such damages are necessary because of "the need to deter millions of users of new technology from infringing copyrighted work in an environment where many violators believe that their activities will go unnoticed." A separate Wired report notes that the RIAA has sued more than 30,000 people to date.