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Deputy Attorney General — an appointment welcomed by the BSA, with president Robert Holleyman saying he would “serve the country well”. MacBride had led the BSA’s global anti-piracy and copyright policy. Earlier, he had served as chief of staff and chief counsel to Biden during his time on the Senate Judiciary Committee between 2001 and 2005 — the time in which the Vice President had railed against the theft of American ideas.

IN 2009 OBAMA began speaking of the need to strengthen intellectual property protection with trading partners and around the world. The issue had become key with a law passed in 2008, under President George W Bush, creating the US government’s first Intellectual Property Enforcement Co-ordinator, a White House position.

Biden was talking up efforts to combat piracy even as Obama’s former supporters sounded an alarm. In a letter to Obama signed by open government and information groups, along with technology and internet law reform bodies, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Library Association and the Entertainment Consumers Association, the president was reminded of his pledge to “update and reform our copyright and patent systems”. It noted the recent appointments of lawyers associated with “concentrated copyright industries” and recommended he create new roles which would “promote innovation and advance the cause of progress in the sciences and useful arts”. They warned:

“Overzealous expansion and enforcement of copyright, for example, can quash innovative information technologies, the development and marketing of new and useful devices, and the creation of new works, as well as prohibit the public from accessing and using its cultural heritage.”

Obama appointed Victoria Espinel the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Co-ordinator — a role confirmed by the Senate in December 2009. Her job was to put into action the administration’s vision for intellectual property. (In late 2013, Espinel changed tack and accepted the roles of president and CEO of the Business Software Alliance, the lobby group for the software copyright industry.) Obama began to speak with increasing force on copyright issues. In January 2010 he told a town hall meeting in Ohio:

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