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The Motion Picture Association of America Inc. fired Steven Fabrizio, its general counsel of nearly six years, on Monday after he was arrested in Washington, D.C., for alleged second-degree sexual abuse in the form of threats and blackmail.

"There was a Steven Bernard Fabrizio, 55, of Chevy Chase, MD, arrested on Friday, August 23, 2019, for a Second Degree Sex Abuse-threats and a Blackmail offense that occurred in the 4000 block of Benton Street, Northwest, DC, on Tuesday, August 20, 2019," a representative for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department told Corporate Counsel in an email.

According to the police report associated with the arrest, "the complainant reported the suspect threatening to publicly expose parts of her private life if the complainant did not let the suspect have sex with her." The alleged incident occurred at the complainant's home, the report said.

As GC at the MPAA, Fabrizio, who could not be reached for comment, oversaw all legal, content protection and rights management programs within the MPAA, both domestically and around the world, according to his LinkedIn profile. He joined the organization as senior executive vice president and global GC in late 2013. The veteran copyright and content protection lawyer had spent the previous 10-plus years in the D.C. office of Jenner & Block, where he was a partner and founded the content, media and entertainment practice, LinkedIn said.

Daniel Robbins, senior vice president and associate GC, has been named interim GC at the MPAA, which serves as the voice and advocate for the U.S. motion picture and television industries.

"These charges, if true, are both shocking and intolerable to the Association," the group said in a statement. "We had no prior knowledge of this behavior before these charges were publicly filed."

The allegations are a long way to fall for Fabrizio, who was named one of the U.S.'s top copyright attorneys by the National Law Journal in 2008 and has been at the forefront of the online piracy issue since its early days. In 1996, he began working at the MPAA's music industry sibling, the Recording Industry Association of America, where he founded and headed the litigation department and was lead in-house counsel for the A&M Records v. Napster case, which led to the original Napster's shutting down, according to a 2013 Corporate Counsel profile of him.

Fabrizio left the RIAA in 2001 and continued to represent clients in high-level content protection cases, including many major motion picture and record companies. He represented a group of television networks in their case against Aereo Inc., a company that retransmits television signals to users, allowing them to watch live TV online, as well as the MPAA in cases against cyberlocker HotFile.com and BitTorrent index IsoHunt.com.

It was not immediately known who is representing Fabrizio.

A Georgetown University Law Center graduate, Fabrizio began his legal career as an associate for four years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore before moving to Proskauer Rose, where he was an associate for another four years before moving in-house at the RIAA, LinkedIn said.