Dmitry Protests Running

Tom writes "the US-wide protests against Adobe and Dmitri Sklyarov's arrest in LA last week are running at full speed. eastcoast protests have already posted pictures - here from New York and here from Saint Paul. More protests are running right now, or scheduled for later today. meanwhile, Adobe has pulled a "we did nothing wrong" press release from their webpage that they put up earlier today. and EFF is meeting with adobe representatives, expected end of talks: around noon PST." Imagine if IBM had arrested the people who cloned BIOS. What an amazing change the world has gone through in just a few short years. Way to go Adobe. In the future the bigger company will just arrest the smaller company's CEOs for competing. That can't be legal. Worst of all, our taxes are footing the bill. Update: 07/23 7PM EDT by C :In response to Sklyarov's arrest, an online pettition has been started. If you would like to let others know your stance on the arrest and the DMCA issues in general, then feel free to add your name to the already grouing list.

Comments

Taxes Footing the Bill

[Wyatt Earp]

I've not followed the case outside of the headlines I've seen here, but I'm going to comment on the "taxes footing the bill".

The reason our (Americans) taxes are footing the bill is because it's a Federal Issue, not a local or state government issue. And also remeber that as a Corporation, Adobe is also paying taxes...and thus they are also footing the bill.

If you don't want your Federal Taxes going to things like the FBI...you have a number of alternatives.

1. Don't pay your taxes.
2. Move somewhere that doesn't subscribe to DMCA or whatever idiotic agreement Adobe is using to justify this to the Federal Government.
3. Vote in Local and Federal Elections
4. Don't support the companies that do this kind of thing.

Unfortunately the EFF was a little counterhelpful

[FreeUser]

Here in Chicago I got email today about the noon protest(s), which the EFF had announced in previous days was "on hold." Alas I got busy putting together a couple of new machines ande didn't see the email until the protests were over, so while I was all set last Friday to take a couple of hours off around noon-time and join the protests, I ended up missing them altogether as a direct result of the EFF's notice to hold off. I am understandably quite annoyed.

The EFF's conduct (disclaimer: I am a paying member of the EFF) in this aspect of the entire issue was unhelpful, to say the least. Which is probably exactly what Adobe intended by scheduling the talks for today, while Dmitry rots in an undisclosed jail somewhere.

Adobe's attourney-goons and PR droids aren't stupid ... they almost certainly expected this outcry when they had Dmitry arrested, and this action to diminish any protests was almost certainly calculated for just that effect. What is annoying is the EFF's role in taking that bait hook, line, and sinker.

The appropriate approach would have been to continue the call for protests and have the protests go on while negotiating. This is typically what is done by other groups, Unions, etc. Caving before-the-fact and calling off protests just to get the other side to the negotiating table is not how one goes about strengthening one's hand, or one's cause ...

Didn't IBM try?

[ethereal]

There was a court case, wasn't there? Civil, not criminal, though. Because at some point IIRC a judge ruled that Phoenix had pursued appropriate reverse-engineering practices. That is the relevant case law upon which "clean room" reverse engineering is based. The only thing missing at the time was the media attention.

It's interesting how corporations are "people" in some regards but not in others. Shouldn't the FBI be going after Elcomsoft the company, not just a programmer that works for them? If Elcomsoft was bankrupt, their creditors would only be able to seize the company, not individual employees' property; shouldn't employees be protected from criminal prosecution in the same way? Of course, this only makes sense if there are real ways to punish whole corporations; the current system of a slap-on-the-wrist fine for an essentially immortal corporation is insufficient.

P.S. Mirror the photos, please, it's going to be a long day for those web servers :)

Text of Adobe's Press Release

[renard]

Text of Adobe's original press release is given below. Judge for yourself!

-Renard

(Revving up Adobe PR machine...)

These are the key points that will be developed in the FAQ below:

• Adobe's goal is the receive assurance from Elcomsoft that they will not sell or distribute their illegal digital lock pick.
• To protect the intellectual property of eBook authors and publishers, Adobe asked the Department of Justice to help stop the sale of this security cracking code.
• Adobe welcomes the input of "White Hat" security experts that inform us of possible security weaknesses. Dmitri Sklyarov was not arrested for presenting a scholarly paper.
• The Department of Justice made the decision to arrest Sklyarov.

Adobe's goal in the Elcomsoft case is to help protect the copyrighted works of authors, artists, developers and publishers. Adobe reported this suspected eBook authors' copyright violation to the U.S. Attorney's office. Based on the information gathered in the investigation (see affidavit ), the U.S. Government chose to take legal action to stop the sale of the for-profit security cracking code, and unilaterally decided to arrest Dmitry Sklyarov.

Elcomsoft found a security weakness and made no effort to communicate what it found to Adobe. Instead, the company distributed a software product for profit that can be used to compromise copyrighted works in the United States, violating U.S. law. Adobe took every measure likely to be successful to get Elcomsoft to cease and desist. Adobe's legal department sent letters to Elcomsoft, their ISP and their credit card clearing house used to offer these products for sale. Adobe forwarded the case to the U.S. Attorney's office only after Elcomsoft failed to respond and/or cease and desist. Our goal has been to stop the sale of the program in the U.S.

Contrary to some reports, the issue is not that Adobe alerted the U.S. government about an expert exposing security weaknesses. In fact, Adobe encourages its customers and the software community, including White Hat security experts, to provide feedback on the performance of its software in order to make improvements. Adobe's concern is that a "digital lock pick" is being distributed to enable others to compromise the copyrighted works of authors, artists, developers and publishers, which is why Adobe alerted the U.S. Attorney's office.

Corporate

Q: How are your customers, the publishing community, responding to this?
A: The Electronic Frontier Foundation considers themselves a leading civil liberties organization that works to protect right in the digital world. We are in constant communication with our customers who are also concerned about issues of privacy and protection of digital property. There is strong support from the publishing community, as evidenced by the statement from the American Association of Publishers. While the laws to enforce the protection of digital media are in their infancy, we believe they are based on the same principles as traditional media--protect the copyrights of authors, artists, developers and publishers while balancing the right to fair use.

Q: What's going on with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)?
A: We are engaged in discussions with the EFF to work together to address this situation. We believe a mutual frank discussion of how best to resolve the current issues will benefit Adobe and EFF.

Q: As a result of this case, what is Adobe doing to strengthen the security of its products?

Re:Text of Adobe's Press Release

[renard]

Uh huh. Typical spin and double-talk.

Yup. One point that has been made on the Free-Sklyarov mailing list is that if Elcomsoft's eBookReader is a ``digital lock pick'', well then, lockpicks are legal (in most of the US).

It's breaking and entering that's a crime.

-Renard

Title?

[Ravagin]

Dmitry Protests Running

My first thought: "What does this Dmitry guy have against running?"

I had to read the blurb to fully understand that. Come on, headline common sense. It should tell you clearly what the story is about. If I had a red pen, I'd circle the word "running" and scrawl "WC?"

I'll stop bitching offtopic now.

-j

20-second explanations

[tunesmith]

Want to know how to explain it to others?

1. For the Computer User "Anyone who is a frequent computer user probably hears about how one program or another has a security problem. You're usually directed with instructions of where to download the fix or patch. Even a couple of years ago, the security experts that would find the problems would often be thanked publicly or even be given a check. Now, however, it gets you arrested. Dmitry Sklyarov gave a talk on the security flaws in Adobe's encrypted pdf system, and Adobe reacted by having the FBI arrest him on criminal charges."

2. For Adobe's Customers: "Adobe charges you thousands of dollars for encrypted pdf solutions. If there was a security problem in this solution, how would you like it handled? Ideally, it would be a proactive admission of the problem, and the innovation and release of a solution. However, the DMCA makes it possible and legal for Adobe to handle it differently: sue to keep it quiet. When companies use this strategy, as Adobe has in the arrest of Dmitry Sklaryov, a student who gave a talk on faulty security mechanisms, it means that you cannot be confident that your secure solution is actually secure, and you cannot be confident that other people out there don't already have the means to break your security."

3. For the corporate president: "Relying on the DMCA invites you to lose your competitive edge. If you are in the technology sphere, you rely on innovative solutions. You sell your solutions using phrases such as 'time-tested', 'robust', and 'secure'. The DMCA invites you to protect your products not through innovation, but through lawsuits and intimidation. When you protect through lawsuit, you are not protecting through evolution. You may win in the short run, but you erode your long-term viability. When you act as Adobe just has in arresting a foreign programmer who pointed out flaws in their product, you have succeeded in silencing and penalizing the voice of potentially useful information, but you haven't improved your product."

4.For the patriot: "Since the birth of our nation, 'Yankee Ingenuity' has been a phrase that has described the American spirit of our inventors, our tinkerers, our problem-solvers. There has always been an American right to take things apart to see how they work. Now, it is illegal. If someone wants to take apart a company's security protocol to see how it works, with no intention of selling or pirating the media it protects, that someone can be thrown in jail for five years and given a $500,000 fine. Last week, Adobe took advantage of this law and started to destroy a man's life. This anti-innovative spirit is far from what America used to be about, and America isn't what it once was. The man who was arrested is from Russia - and what he did is legal there."

5.For Adobe: "Adobe had a man arrested last week for committing crimes - investigating and talking about shoddy security implementations - that every security professional employed by Adobe would probably be guilty of if the law had existed 15 years ago."

6.For Vladimir Putin: "So you have a citizen, a student, doing PhD work in computer security, and a Russian company that creates software that protects the legal rights and responsibilities of Russian consumers. The product is designed to be used for a person's personal material and even has safeguards against using it for piracy purposes. The company does not sell or distribute pirated material. This citizen travelled to the United States to give an academic talk. The United States government, beholden to a US Corporation, then arrested your Russian citizen and is now holding him without bail."

tune

Re:20-second explanations

[tunesmith]

1. He didn't hold the copyright, his employer did.

2. Even if his employer broke a law, this should have been a civil suit, not a criminal suit against an employee that was convenient to catch.

3. The employer was not breaking a law in Russia, where they are located.

4. The product was designed for fair-use purposes, not for piracy.

5. It is not illegal anywhere to own or use the product.

6. Just because Dmitry/Elcomsoft finds a security flaw does not require them to tell Adobe and no one else. They did not find it to audit a company's security. They found it to protect Russian consumer rights that are comparable to what was formerly "fair use" here. (What's more, I believe the ability to make back-up copies is *required* there, so it is beyond just protecting rights. You could argue it is a responsibility if they were to own encrypted pdf documents.)

7. The product was briefly for sale, sold less than 20 copies, was then open-sourced. It also has protections to help keep it from being used for piracy purposes (I am unfamiliar with what these controls are, however.) It was not written/designed/sold for the purposes of piracy.

I appreciate your opposition to the DMCA, but I just think the problem is worse than you actually yet realize. Everything I wrote is true.

tune

Re:And where was Slashdot...

[Eloquence]

I agree entirely. Slashdot editors might argue that they see their site as a news outlet and not as a way to organize the community. But Slashdot hardly reports any news of its own anyway, and their editorial style is highly opinionated. Millions of people go to Slashdot with that knowledge, expecting to be informed about upcoming events of importance to people with a certain common mindset. Hemos' judgment was definitely extremely bad in this case, it's not very much of a stretch to say that he (involuntarily) sabotaged the protests. The protests were last mentioned on Friday - waaay to motivate folks to attend a rally on Monday.

A crisis such as this one is an important test case for Slashdot as an organizing medium for the tech community. In this instance, Slashdot has completely failed. Even just reporting about the protests would not have been enough, you need to motivate people to take part in such a protest shortly before it. Show images, link to videos, post a permanent story on the front page -- that singals importance. You have to reach people's emotions to get them off their asses (and for that, you have to get off your own ass, Hemos). Do you think CmdrTaco and Hemos will understand that? Or will anyone who points out their failure simply be moderated down? Slashdot is a site with great political potential -- but in spite of years in the making, it has failed to realize its potential so far.

Visitors only have a limited viewtime per day. Do you really want to give that all to Slashdot, if it degenerates into a fake community site primarily giving you a highly filtered digest of CNN, ZDNet, Wired News and press releases? If this is not a test case -- an unjust arrest, an unconstitutional law, rallies all over the nation --, then what is?

You may want to check out some alternatives:

• Kuro5hin is a user-moderated community with a wide scope of topics (specific issue-related stories are usually voted up by the users if well-presented, stories are not typically one-liners like on Slashdot. I've never seen a really good story voted down on K5)
• Advogato is a very open community with trust-based moderation that has often discussed issues related to information freedom
• Indymedia is a leftist general community news outlet that sometimes has tech stories as well
• infoAnarchy is a Scoop-based weblog discussing issues of copyright and information freedom which I edit (here's my summary of Dmitry's case)
• Wes Felter's weblog is a pretty good digest of current tech-related events
• Radio Userland allows you to automatically compile a personal digest from many web news-sources using RSS (Windows and MacOS) -- if Slashdot is only mainstream news, you might as well use a tool like this one

Others?

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DMCA criminalizes what should be a civil issue

[namespan]

The biggest problem with the DMCA -- and the
problem which this whole issue highlights -- is
that it criminalizes what should be a civil issue.

It may be that there's some room for civil penalties when someone distributes a copyrighted
work w/o permission. It might (a stretch, but
might) even be workable to have fines and accountability for tools whose sole purpose are
to distribute copyrighted works w/o permission.
But throw somebody in JAIL because they did this?
No way.

Not to mention the sovereignty issues. Just once I wish that some of the people I know who constantly carp about the the United Nations would wake up and realize that we're far more in danger of disolving the sovereignty of other nations and giving up ours to monied interests than becoming slaves a shadowy UN conspiracy.



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Stellar Logic

[nanojath]

This is my absolute favorite part of this press release"

Q: Elcomsoft claims that eBooks in Adobe PDF are insecure and that the encryption is weak, including ROT-13 which is notorious for its lack of security. Are those claims true?

A: Adobe has never sold ROT-13 as a security product. Adobe incorporates sophisticated, industry-standard levels of software encryption to make our products difficult to compromise. However, no software is 100% secure from a determined, illegal attack. When used legally and in its intended fashion, the Acrobat eBook Reader secures eBooks purchased by locking the eBook to the hardware from which it was purchased. The Elcomsoft software circumvents the security afforded by our software to protect copyrighted works."

Parse this logic with me: When used LEGALLY, it's secure. Well, duh: it's ILLEGAL under the DMCA to attempt to circumvent security, so of course it's freakin' secure. "This alarm system works great, sir... as long as noone attempts to enter your house without first ringing the doorbell and being invited in."

Then theres: "the Acrobat eBook Reader secures eBooks purchased by locking the eBook to the hardware from which it was purchased"

Translation:

The Acrobat eBook Reader renders the concept of electronic books nearly worthless by attempting to tie content to a single piece of proprietary hardware.

Gee, I wonder why this e-book thing isn't taking off? I'm an AVID reader - I read hudreds of books every year - and I've never even considered buying one of these things.

Can EFF get a grant from these people?

[r_j_prahad]

I found the following on the Adobe website (emphasis mine):

"We support nonprofit organizations that service disadvantaged youth, the homeless, people with disabilities, minorities, the elderly, and victims of abuse; provide disaster relief, medical and hospice care, and meal service; provide education and literacy programs; support human rights; support the arts; protect the environment; and support animal rights." http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/philanthropy

Maybe the EFF could apply to Adobe for financial assistance in getting Dmitri freed.

Alan Cox is pulling out of USENIX because of this.

[Cunt Turd]

New Scientist has a story about this as well. Computer scientists from around the world are now boycotting US conferences. Yikes.

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thank you for teh support

[Dmitry Skylarov]

I am wanting to thank all American support I have am receiving. All support around world is apprecaited much, but the American support is especially special because America is teh home of ADOBE and the DMCA and Dmitry is are stuck in the American KGB jail! So thank you for teh help! But it is not in the clearing yet because Dmitry are still in jail.

Teh jail is actually pretty nice, and they have a cafeteria, with pudding! I like pudding. But teh only computer is a lime green IMAC and it is SUCKS!!! Is only have 12.4GB of memory and a 64MB hard drive and is running MICORSOFT OFFICE 95. But is okay because IMAC allow Dmitry to post on Slasdot. Dmitry like Slashdot and many of his friends are there! Hooray for teh Slasdot!

But the jail is perfact? No!!! There is a large man and he is black and he is having a hard penis. In Russia there is stories of the men in the American jail who anal sodomize in teh butt and Dmitry not like that. So I want to get out of jail while still are are having "ass cherry." Ha! Ha that is funny.

So onec again thank you for teh supports and they rally and such! And hope that Dmitry get out of teh jail and return to cracking the ADOBE ROT13 ENCRYPTION ALGORITHM OF FUN. But this time I do it in Russia where no are evil DCMA law to put Dmitry in teh jaill.

Also I want to bomb Adobe.

So are thank you for the time! And keep the fight up!

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