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Say Here Why Sklyarov Should Go Free
Skylarov's fate has significance far beyond encryption programs. It goes directly to the very idea of security online, of hacker exploration, the open sharing of software processes, and to the creativity and challenge that is at the heart of the Net. This process of sharing, exploring and challenging is one of the primary reasons for the Net's growth, from gaming to messaging to system software to open source. This case also involves the future of copyright and intellectual property. Sklyarov is in jail because of a poorly-conceived provision of the DMCA written by entertainment company lobbyists that goes far beyond existing copyright law.
Sklyarov violated no aspect of traditional copyright law -- only the outlandish provisions of the DMCA. His behavior is similiar to that of many journalists and critics who, over the years, have obtained secret, classified or copyrighted corporate or governmental information to expose flaws, weaknesses or more serious forms of wrongdoing. Few have been arrested and thrown in jail. The federal courts have always taken the view that the greatest threat to freedom is the unchecked power of large institutions, from governments to auto manufacturers. In a sense, the future of Net security depends on people like Skylarov probing for weaknesses and flaws. Whatever his motives, Sklyarov's behavior was in this protected tradition.
Even if Skylarov is freed tomorrow, his arrest and persecution will chill criticism of corporate products and power, and threatens the survival of individualism online. This is a major escalation for increasingly aggressive and monopolistic tech and media corporations, some of which are aggressively moving to control content and communications. Copyright is their new wedge. This criminal case should be dropped, and Sklyarov freed.
Except that MPAA v. 2600 set the precedent that says that TELLING someone how to FIND a tool that will let you circumvent methods designed to control access or duplication to a copyrighted work, is also illegal under this code.
Actually the ruling said the opposite - merely telling them is ok, but SHOWING them is not. Which is why 2600 changed the link (infringing) into a plain-text non-clickable URL (non-infringing).
The DMCA may outlaw a lot of things, but the US courts know how to deal with printed text and spoken speech, and I don't think anything in this case rises to the gravity that'd be required to form an exception to the 1st amendment (i.e. the "fire in a crowded theater" or "clear and present danger" exceptions).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Money that you spend on your computer does not count as "royalties". The record companies and artists are not in any way a party to the transaction between you and the computer vendor. A lot of people have the misconception that buying a computer and getting online entitles them to get everything for free. That's not the way it works, at least not until PC vendors become more creative with their bundling arrangements (shudder)
Not to mention the CD's that I've subsequently purchased because of this.
Again, it's not the same thing -- you paid for the CDs, but you didn't pay for the online music.
What about the next person who will rot in jail? Wheat about the next Kevin, or Sklyarov, or the hundreds of people whos rights are unfairly limited? How will they be served by his release? I find your short-sightedness to be callous. Unjust laws need to be removed, unfairly imprisioned people need to be freed.
The plain fact is that Sklyarov may have broken the law as it exists and the answer to that isn't to release him, but to fix the law. Having a wife and children isn't a basis for pleading for someone to be released from incarceration. I have no wife. I have no children. Am I therefore more socially acceptable to have behind bars?
The mistake is having a law that we feel is wrong. We feel it is wrong, but it does exist. If we want ot not to exist then we have to break the law, then have the law broken. Trying to get exceptions based on pity and whining about how they're political prisoners isn't the way to affect social change. It's not a conspiracy: It's the law. We thikn the law is bad, but letting him out won't fix it.
Kevin Fox
I don't see this case as anything more than further proof of an ugly aspect of human nature that has shown itself, over and over, throughout recorded history:
Troublemakers will be smacked down.
The only variables of this equation that change are the amount of trouble the dissident makes and the extent to which they get their ass kicked for it.
I believe the DMCA is a broken law. Gandhi fixed a broken law once...
TV was developed, movie companies cried that they would go bankrupt because no one would go to the movies anymore. Wrong, TV and movie viewership continued to increase. Same thing should be happening with online music and traditional record companies, but because they're so paranoid and retarded when it comes to recent historical records, they can't see beyond their bleak self-painted picture of doom and gloom for their business. The first record company that finally embraces mp3's and returns to giving them out for free and promoting free mp3 giveaways, will be the first to make a breakthrough in their profits.
You said something to the effect that buying a computer was similar to paying royalties. Clearly, it is not. You also claimed that buying CDs legitimises otherwise illegitimate behaviour. It does not. And now you resort to silly insults.
I'm not claiming I'm entitled to mp3's. I'm claiming that mp3's increase the overall sales of artists records
That's very good news then, because if it's true, then record companies will realise that it's in their best interests to give away MP3s. The ones that don't will go out of business.
TV was developed, movie companies cried that they would go bankrupt because no one would go to the movies anymore.
Again, one word: royalties. If the online music distributors such as napster pay royalties, I'd say your analogy would have some merit.
but because they're so paranoid and retarded
Have you ever run a succesful business before ? It pays to be paranoid. The reason that the more sucessful companies are paranoid is because the ones that weren't paranoid are all dead.
The first record company that finally embraces mp3's and returns to giving them out for free and promoting free mp3 giveaways, will be the first to make a breakthrough in their profits.
Good. But you should realise that these business decisions are for the record companies to make. You may believe that it's in their best interests to give stuff away, but that doesn't justify taking what they aren't prepared to give.
Agreed totally, you seem to have misunderstood the side of the argument I was on :). My point is that in ethier of those cases the US government would (and did in the case of the US airmen) demand immediate release, loudly, and rightously. Where is this rightousness when it comes to foriegn nationals who are wrongly accused by the US (keeping in mind that I'm speaking of the US in general, and that I realize that the vast majority of /. readers probably think more.
:).
My appologies if my inital post didn't make as much sense as it should have, my blood caffine level was unusually low at the time
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Here is a radical suggestion for you: Code is speech.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
I agree whole-heartly about releasing Skylarov. But what he "broke" was NOT source code it was compiled binaries. It would be like you "enhancing" a MS DLL to provide you with AOL passwords (althought I find it very hard to believe you would even want one.) Playing Devils advocate here The facts are not all they seem to be or we are only allowed to see one side of this predicament. To "arrest" someone in this country (ignoring where you call home) you must have a reasonable belief that someone was breaking the law and that it even was against the law. But while the press might have picked up on this part Skylarov he is NOT technically under arrest but he's being "detained" (probably the same way that some other Americans in foreign prisons are) but until he sees a judge to hear the merits of the case he's still has exactly 0 rights. He does have some rights but IMHO only POW rights under the Geneva convention, He is not an American citizen but so what neither was that Cuban child Elian? but you don't hear the press say Elian wasn't/shouldn't be afforded at the very least a fair hearing do we? The bad press that Adolphe^H^H^H has garned from this fsckup can't be measured and while I do applaud their efforts to have him released I think this was a publicity stunt that backfired.
I agree. The point of this post of mine was to point out "the law" attitude is not only un-american, but inhuman.
- Z
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Fortunately, I have a lot of friends - both online and in off, and many co-workers. You seem to have an opinion that no one agrees with. You probably represent a large company in some way, or feel the need to protect yourself. I believe your response is a troll - nothing more.
I do not represent the wolf. Life liberty and property, property in that case being tangible assets, e.g., guns, real estate, houses, possessions. He never said life, liberty and monopoly. In fact, life liberty and property was rephrased as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In my ethos I strive to achieve a more star-trek like existence, where you can serve yourself (with notoriety, money, etc) and mankind at the same time. There is no need to "milk" technologies - look what happened to TUCKER in Detroit. Fucked out of businesses by the monopolists. I want to protect against that. Milking is what petrol and car companies do, prevent fuel cells, ceramic engines, higher fuel efficiencies in motors, etc. We won't see next generation technology in cars for some time because the current has to be milked.
I am upset with you. I never said ban. Copyright. I said freedom from burdensome copyright, not freedom from all copyright.. You don't know how to read and understand this is moderate position.
Elcomsoft had stopped charging for the Ebook software before he entered the company. He had done so at Adobe's request. He is an employee of Elcomsoft and cannot be charged for what that business entity had done. We have similar laws here where companies are formed to financially and legally shield people from faults.
Of government. Your attention to picayune details is annoying. You misinterpret his words, in my opinion. Are you referring to all the monopolistic and tax payer wasting exclusive government contracts?
As far as monopoly and sacrifice. Yes, monopolies are a sacrifice. I don't shun copyright or patent, I just want them used more carefully and for fair use to be protected. You can still make a product, if it so damn good then you don't even need to patent it. People need to focus on being a better company and product and not thinking about sitting on and licensing your IP for all eternity, e.g., RAMBUS. Again, you misread, malign and come up with shoddy arguments.
I'm going to stop responding to you because you have been a troll, this is clearly someone who sits and reads and has his heart set on disagreeing with me for no apparent reason other than the sake of argument. There is always one of you in a discussion thread, so I guess you can say "YHBTYHLHAND." If you weren't trolling me, then you are very un-American in your thinking - I can't think of anyone, conservative or not, that thinks any of Jefferson's reasoning wasn't intelligent and well thought out.
- Z
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Good alternative points or a crock? You're not making much sense here.
**>>BELCH
My opinion is that the case should go to trial. I'm not for the DMCA, but this would give it a test case in court, and if the ruling goes against the DMCA (and it should by all rights) then that would help to get it changed or revoked. Eric Gearman
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
I said on July 23rd on M-Net that the Russians would try to trade Tobin for him and on the 27th, the Times said they may release Tobin without linking the events. Today, Tobin was released. This is a play up to the Bush administration. Skylarov will go free. IT may not be as timely as anyone expects.
Lets not forget Adobe, after all non of this shit would have happened if they hadn't been for them. I know they dropped the charges but that is bullshit. They have just let the US taxpayer foot the bill and walk away from it. Well I say a lesson needs to be driven home and maybe any other company that decides to pull this shit might think twice.
Hit them where it hurts, don't buy thier shit. Bullshit! That wont' mean one goddamn thing. One more geek not buying thier shit won't mean anything. Do what I've done. I've taken Acrobat 5, Photoshop 6, Capture 2, and Framemaker 5.5, zipped them up and dumpped the on Gnutella.
So far I've averaged 4 or 5 downloads a day. That comes out to be several thosand bucks that Adobe won't get. When a certain person goes free I'll take the zips down. Until then if enough of us do it, it will start to hurt.
Oh yeah and you that are thinking pirate and shit like that. Fuck you. Adobe shouldn't have done what it did. Tough fucking titty
You are missing an importaint point here. This is a US law. It does not apply to actions taken by non US citizens outside of the US, no matter how much US government likes to play world police.
Freedom to speak should exist even when a US corporation finds such speech uncomfortable.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
At what point, if ever, does society have a right to say that the author/inventor has received enough and no longer has the right to use the police and courts to extract monopoly rents from the rest of society?
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
So did I. Using my above example, $700 for the computer, amounts to $1 per song of the ~600+ songs I've downloaded over the past year and a half I've had the computer. Not to mention the CD's that I've subsequently purchased because of this. My argument is still valid. (Actaully, my computer cost $1500 at the time I bought it, but since it's not just used for mp3 listening, I estimate that the equipment used to listen to mp3's amounts to ~$700).
Redundant? I think not.
here's an idea, how about actually including a link to the petition instead of rambling on about nothing?
If things like this are possible, it would be impossible to check the security of software. Overall security would get worse, and people who don't care about about laws (criminals) would have a MUCH easier 'job'
Sander Steffann, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
He is not in jail because he wrote the software... which is a clear violation of US law that took place outside its jurisdiction. He is in jail for sharing his findings and thereby facilitating others to break US copyright law... an illegal act that he did commit in the US.
w o r l d w i d e w e b e r
I agree with the arguments that DCMA are bad. He shouldn't have been jailed for what he did. But! he makes it a little difficult for himself because he tried to sell (I read it somewhere) the stuff. He should have posted it on the net in good hacker spirit.
Look up the words appoint and elect and then try to figure out if presidents are supposed to be elected or appointed. Consider that the Supreme Court appointed the president even if one agrees that Bush won the popular election. This meens that the presdent was not elected by the people! If it doesn't become obvious to you then what is wrong with the picture, don't think about it any longer. You'll never get it. I'm certainly not going to bother explaining to you how the major news networks are literally owned by the major corporations, and how brainwashed you really are 8^{
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You think this was just a big misunderstanding on the part of our legislators?!?
No. This wasn't a misunderstanding at all. This was intentional. Why else would both the House and Senate have passed this piece of shit legislation with a voice vote? There's only one good answer I can think of: they individually didn't want to be held accountable. They wanted to be able to lie to their constituents if it came to that.
Happens that it passed unanimously in the Senate (99-0), or so I've heard, so fingering them is a bit easier. The same isn't true of the House, however.
It's not like the DMCA is a horribly complicated piece of legislation or anything. It's actually very simple compared to most of the legislation I've seen. So no, I don't think there's any reason to believe at all that they misunderstood anything.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I'm sorry, but you have completely missed the point. Do you forget that Skylarov did not break the law? He wrote a program in Russia which was legal in Russia (and most other parts of the world, for that matter). If you are part of the small Slashdot majority who believes the contrary, that Skylarov did break the law and should be thrown in jail, then that tells us where you stand. But you aren't, because you say so yourself: unfairly imprisioned [sic] people need to be freed. You can't have your cake and eat it too; you can't both believe that he did nothing wrong, and also that he should be martyred for the greater cause of putting the DMCA in the limelight. That is just completely unfair to Skylarov, his family, everyone involved. I have no problem with the prosecution and incarceration of people who really did break our laws. I really don't -- and that goes for even such travesties as the DMCA. But in this case, no laws were broken. The fact that the DMCA was ever signed into law distresses me greatly, but it's much more distressing to me that our government has essentially taken hostage a man who committed no crime. And as a responsible citizen, it should be to you too.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Probably nothing new here... I just wanted to be added to the list of people who think the DMCA and the way it is being enforced is terrifying.
Ten years ago I realized (as many did) that the US was heading into a corporate dark-age. This is the incident that announces to me, that it has truly arrived.
Countries are no longer sovereign; corporations are. They are USING countries in their battles at the expense of the citizens, and ultimately probably at their own expense though they are too short-sighted to see it.
Companies are creations of enormous power with huge intelligences and resources at their disposal, but only one motivation. To turn a profit by next quarter. That's it. Engines of mass-destruction who only want to grow faster and larger. I laugh when people talk about whether or not AI's or robots are going to take over the world... I think all we have to do is see whether corporations (our latest creations) are going to do so...
I have too much to say on this topic to write it all in this forum, but I don't mind saying that I'm getting scared. And that isn't hyperbole... I'm scared.
The only other thing I will say is that this is why the open source movement is so important now... Because when you get fed up enough with what's going on, and you just can't moraly support the companies that are banding together to take away every freedom to secure their own control... THERE WILL BE AN ALTERNATIVE. There will be software you can use, bands you can listen too, publications to read, communities of people to support you, and products you can make(or buy) that won't be used to further your own destruction.
It is essential to move open-source back to our physical communities as well, so that we can support each other in personal/physical ways too and complete the open-source movement.
LWH
I think murder etc is pretty universally considered a crime. But what if the Saudi's decided to incarcerate foreign nationals who were known to have drunk alcohol in their country
I think the logic of the above post is off slightly... Thought experiment: I yank some poor shmuck off the street and tell 'em that if they yell, I'm going to blow their brains out. I then proceed to beat the stuffing out of them. Sure enough, they yell and I blow their brains out. Under the logic above (The shmuck's death was a direct consequence of their speech) I am immune to prosecution? That doesn't sound right.
Read the indightment. There is nothing in it about selling software at DEFCON.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Of course, you don't usually hand an item to somebody, accept money in exchange, then try to claim it's still your "property."
The idea that Sklyarov is so damaging and dangerous to society that he needs to be physically restrained and detained is hard to swallow. If he were the CEO of an American company that sold the same type of software, I doubt he'd have been arrested. There'd be a brusque exchange of letters among lawyers, maybe a conf call on the Polycom with Adobe and the feds, but no handcuffs and jail. Or if he were a college student giving away free printouts of eBooks on the street in Berkeley, he might get a talking-to. But no, he's a Russian and a computer programmer, which seems to make him doubly dangerous and doubly mistreatable - break out the cuffs.
Paul Boutin | professional journalist and amateur search engine optimization consultant (well, at least to my wife)
Paul Boutin | writer for Slate, Wired, etc
You are so full of s*** it isn't funny. You can not be guilty of committing a crime if the act you performed was not against the law in the jurisdiction it was performed in. There are some international laws that can apply in some cases but copyright infringement is not one of those. He developed the software in Russia. He can be tried in Russia under Russian law if what he did is illegal there. The company he works for contracted with a US company to sell the software here. I'm not sure they can even get the company he works for under US law. They were not the agents advertising and collecting the money for the software. As a foreign company using a domestic company for distribution purposes it can be argued that the US based company is the one that is responsible for knowing whether or not the software can legally sold here.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Copyright should be a civil matter, hardly federal. Drug running is covered by federal and international treaties (even unpublished ones) or extradition - where extraterritorial kidnapping is more or less ok. Both would fail on these counts. This should be bailable. Who is going to pony out the dollars for false arrest ? Oh - if civil , adobe would have to pay the lawyers, but uncle sam has generously decided to pick up the tab, and that damm 1'st ammendment will get in the way, and why was he allowed to speak first, not arrested first, smells of a setup, showcase , whatever. He really should have been busted for spam, or a monopoly on the product, or tax thingys, jaywalking, or subject to planted evidence. The jury won't be impressed by hearing delays/ bully boy tactics - the facts are pretty clear cut. Europe may see it as exposing a trade secret, or facilitating software interoperability , but not fit for extradition . True, this is standard punishment for scumbag journalists who cross the line, but you will be pushing shit uphill to link it to national security or war exertions . Copyright is civil.. repeat..
I feel like that. COMPLETELY. It makes me feel like I'm riding on the back of some crazy animal, and I can't stop it, and I'm not safe from it.
:)
Or SOMETHING
"Now, I fully support and affirm your points on civil disobedience. But you must recognize that if you are going to take the civil disobedience trip, going to jail is one of the potential prices. In this age of the easy disobedience of DeCSS t-shirts that reality might seem remote. It wasn't remote to Henry David Thoreau, who you cite in your cited post on the why DMCA isn't a law. He went to jail for civil disobedience. It certainly wasn't remote to American revoloutionaries, who faced not just improsonment but death due to their resistance to the crown.
You are, of course, assuming I've never been to Jail for an act of civil disobedience. This would be a very bad assumption.
Now on to the point of the FBI agent and his duty. Last time I checked, you had to be American to be an FBI agent. So, by logical induction they are American. Therefore, their duty is not to enforce the law, but to commit the act of civil disobedience. They don't get to shirk their responsibility as an American just because they are FBI, though clearly this is what the typical FBI agent thinks if we judge from their actions.
Now that we have determined that the DMCA is not a valid US law, and that it is the duty of the citizen to commit an act of civil disobedience against all such laws and that FBI agents are Americans (which I guess we forgot to consider before?) I think we can all agree that the FBI did not do what they are supposed to, even if we have been brainwashed into thinking they have. But then again, probably not. In order for us to all agree, we'd have to see things the same way, and I can't even prove you exist 8^}
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Unfortunately, it is clear you have a misconception of "rights". In your ethos the individual exists to serve society. It cannot be otherwise if the product of one's mind, his intellectual property, is deemed to be the property of society. I prefer a framework in which society exists only to protect the rights of the individual (those being life, liberty, and PROPERTY), or in Rand's words: "to protect man from man." In this framework the only rights being violated are the rights of Adobe and the copyright holder to be secure in the protection of the products of their own mind.
> "I feel it is important to this case, > especially from the American prospective, to > point out that one of the most ingenious, > prolific and outspoken forefathers of the > USA, where the DMCA and other vile laws > live, believe firmly that the bill of rights > should have included and explicit reference > to freedom from burdensome and unfair > copyrights and legislation thereof."
I recognize that you are asserting Jefferson's opinion here but it is nonetheless illogical to say that banning copy right preserves a freedom. You are simply manipulating language to confuse an issue and further a position that is inherently contradictory. You can't be free from something if you don't have a right to that which is being protected in the first place. For example, you should be free from me hitting you because you have the right to be secure in your person. However, you cannot be free from me denying you healthcare because you have no right to healthcare in the first place, and I have no obligation to provide you healthcare. To say that one has a right to healthcare is to say that another has an obligation to provide it. It is a perversion of language and what rights mean.
You can't preserve "freedom" when the means of preservation is the enslavement of another. There is no preservation of freedom in this case because there is no right to the product of another man's life. One could just as easily bastardize what it means to be free by saying: "I believe firmly that the bill of rights should have included an explicit reference to freedom from burdensome and unfair protections of the Negro to be secure in the ownership of the product of his own labor." You don't want freedom "from" anything, you want the freedom "to take" another man's creation, just as slave owners wanted the freedom to take the life's work of their slaves. It is a leech ethic that ignores the primacy of the individual and the right of the individual to be secure in his person, to own and control his creations and do with them as he will.
> "We are railroading an expatriate to whom > our laws do not bind."
The product he sells is sold in the U.S. He was giving a speech that for all intents and purposes was advertising for the technology which is sold in the U.S. The argument that the U.S. doesn't have jurisdiction to arrest him is tantamount to suggesting that I am exempt from criminal prosecution if I smuggle drugs from Amsterdam into the U.S. and then brag about at the latest "High Times" conference. I'm against drug criminalization but it is ridiculous to suggest that either I or Dmitry are necessarily exempt.
> "With regard to monopolies they are justly > classed among the greatest nuisances in > government."
I find it interesting that Madison used "in government" rather than "of government". I know that I am ascribing a difference which in context was not his intention, but it is obvious to me that the most nuisance of all monopolies are the monopolies in government.
> "But is it clear that as encouragements to > literary works and ingenious discoveries, > they are not too valuable to be wholly > renounced? Would it not suffice to reserve > in all cases a right to the public to > abolish the privilege at a price to be > specified in the grant of it?"
Madison was exactly right to make these arguments. The only way to create market incentives for creation is if the creators have some means to profit by that creation. This is the very nature of intellectual property protection. It works! Moreover it is just.
> "Is there not also infinitely less danger of > this abuse in our governments than in most > others? Monopolies are sacrifices of > the many to the few. Where the power is in > the few it is natural for them to sacrifice > the many to their own partialities and > corruptions."
Madison makes a big mistake here. Monopolies ARE NOT sacrifices of the many to the few. The "many" don't lose anything when the "few" create a new product, in fact they gain in the wealth creation that accrues from the trade and use of that new product. To say that the "many" are sacrificed is a ridiculous assertion which can only be true if the "many" had an inalienable right to the creations of the "few" even in advance of those creations being created. It's a right to something that doesn't exist. Where does that right come from? Why does my creation, born of my own hands or mind, become the property of society. How much do I have to pay to be free. Tell me because I will pay it now so as to not live under this yoke one day longer.>
> "Where the power, as with us, is in the many > not in the few, the danger can not be very > great that the few will be thus favored. It > is much more to be dreaded that the few will > be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many."
This is exactly why the Bill of Rights was created. Democracy, for all of you that have yet to figure this out yet, IS NOT FREEDOM. Democracy is a very small part of a system that keeps us free. Democracy is valuable only in so far as it is not its alternatives: monarchy and oligarchy. The Bill of Rights was added to protect minorities from the general will of the majority, and it is this very instance where it becomes abundantly clear that these protections are needed. Everyone wants something for free. Only nothing is ever free- anything that appears free is really stolen, which is what the vast majority of you Marxists want. The "many" wants to take the songs, and books, and articles, and ideas of the "few" without any compensation to the individual responsible for its creation.
>"I like the declaration of rights as far as > it goes, but I should have been for going > further. For instance, the following > alterations and additions would have pleased > me... Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed > to persons for their own productions in > literature, and their own inventions in the > arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, > but for no longer term, and for no other > purpose."
>"The blank was to be filled in at some future > date, obviously. The law is written with the > sense that this right would be the right of > the people to protect themselves against > intellectual fraudulence by companies, e.g., > the theft of the 'little man's' ideas. In > addition to which, there is always the > stance that the people of the fledgling USA > would be safeguarded in the Bill of Rights > against unduly long copyrights."
I have no idea how you possibly concluded that Jefferson was anti-corporation and pro-individual from that passage. If you draw that conclusion from the word "persons" I think you are making a big stretch which is wholly ungrounded in Common Law which ascribes to the Corporation the status of "person" for purposes of law. Jefferson was a lawyer don't forget.
>"This principle that the earth belongs to the > living, and not to the dead, is of very > extensive application... Turn this subject > in your mind, my dear Sir... Your station in > the councils of our country gives you an > opportunity for producing it to public > consideration... Establish the principle... > in the new law to be passed for protecting > copyrights and new inventions, by securing > the exclusive right for 19 instead of 14 > years."
Jefferson again is poorly reasoned in this instance. Jefferson basically argues that because the earth belongs to the living, the intellectual property of the dead should be used by the living, thereby extracting its utility. But Jefferson isn't just saying that "earth is for the living" he is saying that one has no right to confer his intellectual property to his progeny. The reason this is poorly reasoned is because Jefferson makes no consistent assertion for real property. Jefferson certainly didn't argue that upon death all of one's assets become the property of the "many". It makes no sense to segregate intellectual from real property. To be honest I don't have a big problem with 100% death taxes (although I would expect a 0% life tax in exchange), which is effectively what Jefferson seems to be advocating here when taken to its logical end, though if we go down that road we should be consistent between intellectual and real property.
> "Another thing, imagine if the copyrights > were in fact awarded to the people who > invented them, not the companies who > subsidized them. It would be interesting to > see a world where companies like DuPont and > Merck (and every other chemical and drug > exploitation companies, because that's what > they are, the money is in the treatments, > not the cure) are made to treat their patent > holding scientists with the utmost respect > and regard, even more so than the greedy > shareholders, because if they left for > another company, so leaves their patents!"
Those scientists could alternatively develop their patents without the use of corporate facilities in which case there is no contractual obligation to the corporation. Why don't they simply do that? Could it be that the scientists are in fact exploiting the companies for use of their labs and research budgets? I can't imagine it otherwise, because the scientists are free to go elsewhere but for some reason they do not. Damn those exploiting scientists!
> "The most important of all the Jefferson > arguments is this: If IP is so unique, so > wonderful and so great, why does it need > protection? I don't believe I had quoted > this particular argument above, I will work > to find it, but the statement is true. If > something is obvious, then it really isn't > IP. Would you like Bob Metcalfe, the Linux > is a piece of crap Windows 2000 rules moron > who founded 3COM to hold the patent > on 'Ethernet'?"
This is just plain stupid. Whether something is "wonderful and great" is completely unrelated to the ease of copying it and hence stealing it. Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is surely unique and beautiful and though its greatness is all the more pronounced by the fact that it will never be 'replicated' by another mind it is easily 'duplicated' and hence stolen.
> "Don't you think its nice that other > companies compete with 3COM for the Ethernet > space, such as Intel, CISCO, et al? Doesn't > the standard referred to as "Ethernet" get > better and better because these companies > compete for your business in the same > segment?"
I'm assuming by your argument that 3Com created the Ethernet standard. If this is true, 3Com has no moral obligation to open their technology up to competitors. That being said standards are important, so it is likely that if 3Com took such a stance their competitors and customers would have a strong interest in colluding to develop a competing standard that was "open". The point is that just because standards are valuable it doesn't follow that society must appropriate the property of another.
> "He who receives an idea from me, receives > instruction himself without lessening mine; > as he who lights his taper at mine, receives > light without darkening me. That ideas > should freely spread from one to another > over the globe, for the moral and mutual > instruction of man, and improvement of his > condition, seems to have been peculiarly and > benevolently designed by nature, when she > made them, like fire, expansible over all > space, without lessening their density at > any point, and like the air in which we > breathe, move, and have our physical being, > incapable of confinement or exclusive > appropriation." > Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas > Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, > Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181. Link: > http://www.lib.virginia.edu/copyright/"
Let's say this is true, and assume that he who "lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me". Further, lets assume that half of the world has a lit taper and the other half do not but need their tapers lit. Those in need will go to those that have and bargain for the borrowing of their light. Yet, since the marginal cost of allowing one use of the taper is zero the market will bid down the cost of this service to approximately zero. Light spreads everywhere at almost zero cost. No problem. The market works, and property rights are preserved in that no one with a lit taper was coerced by law to provide their taper to another for free. In other words this statement gives no argument either moral or practical for abandoning property rights.
Just because intellectual property rights exist doesn't mean that ideas won't spread. In fact, the author of the property has a vested interest in their spread, and will even promote the spread if he is compensated justly for it.
>"Among the latter, under pretence of > governing they have divided their nations > into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not > exaggerate. This is a true picture of > Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our > people, and keep alive their attention. Do > not be too severe upon their errors, but > reclaim them by enlightening them. If once > they become inattentive to the public > affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies, > judges & governors shall all become > wolves. " Thomas Jefferson To Edward > Carrington Paris, Jan. 16, 1787"
There is no doubt in my mind you represent the wolf.
- J McLane
I feel that the Feds and Adobe are participating in some playground style bullying here. Skylarov was let into the country, allowed to give his presentation and then arrested. I dont think this is going to discourage others from writing similar software. Its just going to keep them from wanting to visit the US.
I also do not believe that the software Skylarov wrote is illegal. Its the same argument the gun lobby uses. Guns dont kill people, people kill people, right? Well, Software that can be used to bypass copyright protection doesnt break the law, people who use software to bypass copyright protection break the law. It is for the end user to behave in a legal and responsible way.
Nor do I think that this kind of copyright protection is legal. Once I purchase an item, it is mine, to do with as I please. I do not look forward to a world where every piece of information and even every item is owned by a corporation and merely licensed out. (Ever read the Philip K. Dick book where the guy has to stick a quarter in his front door to get out of his apartment?)
We've all heard the horror stories (or seen the sucky movies) about some american going to thailand, or china, or mexico or [insert foreign country here] and being wrongfully imprisoned for X number of years. I imagine thats what we must look like from most of the rest of the globe.
Oh yeah. And remember how pissed off we were when China wouldn't give us back our spyplane crew?
Finally, I think we could have found a better, friendlier way of settling this dispute than to stick the offending programmer in jail.
Your
Bad metaphor. If you sold nazi memorabilia in the US, and then went to France to teach a seminar on selling Nazi memorabilia... now that's more in line with what happened here.
w o r l d w i d e w e b e r
Eff has called for more protest and for all to attend his San Jose Bail Hearing links are here
But they didn't bring any charges for the speach. The charges were brought for the actual software.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
If they base their "hard-working living" on state-sponsored restraint of trade, they deserve their losses. Find a way to make money not involving bizarre attempts to interfere with the use of your own products (!) and to throw your customers in jail when they object.
greed
Pay money to read this shit? Spare me! :-)
/me scribbles his signature
-metric
No, the charges were brought for distribution of, or "trafficking in", the software.
Now, he didn't hand out copies of the stuff, so how was he trafficking? Answer: he showed people where to get it.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
"I pledge allegience to the flag of the United Sates of America, and to the republic for which it stands..."
cat /dev/clue > /usr/slashdot/anon
Yes I can prove this given two seconds on Google. See this provision of the DMCA : http://www.hrrc.org/html/page158791.html
And to respond to the other guy, of course VCR != Macrovision device. However, when your VCR must respect macrovision, by law, and your Digital TV can enable/disable macrovision based on the broadcast signal, by law, your VCR has essentially been defeated.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
What if a guy from Netherlands distributed pot at DefCon in the States?
In response to the jurisdiction issue:
I realize I may very be using a prejudiced source in citing the FBI's affidavit filed in court, but here goes.
The affidavit states that AEBPR license keys were sold through Register Now!, and American ecommerce provider, to American buyers, in American currency. Would this not constitute US jurisdiction? Sure, the transactions between Register Now! and US buyers would make those parties liable, but would the transactions between RN and ElComSoft make them culpable within US Jurisdiction?
Secondly, isn't the fact Skylarov is expressly identified as the coyright holder sufficient to warrant his arrest?
According to the affidavit, the splash screen of the program identifies him as the rights holder. I've since been corrected by unconfirmed reports that his name only appears on the 1.0 version, and only then jointly with ElComSoft.
Even so - isn't that enough?
Understand, I'm not saying the DMCA isn't a bogus law that needs to go, just trying to clarify some technical points of the case.
While promoting freedom of speech is nice, it irks me that the poster child for American free speech is just another company trying to make money. If AEBPR were Open Source, then there's something I could REALLY get behind.
Given the byzantine nature of the DMCA, violating one or more of its provisions does not seem to be too difficult. If you would really like to see the DMCA put to the test, then put your money where your mouth is and violate it. Flagrantly. And be prepared to suffer the consequences, which will include separation from your friends and family, a "hacker" stigmatization that will reflect upon you and your work for at least the next decade, and, barring some 11th-hour benevolence on behalf of the EFF and prominent defense attornies, a large drain on your financial resources. I might add that you would at least have the luxury of a passing familiarity with the American judicial system, which, unfortunately, is more than can be said for Skylarov. Until you are ready to take that leap, please don't come on Slashdot expounding the abstract benefits of this case while simultaneously completely blinding yourself to the actual human story underlying it all.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Did Dmitry break the law? Maybe he did. But if it's determined that he did break the law, then that is the whole problem! What he did should not be against the law.
In America in the 1980's we laughed at and criticized the Soviet Union for how backwards and oppressive it was of individual rights like freedom of speech and religion. When the Soviet Union threw dissidents like Andrei Sakharov in jail, we justly protested the Soviet Government's actions. How ironic that now apparently the tables have turned. FBI = KGB, US = USSR, Big Corporations = Communist Party Oligarchy, Dmitry Sklyarov = Andrei Sakharov.
2. Fair Use: What fair use? ;-) This has been beaten to death, but I must mention it simply because it is so compelling. I am allowed to copy things for my own personal use. You can try to stop me with anti-copying measures, but if I succeed there is nothing you can do about it. Which means that a device that allows me to do this cannot be illegal. (this is all supposing that fair use rights have not been summarily thrown out the window by the DMCA).
3. Punish the crime, not the tool. This is my own personal opinion, but I think the US could really look to this when making laws. I can kill someone with a ballpoint pen, and it would still be murder. I could also do this with a gun, a knife or just about anything. It is the murder that is the crime, not the gun (or pen, etc.). I know many do not agree with me on this, but we need to draw the line somewhere. Making extra penalities for commiting a crime with a certain weapon or possessing a weapon that enables you to commit crimes is simply stupid. Similarly, just because I have the tools to commit copyright infringement doesn't mean I will do it. I used to download songs from Napster that I already owned on CD just because it was a pain to rip them all.
4. Code is Speech. If you claim that it is not, please explain how RSA encryption was exported as a book, or how DeCSS can be printed on a T-shirt. Anything that can be written in a book or on a T-shirt is speech, and is protected (as long as it isn't a death-threat or a threat to national security).
5. The DMCA sucks. :-) The above are most of the reasons. It is a law that was passed after huge lobbying efforts by enormous corporations for one purpose only: their own bottom line. It was not passed to protect the artists or writers, give me a break. It was passed to protect the publishers. They need to get the message that if widespread pirating is being done, they need to focus on quality of service and ease of distribution. Why didn't the VCR kill television or movies? Because it is easier to pay for cable and a better experience to go to the movies. Plus you can RENT tapes. As long as a CD costs $18 there will be a poor college kid trying to pirate it because he DOESN'T HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY.
Those are most of the reasons I could think of off the top of my head.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Not that this is particularly a new view point, I will post it to be heard; for what that is worth.
My first point is that the DMCA overrides many of the copyright issues that people have lived with for years, in fact, they take them for granted. Issues like so called "fair use," although tricky, is a major issue that the DMCA throws out the window. Also is the issue of the expiration dates on copyrights. I think this is required, not only because the earlier laws require it, but it is required for an innovative country. Without this, I think America wouldn't be what it is today.
Secondly, the DMCA was passed without the knowledge or consent of the people of the United States. I know that we live in a representative government, where our elected officials speak for the people at large, but this particular law, and alarmingly, many like it, were passed on behalf of the recording industry, movie making industry, etc. This is not the will of the people. In fact, how can someone say that the people are benefited by this law? I say that they are not. Their rights are being trampled by this abomination. In most, if not all states, if a contract is signed that isn't beneficial to both parties, it can be easily contested as invalid. This law is similar, I think it would be over-turned, because it doesn't have the best interests of the American people at heart.
Thirdly, in what way is Adobe hurt by Dmitri Sklyarov's actions that it would have been able to avoid if this didn't contain one of the political buzzwords like "encryption" or "hacker"? In the past, when a company was guilty of lying or committing a crime, it is usually up to a private citizen (American or otherwise) to point it out before the public at large and the Judicial system would take notice? Adobe tried to tie something to a single instance of computer hardware, making it non-copyable. This is shaky legal ground without the DMCA, as it probably violates "fair use." Furthermore, the encryption used is flimsy and easily breakable. If I am betting my company on the quality of this encryption, the low quality of the Adobe product constituted a defective product. Only because it is illegal now (under the DMCA and no other law) to try to break encryption, would this even have the possibility of not being broken and turned into a copyable medium. What Mr. Sklyarov did was to enable people and corporations to understand the risk of using Adobe's defective eBook product. This has never been a crime, and it shouldn't be a crime. Without this type of "expose," we are in the position of the king in the children's story "The Emperor's New Clothes." We know that there are problems, but they are never fixed, because no one is allowed to talk about the problems, thus Adobe--or any other company--has no reason to improve, thus killing the innovation that I mentioned in my first paragraph.
Lastly, it is a crime to talk about encryption subversion under the DMCA. This treads on dangerous territory, that being free speech. Yes, there are instances where we give up free speech for the greater good (the classic yelling "fire" in a crowded theater for example), but this isn't one of them. There is no greater good, only the good of a few wealthy companies, the ones which lobbied this law into existence. In fact, I believe that the criminalization of talking about this if a disservice to America. It is only by talking about things among peers that real scientific advances come.
I still think a run-of-the-mill petition would be in order as well. I think until we actually take action that the "old school" politicians will recognize, we are just shouting to the converted.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
This guy's going to rot in jail until he's ready to confess to anything. A precident will be set that can be used should any geek raise his/her head in the future.
Sorry, that's just the way it is. This is the big leagues and the name of the game is hardball.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The DMCA is part of the United States Code of Law. And in section 1201, it clearly states that no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under copyright law. Does anyone really think that a lawyer would have trouble making the case that software that circumvents the protection on ebooks does not qualify as an infraction of section 1201? I am not a lawyer (or a proponent of the DMCA) and I could argue this case because it is so simple. Cops, lawyers, and judges do not write law! And corporations (despite their power) don't either. So let's all get mad at our politicians.
Like it or not, the DMCA is the law of the land.
w o r l d w i d e w e b e r
Let me tell you something about Internet petitions. They don't work.
If everyone signs it with names like "l33t h4x3r" and "BoJangles Smith" it is not going to work. The names could be forged by a multiple account process, and even if they are not, the log on names are anonymous.
Think for a moment, will the FBI, Adobe, or the Criminal Justice system care at all at a long list of anonymous people? No. So write your real name, address, and hell, send a picture too, but all to a snail mail address. Or if you are going to do it over the internet, verify the information somehow.
If nothing else, I think Skylarov would like to know the real names of people who support them, and not their "aliases."
Dmitry also writes and sells spamware.
...how can the DMCA have anything to do with this case?
(on a side-note: is it me or did
-----------------------
Moderator's essentials
I would say what i think but i dont trust katz not to try and make a book out of this like he did with the columbine postings.
Mess Stuff Up
as they start to cry hands held to the sky
In the night the fires burning bright
the ritual has begun Satan's work is done
DMCA the Number of the Beast
Sacrifice is going on tonight
This can't go on I must inform the law
Can this still be real or some crazy dream
but I feel drawn towards the evil chanting hordes
they seem to mesmerise me...can't avoid their ads
DMCA the Number of the Beast
DMCA the one for you and me
I'm coming back I will return And I'll possess your body and I'll make you burn I have the fire I have the force
I have the power to make my evil take its course
I'm sorry sir, but that is a copyrighted image of Mr goatse, from the christmas islands. If you do not take it down, the christams island police (consisting of a bearded fellow and two muscular reindeer)will have to arrest you.
He lives in a country without a DMCA. He wrote it for a company, that company owns the product, go after them or something. Even then, the program doesn't break the law, at the risk of a bad cliche, guns don't kill people, people kill people. His program is like a gun, it has good application, and in some hands it could possibly be used in a bad way, but then hey, we'll have to go after the people who make forks. I remember the last time my girlfriend forked me...ow :(
Preach to the choir!!! I think the large majority of /. readers agree... so stop waisting the posts preaching to us.. do something about it.
I thought he was arrested for selling copies of software written to break the encryption.
I belong to the ______ generation.
Some news reports said that Russian law requires that s/w can be backed up. Is this true? If so, is Adobe guilty of violating that Russian law by making a product that can't be? And, in this global marketplace, what happens when the laws of two countries are in direct disagreement with each other? Is Russia now the land of Free Speech and has America lost that right?
Perhaps this will change things for Skylarov
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
I have a strong interest in cryptography and I am a computer programmer. Corporations should have rights until they begin to abridge the rights of individuals. The Supreme Court ruling in the 1800s that stated that the 15th Amendment extended rights to corporations was established by the same Supreme Court that said there was no difference between a black man and a donkey.
Talk about an assault on free speech. That takes the cake.
. . . the DMCA should be reformed. I think it is pretty clear that he broke the law. I've heard all the arguments that he did this in russia, but the fact remains that his product was sold in the US. Just because it is a bad law does not mean you get to break it. Moreover, the laws of your own country do not follow you as you cross borders. Adobe had sent this guy many letters telling him he was in violation of the DMCA and he came to the US anyway, what did he expect.
With all the media propaganda about Russia being a corrupt nation where the mafia runs everything and people live in fear of the government, it seems ironic that we would be imprisoning this man.
Check out Roger Parloff of Inside.com's column on why Dmitry should not be freed. I don't necessarily agree but it's good to play devils advocate.
Sklyarov should go free because the law is flawed and because Adobe used it against him, they are too.
Its as simple as that. Nothing to write a manifesto about. Make better software - not more laws.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
While ours was a small group (I believe there were 33 of us who made it to the embassy), we encountered a lot of Londoners and tourists on the way from Hyde Park corner. Some were perplexed by a parade of geeks attempting to chant things like "Free Speech! Free Dmitry!". There was no hostility; however, it was clear that some American tourists were rather upset by the banner we were carrying that read "Visit America, Go to jail". But despite being a small protest, the organiser was interviewed by Newsnight (the UK equivelant of Larry King Live) and we're going to get the second spot tonight.
I don't know if these protests will actually help Dmitry, but I do think they're raising the awareness of the absurdity of the DCMA. With Europe and Canada about to vote on DMCA-type laws, the protests come at the right time.
Copyright laws were introduced to make sure that people did not sell items with copied material in them, originating from someone else. However, if someone publishes a book on how something works, based on their research and their disassembly and their reverse engineering, they should be free to do so. Copyright is the idea protecting ideas from illict reproduction, not from informative deconstruction.
The equivalent is Chilton's Car Maintience guide company being sued because they explain how a GM 305 engine works.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
A court case like this over the DMCA would almost certainly get overturned (of course, IANAL, but this is IMO). However, a Russian would have to wait in our federal jails until the whole process is complete. We could be talking years. I would be more inclined to want the case to go to trial if an American were in jail. And no, it's not so an American can be the hero, but because he/she will be closer to home and would most certainly be treated better.
FBI web readers take note: I am almost inclined to heavily study encryption, reverse engineer some stuff, and publish it on the web just to say, "Come and get me, let's go to trial and get this sh*t over with." I have no immediate family, so I'm almost tempted to do it.
Developers: We can use your help.
Should we really be trying to get him released?
The principle behind the DMCA is sound and reasonable: People ought not to spend their time finding ways to steal. Instead, they ought to be developing their own products and getting them out into the market for whatever price they feel is fair.
Napster was popular for the sole reason that it allowed people to steal. DeCSS is a somewhat more gray area, but it still basically allowed people to steal. Sklyarov did nothing beneficial for society, he merely found yet another way to steal and publicized it.
This is absurd. We would not so glorify those who would publish plans for robbing bank vaults, and yet we take men like Sklyarov who delight in playing a sort of twisted Robin Hood and turn them into our heroes. We rationalize the crimes ("Free speech", "Information wants to be free", blah blah blah) and then laugh ourselves giddy because we get what we want without having to pay for it.
People, the capitalism that it seems the majority of people here are trying to undermine is the same system which produced all this high-quality content in the first place. Get rid of that, and we'll have the same cutting-edge community-based free music as you find in your typical Mongolian village.
I've heard the arguments on Slashdot and other sites. I know the points of view. I know why people love MP3s, DeCSS, Sklyarov and all this other rubbish. But none of the reasons outweigh the simple fact that people like to get good stuff for free, but if things were to change such that it were always free, it would stop being good.
Don't believe me? When was the last time someone actually practiced what they preached and downloaded some songs by the independent artists on MP3.com? Those few who have actually done it know that independent artists generally produce crap, and go back to trying to find their Eminem and Metallica mp3s.
Got Rhinos?
Things sounds strangely like the old religious practice where they would hang/burn/etc scientists for saying the earth was round, that the earth wasn't the center of the universe, etc. Are the megacorporations doing a giant leap back to our barbaric past?
PS. English isnt my primary language.
Yawnsville
I believe that this is a dangerous precedent, because after this event, it will be a lot harder to get bright people to work in the US. Sure the money over here is pretty good (I should say fantastically good compared to some other parts of the world), but the risk of going to jail because you'd like to confront snake oil salesmen is just getting too large.
A large part of the IT infrastructure of this country is built and maintained by foreign nationals. Not only the bright people won't come, but they will create companies at home and employ the others IT workers. The way I see it, soon theses people will just say home, work for US companies, make good money, and free to hack . All that will be left here will be "product managers".
Just have a look at the nationalities of CS graduates students in US universities: mainly India and China. A friend of mine was telling me that he didn't had an American math teacher since high school!
Nobox: Only simple products.
Are you equipped for it?
Unfortuneately, he who can afford the biggest lawyer generally wins. Money is known as the universal lubricant for good reason. The war between legality and "basic human rights" (or what keeps the most people from living like slaves), has been historically lost with phrases like "for the good of the people". That said, the main reason that this should be thrown out BEFORE it gets to the criminal trial stage is that having the trial in the first place would lend legitimacy to the charges. The laws of ANY country are supposed to reflect the will of its citizens. Individual citizens (in this and other countries) are being sidelined in favor of corporate citizens (not people, but legel entities). Remember that our legel system can bring justice just as easily as it can fortify oppression. My two centi-Euro's(TM)...
You're gaining an insignificant amount of security, at the cost of a immense amount of bad will on the part of people who can really hurt you. Your duty to your shareholders should compel you to drop this matter ASAFP. Develop better security, and thank the people who find the problems; better them than your competitors.
Have anyone of you ignorant people even looked at the Criminal Complaint before assuming you know the facts of the case? Dmitry sells is "eBook cracker" for $99 dollars. He does not help the open source community, nor does he help individuls, he helps himslef and the software company he works for. Wake up ignorant slashdot readers, not EVERY government action is out to take away your freedoms, some actually protect it. Like the ability for a company like adobe to try and sell a decent product that authors could feel comfortable releasing their work with.
Even if he did break US laws, he did so outside of the boarders of the US where we have no jurisdiction... it is like killing someone in Canada and being arrested and charged for the crime in the US... that is illegal. Also similar to General Manuel Noreaga, remember him? We kidnapped him from his own sovereign nation to bring him back to the US to stand trial... illegal? It is, however we did it and he still is in jail.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Dmitry should be freed, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The DMCA should be changed to take fair use into account. Otherwise, electronic books will be severely crippled, and I don't have enough faith in the average person to care enough to boycott them. Then real books could become less popuilar, and libraries might become darn near impossible. On top of all this, the right to critisize encryption and publish software which breaks it is very important to keepign it strong. If insecrureties become quelled, then they will be exploited more by those in the know and never fixed. We have to make sure we keep the larger issues in mind and not just to free Dmitry, because even if he is freed, there will be many mroe like him to come soon if the DMCA remains unchecked.
The numerous reasons stated in the above posts should be enough to justify his release. If not, consider the fact that Adobe have stated their wrongdoing, have recommended his release, and have dropped all charges against him. So what are you waiting for, release him now!
....or we make John Katz take the stand as an expert witness! Tom.
Oh arse
For those of you saying, he broke the law, he DIDN'T! Unless of course US laws now apply to every country in the world (better go arrest all those pot smokers in Amsterdam). Had he been on US soil when he wrote the program, then the US could go after him with that big club known as the DMCA, however he wasn't. Perhaps he's responsible for spamware, so what, that has nothing to do with this. I could right a program to mailbomb you, but if I get arrested for breaking the macrovision encryption on a CD, there's no linking event, other than the fact that I programmed both. It's not illegal to make a tool that could theoretically be used in the commital of a crime. If this has changed, then someone better arrest everyone at Smith & Wesson.
Orrin Hatch is alledged to have said that felt the DMCA was not working as they, the congress had intended.
Does ANYONE have a collection of links to the lawmakers who have said "whoops" WRT the DMCA? The dates/places where they said "whoops"? Or, where there is a big disconnect between public statements made at the time by the DMCA supporters then VS later? (IE - We need this to protect our property in case the encryption is broken, then later say XOR is sufficent because the law protects us)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Just one small question.
Why would a Non-American's First Amendment rights be violated? I thought the American Constitution was for Americans?
Not saying if this incarceration is right or wrong, but as I understand it, only American citizens are entitled to constitutional rights.
This isn't a troll. Elcomsoft's major products are spamware. Dmitry and Elcomsoft are not the kind of people worth defending, they are a pox on the whole internet. If you don't believe me, look at THIS web page:
http://www.mailutilities.com/aee/
and then scroll down to the bottom and note the Elcomsoft copyright message. This software is designed to help spammers extract addresses from email and websites. Every copy of this spamware that Elcomsoft sells means you and I get more spam. They should ALL be in jail, if there was any justice on this earth.
Firstly, Sklyarov works for a Russian company, and that *COMPANY* distributed the allegedly illegal software. Disregarding the fact that said software is legal in Russia, did Adobe try to take any diplomatic approaches to dealing with this company?
Because this has to deal with a company distributing this copyright-circumventing software, the company is the one you go after, not an individual. If this is allowed to continue, it will set a terrible precedence. It would mean I could go sue Joe DLL Author in the Windows division at Microsoft, because I didn't like CMCTRL32.DLL crashing my computer and causing me to lose my data. Of course, I'd never win against Microsoft's team of lawyers that would charge to his defense, but interestingly Sklyarov doesn't have that option now does he?
This guy was arrested for his research, which was put to use by the company he works for. If Adobe was smart, they might have tried to get this guy on board, or buy out the Russian company, and use them to help IMPROVE their security (if you can call using rot13 security). But of course not, these are the "Reds" and, what's worse, this guy is a hacker! So much for justice and liberty for all.
It's situations like this that really make me wonder about the direction America, and humanity in general, is going.
Fact #1: Dmitry lives in Russia and thus is subject only to Russian and International laws
Fact #2: Dmitry designed his program and allowed it to be sold, while he was in Russia.
Fact #3: The DMCA is neither a Russian or an international law.
Fact #4: Dmitry came to the United States simply to DISCUSS the flaws in Adobes encryption.
Fact #5: Dmitry did not violate any laws while in the United States.
Fact #6: United States laws are not international laws.
Fact #7: The United Staes does not have international jurisdiction.
Fact #8: If I travel from New York (where private citizens using fireworks is illegal) to another state (where it is not) and buy and use fireworks while there, I can not be arrested when I return to New York simply for using fireworks where it is legal.
Conclusion: A Russian citizen wrote a program while in Russia that woud not have been legal to write if he had been a United States citizen or was in the United States at that time. This Russian citizen then visited the United States and, while he was there, broke no laws. The FBI, a United States law enforcement agency, placed him under arrest for violation of a law he had not violated. Since the "crime" was committed in Russia, where it is not a crime, the United States has no right to persecute or prosecute Dmitry. My conclusion is supported by my last fact (Fact #8).
Final Thoughts: Though I personally believe the DMCA is wrong, the reason Dmitry should be freed has nothing to do with the DMCA being wrong but with the fact that he did not violate the DMCA because he was not subject to United States law when his "criminal" activity occurred. The United States (which I am currently a citizen of) is setting a dangerous precedent which may backfire. An example of such a backfire would be a United States citizen who places an article on the web, while in the United States, insulting the dictator of a third world country (assume this is illegal in the third world country). This man later visits this third world country and while there says nothing negative about the dictator, but is arrested because while he was in the United states he made negative statements. If the United States convicts Dmitry or even holds him for much longer, any action they would take against this country would be hypocritical.
"
I agree that Skylerov is not being served justice, but perhaps his sacrifice can bring about change to the ill-devised DMCA.
This needs to go to a court where technolegy isn't veiwed as a yoke to assist in our daily lives. My hope is that the lawyers and judges on this case can see technolegy as the last great American Freedom. Skylerov's actions were to free restrictive and narrowminded technolegy to empower people to use the product in question, not to promote pirecy or theft of a product.
I can only hope that thi is the death knel for the DMCA I hear on the horizon and not the sound of the big business gestapo making sure that their power isn't lost.
Case 1: Sklyarov writes a program which demonstrates the lack of security in a programs piece of software. This shows that the developers of the software have to rewrite their code to fix this problem, this also prevents consumers from buying faulty software which could leak important information.
Case 2: Consumer Reports buys a car, test drives the car and tips it over. They publish a report showing that the car is defective. The cars engineers have to redesign the car and this also prevents consumers from buying a defective car and injuring themselves.
So when Consumer Reports announces that a car is defective, how come they don't get arrested and jailed? They are releasing information against the companies interests in order to protect consumers, damaging the companies reputation and sales of the car. I'm sure any company would want to prevent this information from being released. Sylyrov was not arrested for reasons of immoral acts or destructive behavior. Sklyrov was arrested because he released information that was against a companies interest in order to protect consumers, and the company used a new law which applied to this type of information to prevent it.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
We are setting a precedent that is going to come back to haunt us. Consider that we have imprisoned a foreign national, who entered the country on a Visa from the US government. His act is only illegal within the boarders of the US and the act did not occur here.
This policy puts all of us who travel abroad for business at risk. Consider that we have people setting up phone networks, running fiber, etc. in countries like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and a host of third world countries. Can you tell me what is illegal in those countries? Would you like it to be in the US? That is what we are saying. If you violate our laws while in your country, never come here.
Extreme example? The only people who believe the world loves the US have never traveled. While they do not dislike us individually, we are considered arrogant and inexperienced as a country. Most countries have homes older than we have existed. We think we are right most of the time and are more prone to "my way or the highway" mentality, with the view shared by many that we are a bully that needs a good thrashing.
We have now set the precedent that you can arrest an American for violating your laws while in America. This is bad on so many levels.
Your enemy could be yelling at the top of their lungs something that they believe so strongly that they're willing to die for it.
And you at the other end are yelling at the top of your lungs the complete opposite view because you believe in your ideas so strongly that you too are willing to die for it.
Freedom is the environment where you and your enemy can yell at each other without the fear of being silenced.
Freedom does not exist in the CRA (Corporate Republic of America).
When you are a corporate citizen claiming to represent thousands of human citizens and your enemy is not a citizen whatsoever, it becomes far too easy to say your enemy is not entitled to freedom.
Should this corporate citizen back down because it had over estimated its influence as it has in this example, public perception has been skewed and your enemy has been marked by the government as an anarchist for their views, and their views do not fall under the protection of the law...only their crimes.
There-in lies the crux:
...and Skylarov were an American in Russia, being held after taking a trip to a conference in Moscow to present scientific research sponsored by his employer, and was arrested for spying because of that research, the American press would go apesh*t (as Slashdot has previously noted). Today on dailynews.yahoo.com:
The individuals in the USAG's office from Ashcroft on down need to be held accountable for every day of the immoral, obscene detention of Dmitri Sklyarov. His release is inevitable, but I fear it won't be soon. For it, I say SHAME!
Oh, those zigs know what they doing. I'm sure it'll all get straightened out in the end.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Dmitry should be freed, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The DMCA should be changed to take fair use into account. Otherwise, electronic books will be severely crippled, and I don't have enough faith in the average person to care enough to boycott them. Then real books could become less popuilar, and libraries might become darn near impossible. On top of all this, the right to critisize encryption and publish software which breaks it is very important to keepign it strong. If insecrureties become quelled, then they will be exploited more by those in the know and never fixed. We have to make sure we keep the larger issues in mind and not just to free Dmitry, because even if he is freed, there will be many mroe like him to come soon if the DMCA remains unchecked. Also, if this doesn't get chagned, other countries will be soon to foolow, foolowing the US's leads.
This could seriously undermine Russian and US relations, not counting the ABM treaty that the US wants to put aside in order to build their missile system. If Russia doesn't know already about Sklyarov's plight, they'll know soon, and they will demand justice too and put some political pressure on the US.
Not to mention that he hasn't had a bail hearing yet or has even been expedited to California. I'm just glad the Cold War is over, or we'd see something far worse happen.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
I clearly remember Janet Reno's comments regarding a series of Denial-of-service attacks on major websites that took place about a year ago. She basically said that the FBI would do all in their power to insure that the internet was a safe place to do business. I thought, "Does this mean the FBI is going to start fixing bugs in software and holes in protocols?" I realize that, in the case of DOS attacks, the FBI has a chance of catching the people responsible and stopping the attacks. However, the security of encryption algorithms used to secure intellectual property should stand on its own. One of the best ways to ensure the security of encryption and copyright protection software is to allow individuals who find holes in this security to publish their results, and to encourage research in these areas. The DMCA restricts this type of research and therefore perpetuates security problems. I know that members of the l0pht have explained this to our Congressional bodies. I assume that most of our legislators are very intelligent, and I cannot understand how something like the DMCA was passed. In the short term, the DMCA helps corporations sell products and provides a false sense of security to the purchasers of such software. It hurts customers and vendors, and in the long run it hurts the quality of copyrighted software available to consumers. If people cannot publicly publish research regarding software designed to secure intellectual property, then intellectual property will never be secure. Corporations often would rather hide holes in their software from customers, rather than fix the root problems that cause them. They do not want their image tarnished, nor do they wish to expend the resources needed to fix the problems. If I was trying to sell ebooks using Adobe's software, I would like to know that it is trivial for amoral individuals that don't care about copyright laws to steal my intellectual property. The only way I could know this, if I were a nontechnical author, is through published research and demonstrations of software designed to defeat this technology.
Sklyarov should not be summarily released. Yes, I said it.
Why? Because the DMCA is fatally flawed. Its concepts make dangerous and possibly unconstitutional precedent, and criminalize the rights of invention ('freedom to innovate') in ways previously relegated to dark-future fiction.
Will Congress repeal the DMCA? Unlikely. Political pressure from lobbyists is far greater to keep it in place, and that's where the money is.
Will the president do anything about it? This president? Not likely. (Besides, he's going on vacation for a month.)
The courts are the only arena where the DMCA will be chipped away until it falls apart, but that can't happen if we stage 'free hacker-x' demonstrations every time the DMCA is to be put on trial.
This case is perfect. It's highly public, it hits upon the core of the DMCA, and it's one where the victimized party (Adobe) also feels that the defendant should not be prosecuted. If there's another test case that stands a better chance of chinking the DMCA's multi-platinum armor, I don't know what it is.
But none of this can happen if we don't push the trial through. Look at the big picture. Free Sklyarov, and next month there will be another Sklyarov in his place (anyone want to publish a paper on DeCSS?), but break the DMCA in court, and all Sklyarovs will be free.
Kevin Fox
The only way the US can save face on this one is to have someone electronically publish a story of a Russian programmer imprisoned in violation of a law written by the producers of Entertainment Tonight. The story's author could sue the Government for copyright infringement for acting out the events in the story. Of course, there will be no warning, no discussion, just haul the Attorney General into jail. While he is in jail he can be peppered with vague cease and desist letters. After the relevant people are sued and crucified, the Government might figure out that whole "prior art" thing. In response to the cruel treatment of the Attorney General, the US will rush out new laws assuring diplomatic immunity for the rich and well connected... oh wait we already have those. Nevermind.
For those of you with "The Law is the Law" attitude, I believe this law undermines our fundamental laws here which are regarded as inalienable. Thomas Jefferson and others should clear this up.
/ 21/990621opmetcalfe.xml
Intro:
I feel the need with all the horrible rights violations going recently to highlight Thomas Jefferson's views on copyright. In the writing to ensue, there will be much opinion and conjecture surrounded by a more valued and respected sets of opinions by none other than Thomas Jefferson. Without a doubt, Thomas Jefferson has already covered most of what gets rehashed, particularly when it comes to fair use and the DMCA.
I feel it is important to this case, especially from the American prospective, to point out that one of the most ingenious, prolific and outspoken forefathers of the USA, where the DMCA and other vile laws live, believe firmly that the bill of rights should have included and explicit reference to freedom from burdensome and unfair copyrights and legislation thereof.
Thomas Jefferson was concerned about you and me. The people that read periodicals. He was concerned with everyone as a singular entity. You yourself may not know what's best for you if you belong to something bigger. Our [United States] laws are supposed to protect the little people.
While I'm not suggesting an armed standoff against federal agents necessary in this case, something must be done. We are railroading an expatriate to whom our laws do not bind. Furthermore, our own forefathers, particularly Jefferson, BELIEVE me he is YOUR friend (not the big monopolies like Energy/Petroleum Companies, Microsoft, etc.)
I'm going to excerpt his beliefs below. Realize that even 200 years ago, the pitfalls of burdensome copyright and the legislation that ensues would erode our freedoms.
...
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in his correspondence with James Madison (1751-1836) was initially hostile to the provision for copyright and patent law in the United States Constitution. On Dec. 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to Madison from France concerning the recently-drafted Constitution:
"I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land..."
Note, here IMHO, Thomas Jefferson wants to, along with our other inalienable rights, establish a freedom from Monopoly. These rights, not excluding freedom from monopoly, were to him as core as the rest of our bill of rights. He repeated this view in his letter to Madison dated July 31, 1788:
"I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new constitution by nine states. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want re-touching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from North to South, which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion and monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty in finding general modification of these suited to the habits of all the states. But if such cannot be found then it is better to establish trials by jury, the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies, in all cases, than not to do it in any... The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression."
Madison, in a letter dated October 17, 1788, responded,
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government. But is it clear that as encouragements to literary works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely less danger of this abuse in our governments than in most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many to the few. Where the power is in the few it is natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as with us, is in the many not in the few, the danger can not be very great that the few will be thus favored. It is much more to be dreaded that the few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many.
I hold the recent copyright extension as an example of what Madison thought there was little danger of. There it was said, even by Madison, the proponent of the said directives, that there would likely be no "a sacrifice of the many to the "partialities and corruptions" of a powerful few."
I firmly believe the DMCA is both a corruption and a partiality. Anyone with Macrovision stock will try and convince you otherwise.
Jefferson probably saw that there is some purpose in having intellectual property be protected in some fashion or more likely, IMHO, probably decided that he would rather be a part of creating the ground rules for this countries operations and decided to cut bait at this point. He subsequently said to Madison in a letter on August 28, 1789:
"I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions would have pleased me... Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose."
The blank was to be filled in at some future date, obviously. The law is written with the sense that this right would be the right of the people to protect themselves against intellectual fraudulence by companies, e.g., the theft of the 'little man's' ideas. In addition to which, there is always the stance that the people of the fledgling USA would be safeguarded in the Bill of Rights against unduly long copyrights.
Jefferson's preference for the term of copyright was submitted to Madison a few days afterward, in a letter of September 6, 1789. The proposed term was that of 19 years, based on actuarial calculations:
"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another seems never to have been started on this [i.e., the European side -- Jefferson was writing from France] or our [American] side of the water... that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. -- I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it... A generation coming in and going out entire... would have a right on the first year of their self-dominion to contract a debt for 33 years, in the 10th for 24, in the 20th for 14, in the 30th for 4, whereas generations, changing daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant term, beginning at the date of their contract, and ending when a majority of those of full age at that date shall be dead. The length of that term may be estimated from the tables of mortality. Take, for instance, the tables of M. de Buffon... [according to which] half of those of 21 years [of age] and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt... This principle that the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive application... Turn this subject in your mind, my dear Sir... Your station in the councils of our country gives you an opportunity for producing it to public consideration... Establish the principle... in the new law to be passed for protecting copyrights and new inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19 instead of 14 years."
A Jeffersonian computation using life tables from 1992 gives a Jeffersonian copyright term of 30-35 years. (Vital Statistics of the United States 1992, Volume II--Mortality, Part A, Public Health Service, Hyattsville, 1996, Section 6, Table 6-1.) Note, however, that at least one edition of Jefferson's works has a much abridged version of this letter, in which the 19-year computation and the proposal for the term of copyright do not occur.
One of Jefferson's most famous statements on patent law was in his often-quoted letter of August 13, 1813 to Isaac McPherson, in which he wrote that, since there is no natural right to property in land, how much less is there a natural right to a property in ideas. I think Jefferson's words apply equally well to copyrights as to patents; to "expression" as well as to "ideas": "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
A random set of impressions of these laws with which I agree:
"The scary thing about the DMCA is that it affects everyone, but only a subset of the country realizes it exists, of which a subset understands what it means, of which a subset understands why its so wrong. " quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
"Is there a "voice" amongst this subset that has any power to inflict any change here? Kind of spooky. It makes you wonder where things are headed." quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
As someone pointed out in a discussion, be sure to realize that copyright is referred to at this point as monopoly in Jefferson's letters.
Its fairly clear that Jefferson uses Monopoly in reference to copyright, which is what it is, you can monopolize on your intellectual property for a set period of time. He was willing to give IP of the day 19 years, but he was very much verbal about fair use, and that public fair use was of the utmost importance.
Even cursory inspection of Jefferson's views shows his distrust of allowing monopolies run rampant.
Even Madison has said:
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government."
They both realized that in order for Monopolies of any sort to be protected by the government, that undue amounts of arbitration would be necessary.
Jefferson also affords a Monopoly to the Individual, not a corporate entity:
"Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose."
Surely he isn't suggesting that one person could create a monopoly on, lets say, corn. He was referring to copyright. He certainly isn't suggesting that corn could only be sold by one person for 19 years.
Another thing, imagine if the copyrights were in fact awarded to the people who invented them, not the companies who subsidized them. It would be interesting to see a world where companies like DuPont and Merck (and every other chemical and drug exploitation companies, because that's what they are, the money is in the treatments, not the cure) are made to treat their patent holding scientists with the utmost respect and regard, even more so than the greedy shareholders, because if they left for another company, so leaves their patents!
The most important of all the Jefferson arguments is this: If IP is so unique, so wonderful and so great, why does it need protection? I don't believe I had quoted this particular argument above, I will work to find it, but the statement is true. If something is obvious, then it really isn't IP. Would you like Bob Metcalfe, the Linux is a piece of crap Windows 2000 rules moron who founded 3COM to hold the patent on 'ethernet'?
Link: http://iwsun4.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/99/06
Don't you think its nice that other companies compete with 3COM for the ethernet space, such as Intel, CISCO, et al? Doesn't the standard referred to as "ethernet" get better and better because these companies compete for your business in the same segment?
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181. Link: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/copyright/
The message in this passage is clear: an idea is not matter but energy; it cannot be owned, and it isn't diminished by being shared. In any discussion of copyright, it is useful to begin by reminding ourselves that ideas can't be copyrighted and can't be owned--only expression can. Furthermore, even when expression is copyrighted, academics ought to bear in mind their right to Fair Use, a crucial exception to copyright that exists in order to enable teaching, research, and news reporting.
A few more quotes to muse upon:
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they... undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow "
-- James Madison
And finally:
"The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies, judges & governors shall all become wolves. "
Thomas Jefferson To Edward Carrington
Paris, Jan. 16, 1787
- B. Howes, 2001, California "Amerika"
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
If it wasn't for Skylarov, we wouldn't know how crappy the encryption being used by Adobe was. He was doing us all a service. This should be protected by the First Amendment just as Consumer Reports and other groups rate and test products. Skylarov was merely testing the encryption and exposing the faults of Adobe. Everyone should have the right to do that. Does the fact that it was source code and not a newspaper article make it worse? NO!! OSS = good
Slashdot starts buggin out and the first thing I lose is my Katz filter. The Slashcode needs to be reviewed to make sure that it fails in a Katz-safe way. Having a program that may malfunction in such a way that the user is exposed to the insane ramblings of Katz is unacceptable, Slashdot should hold itself to higher standards of software development.
you should put Katz there in his place!
Skyleroff is prolly happier in a US penetentiary than back in the USSR, which is just like a jail or worse, althought the Beetles thought the girls were better there...
Free Sklyarov because he has done nothing morally wrong:
- Pointing out the flaws in Adobe's software is completely normal and legitimate - most would argue morally right. This is the Freedom of Speech
issue. Sklyarov wins.
- Making software that exploits those flaws is just making a tool - that can be used for arguable moral good (blind users of eBooks, fair use, fair
access, research, excerpting, even recommending to friends) or arguable moral harm (reselling eBooks for less money and giving nothing to their
authors). Toolmakers don't control their use. This is the 'freedom from liability for the actions of others' issue. Sklyarov wins.
If legislation exists that makes Sklyarov wrong, then it is the law that must change.Duncan Cragg
Friends, Geeks, Script Kiddies, Lend me your ears!
Seriously, while I support the actions taken against the DCMA and believe the charges he's jailed under to be illegal under our own constitution, as well as ill founded and unevenly applied, I still think he's a crook who should rot in jail.
It's like the Mafia - so we got him on tax charges, he still belongs there.
But is the DCMA right? Should the feds be able to do this? Should Adobe get off scot free by saying "oh, gee, wish we could help, but after we signed the death warrant it's all out of our hands and we really think he shouldn't die, but we won't do anything about it"?
No.
So, fight the good fight. Win against the forces that oppose you. I support the cause, but not the man.
Meanwhile, Texas continues to execute poor black men for the crime of not being rich enough to afford lawyers, and DNA evidence to prove innocence is still the exception after commital and sentencing, not the rule.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
surely he misses them as well. Let him go.
Several people seem to be confused about the way jurisdiction works. Even though Dmitri wrote the software where it is legal and works for a company in that contry, etc., it does not change the fact that he was selling the software (i.e. - trafficking in it, which is illegal in the US under the DMCA) in the US, where it is not legal. This means that he broke the law in the US (as flawed as that law may be, he still broke it). That means that it is the executive branch's _duty_ to prosecute him, no matter how many whiney /.ers cry "unfair!!".
I think the answer is obvious: we all need to supposrt the Free Speech Protection Act.
One of the primary injustices of Sklyarov's arrest is that US law enforcement officials have no jurisdiction over this matter. Even if his actions did violate US laws, he broke Adobe's encryption while living and working in Russia. It is absurd that the United States government should arrest him while travelling in the United States for a his (legal) actions in another country. Arresting a Russian citizen for an alleged violation of the DMCA, which occured in Russia, if at all, is analogous to arresting a Dutch citizen for smoking marijuana while at home in the Netherlands, where such activity is perfectly legal.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Next time China arrests and convicts a visiting scholar for espionage, any U.S. protests could easily be rebutted with a comparison to Sklyarov.
Why free Dmitry? If for no other reason, to regain some semblance of self-respect as a nation.
It has nothing to do with the First Amendment. He's not a USA citizen and has no rights in this country. The constitution is irrelevant.
Any alien in the USA can be arrested and/or deported for no reason at all.
- AndrewN
Placing Dmitri in jail for explaining how bad software algorithms work, is akin to placing someone in jail for explaining how a car works, dna replicates, or how the checks and balances system of government works.
The US is setting a dangerous and oppressive precedent with this case. The very freedoms that allow us to criticize, expose wrongdoing and correct wrongs (slavery for instance) are currently jeopardized. Would DDT have been banned if scientists had not been allowed to research and discuss its effects on animals and the ecosystem?
Also the concept of quality will be thrown out the window as well. What incentive would a company have to make good products, if the ability of the people to have dialog on products and services are taken away?
If you really care about the people ,do what is right and destroy this oppressive legislation that can only lead to thought-police and totalitarianism.
He is a criminal and in this country criminals get punished. Five years in prison is a pretty light sentence for his blatant act of intellectual property damage. Quite frankly I hope they throw the book at him and bring him up on additional charges as well. I'm sure conspiracy can be worked in at the least. Of course we cannot forget about the ass hammering he will undeniably get while serving his prison sentence. Not only will he be an evil hacker but in addition to that he'll become a disgusting homosexual. Hell, after being raped couldn't he also be brought up on homosexual charges? In many jurisdictions there are laws against homosexuality.
These phone calls are easy and quick. They'll want your name and address; I can imagine this will no doubt make many /. readers blood pressure go up, but it's the way the system works. They want to make sure you're a registered voter, and that you're a real person in their district.
I always feel like a bit of a dumb ass when I call. Often it's an intern answering the phone, that has little idea about the issue. Be short and brief, so they can't missinterpret your view.
These phone calls matter to many representatives, and help influence them. If they get several phone calls about a little known issue such as Dimitri's within a day or two, they will take notice.
We should use every method (email, phone, petitions, etc) to make our country what we want it. God bless us, every one! har har
Nathan
Retards.ORG
What bothers me, is let's take the converse situation. A MS employee is giving a talk overseas and is jailed by the local government because MS violates local business practice law.
In fact, we saw something similar just recently. A US spy plane was forced to land in China. Putting aside the morality of spying for a moment, the fact salient fact remains, they were violating Chinese criminal law by spying on them, they landed in the country where they violated the law. They were detained. Did the US say, "oh well, they're right, we did violate the law, and should be punished?" Ya right. Why is it that the US feels free to violate other countries law, but when the reverse happens to them they throw on the cloak of righteous justice?
That's hyprocicy, no matter what language you spell it in.
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
e-mail your senator or e-mail your representative
America is for sale. Corporations don't follow laws, they buy them. Anyways, as for Dmitry, its ridiculous that it's legal for the KKK to promote racism and violence while Dmitry is locked up facing 5 years in jail. It's ok for me to say "Adobe's encryption sucks" But, if I prove its ineffective with code? its a crime. In addition, I find it very strange that if Adobe's computer code makes Dmitry's computer code illegal. Anyways for anyone reading this who isn't informed about what's going on (unlikely), The following sentence is potentially punishable with a 5 year jail sentence: Decrypt = Encrypted - 1 if Adobe decided to encrypt its E-Books by adding 1 letter (Thus the word HAL becomes IBM) the sentence above essentially is the heart of a computer program. DMITRY IS IN JAIL FOR THIS. Although his code is a lot more sophisticated but never the less, Adobe's encryption was ineffective.
10) He's a master locksmith at a locksmith convention. He shows everyone how to circumvent a security measure. Should he be imprisoned? 9) He has the job that guy off fight club had. He gets lets the word out that firestone tires are unsafe. Should he be imprisoned for pointing out a safety defect. 8) He used to work for KFC. He goes to a convention and makes a speech about the secret spice. Should he be imprisoned? 7) He's smart and is doing nothing diabolical. 6) Russia just left one of the US's guys go. 5) Adobe dropped it, why can't the fed? 4) HACKED BY CHINESE. Not Russian. 3) He states that the decryption key for life is 42, but he doesn't have the source. 2) Ever see a nerd riot downtown? It isn't pretty. Nerds like D&D, have swords, and magic wands. Oh and some like to pretend their mouse is a ball in chain. Don't give a nerd an excuse or he'll polymorph you into a roach and smoke you. 1) The FBI just wants to save some face after the CIA found they can't keep track of their office chairs.
God spoke to me
This is a perfect case to go to trial, and overthrow the ridiculous - big business paid for - DMCA.
With the incredibly weak 'encryption' that he exposed as a sham, this is proof of how bad the DMCA is for business and consumers. Take it to trial!
If Dimitry is promptly released, we will miss a great opportunity to go on the offensive against DMCA, or at least learn about our enemies and their tactics. I say we leave him in for a while, in the name of science.
href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0
discusses the resignation of Alan Cox, a major force behind open software, from the USENIX organization for fear of unconstitutional seizure by the FBI while traveling in the US...
Could someone point me in the direction of one o' them boatloads of battles what apparently need to be lost? I'm really much better at those.
Why do I feel that he has been jailed wrongly? Lets see, gives presentation, and is arrested. I have downloaded and read his presentation, he dose not five out his program and only explains the basics of how it is done in his speech. Be honest, with this, we get to learn that there is work needing to be done in the e book side of things. But adobe dose not want to do work, they rather arrest the people who know how to hack their sough and pretend it did not happen. Any real court is going to overturn this anyway, so adobe is wasting time in this fruitless effort.
Basically Adobe is bending the law much like Microsoft has done in the past to suite them selves. So why should he be released you ask, because he did nothing wrong but try and open the worlds eyes to the point that e books are not secure. If anything adobe should be charged with manipulating the law or something for this sort of behavior. But like we all know, they will get off scoot free.
People have asked me why I do not want to work in the states instead of Canada. Well it's the bs like this that I keep seeing in the states that keep me out of there. I don't feel like going to jail because I have been asked to give a presentation.
My 2 cents plus 2 more
Believe it or not, when laws are created, whether on not we like them, they must be followed. This person violated a US law and was on US soil. He deserves the maximum punishment. If you don't like the law, get it changed. Can't get it changed? Then your view must be a minority. If this wasn't the case, then I would be free to shoot all of the people who post stupid one sided arguments against anything Microsoft does, would that be OK with everyone?
He should not have been arrested and jailed under the DMCA in for writing software that undermined the effectiveness of Adobe's e-book encryption software. Were he not a so-called "hacker," he wouldn't have been. No, if he hadn't been SELLING the password cracker, he wouldnt have been. How is this any different than any of the other warez key generators and cracks? The reason the authors of those don't get busted is because they don't go out and sell them. At least in the deCSS case, 2600 was merely linking to the program.
Dmitri should be free. It's a violation of human rights in my opinion.
I moved to the US to get away from things like this. In Northern Ireland in the early 1970's they passed an . This was just like the DMCA in that it was very badly worded and horribly abused; it was meant to stop violence but just created worse problems instead. Internment meant imprisonment without trail for people just suspected of terrorism. In the loyalist thinking of that time, it meant anyone who was catholic and outspoken.
The DMCA is about laws that protect corporate stupidity. If I was running a company that wrote software as badly as Adobe et al did, I'd shake Dmitri's hand, and go and write software with proper encryption. It's a stupid law passed by stupid politicians, enforced by stupid companies that dictate to showboating law officials what should be done.
This country is really starting to piss me off. A hundred years ago the US was where people came to get away from things like this. Now it's become a country where those who pay the most win.
Which fair use is it that DMCA is supposed to be interfering with? DMCA explicitly has written into it a clause that non-infringing use takes precedence over the prohibitions on by-passing technological means of protection. So you should be able to back-up your (encrypted) eBooks, etc. The problem is that a lot of people want INFRINGING uses to be allowed, so they can get free copies over the internet. Now maybe Copyright is outmoded and no longer needed - but THAT's a much bigger step than adding DMCA to the current system in an attempt to maintain the status quo.
These rights were, after all, codified with the idea that they apply to human beings, not just Americans.
So this is not entirely off topic, my 2 cents for now: the DMCA is being used for censorship, and this is not good.
Many companies have actually used their superior technology to their benefit! Cisco practically pays you to learn as much about their technology as possible.
This could very well be the end of the information age. Everyone believes that they own a particular piece of information and viciously guards it. There is no longer cross-polination of technology and the entire country settles into a stagnant phase during which noone knows enough general information to build on past technologies.
Free Sklyarov!
Given that Dmitry's company has a history of cryptography and working with US federal agencies, is it possible that the FBI is just using the DCMA prosecution as an excuse to investigate other things? He is a Russian national, held by US federal agents, perhaps this is outdated cold war behavior.
The title says it all, yeah mod me out of existence - I dont give a shit, the problem isn't unjust institutions - its people like you who refuse to accept that this all is just your beliefs in copyrights brought to its logical conclusion.
What we need is not another Slashdot forum, but an organized drive to contact our legislators. I see people writing letters to their congressmen and posting them to Slashdot. What if someone made a postcard and we printed them out, signed them, and all mailed them to someone in Washington D.C.? That person or organization takes all our postcards and drops them of at the Internet sub committee (or whatever it's called).
I think that this case should go to trial. I think that the Americans should hang on to Skylarov until he goes to trial. But they should also stop violating the Vienna Convention, and let him talk to his Embassy. Also, are not all people guaranteed the right to a speedy trial under the Constitution you hold so dearly?
This is a question of Jurisdiction, first and foremost. Your people arrested a Russian national for doing something that is PERFECTLY legal. Not only is it legal for him to decrypt the encrypted e-books in Russia, it's legal everywhere else. What's illegal is to then distribute the unencrypted intellectual property (e-books), which Skylarov never did. I'm aware that your DMCA prohibits the production/distribution of programs designed to circumvent encryption, but that law's considered illegal by most of you, anyway. Strictly speaking, the E-Book reader program from Adobe is designed to circumvent the encryption on e-books to render them readable....
The longer this case takes to be dismissed (and it will be dismissed), the worse Dubya looks in the international community. (That's pretty hard, since he started building nukes again.) Every day, there's an increasing number of protests about this internationally, and it wouldn't surprise me if other countries join Russia in lodging a formal complaint with the UN once the fall session opens.
Sorry, </rant>. The point is that the longer this case takes to be resolved, the more aware Joe Public is going to be. I understand that Skylarov is unjustly imprisoned, and I empathize for him and his family. I would certainly not want to be in his situation, and I can think of nobody that I would wish into that situation. But I would rather make a martyr out of Skylarov now than wait 15 years for resolution on DMCA and opression for all.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
In America, they first came after the hackers who created DeCSS. I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a hacker.
Then they came for the security experts, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a security expert.
Then they came for the file traders, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a file trader.
And then they came for the people who created mp3's from copy protected CD's, and I didn't speak up because I did not make mp3's.
And when I used an old browser that saved copyrighted material in it's cache on the hard drive, they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
As things are, the DMCA is not the best thing in the world, clearly, and therefore I think it should be abolished, but that's only my humble opinion.
Due to the fragged up US government however, I see no way to remove the DMCA except proving it not to be in compliance with the US constitution.
For that, it needs a trial, and hence it would be tactically better to keep things as they are and keep him in jail so he can face trial.
Don't worry, Dmitry. They're probably not going to keep you for long. If you need good literature in the meantime, read Sol'zhenicyn's Àðõèïåëàã ÃÓËÀÃ (Arkhipelag GULAG, in case it doesn't get over properly), especially when he deals with the USSR constitution, and then you'll learn what the US law system truly is like.
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
First, I'll second what I've heard so many times throughout this and other forums. Code is speech. Just as much as a cooking recipe or instructions on how to build a bomb
Alright that said, here's the second point:
The ability to decrypt an admittedly lame encryption algorithm does not mean that you will decrypt it, or even that the decryption is necessarily illegal. The ability to pick a lock is not considered illegal in this country, only using that ability to commit a crime. What is Dmitrii's fundamental crime? Providing the knowledge necessary to pick a lock. A very tiny brass lock. Not even like a Masterlock or anything. Okay, maybe I'm stretching the analogy a little, but I think everyone can get my point.
Speaking of which, here's the third point. If a new method of picking locks was discovered, making all existing Masterlocks easily pickable, what would Masterlock do? Would they try to imprison the originator of this method? Or would they be more likely to try to make a better lock and sell it to people?
Well, that's my $0.02. If you ask me, people shouldn't be able to be imprisoned because they step on any other individual's (corporate or private) pride...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Look for their editor to encourage more such columns from their contributors in future.
You'll see that the comments are forwarded to the appropriate federal officials? My understanding is that officials like to hear directly from his/her constituents and they ignore all other contacts. Wouldn't it be best to have a place for automated contact with our own officials (i.e.: I enter my letter and then my name and address is automatically affixed to the letterhead and envelope).
/. could work with Russian counterparts who would apply similar to pressure to their local officials, who then would pressure U.S. officials?
Moreover, I hope you are printing out this information and sending it via snail mail --- government officials tend to also ignore email.
Finally, I recently read of a U.S. citizen freed in Russia after a conviction for drug possession. The Russian government was pressured by U.S. officials --- who were written to and called upon by constituents in the U.S. Wouldn't it be helpful if
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
Since the 1st Amendment applies to US Citzens and he is a Russian Citzen, technically the 1st Amendment is not broken.
Though it looks like any hacker visiting the US might want to arrange to get a diplomatic passport.
Dictionary definition of language:
"Communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols."
A programming language fits this definition. Sklyarov's First ammendment rights have been violated.
This is typical of the United States government. There seems to be a rapid shift to protecting their corporate and economic interests at any cost, rather than individual rights. The Gulf war and the recent dumping of the Kyoto accord are two great examples of this and it now seems to be internalising.
The guy's Russian, who cares?
writ of habeas corpus
...cause if they don't free him, Katz is gonna continue writing these articles.
Please, for the love of God, let him go!
Because John Tobin a US student jailed in Russia was just released. The affairs of state have different goals that the affairs of mere mortals.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
You need to enter the special code that you received when you purchased the particular ebook to be able to "unlock" it and make it so that you can move it to another computer or transfer ownership to someone else.
Now that I've purchased this ebook, I should have the ability to do with it what I can do with the rest of my books. Take it with me to work so that I can read it on my breaks, loan it to my dad so he can read it, whatever.
And since it is in digital format I want to take advantage of this feature and back it up onto CD media so that if my hard drive dies I won't be out of luck.
I am not a criminal for wanting to copy my ebooks, just as much as I'm not a criminal for owning a gun. If I engage in illegal activity in either case then I must face the consequences for my actions. But labelling a criminal solely based upon what I could potentially do with a legal item is charging me with guilt without cause.
The arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov has brought to light a serious imbalance in current copyright law. This case shows why the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), while conceived for a noble purpose, was overreacting and has the potential to hit at the core ideas of Americans.
Copyrights are a necessity. Authors deserve the right to know that their work will be protected for a short amount of time. However, copyright is not an end unto itself, nor is it absolute. If copyright were absolute, copyright holders could use their copyright to exploit the people. The DMCA tips the balance towards this latter end. The DMCA has protected copyright holders, but at the expense of the masses. The DMCA has become a tool for copyright holders to tyrannize the masses of people who have no interest in denying copyright holders compensation for their works, and it this that makes the DMCA unbalanced.
Dmitry wrote a program to enable the purchasers of e-books to exercise the fair use privileges that Americans are accustomed. Consumers deserve the right to be able to back up materials they have purchased or convert information they have bought to a different format. Copyright law has put a stranglehold on these freedoms.
The DMCA needs to be re-written in such a way that both consumers and publishers are protected. Tools themselves should not be illegal, but the use of those tools for illegal purposes should be. In other words, don't go after software writers and scientists, go after the people who use tools to circumvent the law. People are afraid to talk about subjects that might be covered by someone else's copyright; we cannot allow copyright to inhibit free discussion. Punish the people who would use tools in an illegal way and go after violators rather then the professionals who create these tools for legitimate and necessary purposes.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
NRAdude: I'll take USA government perversions for 100, Jon.
Jon:This scientist was jailed for contributing software that decrypted Adobe's eBook softwre format and was immediatley jailed; ignoring his first ammendment right...
NRAdude: Who is Dmitri Sklyarov?
Jon: Correct...
NRAdude: I'll take Software that Sucks for 666, Jon.
Jon: Following the arrest, postponment of civil rights, and immediate jailing of Dmitri Sklyarov, Adobe systems again stated that he violated copyright law by undermined Adobe's eBook software. What is encryption?
NRAdude:Would you please restate the question in the form of an answer, Jon?
Jon:Encryption is the act of writing software data in a form that is not immediately readable by others.
NRAdude:In Dmitri Sklyarov's perspective, the software wasn't encrypted. What is Software that sucks?
Jon:Correct...
NRAdude:I'll take Hot Greasy Poo in a Flaming lunchbag for 100, Jon
Jon:Oh shit, money out of my pocket... ahemm...That's our Daily-Double! How much are you willing to wager?
NRAdude:I'll wager $450,000,000, Jon
Jon: *cry* What are the ingredients of a civil war?
NRAdude: 1)Someone's civil rights get violated by the government, 2)the government doesn't correct itself on the matter of violating the civil rights, 3)the government demonstrates corruption by the prior, 4)the citizens and offendees hammer the government officials into smoldering ashes. 5)a monument is created out of the skulls of the government officials that perpetrated the acts of violating the citizens and offendees. 6.66)Adobe gets away scott-free, but will have to brave many future DOS attacks.
Jon:/b>Correct...here's your 450,000,000 in worthless paper money...and here are some parting gifts...
Announcer:A Linux personal PDA made by Compaq! A lifetime shell account on Slashdot.org! A lifetime supply of Barred Soap and Gasoline!
without prejudice
If you didn't know, an american citizen was not so long ago tried and convicted in Russia for illegal posession and distributing of drugs . So this might be another case of the still ongoing cold war practice. Sklyarov was just a convenient target.
When the police came away to take the homosexuals, I did not say anything because I was not a homosexual. When the police came to take away the handicapped, I did not say anything because I was not handicapped. When the police came to take away the Jewish, I did not say anything because I am not Jewish. When the police came to take me away, no one said anything because there was no one left. Who fights for your rights?
If the U.S. is so sincerely concerned about protecting the bottom line of its corporations, why isn't it a criminal offense to use Microsoft products? Hell, I can't even sue the bastards for their screwups.
http://www8.techmall.com/techdocs/TS000605-4.html
http://www.riaa.com/Protect-Campaign-3.cfm
Adobe made the simple blunder of attacking a potential ally. Elcomsoft really just wanted to help.
The smart thing for Adobe to have done would have been to simply buy Elcomsoft, or hire the emplyees as consultants, or otherwise collaborate with them.
Adobe could then work with these individuals to insure that:
A- the eBook system is truly secure, something Adobes clients, and thus their shareholders, would surely appreciate (if there is anything to be learned by potential eBook clients (publishers) through this mess, it is that the eBook system is no so great (insecure), and a closer look should be given to the competition's system).
and
B- the eBook system has mechanisms in place to assure the rights of fair-use, private copying, citation, etc, which are guranteed under copyright and free spech laws -- that is, make it "slashdot freedom rant compliant", if you will.
If Adobe would have done this, they would have a better product, the Elcomsoft people would be rewarded for their hard work (and their concerns of security and fair use would be adressed), nobody would have to go to prison, and the governments and our time and energy and resources would be saved. It would have been the proverbial win-win situation (and Adobe could have spun some real support from all fronts by showing that they are working hard to improve their system and adress any potential doubts, even if this means "working with the enemy")
This would have prodably cost Adobe less than what they've already spent in legal fees and suffered in bad publicity, and, again, they would have a better product in the end - which is the goal, right?
So, why free dimitry? Because the whole thing was simply a gross strategic blunder on Adobe's part for letting their legal department run the show, rather than having thought intelligently for a moment about the situation and who they are dealing with. This is surprising, coming from Adobe, becouse outside of this incident, they have a reputation for being a wonderful company in every respect. (Note to Adobe: keep your legal department on a short leash, use them as a last resort, and get some people to help you deal intelligently with these situations.)
I wish I had Adobe stock right now. (Not only because I would be quite rich, but also) I would love to be able to voice these views at a shareholders meeting.
This is a moral/logical reason rather than the Feedom/Legal/Constitutional response I think Katz is looking for here. (It is also too late. Sorry. If I could travel back in time and tell Adobe this, I would.) I present it because I think that unfortunately the Constitution means s**t in America today, and talking about it is equivalent to talking about angels and pinheads...(unfortunately, i say)
Adrien
Point and Grunt
Juristiction part 2: Even though the act of speaking on the research into the cracking was done inside the US, the FBI complaint was sworn to the actual cracking itself. The arrest was illegal to begin with.
Legality: Because of the First Admendment, such research done anywhere on Sol 3 (Earth) and it's resulting report can not generate a legal arrest. The crime of speaking publically about an encription method is not a crime at all. Even ITAR export regulations say that printed source code of PGP is legal to export, while the source on a disk is illegal.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
It's basically pretty simple; just not as simple as your average lawmaker. When I drive in a car, operate a microwave, or do almost anything potentially dangerous in the year 2001, I want to know that the product I'm trusting my life with is safe. I want to know that, while I personally didn't have time to reverse engineer the Automatic Braking System (ABS) Software, somebody probably did, and I could if I was so inclined without the threat of Jail. I want to know that if I do so, and I discover that millions of people are in danger becasue of a flaw in that software, I don't have to choose between Jail and saving lives.
What does all this mean? It means that the DMCA could not have possibly been passed by a government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people', and that also means that the DMCA is not a valid US law. It doesn't take a lawyer or judge - indeed it seems it may take the lack thereof. Henry David Thoreau must be rolling in his grave to see how peacably we US citizens hand over all of our rights with a smile to an oligarchy calling itself a democracy! 8^{
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Those who wish to keep Dmitry in jail so this can go to court, think for a few minutes. Dmitry did not ask for this, he was unprepared/unaware of the consequences, and he is not a US citizen. Dmitry should go back to his home and be with his wife and children. If he wants to come back here and file civil suits, that's fine.
The best case for proving the DMCA is someone ready to break the law, accept the consequences, and is willing to take the case to court. Are you ready to go to jail for your beliefs and see the DMCA gets overturned? Then go violate the law and be prepared for what happens.
Leading and working in government is not a right, it is not even a right if you do your job and play by all the rules, it is not a right even if you are backed by majority vote. The preamble of the consitiution makes it very clear that government is justified only to the extent of its ability to uphold certain basic inaliable rights.
With this programmer, the right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happyness has clearly been denied - and there seems to be little intent of restoring it. By doing this, it will obligate civil people to deny those in government any authority over them - even at the cost of personal safety and life.
America has been thru nearly 2 centuries of people dying to uphold these basic rights, esp the freedom of speech, people will simply not let be done what is trying to be done. As me a free citizen, and you (government) a public servent - I demand that you release him because you are bound to.
We have a situation in this country where the Klan, neo-Nazis and hate groups of every stripe routinely and regularly exercise their freedom of speech and assembly, often on courthouse steps, with police protection. They are able to do this thanks to our society's long-held belief, codified in the First Amendment, that despite the offensive nature of someone's beliefs, we need to uphold their right of expression so that the rest of us can enjoy the same rights when we choose to exercise them. The courts have upheld this principle time and again. At the least, a federal judge needs to determine that Sklyarov's talk about the Adobe protection scheme, in and of itself, should be afforded constitutional protection. Simply TALKING about a means of circumvention should not rise to the level of a felony, particularly when the interests represented by the DMCA are corporate, and not civil. Certainly his talk doesn't equate to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. The Constitution was written to protect the People last time I checked. Unless I am mistaken, he did not get up in Las Vegas and perform a literal demonstration of the software (Even if he had, we then get into the issue of fair use, which is another ball of wax altogether). His arrest IMHO should be judged to be a form of prior restraint, and the FBI should be ordered to find another avenue to pursue Sklyarov's company, pending a challenge to the DMCA.
8 bit computing - It may be 2007 out there, but it's 1983 in here!!
One Sklyarov for one slightly used Jon Katz?
I think we could solve two problems that way!
Maybe if Russia sends over an apology to Adobe and the US government they will let the guy. Ain't it nice, we spend the better part of April bitching about China the we turn around and do the same fucking thing. Well the out come of this mess could be good though. Hopefully a gongressman/woman will remove their head from their ass/intern's genitals and see that the DCMA is violation of programmers rights.
AK
Dmitry was arrested under the DMCA for reverse engineering e-book "encryption." Since he did this work in Russia where it is legal, how can he be arrested in the US for it?
That being the case, he was arrested for giving a speech. From what I saw in his slideshow, he was giving his analysis of protection techniques, not giving out circumvention code or encouraging others to circumvent the protections. So what crime did he commit?
In a way, this may be a good thing. Now the government isn't even pretending to be of, by, and for the people anymore. Wake up Amerika, we are living in an oligarchy or a Plutocracy.
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
I see no link to a petition. You can however, host one here
The question of whether there was probable cause that Sklyarov was personally responsible for distribution of an alleged circumvention device at the time of his arrest is certainly beyond my legal expertise and I suspect that most people who are stating an opinion on the subject are equally clueless.
That being said, the main reason this man should be released is that the supposed injured party and original source of the complaint, Adobe, has withdrawn its complaint and expressed its desire that Sklyarov be released. Yes, yes, someone will say, you don't need to take the "victim's" desires/feelings into account for there to be a crime. But it helps. We have enough serious criminals that need to be in jail without filling cells with people like Sklyarov.
The real story here is why Sklyarov is sitting in jail still at all, not being indicted, not having a bail hearing. I suspect the simple answer is the FBI is trying to figure out what to do with him that will not A)further embarrass them in the middle of their most shameful year in recent memory or B)wind up getting the DMCA thrown out of the law books on appeal. Headline: Russian Hacker Brings Down Landmark Intellectual Property Law. Nice one, Feds.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I've been following this case since it came out, and I get a sick feeling everytime I read something about it. As I read through the arguments people have posted I can't think of anything really original to say, both sides seem to be covered pretty well. What this leaves me with is a sense of dread and helplessness at what my country is doing to itself. I feel like there is this huge injustice happening right here and now, and the only people that seem upset about it are the geeks that read slashdot. Everything seems to be boiling down to those with the most money have the power, and everyone else is going to be screwed, no matter how correct either morally or legally we might be.
Am I alone here? Does anyone else feel like this?
Casca
Maybe you should start to care when the most vile vermin scum's rights are trampled on because if you don't, you will be next. You don't have to believe in the philosophy of the KKK, the Black Panthers, etc., but you had better DAMNED well support their right to free speech. If not, then you are part of the problem.
While I feel incredibly sorry for Dmitry and his family, there's absolutely nothing about this incident which couldn't be fully predicted from the DMCA itself, and the general legal trend in the US for the past 50+ years. Corporations are in the business of maximizing profit and minimizing risk, and governments are in the business of maximizing order, increasing control, and growing their headcount, prestige, and budgets. This is the logical result of evolution through time.
Without strong protections, enshrined in contracts like the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, and in the everyday behavior and norms expected by a well-educated, informed, and active citizenry, things will naturally become more and more authoritarian. We've seen it in the US with DMCA, CALEA, and other new laws, as well as administrative actions taken by government agencies. We've seen it in the UK, with abominations like the RIP Act. We've seen it in the EU, which passes laws which ostensibly protect individual privacy but in fact create new bureaucracy. And Asia and Australia are even worse in a lot of ways.
Absent a major change in public perception (which I think is highly unlikely), the only path to individual liberty is technical. Perhaps it is now the case that security researchers, mathematicians, and pro-liberty activists must go underground, communicating using anonymous remailers, pseudonyms, and strong cryptography. Certainly groups have been forced underground in the past, but given certain conditions, it is impossible for them to be totally silenced. There are plenty of places in the world where people can live in freedom, due to a policy (intentional or unintentional) of tolerance -- Holland, Costa Rica, islands in the Caribbean, the Pacific -- for those who can't live underground in their own lands. Hopefully, HavenCo and Sealand can play some role in safeguarding liberty for those who live in other nations, by hosting servers for sensitive projects, remailers, and other infrastructure, as well as serving as an example of rational security policy for other nations. However, systems like Mojonation, Gnutella, Napster, ZKS Freedom, Mixmaster remailers, OpenPGP, and BitTorrent are perhaps more important for enabling this kind of research to be conducted, if not openly, at least securely.
If you're going to campaign for political change, don't just campaign for Dmitry to be released, or the DMCA to be overturned -- the core issue here is the continued erosion of individual liberty, at the hands of government, "well-intentioned do-gooders", and corporations.
I look forward to seeing people at HAL 2001, which thankfully is being held in a fairly free country.
Ryan Lackey
http://www.venona.com/rdl/
http://www.havenco.com/
Thats it, nothing more. No matter how many laws they create, or arrest people on. That is the ultimate law that covers it all.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Cigarettes were advertised as sexy and healthy (or at least normal), when they actually kill people and make them ugly. I mean, we're talking about killing people to make money... for that SOLE reason. This took years to prove in court.
How long, then, will it take them to get Adobe/Microsoft, et al, for advertising their products as secure when they certainly are not?
I believe that all governments involving more than a single person are too complex, and are futile. The only good government would trick people into solving their own problems. Self-empowerment is the only way.
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
Yeah, this is offtopic. But why are we letting Adobe off the hook? Katz doesn't even mention Adobe in the context of the agressor. The FBI/DOJ/CIA conspiracy is just obeying its charter. Adobe corporation put the man in jail. They've said they wouldn't press charges, and recommended he be released. So fucking what? Adobe hasn't apologized, and they are not paying Dmitry's legal expenses. Their hands are not clean, why shouldn't they be punished?
It should exist especially when they find it uncomfortable.
Nope, no sig
Why not just make the crime illegal instead of making the possesion of legal tools illegal. Just like a crowbar is legal as long as you haven't just left the scene of a B&E at which time it will be considered Burglery Tools. The main problem is corporations don't want to spend time tracking down everyone who copies a Movie off television because a) its impossible and b) a boycott would emerge against that company.
The author's assertions are based on his personal opinions, just like everyone else here on Slashdot. Yet he feels that he is somehow "better" than those that are arguing for Skylarov's release. Some good alternative points are made, but it just looks like he's trying to antagonize people to boost readership. What a crock.
this means nothing today
<p>"the powers that be" today have about as much respect for TJ as they do for, say, your average sample of belly button lint. Thus his arguments, true and logical and beautiful as they may be, carry about as much weight as said lint.</p>
<p>If you are lucky, your might for a moment appeal to some politicians nostalgia of history and patriotism, which will last for about 3 seconds, at which time the current realities and fat cheque from GlobalMegaCorp International will snap him back to his senses.</p>
<p>And, I disagree, the exact number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin is 1024.</p>
<p>Adrien</p>
Point and Grunt
Does anyone else see this post as a blatant "RFP" (Request for Posts) so Katz can publish "Voices from the Skylarov"?
with all this arguing about not-a-crime-in-russia, shouldn't-have-come-to-the-US, etcetera, my head is swimming
lets break it down simply:
no matter where i'm from (moscow/boston) i won't get arrested for this. I could go to a police station and tell them i smoked pot in amsterdam and the only thing they could do is hassle me (and maybe give me some D.A.R.E. pamphlets)
how is Dmitry's case different? no drugs are involved and he apparently pissed someone off in the fbi or doj. anything else?
If you so called hackers we're so self rightous about your freedom and spent more time off of other peoples systems the authorities wouldn't feel the need to alter your behaviour. I hope they start prosocuting script kiddies and everyone that makes the internet the unsafe haven of criminals that it is today. And another thing you linux heads should get down off your high horse and shut up about microsoft. I hate that they have bugs, so make something better that is as easy to use or shut up. Like some other poster said."at the end of the day linux is really gay"
Reason: Skylarov works for a /company/, right?
/employee/ of a /company/ that produces the the code that is under question. Apart from the obvious that Elcomsoft is a Russian company, since when are employees of a company criminally liable for what their company does? Since he's been arrested does this create a precendent that programmers working for a company could be jailed if their /company/ products "violate" the DMCA?
If I understand correctly, Sklyarov is an
If he can be jailed for writing an E-book format reader, can programmers at Corel, Sun, etc be jailed for writing an MSWord reader? (If modified rot13 can be called encryption, one would certainly imagine that a binary format like msWord would fall under the "encryption" category - how is "encryption" defined in the DMCA?)
This could set some scary precendents.
Atleast Katz could try to spell his name right..
http://almostsmart.com
In the past the US courts have always sided with the 1st Amendment on cases where widespread chilling effects could be easily demonstrated. If I can come up with a solid example in 15 minutes a good lawyer should be able to build an ironclad case. While the man should most definitely be released (and file suit for the numerous rights violations that have been outlined in other posts) I almost hope this case DOES stay active through the legal system as it seems to be an almost perfect weapon against this ludicrous law. Sklyarov committed no actual infringement. The company issuing the complaint has backed down. The presentation was given in an obviously journalistic/educational setting. If this can't win in court, what can?
jello.
aka aron.
Thanks for wasting bandwidth and time fighting the wrong fucking battle, Jon. But I guess that's what you're best at.
On a related note (albeit indirectly) there was a program recently on a local (here in Vancouver) cable station talking about "corporate branding" and other such issues. One of the points made was that our society has been shifted such that the freedoms that we take for granted are starting to become more and more irrelevant. For example: The "commons" has been replaced by the shopping mall, which BTW is owned by private corporations and no, you don't have free speech anymore because it's private property...
The case with our friend Dimitri is symptomatic of a far greater evil. That being that powerful institutions are seeking to reverse the so-called freedoms that we think are etched in granite.
At the risk of sounding pessimistic, I think they stand a very good chance of succeeding.
You're using her as bait, Master!
The DMCA is a bad law being used to put normal people behind bars, much like prohibition did in the earlier part of the last century.
Because it allows for enforcement of the copyright laws in such depth and detail you would expect that it would probably be a burden on the organized crime syndicates that make millions copying and selling bootleg copies of copyrighted matterials but I submit that is probably not the case.
Cops, prosicuters and their ilk are human and many of them are willing to do things that will gain them recognition but will in reality do very little to stop the crime we have hired them to prohibit. They are the same kinds of cops who give out countless speeding tickets and are seen by their superiors as having great numbers and are recognized for their productivity. Unfortunatly, while they are writing these tickets, they are unavailable for the robbery down the street and they can't investigate that rape that happend last week...
Arresting hackers and people who cobble together code allows them to rack up the numbers they show to their superiors to prove that they are doing a good job but it does nothing at all to prevent the big boys who sell counterfit software by the caseload. Matter of fact, it helps those guys by draining the resources of the enforcement agencies assigned to bust them!
Because the resources are tied up, the syndicates that produce the nicely shrink-wrapped and holograph sealed software overseas and ship it here have the time and money to protect their racket. They perfect their packaging and find the best ways to bring the product to market staying under the radar screen of law enforcement. These are the big boys who have invested a lot of money for real duplication equipment, printing presses, and packaging equipment. The products they make look real and enter the retail chain and are sold in stores. They are financially back by orginized crime and the profits end up in the same kinds of pockets that money from drugs and prostitution ends up.
The cops who bust hackers figure they are safer dealing with these guys than they are the big guys. That is why it is happening.
for providing devices that allow a regular consumer to go beyond the legal speed limit.
If I buy copyrighted material, and am allowed fair use, why can't I decrypt it so I can use XPDF to view the files on my Linux computer(do we have ebook readers yet?)? and if that would be OK, then why can't someone give me a tool that helps me view my files?
if he was redistributin copyrighted ebooks, that's one thing, but a tool to manipulate information can never be a crime.
Publishers should be GRATTEFUL to find out now about this weakness in security before they have invested more in distributing under this format.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Yes, but he gave a talk and explained out it works in the US.. that is illegal (currently) in the US.
There's a disused piece of parchment in a display case in Philadelphia that purports to secure the right to free speech, and NO law passed by Congress can overrule it. Dmitri's talk is CLEARLY speech, and thus is, or should be, protected by the First Amendment; this protection flat-out trumps the DMCA. Dmitri has cause here to sue massively for frivolous arrest.
Also, if I recall correctly, the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision applies ONLY to access control methods that EFFECTIVELY control access. Anyone here think ROT13 (a Caesar alphabet where each letter is shifted 13 places down the alphabet) is an effective control measure? Anyone? Funny, but I don't see anyone with their hand raised...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
If it is illegal to create a product that defeats someones security, and is not the fault of the individual that actually violated the security agreement. Then I have a list of companies that provide products that violate my security. Remmington, Colt .... every gun manufacturer whose product finds its way into hands of people whose sole intent is to violate others. Cigarette manufactures that provide products that violate my clean air. Automobile manufactures same reason as the cig companies. What you all say they have legit uses unlike this software. Well this software is just taking advantage of adobes stupidity, to turn a little profit for a little while. Adobe make your product better bottom line.
The only way to compete in a world market is to provide a good product.
It seems to me that Adobe and the Feds are just taking the easy way out.
Well, I really can't say I think this guy is innocent and should be let go. If this was like the Jon Johansen case (DeCSS, I hope I remember his name correctly), where the guy created something that strips off lame encryption and then released the source code to the world for anybody to integrate into whatever product they choose, then it would be a different story. But it's not. This guy just wrote a program that strips off the copy protection from a PDF... and is selling it for $99. The fact that he's trying to make a profit off of it changes the situation completely for me. Why should he get paid for a product whose sole purpose (let's be realistic) is to cause another entity (either individual or corporation) to lose money?
Then again, under fair use, the DMCA shouldn't be permitted to exist. You should be able to make backup copies for personal use. But in the Internet age, how can you distinguish between a "personal use" copy and a "let's send this around to everybody" copy?
What the heck are you trying to say Jon?
Then the cheaply-made cutting board breaks. Or you move. Suddenly your knife doesn't work, and you have to buy all-new cutlery so you can do your basic cooking tasks. Not so good any more, is it? Thing is, if you had $200 invested in a good set of knives, wouldn't it be worth $99 to get a gadget that would let you use the knives as you want to? Aren't the people really bent on mayhem (or theft) going to find a way to do their dirty work no matter how many silly legal obstacles you put in their way?
I know you're playing Devil's Advocate, but I'd take issue with this. I subscribe to Sturgeon's Law, with Spamalamadingdong's corollary: Sturgeon was an optimist (an hour listening to Top 40 radio will confirm this to any open-minded person). I don't see that the work of Mozart, or Beethoven, or Debussie, or Ellington was impaired in the slightest by the lack of the DMCA, and I don't think we need such absurd hoarding of authority by publishers today any more than we did then.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
really now, if you spent that entire time busting your ass writing software only to have somebody else make profits on it (or diminish what profits you could have made), wouldn't you be pissed? imagine all that hard work done for nothing; money that could have been used to feed your kids or send them to college or to pay off college tuition. wouldn't you be pissed off, too?
oh yeah, i'd also like to say that you all are a bunch of cockfancing effeminates . thank you.
He should also be freed because it appears he is nothing but an easy target to make an example of so some government punk can get a blue ribbon and a promotion. Nothing will be solved by locking this man up. Maybe the government and the RIAA should learn a simple lesson: there are many, many more people out there that are smarter than you. You cannot sue them and jail them all. Eventually, you'll lose the battle, like it or not. All you can do is keep evolving your protection methods so that it never becomes commonly easy to bypass your protection. Expensive, yes, but eternal vigilence is the price of profit and monopoly.
You're a troll. Adobe doesn't have your money. The RIAA doesn't have your money. The artists who create the music you download don't have your money. The companies who create the software you download from warez sites don't have your money. The comparison is absurd.
Got Rhinos?
We don't need to get this guy out, we need to get those who sell America to these corperations daily out of office. Even if you feel that they should be jailed or shot for treason they'll go scott free with millions of dollars in bribes. Money moves our government and unless you can bribe the scum to do their job honestly your just not gunna be pleased with the outcome every time they go to vote. They will sell your rights because they can. Our forefathers thought states would remain untrusting of eachother. Now they are in cahoots with eachother. They relate to eachother better then they relate to those they are suppose to represent. Screw this online petition, our rep will use it to wipe his arse as use'n paper from the breifcase he got from that shadey charactor gets expensive.
Our government is corrupt and useless. Someone needs to hit the reboot button, reload the bios code (constitution) and start working on some bootstraps that protect our personal freedom rather then selling it to the highest bidder.
I still see Adobe as being responsible for this. They started it and if they lost control of this wildfire its still their blame. We cannot blame the mindless robots who follow the direction of our corrupt political system. Nor can we blame the scum that voted yes to DMCA. No, blame rests in the hands of what really drives American law, the corperation. Namely Adobe. Now I can't say for sure that Adobe had anything to do with lobbing for DMCA, but the blood of its injustice still stain its hands.
I wish the US Gov would stop calling themselves Americans. They have no idea what it means to be an American and in my opinion, represent the tyrany our forefathers warned us about. Hell, the majority of our people don't deserve to be Americans. Sadly it is the new Americans, the forigners who move here, that still have that dream. That pride. That hope of freedom. The majority of the people here don't care about freedom anymore. All they care about is their pay check and the starbucks on the corner. The majority of my fellow countrymen (and women) make me sick. They don't deserve to breathe the same air I do.
I wish they could be expelled to where they want to go. For all our social medicine / welfare people, go to russia, see how communism works! Don't bring my country down because your lazy ass doesn't want to work. I'm sick of pay'n out 33k a year to pay for some fat bitch to squirt out puppies. Neuter that whore! Ugh, I'm getting way off topic...
This is futile. There will be no fair resolution, only more money in the coffers of the rich. This is the new America. Welcome to the United States of Socialist America, and the tyrany that comes with it.
Nexion
Well, I live in the USA. Hopefully not too much longer. This country sucks for more reasons than the DMCA. I had planned to take my kids out of this unhealthy society already anyways, but particularly after this incident I want to get the hell out of this backwards country that has gone on it's own little with hunt again. Talking here about the DMCA obfuscates the more important question "Why were Dmytri's rights under the Vienna Convention trampled by the USA?". Nobody in the rest of the world cares about faulty USA laws, most of the people abroad KNOW the USA is fsck'ed. I wonder if I will have to go wear a yellow star or something sometime soon because I'm a computer programmer and know a fair bit about security. For you who don't know what the Vienna Convention is: It is the international law proposed by the USA and signed unanimously by all countries that when somebody gets imprisoned in a foreign country, he/she has a right to have consular contact. And that doesn't mean he can run to his embassy and not be put in jail or anything. It means somebody from the Russian embassy can assist and help him dealing with this foreign country's law as well as possible. Somebody can explain to him what's the issue IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE. Now he gets an American Attorney through the EFF. The EFF has the right intention, nothing bad about them, but how do you think Dmytri will feel about being represented by an American attorney? Barbarians.
I don't think he should go free, so I'll tell you why he deserves to stay in prison.
Skylarov not only encouraged theft, but provided the means in which other people could bypass security measures in order to steal something.
Here's an analogy to think about. Some guy comes up with a way to defeat ADT Home Security systems...You can walk up to any house with a blue stop sign in the front yard, punch in a series of numbers, gain entry to that house, and steal its contents when the owners aren't home to protect their property. Suppose you're one of the homeowners who has ADT, and you pay a monthly fee for it. Now, Skylarov starts walking around downtown handing out flyers to seedy characters describing how to defeat the security system that protects your property.
What we're talking about here is no different.. Property is property. A company has a right to protect their propertly just the same as you have a right to protect your own.
Way too many people have this bullshit idea in their heads that "oooh! All corporations are bad!! They're all out to screw you and I!!" when the fact of the matter is, they have the same constitutionally protected rights that you and I have. Skylarov shouldn't be able to encourage hackers to break eBook encryption no more than I should be able to encourage theives to break into your home and walk off with your computer.
Plain and simple, this guy is a jackass. He could have simply kept quiet about his little discovery, perhaps informed the company that they should think twice about how safe their property is. Then, if someone else happens to rip them off, its their problem, not yours. After all, you warned them. Instead, this guy decided he was gonna try and be famous, and got burned. Now you're all crying for what essentially amounts to a criminal being caught.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll throw Skylarov in there with Mumia Abu-Jamal and Kevin Mitnick on my list of "People Who Should Continue To Rot In Prison".
Bowie J. Poag
ouYa areya owna uiltyga ofya ircumventingca yma encryptionya. Should I have you arrested? G.W.Atkisson
He is being jailed for something he wrote. Code is writing and should be protected as such.
No link here. You are totaly confused on the matter. Tobin is (was) the only US citzen in a russian prison. There are thousands of russians in american prisons. The "free" US media never mentions that fact - but raises incredible noise for the american. Tobin was arested for drugs. As many other russians and amercans are. As a step in the internatioanl politics, Sklyarov's arrest is a provocation and so are many other steps of this administration. This in addition to the internal goal to strengten DMCA at the expence of the already well worked out images of the "bad russians" and "bad hackers". On a side note, just to give you a flavor of the "free media": two milion russian "whites" mostly inteligent people fled from the "reds" to the States after the revolution. Well, they were arrested by Roosevelt and extradited back to Stalin (who killed almost all of them). How about two pupets hanging on the same hand? I know it sounds wierd - but that is only because most people are soooo used to the Holywood version of things. FreeDmitry
Jon asks "why [Dmitry] should go free" and not why the DMCA is bad law, so I will restrict my comments to this limited question, and target them towards the US policymakers who have the power NOW to change the government's course.
Dmitry was arrested under the provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). It has been argued that Dmitry did not violate this law - but I will not make that argument; assume instead that he did. It has also been argued that the DMCA (or part of it) is bad law - but I will not make that argument either. Instead, I will argue that even granted these points, Dmitry should go free.
To make this argument I assert, first, that the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA - those that Dmitry is accused of violating - are controversial law. Specifically, these provisions of the law may be unconstitutional. As evidence I offer up, first, Constitutional Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times; and second, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's essay on their web site. Note that one does not have to agree with all or even most of these arguments to accept that the law is controversial - one merely has to accept that some of these arguments are reasonable.
Second, I assert that the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, and particularly their criminal remedies, are currently untested law. This point is almost self-evident, as nearly every media story about the case has referred to its ground-breaking nature. It suffices merely to point out that in addition (1) the two other cases brought under the DMCA, DeCSS (2600 magazine) and SDMI (Prof. Edward Felten) are civil actions; and (2) Neither of those cases are yet resolved in the courts.
Finally, I assert that it is not in the US government's interest to make Dmitry Sklyarov the test case for these controversial, untested provisions of the DMCA. There are several reasons for this. First, Dmitry is a working graduate student and not clearly either criminally responsible for the software or wealthy because of it; therefore he is a sympathetic defendant for judge or jury. Second, the chief complainant in the case, Adobe, has recommended dropping the charges. Third, he is a foreign national who is accused of breaking this controversial, untested American law while in his home country, which adds needless complexity (and diplomatic ramifications) to the case, and threatens to deprive the US of the expertise of foreign programmers (c.f. Alan Cox).
Rather than pursue the risky brute-force prosecution of Dmitry Sklyarov, then, US policymakers should tell the FBI to pick on someone their own size - that is, a US citizen who has clearly broken these provisions of the law while on American soil.
Free Dmitry Sklyarov!
-Renard
I hate to make "me too" posts, but that was very much worth reading and I'd like to thank Zeio for the effort. (This is posted without a +1 bonus to keep it under the radar of people reading at +2, and anyone reading at +1 probably doesn't mind a little fluff.)
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Dmitri Sklyarov should be freed. Here is my reasoning:
-Fair Use rights. Consumers have historically had a "fair use" right which basically allows them to do nearly anything with a personally owned, copyrighted work. A consumer is allowed to take an electronic device apart to study it. He is allowed to photocopy a book if he desires. He may make a copy of a music recording to alter the format it's stored on. The tool that Dmitri worked on (in Russia, and distributed by a Russian firm), makes it easier for a consumer to exert his Fair Use rights. Unless the Congressional intent of the DMCA was to eliminate nearly all Fair Use rights, Dmitri is in jail illegally, and should be released and compensated for his troubles ASAP.
One sad note in this episode is that we (consumers) may be better off if the case against Dmitri goes to trial. It is likely that the DMCA will be labelled as unconstitutional if it goes to the Supreme Court, which I'm sure it would as neither party would be willing to accept a defeat from a lesser court.
The dry fish swims alone.
I will be the first to admit, I used Napster all the time. Before Napster, I downloaded/traded MP3s on IRC. I now have 7 GB of MP3s on my computer. However, I do not kid myself and say that this is fair use or whatever.
Probabally 70% of my MP3s are songs that I have NOT purchased, nor do I own on CD. I burn them to CD and listen to them on my discman, stereo, etc. Most of these I have never paid for, and never intend to pay for. That being said though, most likely, if Napster had never existed, I still would not have bought the CDs. I have become much more of a music fan, a fan of all types of music, because I have been able to listen to all types via Napster, without spending thousands of dollars. However, make no mistake, it is still stealing. I have near-original quality copies of many full albums, and singles, which I have burned to CD, yet never paid for. Regardless of profits, motives, etc, it is not possible to justify that as not being theft.
That being said though, I will still use my p2p music trading software.
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill
grep -ri 'should work'
He violated the law of the land. Therefore, he is a criminal and richly deserving of punishment. Why are we even having this discussion?
Skylarov should not be freed - here's why:
He (or his company) conspired to break an existing law of the United States. Since Skylarov is the acknowledged author of the program he must be held liable for breaking that law. Since our society is based on law, we must attempt to enforce ALL of the laws, or else all of them are invalid. This means even the most odious of laws must be enforced, no matter how painful it is.
Since the DMCA is the law in force at this time, the authorities entrusted with enforcement of those laws HAVE to prosecute. They don't have a choice in this matter. A crime was reported and a suspect captured, so now the justice system must determine factors such as cause, intent, etc. and perhaps eventual punishment.
That is why he must be jailed.
Now, that being said, I do believe the DMCA is an odious law. It perverts the nature of copyright and removes an essential right from the public. It must be changed to something that provides a safe middle ground - ensuring protection for publishers and consumers alike. This will probably never happen, but we must work to that effect.
Is Adobe at fault? In my understanding of the case - no. By the law, even the simplest form of encryption is protected. ANY attempt to bypass that encryption is a crime under the DMCA, if the intent is to defraud or otherwise cause harm to the publisher of that content. Adobe used what they apparently thought was a good method of encryption - obviously not true, but protected nonetheless.
However, none of this changes the fact that Dmitry or his company broke U.S. law in offering the software for sale here.
If you are upset by this - believe me, I agree - then get the law changed.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
An ebook publisher on why Dmitry should go free
I've added a recent list of points about what turns out to be the main technical point even if you believe in the DMCA. The DMCA crime alleged here is trafficking in the software in the USA. He didn't do this, his employer/publisher did. There is a big difference. If there are to be info-crimes, should employees be put in jail if their employers use their (legal where they did it) work in illegal ways in other lands?
Of course, as chairman of the EFF I may have some bias here.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Everyone has the freedom of speech according to the constitution, but with that freedom comes the *responsibility* to accept the consequences of that speech.
exactly. mod this guy up for the love of jesus!
(Someone needs to learn how to preview...)
Adobe sets a scary precedent by allowing taxpayer money to be used to prosecute someone who challenges a corporation's marketing claims.
I saw Dmitry's talk at DEFCon, I don't think it's anything to put someone in JAIL for. At the very least this should be a civil suit filed by Adobe -- the criminalization of supposed copyright interference is a new and frightening phenomenon of this century.
So, you admit that he's guilty. The fact that you disagree with the law doesn't mean it should be ignored - you work to change it! What kind of country are you working towards, Jon? One where all the dumb laws (in your opinion) can be legally ignored? What kind of defense does this guy have? "Yeah, I know what I did was illegal, but it's a stupid law." What, do you think the judge will agree, and just let the guy go, thereby annulling the entire DMCA?
Without rules, our society cannot function. And rules are nothing if they are not enforced. Our political system supports processes to work for changes to those laws, within certain guidelines. You can't just throw all that out the window because you don't happen to like it.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I think that citing support from The Economist would be beneficial.
"I want to know God's thoughts...The rest are details." Albert Einstein
It is a crime in many middle-eastern countries to view/possess pornography. Many "luminaries" of the US tech industry have a hand in the creation of the WWW; people like Andreessen, Gates, Vint Cerf, etc. Any prosecuter in those countries can claim that their products are breaking the law in their country and arrest them. How would the US feel in that case?
Secondly: how come it is legal to sell guns, which kill thousands of people per year? Easy: the NRA says that guns don't kill people, people do. Similarly, Sklyarov's programs don't by themselves break any copyright laws, people who use these programs do.
Maybe we should enlist the NRA's help in this case...
Because any acts purportedly illegal under US law performed by Mr Sklyarov occurred in a foreign country, the US has no jurisdiction. If use of his product is illegal in the US then legal exposure should be limited to those who used it in the US.
Any other interpretation is enormously risky to Americans who travel abroad, as behaviors considered innocent in the US may be illegal elsewhere. The present interpretation opens such Americans to prosecution by foreign courts for acts committed in the US.
I said bad things about the Soviet Union back in the communist era, and subsequently visited that country. My speech was illegal under the rules of the USSR. Is it the US position that the USSR would have had the right to incarcerate me for such speech, even if uttered within the US?
Furthermore, the excessive nature of the punishment damages the credibility of the US as a champion of justice and human rights in the world at large.
In short, this episode strikes me as putting matters considerably more important than intellectual property at clear risk. Why? For at best a marginally justifiable enforcement of at best a marginally justifiable case of at best a marginally justifiable criminalization of an at worst marginally damaging violation of intellectual property? At this point I think "cruel and unusual punishment" is a relevant phrase.
mt
Comment #197 is wholly true! Please correct this injustice!
Essay on a Historical Perspective on the DMCA
l if fe.htm
b ib le.htm
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act is hardly the first attempt to use obfuscation of writings as an attempt to control how the masses access works. The reasons why the supposed new right of access authorization must be facially rejected have not changed in the 600 years since its original use. In a nutshell, legal enforcement of access controls violates the "right to read", a principle that literally lead to the foundation of our country.
History records that in the year 1377, John Wycliffe was brought before the Roman Catholic Church to answer for his beliefs that the common man had the right to read the bible, which he had translated from the Church's sanctioned latin into English. The position of the Church on common vernacular translation was known from the time of the Spanish inquisition. Spanish bible translators were often beaten, tortured, and burned alive during the spanish inquisition by the Catholic Church that sponsored it. Spanish clergyman Alfonso de Castro gave the opinion of Church in these words: "the translation of the scriptures into the vernacular tongues, with the reading of them by the vulgar, is the true fountain of all heresies." The hypocracy in his statement is profound: the fountain of all heresy is, in fact, the attempt to restrict or limit the public's access to ideas.
Wycliffe was lucky to merely be arrested and excommunicated. His work survies, although the church did eventually dig him up from the grave and burn his bones. Because of John Wycliffe, the English Bible now exists.
In 2001, cryptography and computer code have replaced latin, while encrypted content like eBooks and DVD's are the container of choice for influential works of art and science. The "Copyright Industry" and their special interest driven politics have replaced the pre-reform Catholic Church as the organization that uses secret languages to maintain their self-maintaining control. Make no mistake, the DMCA is about thought control in its most base form: the copyright industry would like to control how you experience the works they sell, just as the medieval Church wanted to control how you experienced religeon.
After John Wycliffe asserted the right of the people to read, this principle became a central tenent of all church reformers. As people were able to have unfettered access to the information in the Bible, they came to understand that it was not the information itself, but the metering of its access that was the source of their oppression. It cannot be denied that direct access to the Bible and the correspond right to read was a cornerstone belief in the protestant groups that fled Europe seeking a new life in what eventually became the United States of America.
Copyright exists precisely to enhance this "right to read". Copyright inherently must increase public access to works. The abandonment of such control by authors is the quid-pro-quo of accepting reward in the marketplace, and it is completely irrational to believe that the public would empower Congress to grant commercial monopolies to authors without demanding as compensation that they forego all forms of use control on their products.
Today, as in medieval times, the right of the people to access the raw text of documents that affect the public psyche, without regard to "technological protection measures", such as latin, object code, cryptography, or obfuscation, is inherent in the First Amendment and the fundamental human rights which transcend government. It is also a simple property right, when copies of the work are purchased in the free market. To think and to examine and to decipher and to ponder the meaning, however cryptic, of raw data is the essence of the free mind and of liberty.
Conversely, the supposed right to control access to copyrighted works against circumvention, asserted by the DMCA is a false right and it must be facially rejected because it conflicts inescapably with the right to read. This "right" is completely distinct from the one it was supposedly created to protect, which is the right of authors to authorize the first sale of their works.
Citations for Bible Translation History:
http://www.whidbey.net/~dcloud/articles/johnwyc
http://www.whidbey.net/~dcloud/articles/spanish
But on a more serious note, how many of you have done anything constructive on this matter? I mean in meatspace, not cyberspace. No website is really going to help him much. Have you put up a "Free Dmitri" sign in your business, home, or car? Have you written any public officials? Bought or made a tshirt proclaiming your views on the matter? Attended a protest? Why don't you put down the mouse and show people that hacker != cracker.
Speaking of which, is it possible that the reason The Media can't make the hacker/cracker distinction is that it allows them to make guys like Dmitri seem like evil criminal masterminds who are out defacing websites, stealing credit card numbers, wholesaling warezed copies of MS Office, and ddosing major internet sites?
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
Intresting point...
// deess
Something like when they got Al Capone for not paying his taxes...
"In swedish it's called räksmörgås."
well, this case just cracked it for me. I'll not be going to the US. why? Because I don't feel safe. I'm a programmer, and I've done my share of heinous crimes: I'm smoking pot, I've been drinking since before I was 21, did some DeCSS mirroring, made copies of CDs. Oh, I drew extremely violent pictures when I was n school too involving ropes, knives, guns, bullets and strange apparati (andsometimes a teacher or two..). I feel I could be arrested for breaking any number of american laws the moment I step from the plane. OK, maybe I'm paranoid.. but think about it, I may not be the only one...
Nobody expected the american inquisition.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Fr33 D!m!7ry N0W! N3x7 W0rM W!11 b3 H4Xorz by Russ!4ns! Un13ss U$ Fr33s D!m!7ry N0W! 7h3 Br07h3rh00d of 3v!l H4Xorz w!11 Br!ng d0wn h311 0n 7h3 U$!
Reminds me of some far-left organization's yearly report of "Top 10 Censored Stories". It does not take much effort to figure out that not one of these stories is censored, and the left-wingers' real problem is not that they are censored, but that few people care about the stories.
The courts of the United States have lately been treating the law as if the entire planet were under their jurisdiction; e.g. Noriega, who was indicted despite never having committed crimes within the US. And while I doubt the local prosecutors would've bothered indicting Sklyarov and then having him kidnapped from Russia, gunning for him while he was in the US proved too great a temptation.
Is the only response I can think of. My understanding is that he was arrested for actually selling the software at defcon. If so, that is a violation of the DMCA. Like it or not I think we would all agree on that.
It's a bad law. What can you do about a bad law? Since it's an unconstitutional law what we can do is put forth a test case that gets to the high court where it gets thrown out. that requires someone to be arrested, charged and supported all the way to the supreme court. We could also get it repealed by congress, but I don't think that is likely. Congress no longer represents US citizens and and has already showed their distain for the constitution.
Dimitri is a cruel test case. He's a foriegn national. He wrote a program that not only is legal where he lives, but without which the Adobe software is itself illegal in Russia. Most important, this is not his fight - it's ours. Send him home. This behaviour makes many of us ashamed to be Americans. Send him home. Use any excuse you have to to cover your collective asses. Say you are releasing him as a gesture of goodwill to Russia for releaseing that drug dealer they sent back to the US this morning. Just let him go.
You can take me instead. I don't think I've violated the DCMA recently but I'm willing to. Get me a copy of this software and I'll happily sell it to an FBI agent. I'm a US citizen, even when you make me ashamed to be. It *is* my fight, for good or ill. I've got a wife and kids that depend on me, just like Dimitri, but that's the way it shakes out sometimes.
Who's with me? The Ghost of Henry Thoreau is calling.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I have a suspicion about why Dmitri was kidnapped by Adobe's fbi thugs. A FulBright scholar from Connecticut (US) named Jack Tobin has been sitting in a Russian prison, held on charges that seem equally suspect. It may be that Sklyarov is simply being held hostage in order to secure Tobin's release. If that is the case, The US (in)justice system is conducting a hostage for ransom scheme.
It looks like Tobin will be released soon. If Dmitri is released soon after, then there could be a connection between the two kidnappings.
After all, I'm sure we all remember how the invention of photocopiers, scanners, OCR software and desktop publishing systems led to wholesale copyright violations and brought about the demise of the printed book industry.
If this were a corporation, it might be tied up in court, but not in Jail.
Why don't we also throw all those annoying academics in jail while we're at it? They probably think all kinds of un-corporate, anti-profit, thoughtcrime things. Wait...we already threatened them, maybe that's enough (for now).
Seriously, we're putting someone in prison for THE POTENTIAL OF harm to the PROFITS of a corporation? Profit at all costs, eh? Does that end justify these means?
It was Penn Jillette who said that he wanted to be smarter, so why take things that make you stupider?
Stay out! We have enough dope fiends here already.
Is the only response I can think of. My understanding is that he was arrested for actually selling the software at defcon. If so, that is a violation of the DMCA. Like it or not I think we would all agree on that.
It's a bad law. What can you do about a bad law? Since it's an unconstitutional law what we can do is put forth a test case that gets to the high
court where it gets thrown out. that requires someone to be arrested, charged and supported all the way to the supreme court. We could also
get it repealed by congress, but I don't think that is likely. Congress no longer represents US citizens and and has already showed their distain
for the constitution.
Dimitri is a cruel test case. He's a foriegn national. He wrote a program that not only is legal where he lives, but without which the Adobe
software is itself illegal in Russia. Most important, this is not his fight - it's ours. Send him home. This behaviour makes many of us ashamed to be Americans. Send him home. Use any excuse you have to to cover your collective asses. Say you are releasing him as a gesture of goodwill to Russia for releaseing that drug dealer they sent back to the US this morning. Just let him go.
You can take me instead. I don't think I've violated the DCMA recently but I'm willing to. Get me a copy of this software and I'll happily sell it to an FBI agent. I'm a US citizen, even when you make me ashamed to be. It *is* my fight, for good or ill. I've got a wife and kids that depend on me, just like Dimitri, but that's the way it shakes out sometimes.
Who's with me? The Ghost of Henry Thoreau is calling.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
p are being reasonable, people should NOT bend over.
:-) and Putin might feel a little different about one of his citizens being snatched, jailed, and threatened with death over his being helpful to Adobe.
The trick is to ask for punishment so draconian, so outrageous and so indefensible that it can't possibly get accepted. It can't even be considered.
If I was Putin, I'd've put in a call or two to Bush asking for the kid. He's only in jail on technicalities that aren't worth bothering about..
But he's only in jail on technicalities that aren't worth bothering about. For all we know, he may get off with time served and get a ticket home on the next Aeroflot.
But threaten to have him sit in the "big chair" (a fitting punishment involving electrons, don't cha think?
That might also cause a BIG chill in overseas software sales. Nobody wants to buy American since M$ will reverse-engineer everything. bundle it into Windows and then haul your ass from Nor-fuckin'-way and throw it in jail under threat of death if you try the same thing.
That would get Linux adpoted everywhere that Windows isn't and where programmers are.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This is an idea I had about how hackers could legally distribute the source code to circumvention devices they've written that might be deemed illegal under the DMCA. In it's most basic form this idea calls for the adoption of an inexplict hacker convention such as "before distribution subtract 3 to char 3, before compliation add 3 to char 3". Here's the long version (warning: I'm not a lawyer AT ALL):
Prior to a hacker distributing the source code to his/her circumvention device, they would (by this informal convention) subtract 3 from the ascii value of the 3rd character in thier source code. This small, simple and easy to remember mathematical operation would almost certainly lead to either a compliation error or a runtime error of some sort; thus transforming the otherwise illegal source code into trash.
On the other end of the equation would be the user who (by a reversal of the same informal convention) would add 3 to the 3rd char of the source code, thus returning the source code to it's original, functional state.
The most important aspect of this process is that NO WHERE IS THIS CONVENTION (ADD 3 TO CHAR 3) EXPLICITLY WRITTEN: either in the readme.txt or anywhere in the source code's comments. By not bundling any information with the source code that would enable the end users to perform the necessary operation to the code to return it to a functional state, the author is essentially distributing useless (and therefore legal) code.
Are there any legal arguments anyone can think of in response to this tactic (like intent of the author)?
He engage in free speech. Under the laws of this country, it is covered under the first amendment. Not guilty.
Personally I think it is an outrage... I would think the bad PR would be enough to make adobe pull back, but apparently not... Well you really wanna get your point across, bug the chairman Join Warnock and Charles Geschke...
... that (paraphrasing here) "the only place for a just man in an unjust society is in jail."
Civil disobedience has a long, long history. There have been some major figures practicing it throughout history, but I don't think it's any one human's "creation".
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Dimitry never hurt anyone with his software, even adobe has admitted that by withdrawing their support from the doj. To have a crime, you have to have a victim, and where is the victim in this case?
Everybody, think real hard about how much money you can part with. Surely most people here can let go of at least $100, without blinking. Hell, a lot of you wouldn't blink at spending $500 on a night out. or maybe you can only spare $20, you can still help with that. Now do two things with that money:
1) Donate to the EFF, or Join the EFF. They're a great organization, and they can use your help. You, on the other hand, can use the tax break.
2) Purchase Elcomsoft software.
we take men like Sklyarov who delight in playing a sort of twisted Robin Hood and turn them into our heroes. We rationalize the crimes ("Free speech", "Information wants to be free", blah blah blah)
Why compare him to a thief like Robin Hood? Sklyarov didn't steal anything. What did he do? He spoke about how something could be done, specifically, he described an decryption technique that, if used, might make stealing possible. Ian Flemming's novels described the techniques James Bond might use to kill a person. Should Ian have been charged with murder just because someone else *could* read the books and use those techniques to commit a murder? I don't think so. What else did Dmitry do? He wrote a program that could be used to make stealing easier. Do you think Walther or Colt executives should be charged with murder just because the guns their companies manufacture *might* be used to murder someone?
The simple fact is that Dmitry's only crime in the USA is that of speaking about something that you don't want the rest of the world to know about. The bill of rights is supposed to protect speech, even speech that is not popular with you. The DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions contradict the bill of rights, and these provisions ought to be overturned.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
-- Picard, ST: First Contact
BytesTemplar.com
The charges against Dmitry Sklaraov must not be dropped. I believe his arrest and imprisonment is unjust, but the implications of this case stretch far deeper than the fate of one man, deeper even than the fate of the DMCA. At the risk of overstating my point, this case tests whether or not we are still represented by a government, "..of the people, by the people, and for the people." The magic of the U.S. Constitution lies in checks and balances. Chief Justice John Marshall, by establishing judicial review in 1801, set up the courts as the ultimate check on congressional authority. It is the nature of Congress and the President to overstep the bounds of their power, and reigning them in is the duty of the courts. The Skylarov case must be fought in the courts, because the DMCA must be brought into line, and only the courts can do that. If the courts fail us, I fear all my notions of what is to be an American, what it is to live in a free society will suffer the same fate as Dmitry. Is our government still the champion of freedom? Are the ideals of 1776 still alive somewhere? Or has Washington sunk to being the strong arm of Wall Street? This battle must be joined, there is just too much at stake.
Sickman's spinfusor catches Anonymous Coward by surprise.
Regardless of Dmitry's fate technology will always defeat the corporate powers that be. All it takes is a single invidual to let the cat out of the back to destroy corporate attempts to control us. Corporations try to act as the train coming down the track full steam and saying that anybody who stands on the track will be killed. They know they can't stop technologies but they hope the actions they take will at least frighten people who would think of standing on the tracks. What we need is a train coming down the track from the opposite end and hope for a derailment. In other words we cannot allow ourselves to fall victim to things like the DMCA. We need to fight it and get rid of it at whatever cost. In the meantime we need to keep creating technologies that will thwart corporations and make them waste billions of dollars on futile research until they can no longer afford to.
Dmitry up!
Adobe down!
I think this arrest has happened because the people that are in charge of this country or its law enforcement have no clue how the world functions anymore. Honestly the person that I that should have the rights to press charges on him are eithier the person that wrote the software or the team. I state this because, its like you telling all the proffesional problem solvers in the world to solve a problem, then arrest the problem solver that does break it. In this day an age if we want to be sure that our technology is the best support the breaking of it. Ex. RSA supports everyone that try to break their cryptography. If the government continues with this case, it will set a dangerous precident, stiffiling to intellectual thought. And possible set the world back to the days of Kings & Queens. (Forgive my english, I can code like the wind, and spell like a 3rd grader)
Fr33 D!m!7ry N0W! N3x7 W0rM W!11 b3 H4Xorz by Russ!4ns! Un13ss U$ Fr33s D!m!7ry N0W! 7h3 Br07h3rh00d of 3v!l H4Xorz w!11 Br!ng d0wn h311 0n 7h3 U$!
You also miss the point of the Kyoto Accord, which is best dumped based on bad science and its bias toward third-world polluters.
But yes, this man's first amendment rights have been violated.
I am repeating what someone else said in another post. I can't find it now, but I found it to be extremly interesting. After years of living in the 'cold war', we now have a Russian citizen who is fighting to LEAVE the U.S and go BACK to Russia where he can be free to express himself. Why is our government holding this man against his will? Why have the FBI not been brought up on charges of kidnapping? This is basically what they are doing. They are holding him against his will in some cell somewhere. If there hasn't been a horrid miscarriage of justice somewhere, I would be surprised. Please please please Jon Katz, keep this thing in the light, keep the fight up. Don't let this die. Free Dmitry!
So, in a democracy, the people appoint the president, and this is what happened. What is so wrong with this? Are you comparing it to the president appointing himself (as opposed to the democracy doing it) or something?
yes, he wrote the software in russia where it's legal (and required) for this type of software to exist.
yes, he is the copyright holder (in russia) of this software.
yes, Elcomsoft distributed the software, not him.
yes, Elcomsoft used an American company for billing purposes.
yes, Elcomsoft distributed the software on an english website.
what does this all add up to? Dmitry is responsible for distributing this software to english speaking persons using an American distribution system (verio for their hosting and the american billing organization). which, if i'm not mistaken, is against the DMCA. he's in america during the time that the crime is happening. he gets arrested.
perhaps this case will change how the DMCA is viewed and perhaps create some changes.
but no, he is not being held because he wrote a piece of software in Russia that is against American law. he's being held because he was distributing a circumvention device while in America.
and the Irishman took the fly in his hands and yelled, "spit it out!"
The law of the land, is in fact, the United States Constitutition. What this Russian did was only free speech. Those involved with jailing him are violating the law of the land by ignoring the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.
Purely and simply this is a violation of Dimitri's first ammendment rights.
However, as a reminder of why the freedom of speech is so important I would like to paraphrase the 19th century british political philosopher John Stuart Mill.
When someone makes a statement there are three possibilities:
1) The statement is true.
2) The statement is false.
3) The statement is partially true and partially false.
In the first case, the statement is true, society needs to hear what is true. In the second case, the statement is false, society should be exposed to the statement and be allowed to discuss it freely so that people will be able to identify the statement as false. In the third case society should be able to discuss the statement to identify what is correct and incorrect about the statement.
So we can see that by allowing the freedom of speech all society benefits. I believe that this also holds true for code and information about encryption as well.
I am not going to say anything new here, I just felt the more people to "sign" this petition, the better it is.
My reasons for wanting him to be freed are as follows:
1. He did no crime. If anyone is guilty, it may, perhaps, be his employer, but it is NOT him. He built a perfectly legal device in his home country. No one can seriously argue that the US has any jurisdiction over what he did there. The only (weak) case the US has to claim jurisdiction is that his employer subsequently sold Dmitry's program in a country where the program is illegal. Does the US really want to say this prosecution is acceptable? If I am a photographer for Playboy, can I be arrested if my employer sells the magazines in the Middle East? Is this the message the US should be sending?
2. The DMCA is wrong. We do not outlaw lockpicks, crowbars, knives, rat poison, etc, simply because they may be used in an illegal manner. As long as they have some legal use, there is, as far as I know (IANAL) no precendence for outlawing something which has many uses, most of the legal, simply because some of their uses may be illegal. We do not make the tools illegal because their usage in an illegal manner is already illegal. Software should not be different, espically when the outlawing of such "tools" violates so many rights. I don't believe it is ever acceptable to take away basic constitutional rights to protect the already ridiculous profit margins of an industry.
That is my 2 cents...
At least when it is release for charge. Even if we are able to argue the software is speech, sold software would be 'commercial speech' which is treated differently under the First Amendment. The government has reserved the right to limit commercial speech. And it can.
That said, the USA hasn't made a habit of arresting people who don't follow our laws on commercial speech in foriegn countries. This is exactly the case in this instance. This sets a dangerous precident of the United States enforcing its laws all over the globe by arresting someone who just happens to be on American soil long enough to slap some 'cuffs on him. Ridiculous.
I am an unapologetic capitalist and as Republican as they get, but this guy's arrest is unbelievably unjust. At the core of the "freedom to innovate" is the freedom of speech. Without it, not only does liberty suffer, so does the ability to make money. If this poor guy weren't in jail, I'd almost hope that he would be prosecuted so that the Supreme Court would ultimately stike down this crazy law as unconstitutional.
If you ever come back to the real world, let us know.
This Star Trek quote was uttered by an organ of the Paramount network, which is owned by white capitalists engage in corporatist imperialism. We must be ever vigilant, and ever critical of their attempts to brainwash us. It is only though an informed citizenry and an empowered democracy with no private sector that the people will be protected.
Dmitry's software does us the service of enabling us to get the data out of the PDF format to a format where it can be read and used.
Stephen King made a big mistake in releasing his online work only in PDF.
an American student got released from Russian prisons after serving part of a questionable conviction.
CNN story here
Maybe the Russians can argue now, "We freed your guy; how about you free ours?"
If there has ever been a good time to send a letter/make a call/make a visit to your congressman/woman / senator about the DMCA, this is probably it. I'm sure Boucher would be more than delighted to put the bill on the floor if he had our undivided support for it.
I think, by analogy, that it should only be illegal to develop copyright circumvention technology in special circumstances for limited times. Specifically, when it is clear that there is substantial harm from the circumvention technology and when there are no legitimate uses of the circumvention technology.
Lets say you lived in a bad neighborhood and had a padlock on your door to keep out the baddies. Now schmuck decides that it is his god-given right to pick your lock and then distribute the combination on the street corner. Well then you say - thats nice, he pointed out the flaws in my security. So you go out and buy a better lock, but it so happens that the said schmuck finds out how to pick your new lock as well. So round and round you go, him having fun and you loosing time, money and and getting robbed to boot.
Just in case you are still wondering who is who in the story: you are Adobe and the schmuck is Sklyarov. You may have forgotten that a corporation is not some anonymous evil organization bent on destroying the world. In fact Adobe (just like many other companies out there) is comprised of a bunch of hard working individuals who toil away every day trying to make a living. What gives schmucks like Sklyarov the right to take away their somebody's hard earned bread? Who cares if the encryption is poor - it was _GOOD ENOUGH_ until Sklyarov decided that he wanted a piece of the action. Why do I keep on saying Sklyarov? Because his name appears on the copyright notice. If the software belonged to the company that hired him - the notice would reflect that fact.
The bottom line is this: "If you can do the crime - have the balls to do the time". For all you "I can do anything I want and claim its free speech" weenies - this is what happens when you steal. Grow up and get used to respecting the rights of others.
BTW Sklyarov can thank god for US laws. If he stole the equivalent from someone in Russia - he would be floating face down in the river as opposed to enjoying a nice clean jail cell and free speech groupies lavishing kisses on his pimpled posterior.
This is absurd. Let the man go.
Simply put, there are two reasons I have a problem with Dmitri's arrest:
1)At the very least, this should be a civil suit, and not a criminal one. Since when has the responsibility for protecting copyrighted material fallen onto the government instead of the copyright holder?
2)The DMCA is an unconstitutional law which should never have been passed in the first place.
What more needs to be said? Free Dmitri and strike down the DMCA.
If it's supposed to move and doesn't, use WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape.
Setting aside the lamentable DMCA itself, jailing this man without bail is thuggish intimidation unworthy of a free country. This is the kind of extra-judicial bad acting I associate with communist China and undemocratic Muslim countries. Shame on the judge - he's unfit for the American bench. If the accused is deemed to be a flight risk (and his word to appear should suffice in this sort of case), his passport could be held. Even this would be odious, since his alleged actions, not performed on US soil, are distinctly LEGAL in his home country. Thus, we have a diplomatic issue, not a criminal one. Arbitrary arrest and detention without bail cannot be allowed to become SOP in the United States of America. Every day this man is held is a further stain on the civilized application of the rule of law.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
i believe that, in america, one has the unalienable right of freedom of speech, and the press. how dare any american step on that right.
is an american a true american, if in the daily course of events that american stains our bill of rights with petty personal insecurities?
hrm, compare and contrast the free software people and the KKK, add in the government's interaction between the two. that sounds like an essay.
I'm stating this so that it's appropriate for people who are less involved with the DMCA backlash and want to know what's going on.
There's a particular provision in the DMCA that bans circumvention devices. A circumvention device is effectively declared to be something that breaks encryption. Distributing such devices is illegal. Hence, court battle.
The DMCA is supposed to update copyright law for the digital age, in the efforts to continue to protect copyright holders.
Not a single one of us disagrees with that. Copyright law is good! We support copyright law and we support the rights of the person who created the work to be allowed to do what they want.
All instances where people have been sued for violating the DMCA, in not one case was anyone's copyright being harmed. It's interesting to note that the copyright holders are not the ones suing, despite claiming that they are acting on copyright holders behalf.
Take the MPAA's DVD lobby, whose members include most major DVD technology vendors. They created the Content Scrambling System to "protect" DVDs. There is no case on record where a copyright holder has used the DMCA to protect their work distributed on DVD from being stolen. What HAS been happening is that the MPAA has sued individuals who want to make independent DVD players. They are using the DMCA to make it impossible to create a competing player without a license from the member group. The damning evidence is that the CSS uses an extremely trivial algorithm (ie, laughable, pathetic, would never be approved by even inexperienced cryptographers), rather than any one of the proven, secure, public domain, military grade algorithms out there to protect their content!
The only thing this does is stifle competition. If a startup came up with a DVD player that cost 1/10th the price of current market DVD players, do you think the DVD group would give them a license that would put all of their member groups out of business? Of course they wouldn't. That would be very bad business. The innovator cannot release the new product. The consumer loses.
Adobe moved to have Dmitry jailed not because he violated anyones copyright, but because he figured out how Adobe's cryptosystem works. This means that competitors could in theory develop technology that can read eBooks, cutting Adobe entirely out of their exclusive market.
Adobe did not develop anything original-- their content protection system was laughable, but they had the power to act as if they had a patent on it, granted by the DMCA. Adobe naturally moved quickly to jail what would have been a real competitor.
RealNetworks, Inc. just won a case against Streambox, Inc. using the DMCA. Streambox, Inc. sought to compete against RealNetworks by providing an alternative player capable of using RealNetwork's technology. RealNetworks countered this by "encrypting" their content streams, which meant that if StreamBox was able to read it, they would be using a circumvention device.
What "encryption" did they use? They set a single bit in the header that signified a stream was encrypted! The rest of the packet remained cleartext, but the encrypted bit was set. This is analogous to sending a letter to someone by postal mail and checking a box in the upper right corner of the envelope that says "[ ] Encrypted!", and suing anyone who saw the contents of the letter, or more amusingly, suing people who make letter openers.
In all of these cases, the DMCA was used by companies as an alternative to patenting their technologies. And why not? With the DMCA, you don't need to have an original idea. You don't have to even use a good idea. You can use the DMCA for criminal prosecution! You don't even need to sue!
The DMCA is not protecting the copyright holder, piracy continues and will always continue, especially outside of areas where the United States laws do not apply (like China, and Russia, where you can buy pirated software/music on store shelves). Every one of them is violating age old copyright law, and none of them are suffering. The DMCA will do nothing to stop this.
The DMCA is stifling innovation, hurting competition, and jailing innocent people. Researchers, scientists, technology lovers, programmers, etc are being threatened for providing a public service. The DMCA needs to be fixed.
zpengo asserts boldly without proof:
... ebook reader not approved by adobe or )to pop the lock ( access control) to get into their car(ebook).
"The sole purpose of copyright circumvention is the acquisition of free content. Anything else is a perk that can be used to rationalize illegal activity."
Yea right and lock picks are used soley for breaking into houses. Come on, this is one of the most ridiculous pieces of rhetoric I have ever seen. By your logic if a person locks themselves out of their car they should be arrested for using a close hanger( access circumvention device not approved by Ford motor, i.e
My biggest question is why are you defending this stupid law that violates our civil liberties? Are you an IP lawyer?
There are plenty of reasons for breaking an access control device and writing softweare to do it efficiently. One could be pure necessity (I lost the code to my ebook on CPR and I need the info to save my friend from choking on a hotdog and the manufacturer is not being responsive and thinks anyone asking for info is a criminal).
Another could be curiosity a person may just one to see how the access control device works. May be the access control device conceals the possibility that the software in question is being used for spying.
Anyway, just trusting the government and corporations on this one will surely lead this nation into a full on tyrannny by the few at the expense of the many.
BTW the way do you have scientific study or source that proves the assertion I extracted from your comment above?
Attempts like McCain Feingold fail to deal with the problem, and just shift the bribery around. They also do nothing with the problem of organizations (unions) forcing people to pay campaign funds, or the power of huge media conglomerates during campaigns. In addition, they do nothing about other corruptions of the system, such as leaders wasting taxpayer dollars on government pay raises in order to buy the votes of our public servants.
The solution to all of these problems does involve a major change in the Constitution: choose legislators and the President at random from the population, and let them serve just one term. No re-election bribery! Are there problems with putting too many "great unwashed" in power like this? Yes. But look at the inhabitants of the White House lately. Look at Ted Kennedy. Look at Trent Lott. It is hard to do worse with a random selection.
You'd have no DMCA: the average person, as represented now as never before, does not like such censorship... they might even be Napster users! No election or re-election bribery, since there are no elections or re-elections! You'd still have lobbyists (still a 1st Amendment, after all!). Perhaps they would find a new way to bribe....
You'd have a chance of getting a Klansman in the white house for 4 years if we did this change. Yet again, we just had a rapist in the white house for 8 years.
Your arrogance is overwhelming if you think I actually believe that you would use it for anything other than theft.
Some people will use ElcomSoft's utility for cracking illegally copied content. The relevance is lost to me. I'm sorry; it really is. I disagree with your statement. Making cracking software does not preclude teaching or aiding in the fight against copyright perversion, even if it can be used to break the law.
While I'm sure Sklyarov's story has changed after a while in jail, I doubt that his original rhetoric involved anything other than "Hey, look! I made software for cracking so you don't have to pay Adobe for their products!"
Not in North America.
Actually, it applies in North America more than anywhere else in the world. Companies are here to serve their own interests, not yours. They have no obligation whatsoever to please you. If they choose to do that, which seems like good business sense, then bully for them. If not, then don't buy their products.
No, I have circumvention technology.
And so that you could have it, a man rots in jail. Are eBooks (which I doubt you even read) worth that much to you?
One can only hope. :)
That's the sort of rubbish that leads to these inane debates. "Hope" is worthless. You have to do something to change the world, not have silly online arguments about the virtues of various criminals.
Got Rhinos?
One of the problems here with Sklyarov is trying to find the appropriate analogy with non-techie folks, espeically those who don't even have a clue what a programming language is at all, much less why telling a programmer that they can't read in a data file and convert that data to another format (because it is illegal, not because it is technically challenging or impossible).
One analogy that I've come up with is something like this:
Imagine somebody who for fun in another country (say, for example, Russia) has decided to counterfit US Currency (they like the looks of Ben Franklin on the $100 bill). In the country where they live it is perfectly legal, as long as it is the currency of another country (and in this case no treaties regarding this either... I know this is a stretch of the imagination.)
Now imagine that this same printer decided that he wanted to come to the United States on a conference regarding legal document ingravings, and presented a discussion regarding the inadequacies of the US currency system and why it is so easy to counterfit US money. (For a side note, imagine that US currency was printed on construction paper with a mimeograph machine... but don't let the analogy get carried too far.)
Now imagine that the US Secret Service arrested this same printer for printing the money, even though none of it ever even came to the United States. (BTW.... IANAL but my gut feeling is the Secret Service would indeed arrest somebody in this same situation, and I'm curious if you could get arrested as a foreign national for counterfiting even if it is done somewhere else.)
***********
I would like to see a killer analogy that could be given to representatives of the US news media to show just how rediculous this arrest really has been.
They prosecuted an employee of a company that sells a program that undermines the security (not sure you can even call it that) of their product, even though that company had ceased selling it in the US. Since then Adobe has backed down from their charges, yet he still does not go free.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
This has probably already been said (because it's frigging common knowledge) but, if responsible parties don't periodically challenge and point out the flaws in all types of security, we're just waiting for some irresponsible person to cause a need for it.
Who is really the criminal in the Dmitri Sklyarov case? Since Dmitri Sklyarov committed his crime while living in Russia, and his actions were not illegal by Russian law, did he committ a crime? Also, in Russia where this "crime" took place, it is required by law that you be able to make a back up of software, but Adobe did not allow people to make back ups. Therefore it was actually Adobe that broke Russian law. Does this mean Russia should arrest Adobe employees entering the country, of course not. What this does mean is that America should not be so imperialistic as to arrest a man from another country who violated our law, even when he was not in our country. This hearkens back to Eurocentric spirit of the Boxer rebellion in China, a time where European criminals were not able to be sentenced by Chinese courts, and were often given a slap on the wrist for committing crimes against Chinese people. It also reminds me of a case in Korea a few years ago where a US service man raped and murdered a little girl, but was not sentenced under Korean law, and by Korean standards got a slap on the wrist for his crimes. It seems that we are quick to convict foriegners who break our laws, but not our citizens who break foriegn laws.
Well, something stinks. Pardon my paranoia, but I gotta wonder if this isn't a red herring to get our attention away from something more important, like the fact that the Russians and the Chinese are buddy-buddy once again after quite some years of antimosity.... and that Taiwan is sitting right off the Chinese coast with all those motherboard factories....
One does, indeed, wonder...
But, yeah, I agree, this is our fight, and Felten has enough ammo to strike down the DMCA alreddie. No need to keep some poor Russian in the brig... and besides, if they have to let him go, it'll make the FBI look bad, which IMHO is a Good thing.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
This type of thing makes me ashamed (and fearful) to live in the U.S.
Noam Chomsky has stated that, "we're living in a system of massive public subsidy for private tyrannies that are moving toward oligopoly." This seems to be an extremely accurate picture of the current social and economic climate that got Sklyarov thrown in jail.
Beyond simply freeing this guy, we need -- as technically-skilled individuals in favor of open expression -- to re-double efforts to use free and open source, content and philosophy as a basis to provide an alternative to the cultural abyss we seem to be heading towards.
What we need to provide is an ever more powerful "system of massive private subsidy for public anarchies moving toward freedom."
Proteus7
In addition to all of the ethical and legal reasons already pointed out, the US has a strong pragmatic reason to let Dimitry go (with apologies and compensation).
Currently a lot of foreign programmers are boycotting conventions in the US due to sympathy, and fear that they will also be arrested. If Dimitry is convicted, this boycott will spread, and a lot of international software conventions currently held in the US will move to Europe, because they don't want to lose half their presenters.
Such a shift will eventually lose the US its primacy in the high-tech world. Germany, the UK and Israel are already eager to take the lead in tech development away from America; this would give them the push they need. Pretty soon, Americans would find themselves learning German or Hebrew just to maintain second place in the software world.
And that's aside from the millions in convention income lost.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the technological wealth a little more world-distributed. However, I'd think that an appointed official of the Bush Administration would be a little more concerned with keeping America's technical edge sharp.
-Josh Berkus
San Francisco
It's an intelligent counter to a lot of otherwise Passionate Nonsense.
**>>BELCH
This is, in fact, a travesty of justice and good sense. This young man has done nothing illegal within the borders of this country, and yet he is imprisoned.
In matter of fact, what he's done enables Adobe to sell their products in some foreign countries that demand a method of backup for electronic data.
But no less important is the fact that the software this man has written breaks a law that should never have been allowed to exist.
That the DMCA exists at all is a poor statement on the state of personal responsibility in this country. Somehow, just because a tool exists the creator is liable for its use. That would be like suing Sears because you stripped a screw with a Craftsman screwdriver.
Let him go home. This country is becoming increasingly hostile to intelligent life. Let's reverse the trend.
If you do something right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
If you can jail someone for finding a flaw in a encryption software and thats not even a crime in its own country. Why should not everyone who have ever posted a bugreport in bugtraq get free, same thing i belive. So why not put every securityexpert in the world in jail for a while and let the hackers do what thay want for a while, then maybe the lawmakers realice that thay do need ppl like Sklyarov. And make laws that help them do there work instead of defeating them.
To quote the renowned Phil Zimmerman (I wonder if people in the FBI are gasping yet):
In some ways, cryptography is like pharmaceuticals. Its integrity may be absolutely crucial. Bad penicillin looks the same as good penicillin. You can tell if you spread sheet is wrong, but how do you tell if your cryptography package is weak? The ciphertext produced by a weak encryption algorithm looks as good as ciphertext produced by a strong encryption algorithm. There's a lot of snake oil out there. A lot of quack cures. Unlike the patent medicine hucksters of old, these sofwtare implementors usually don't even know their stuff is snake oil. They may be good software engineers, but they usually haven't even read any of the academic literature in cryptography. But they think they can write good cryptographic software. And why not? After all, it seems intuitively easy to do so. And their software seems to work ok.
<rant type="crazy">
Pretend the rot-13 encryption in the eBook Reader is bad penicillin, and that Dmitry is a little-known Russian doctor. (Slightly true, since I heard that this was part of his Ph.D dissertation.) Now, he finds out about this "bad penicillin" and goes to the United States to warn people, tell people, et cetera. All of a sudden, the FDA arrests him because it's already in use. Screw the fact that lives (or in this case, intellectual property) are (is) at stake.
</rant>
<anger topic="crypto">
Now, these people are stupid enough to use rot-13 and all this Caesar-era encryption. How long did these people think this would last before someone figured out their, at best, pitiful encryption and cracked it?! Haven't these guys ever heard of Twofish?! Square? IDEA? CAST? I mean, come on...even RC4's better than that. (No offense intended to anyone from RSA; RSA would be a lot better than the other crap they use)
</anger>
We all know how the government supports intellectual property. (Probably more than it should; I mean, really, why do they honor user interface copyrights?) Yet someone breaks this encryption, and the Justice Department doesn't see it as we do. To us, it shows them that they need stronger encryption to secure their intellectual property. To them, it shows that someone can break purportedly "strong encryption", which isn't really strong at all.
<mock>
Ohhhhh...this guy broke rot-13; let's throw 'im in da slammer a few years!
</mock>
I'd like to close with one more quote:
I love my country but fear my government. - Anonymous
Free Dmitry!
Justin Myers
Email: sysop0130@hotmail.com
MSN: see email address
P.S.: Hey, all you people from Adobe! Yeah, you! Read Applied Cryptography. Interesting reading.
-------
"People who do not break things first will never learn to create anything." -Philippine Proverb
He is, however, recognized as a linguistic authority. Only in this field is he valid. Quote him about linguistics instead of his anti-libertarian views, just as Lindbergh is good as an aviator, not as someone who knows about Jewish history.
If Dmitry were being jailed for violating the laws created by "true representatives of the working people" (or some other such crap term used to describe "democratic" socialist dictators), Chomsky would be putting more chains on the jailhouse door.
I'd like to see him stand trial just to spite that whiny little sissy JonKatz. If he is "innocent," which he isn't as far as I can tell, he will go free. Otherwise he'll be eating a lot of oranges and bologna sandwiches for the next several years in a federal prison.
That's a recent quote from U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, regarding an academic being held by the government. I've obscured a couple of words only to remove any identification, because in this case it's the Chinese government and the academic in question is someone the Chinese have accused of spying.
So is the double standard apparent yet? When other countries imprison foreigners without promptly filing charges, they're "detainees" and the media coverage in the U.S. is spun accordingly. When the U.S. government imprisons a foreigner, nobody pays attention.
The United States does not have jurisdiction in this case. There have been, I believe, sufficient arguments already posted to justify immediate release of this unjustly jailed person. In addition, an apology shoudl be made to the Russian government for usurping their sovereignty and damages paid to the illegally detained hacker.
We need open borders, open immigration, WTO, Gatt, NAFTA, FTA and anything else that will let the people work around the obstacle that is international borders and the greed and power of the governments that guard them.
One of the spies recently in the news was being persecuted by China for spying for Taiwan. I thought China claimed Taiwan as part of China. Either China jailed someone for spying for China, or Taiwan is not part of China.
He is innocent, since his actions are covered by the first amendment and are not a crime. Looks like you are the one serving balogna here. Are you serving oranges too?
If this were an American, he would probably would have been released on bail the afternoon of his arrest. Even if you don't agree with what Sklyarov did and like the DMCA, do you really think jail time is the correct remedy?
So, just because something is "the law", everyone should blindly follow it without a thought of acting against it, until someone can convince (or bribe) the politicians to make a different law that supercedes the first law. Guess we have to reprint the history books, and make sure they label as criminal Harriet Tubman and the other Underground Railroad persons. Not to mention those traitors George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, etc., who refused to follow the laws enacted by their own country's legislature and king.
But besides that, he was not in the US when he made the program, so as far as that goes, the DMCA issue is moot. No matter how much we Americans think we can legislate the actions of people in foreign countries, our laws have no jurisdiction outside of our borders. If our laws were enforceable in other countries, then laws of those other countries would be enforceable inside the US. Would you like to travel to another country and be arrested because you made a comment in your home town that is unlawful in that country?
So please don't give an asinine reason that "the DMCA is the law of the land." Too many things have been illegal here that are now legal, and the laws of our land don't apply to other lands.
I have to stop wasting so much time reading Slashdot. It's interfering with my crystal meth addiction.
What purpose could you possibly have for inventing OCR other than to steal people's copyrighted works? If something is not made available in digital form, it's because they didn't want it made available in that form. I would guess that 99% of the uses of OCR have to do with copyrighted works.
So... Do we make OCR illegal? It's certainly getting better and faster all the time. In the forseeable future, a machine could be invented where you drop in a few pages, or an entire book, and it converts it to digital form. Would the creator then be arrested? It's obviously very easy to get to that final step now, just like the DeCSS T-shirt I'm wearing could easily be used to spread copyrighted DVD's over the Internet. Right? That's what is being alleged, anyway.
Ok, the answer is that OCR does not circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. Or does it? Think about this long and hard. If OCR is not "a technological measure" and if pages stamped on books do not "effectively control access to a copyrighted work" then why are these books not immediately available in digital form? Of course it effectively controls access! I would consider this a form of analog encryption, which fortunately still allows our eyes to read it.
Finally, I've come across a product that that decrypts this form of analog encryption. I hope they don't get sued by someone like Adobe...
"Adobe Acrobat Capture 3.0 Personal Edition is a professional production tool for turning paper-based information into high-quality knowledge documents optimized for electronic distribution." http://www.adobe.com/products/acrcapture/main.html
Does anyone think that the feds were looking for another scapegoat after they released Kevin Mitnick? This comment may be looked at as an open letter to our "benevolent" government: "Leave us the hell alone. We have a desire to simply know more about the world inside our little boxes. Back the hell off already."
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
It is my understanding, forgive me if news reports are wrong, but Skylarov has been held for two weeks without even a bail hearing?
No excuses. This is something that is worthy of the KGB or Gestapo, not the United States of America.
Shouldn't they all be in jail too? Do they not make the original circumvention device, the copier? After all, it is VERY illegal for me to copy 10000 prints of 'Hunt For Red October' - for distribution, resale, etc. But it is NOT illegal for Xerox to sell me the device to do it, at any price. Now there's even a small machine which will copy, bind, glue, etc the books I want! Should the inventor of that device be in jail, following this to it's illogical conclusion?
I didn't write this, but I thought it nicely summarized the DMCA and why the DMCA sucks.
From: unruh@xxxxxxx.xxx.ca (Bill Unruh)
Date: 3 Aug 2001 01:38:10 GMT
Organization: ITServices, University of British Columbia
The DCMA has made it a crime. It is absurd and flies in the face of 500
years of law. You can patent-- but then you have to reveal. You can
copyright, but then only that particular expression is protected. You
can trade secret, but reverse engineering is specifically allowed. The
purpose of these laws is to reveal, to make sure that human knowledge is
advanced. That is the purpose of both copyright and patents. However
this law is one that not only hides, but then makes revealing that
hiding criminal. It is far far stronger than trade secret law, and
completely overturns copyright as it protects and hides the idea as well
as its expression. Anyone in the world would be a fool to use trade
secret law anymore. Just put in any laughable encryption and now claim
DCMA to prevent anyone from reverse engineering your product. And you
now have a monopoly forever, since even once the copyright dies in 75
years, you can still prevent anyone from reading it with criminal
sanctions.
He should go free because reverse engineering is necessary for the advancement of society and technology, especially in a country such as the United States of America where copyrights and patents have become so odious that they serve to promote only suing rather than actually improving products.
Why improve your product if you can just sue everyone who competes?
MORE IMPORTANTLY it is important for us as consumers to retain the rights to the information we create and purchase. It is unreasonable to prevent(via DMCA) the ability of consumers to backup their files, convert purchased media to improved and more versatile formats(eg: cd-audio to mp3), and to create their own media and media players without paying exorbinant licensing fees(DVD encryption) or being restricted from playing media with they legitimately purchased(DVD regions).
This is getting disgusting. Free Sklyarov and keep America in the hands of the CITIZENS not the CORPORATIONS!
Because jailing him is in direct opposition with the first amendment. Courts have ruled that instructions for building bombs are protected speech. If used for malicious purposes, this information could contribute to acts of terrorism that leave many Americans dead. We already have laws for dealing with murder. We don't need to criminalize the information. To do so, as our founding fathers believed, would be extremely dangerous, as it gives the government too much power. As such, it's still legal to transmit plans for bombs, because of the first amendment. Now consider Dmitry's program. Even if somebody tried to use it as illegally as possible, they wouldn't even come close causing as much damage as bomb plans would. Perhaps they could transmit a few .pdf files of eBooks to their friends, but they would NOT end human lives. To claim that Dmitry's program, if used for illegal purposes, has the potential to cause more harm than bomb plans is to claim that money is more valuable than life itself.
As such, given that courts have consistantly ruled that even information, whose potential misuse could lead to death, deserves protection under the first amendment, Dmitry's software also deserves the same protections, as any damage that it might cause is minimal compared to criminal use of bombs.
Furthermore, we already have laws covering copyright. If somebody uses Dmitry's program to send copies of some eBook to strangers on the internet, then prosecute them under traditional copyright laws. The DMCA was never needed. Our previous laws were sufficient. Dmitry is not a criminal. Don't let him spend the next 5 years in jail.
and don't even know who he is, but you got nothin if you can't rebut his argument: http://forum.fuckedcompany.com/phpcomments/index.p hp?newsid=13997859876&page=12&parentid=0&crapfilte r=1
(if the link doesn't work go to the site and find the Adobe thread, then page 12).
Just Don't Sit Behind the Computer!!!!!!! Get OUT there and HELP Dmitry!!!!!!!!!! Keep the media, and public attention focused on him, or he and what we fight for is LOST!
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Mr. Sklyarov will be found innocent either at trial or in pre-trial motions not because the "law is bad" but because the law doesn't apply to him. Let me explain. The DMCA, contrairy to what some others have said, did not render his presentation in Las Vegas illegal. He was arrested for creating and distributing his illegal program. The problem with that is that established case law in this country will easily refute the charges. Let me further explain. Previous cases have shown that when a non-US citizen does something outside the US that he/she could not forsee having an immediate impact on US citizens or property, that case is thrown out. Its thrown out because the US has no jursdiction over what was done. How does this relate to the Sklyarov case? Mr. Sklyarov WROTE the program outside the US... no jurisdiction. He DISTRIBUTED the program to his parent company... no jurisdiction. His parent company then distributed the program to people in the US... possible jurisdiction. In any event, unless it can be shown that Mr. Sklyarov personally emailed a copy of his program to someone in the US, the US has NO JURISDICTION. In other words the FBI arrested the wrong person. At best they could bring charges against the owner of the company if it is a private company or possibly the partners in a partnership or possibly the relevant employees in a corporation which would be whoever decided to specifically sell or license the software to US entities. I agree that this law is evil and un-American and flies in the face of the Constitution, but this case will more than likely not resolve that dispute. Portions of the DMCA will most likely be ruled unconstitional by the supreme court of the US as a result of one of the other cases going on right now. Probably the Edward Felten case.
-- If you cast your bread on the water, sometimes it comes back angel food cake.
zpengo writes:
> Circumvention activities are not, and never have been, for use when copyright protection devices fail.
I beg to differ. I purchased "Dungeon Keeper II" when it first came out, only to find that the SafeDisc(r) copy protection (brought to you by MacroVision Corporation, Macrovision UK Ltd., and Macrovision Japan and Asia K.K.) completely interfered with my ability to play the game. Why? Because I choose to use Plextor CDRom products. If I remember correctly, Plextor's response to a serious error on the CD media is to spin-down, spin-up, and attempt to re-read, and it may attempt this several times.
Safedisc(r) is completely incompatible with Plextor products for that reason - it has something to do with the timing, perhaps the long time that Plextor drives take in their re-trying period before returning a "Sorry, couldn't read that sector" result.
I did my research, figured out I was pretty much hosed, and then called Technical Support at Electronic Arts to see if they had a patch to deal with this problem. I didn't hold out much hope, but I figured I'd give them a crack at making me happy.
I spent 30 minutes on the phone (most of it on hold) on my dime, during prime time rates to talk with a very nice technical support person only to find out:
a) They are aware of this problem with Plextor Drives.
b) They have no patch available.
c) They will not be releasing a patch to address this problem. (Plextor owners are out of luck.)
So, I asked the nice Tech Support person what I could do?
He said that I could try returning the product for a refund.
I pointed out that the software package was now _open_, and that Best Buy wouldn't take the game back in that condition.
He said I could send them all the original materials and box back to Electronic Arts, and they'd get an unopened replacement out to me within six to eight weeks, which I could then return to Best Buy with my receipt.
I pointed out that went well beyond their (I think) 30 day limit on returns of software.
He said he was sorry...
It was then that I informed him that I'd be using the crack that would remove the SafeDisc(r) protection, found on gamecopyworld.com. I also requested that he put this exact information on my problem report, and to make sure that someone with decision making power in the company got to see my complaint, and how _I_ would have to resolve it in order to play my new game that I just shelled out $50.00 USD for.
He got really nervous at that point (I think their calls are monitored by supervisors), and said he couldn't recommend I do that, but could understand my frustration. He also said what I was doing wasn't exactly kosher and could be risky.
I volunteered to give him my full name, address, phone numbers, my address at work, and invited him to put it with my complaint. Basically my attitude became "Go for it, I can't WAIT for the subpoena or the warrant. The fact that I have to download a software crack from Germany to use my legitimately purchased US software is LUDICROUS."
Now...
What were you saying about there never being a legitimate use for circumvention devices?
I know, I know, I could have shelled out more money for a different drive. But I shouldn't HAVE to. Copy protection should _not_ get in my way when I'm working with the _original_. Copy protection should only prevent me from making a copy, nothing more.
It was one of those "It's the principle that matters" things.
The most pathetic part of this sorry deal is that my understanding is that the FBI uses a lot of ElcomSoft software for "recovering lost passwords"! I wouldn't be suprised if the USG and especialy the FBI is the worlds biggest customer of these illegal hacking tools, after all they need something to open all of the stuff that Carnivore munches on, from the net.
Maybe all of the special agents should take turns arresting each other for using illegal circumvention tools. Hey guys remember that oath you took especialy the part that went, ... uphold and enforce the laws of the United States, well I do even if you don't. This is a prime example of why americans are more afraid of their police than their millitary. I'm retired military with 24 years of service, so don't even blow me off as some kind of unpatriotic jerk.
To protect and defend the constitution
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It is Dmitry's fault for breaking the law... he should be in jail. It's the government's fault for making the law but it is still a law. He should not (but deserves to) be freed - he is technically a law breaker. We can't just ignore the law and release him, we have to fight the law so that we ourselves don't go to jail. It's all common sense, the same thing that police aren't allowed to use when arresting and the same thing that law makers choose not to use so they can get re-elected... Now they voted for laws that made it tough on criminals and people that try to steal from honest companies. Crap - this thing will never get repealed. we just need to come up with ways around it... like encrypting instructions on how to break encryption. Maybe even make a small company that does that... gotta break the law to protect the law.... oh babe i've got to ramble
He's not a U.S. citizen. He's not even a resident, merely a tourist. Did any of the alleged violations actually happen while he was here in the U.S? How do we have the authority to try him for these acts? What treaty am I missing that gives us the authority to try foreign nationals for acts conducted in foreign countries? If I sell Nazi memorabilia in the US for a living and go to France for vacation, I certainly don't expect to get arrested (unless I peddle my wares while I'm there)...
puts scientists , programmers and other creative minds behind bars, because of the creative work they do, should be regarded as unreliable.
DMCA or not, its important that people who don't commit crimes like, killing, murdering, stealing, raping etc., but just do their profession, should walk free.
People who are arrested because of their profession, because they were not in the right country at the time, should be regarded as political targets. And thus UN or Amnesty International should handle this. This might lead to the suggestion that the USA has turned into a unreliable country.
Robert
...then the next Edmund Pope will die of bone cancer in a Russian jail.
I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, along with many youths my age. I remember the principal of free speach and the time-honored principal of pointing out flaws before they became a problem. I remember these same principals landed people in prison back in the USSR back in those days.
Now these things are legal back in Russia, but not the United States? The United States is becoming a puppet to Corporate America, with our God given rights at the expense. Once one fundamental right is taken away, future encroachments are much easier to justify and pretty soon we begin to look like the former USSR.
Another premise on which the United States was formed on was the belief that intellectual property belongs to everyone. In the beginning, the government gave a limited monopoly to copyright owners giving them temporary ownership of that information, and after which that copyright expired the information became free to everyone. Under this ideal, the concept of fair use developed, another American concept handed down by the Founding Fathers at the inception of this great country.
It is with these points that the DMCA is unjust and violates every principle the United States stands for. If it violates these principles, the law is Un-American and is a threat to the very foundation of this very country that many have proudly fought and died for. If Dmitri Sklyarov was arrested on upholding these principles, then he is more American than those that framed this mangled and twisted law. Free Skylarov and let him go back to the new land of the free because as long as this law is in place and Skylarov is in jail, we are no better than the USSR.
Karma: Positive. Mostly effected by cowbell.
The police haven't come to do any of that.
And they won't.
Stop implying that we're all spam-bot vendors.
We're not.
I'd use my slashdot nick but I forgot the password and it won't e-mail it to me. Sklyarov was trying to do something good when he wrote that program to crack the encryption. It's a way to show companies "Hey, you have a problem. It needs to be fixed." I doubt that Adobe cares whether or not someone goes to jail for this or not. They saw $$$ or the loss of $$$ in this case, so they took advantage of the DMCA and threw him in jail. In my opinion, the DMCA needs to be abolished and rewritten to give more writes to people and less rights to authors and businesses. Authors can still have rights over their intellectual property, but not to throw someone in jail for figuring out how to break into their software! If they would secure their software/property right the first time, it wouldn't happen!
First, in Russia the program he wrote is legal, Russian law states that encrypted files must be able to be backed-up in an un-encrypted format. And second, it only works on books that have been paid for. What is Adobe worried about?? Obviously the people that wrote the DMCA are not feeling the same acid shortage as us geeks.
Chop
If a new kind of padlock technology is invented, surely locksmiths will study it and discuss it and work to understand it? That's what they do.
I lost my house key once and I called a locksmith and he picked the lock in a few seconds. I was pretty happy at the time to get into my house, but I remember thinking "Wow, who knew it was that easy to get into a locked house?!" The illusion of invulnerability is shattered. Deal with it. It was only an illusion in the first place. A lock is only a deterrant. If my landlord had had the locksmith arrested for violating a law about not messing with his company's locks, then we would have a similar situation to the Skylarov case, except that my landlord would have to be in another country. People could not get into their own eBooks to have them read aloud by screen-readers and such. Dmitri's company helped them to access their own information. Dmitri himself just talked about locks with other locksmiths at a locksmith convention.
Is a locksmith a good guy for answering my call and letting me into my house for a reasonable fee, or is he a bad guy for just plain picking a lock? Is there absolutely no possible reason, under any circumstances, for ever picking a lock? Is our technology so advanced?
I am amazed and saddened at the ignorance that is being displayed by the US government about technology, in this case, and also with Microsoft Outlook and Office viruses, and Code Red and others. How many times can suits and cops get up in public and display their complete ignorance about a matter before they learn just a little bit of humility at least? Not to mention learning about technology. I mean, get more than one opinion on a subject. Do some research. I fear that suits and cops will only continue to ask other suits and cops for answers about technology, instead of asking geeks. Geeks and regular Joes and Janes will pay the price for that. Atlas Shrugged looks better every day.
There is such a thing, at least the ability to have such capability via organization's websites.
See Lobbynet for an example of the kind of services being built for grassroots lobbying campaigns.
To clear the record, yes I worked for PinPoint Communications before moving across the country, yes I am biased. The point is that PinPoint and many other companies are building products and services to allow the organizations you support to quickly and easily raise **massive** amounts of PR by faxing, emailing and/or mailing the hell out of legislators and other persons in office.
Notify your favorite lobbying organization, and let them know what they can do to help your voice be heard. Find the company that provides what you want, and get those faxes cranking!
-Aaron
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
The locksmith analogy is reasonable, but I don't like it for one big reason: most governments require locksmiths to be licensed. If this analogy is the one that plays, expect to be licensed by the state to "pack" a debugger or in-circuit emulator and possibly even an assember.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
If the U.S. can arrest a Russian for breaking a U.S. law while he was in Russia. What's to stop me from being arrested in Singapor for having chewed bubblegum.
Air traffic controllers? The ones Reagan "fired" actually had quit their jobs BEFORE Reagan's action. All Reagan did was see to it that these greedy pigs who quit their jobs in order to make the skies more dangerous and get more money never would come back to the jobs they abandoned.
Their real problem isn't that the media is censored. It is that their ideas are not popular. They blame the unpopularity of their crackpot ideas on control conspiracies by phantom non-existent entities, rather than face the fact that they are on the lunatic fringe.
What ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? I understand holding him, but without bail is just snarky. I do not have an account here, but wish to add my comment to the petition.
I guess I never have thought of him as a hacker and gadfly. I guess I've been thinking of him as an engineer all this time.
The best way I can express my reason is the way I expressed it to a group of friends who are not employed in any computer-related field. Jailing this young man for what he did is almost exactly analogous to a pharmaceutical company being able to prosecute a doctor for discussing a specific disease--simply because the drug company has a patent on some medicine for it.
In addition to the utterly chilling general First Amendment issues, I greatly fear it will have an adverse effect on people concerned with topics related to computer security. If they can't talk about it, they can't improve it.
The Federal government has decided to make an example of someone who really hasn't done anything wrong. I've already written to express my views to my senators and congressional representative, and I hope everyone here who lives in the U.S. will take a moment to do the same thing.
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
Remember, criminalize the act (spamming), not the tool (writing software that might be used by spammers).
I am primarily concerned that US law is now starting to become a world wide defacto. In this example a Russian Citizen is arrested for a 'crime' which was performed in another country.
If you commit a crime - say murder - in one country, then move to another generally you have to be extradited to the country you committed the crime in to stand trial. The US is now going to try and convict someone for a 'crime' committed in another country.
To add to the difficulty, the 'crime' is actually legal in this other country, so this poor person is being convicted for doing something in his own country that was perfectly legal.
Now lets say China starts this game. Lets say they arrest and imprison visitors that have spoken out against China in their country of origin. How would you like it if you were traveling through a country with "no drinking" laws, and they imprison you for drinking in a different country.
Since President Bush became president the US has become essentially hostile to the rest of the world. The cancellation of important treaties, ignoring environmental responsibilities, draconian imprisonment of innocents. Its going to be hard to lecture other countries about their responsibilities when the US is putting up such a poor example.
Nobody can know whether this document which you are reading was actually written and encrypted by someone else other than me, and someone illegally decrypted and gave me the plain text. Now that you know that this is a possibility, aren't you a coconspirator if you don't report me?
I feel that of some software has serious security problems, I as a past or future customer have the right to know about this. I don't see why analyzing and auditing software should in any form be prohibited by the law. Here is Austria (where I live), you have the right to even _disassemble_ software, if you need some cruical information, and the vendor won't supply you with it. The whole definition of a "circumvention device" in the DMCA is ridiciulous, because I believe it to be my right to do what ever I want with information that I received (received them without commiting a crime of course). If the information is executable code, I believe that I have to _right_ to test, and analyze this code. And if I find serious problems in the code, I think it is my _duty_ to tell the people about it. There _are_ encryption mechanisms which cannot be cracked (at least in the near future), and its a companies faul if the use weak encryption or protection alogrithmns. Freedom of speech, and generally freedom of information is more important to me, than some company losing money. If we stop carying about the ethical issues of certain laws, we will find ourselves in world we all didn't want to create, where money means power - in a much stronger way than now.
Is this adobes answer to this case http://www.boycottadobe.com/adobeComments/index.ht ml
"Bando de hipocritas"
Even in portuguese i think u guys understand
Imagine the irony. A Russian political prisoner in an American jail, in prison for speech and programming that is legal under his own nation's law.
Where's Putin on all this? Where's the Russian press? Where, at least, is Amnesty International?
If America is to be the enemy of freedom, then the friends of freedom around the world need first to make the charge. I haven't seen that happen. Which may be why this case is being ignored.
...or ban cars, matches, and pots and pans.
This man did nothing wrong. Let him out of prison.
The irony of it. Ten years after the fall of communism, a Russian academic is arrested for his beliefs - in the United States!
Try to separate your annoyance at a trivial problem - spam - from something which threatens all our freedom - the freedom to read, listen, and watch without paying a toll on every occasion, for example. The freedom to not have every detail of our lives controlled by global corporate monopolies. In the face of these threats, so clearly demonstrated by Sklayrov's current predicament, spam doesn't even belong in the dicussion.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Benjamin Franklin
You want to give up our freedoms in exchange for safety from spammers? You're incredibly lucky to be living in an environment where you can afford to believe that spam is the worst thing you have to worry about. If history is any guide, it won't always be that way. Laws like the DMCA are one of the ways in which societies can change for the worse. A little law called "apartheid" in South Africa ultimately led to the ravaging of that country, in political, economic and human terms. It doesn't take the imagination of a Neal Stephenson or a William Gibson to project what the DMCA can result in - in fact, RMS has already written one such near-future sci-fi piece, "The Right to Read", and Sklyarov is busy living the prelude to that story.
he did not give out the code, he did not give the program away for free, he is selling it. He is trying to do is take the money that adobe should be getting. If he gave the program away or if he let you get the source code i would have a huge problem with this. HE DID NOT. He is just trying to make money by being a common theif. We should not support that. I also think that companies should be able to make a profit. I think the way that they are currently doing it is wrong and outragous, but that is how so many of you make your money so that you can do all that you do. Both sides need to try to work together so that we all benifit. We need more openess and they need money. We should use this to try to work out someway that you can do both. THose are just my 2 cents so blast away at them all you want.
Suppose there was a company, Abode (note spelling!), who developed a new kind of lock for you to use, say, on all of the doors of your home. It would be so great that for an owner to forget a key inside would be a nightmare. Then, someone discovers a master key for this allegedly incredibly secure lock. Should the inventor be jailed "long enough"? What if he didn't come out in public, so as to avoid trouble. Would the world be any safer?
Allowing the DMCA to continue is like removing the expiration dates from milk cartons. The public needs to know what milk is and isn't fit for consumption. Obviously, the ublic doesn't *have* to know, they could drink water instead, but if you're going to pay for milk, you are justified to expect that it won't do you harm.
Likewise, whether you "buy" your software or "license" it, if you pay money for it, you ae justified to expect to recieve no harm from it. Software however doesn't go bad. The only problems that may come of software are bugs, and malicious code designed into programs.
Bugs are unintentional, but considering many major companies *don't* promptly provide patches for major bugs (often security holes) if you work on anything for which security is neccasary (trade secrets, medical records etc) you cannot guarentee their safety, even if you are required to by federal law, if you can't check your software to make sure it is secure, that there are no backdoors. The DMCA prevents this asic check, and even now, countless documents that aren't legal to access are incredibly easy to access because of insecure systems that *can't* be patched because they can't be reverse-engineered to find the hole and how to patch it.
In addition to accidental security holes, there are holes deliberately left in some programs (often for testing purposes, that are forgotten about and thus not removed before the product ships) In addition, some software reports information about the user without notifying the user. The user should at all times know what their computer is doing (should the user be advanced enough to understand such matters anyway), and to prevent someone from checking to make sure an application THEY PAID TO USE isn't doing something behind their backs is absurd.
Reverse engineering has until the DMCA always been protected, as it is neccasary to protect consumers. Even if the software industry had proven itself trustworthy, this law would still be invalid considering the cost of freedom is eternal vigilence. But with an industry that has proven so untrustworthy, to leave it unchecked, and to in addition BIND USERS, PREVENTING THEM FROM KNOWING WHAT THEY ARE USING is reprehensible.
The DMCA demonstrably harms US citizens, and thus should be struck down. Firthermore, those of Congress who supported it showed either that
a. thay don't care about citizens
b. they don't bother to read what they vtoe for
or
c. they are more than happy to legislate in areas they don't understand
This would be like outlawing containers of compressed gas over x PSI in public places for fear of explosions, without checking the PSI of the average fire extinguisher.
Facts:
1) A Russian researched and made a discovery in Russia that is critical of a current practice (Adobe's software design).
2) He tries to share the idea with people in the U.S.
3) The U.S. government is trying to stop the discovery from being spread to the public.
Who made the iron curtain again?
Other thoughts:
You can't copyright an idea, just expression. Patents are void if prior use is proven (Adobe's weak encryption is nothing new AFAIK). Patents are to protect new methods from use by competition; they don't stop people from learning about them or sharing information. It doesn't seem the DMCA fits well into copyright or any form of intellectual property...
Jeff Davis
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Posted so late, I doubt that anyone will read this. However, my favorite comic strip in the whole world was pertinent, and I thought you might like to see it.
...anti-capitalist fanaticism, it is quite clear even to a Libertarian such as myself that the scales of justice have been overturned to the powerful, and in this case, Adobe. The Freedom to innovate belongs to all people, not only those who work for major software corporations. The kid isn't going to bite anyone, he is simply exercising free speech. Free Software = Free Speech = Free Dmitry. Get government and legalities out of it.
poop.
This man is in jail for fighting for the principle that what you buy is yours.
To my understanding all this is similar to the NY Times Company v US (The pentagon). It was known as the Pentagon Papers as I am sure most of you know. The NY Times got some leaked information and the Pentagon tried to take legal action for endangering confidential documents. At any rate the Supreme Court acted in favor of the NY Times Company therefore Sklyarov should be let go. At least that is my understanding from skimming through the article.
Mathematician, n.:
Someone who believes imaginary things appear right before your i's.
Hmm, I don't think things were necessarily that great in 1901. Maybe 200 years ago.
As we all know, we are supposed to have freedom in this country. It seems like we have to go to war against those who seemingly are not human. Like aliens are eating away at more and more of our freedom.
People who say he should be left in jail for his unconnected actions of participating in spamware are just plain missing the point. If you did something legal in your own country would you want to be arrested in another for doing something that is also not illegal in that country (or yours)?
I have not hardly heard anything about this in the general mainstream media. But every 10 minutes I see about the congressman scandal and the missing chick. Which is more important? A lady who is not considered kidnapped just missing... or freedom? This reminds me of the presidential campaigns and their coverage. Let's see... Nader holds the *biggest* polictal convention in the U.S. and you didn't hear a thing about it. That is odd...
These protests are so important. If no one does anything the DMCA will flourish and probably more strict laws will be passed. Do a search on "writing ABOUT kiddie porn" which is now illegal in Ohio??? I can't wait until the thought police come knocking on my door!!
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Clearly under DMCA he is guilty of a crime. Not for what he said but when he saved the eBook as an unencrypted PDF. However he could not have done this alone, he used Adobe's software. The DMCA makes it illegal to manufacture software that removes encryption is such a way. Adobe is the cause of the crime. Sklyarov should make an immunity deal and testify against Adobe.
2. Fair Use: What fair use? ;-) This has been beaten to death, but I must mention it simply because it is so compelling. I am allowed to copy things for my own personal use. You can try to stop me with anti-copying measures, but if I succeed there is nothing you can do about it. Which means that a device that allows me to do this cannot be illegal. (this is all supposing that fair use rights have not been summarily thrown out the window by the DMCA).
3. Punish the crime, not the tool. This is my own personal opinion, but I think the US could really look to this when making laws. I can kill someone with a ballpoint pen, and it would still be murder. I could also do this with a gun, a knife or just about anything. It is the murder that is the crime, not the gun (or pen, etc.). I know many do not agree with me on this, but we need to draw the line somewhere. Making extra penalities for commiting a crime with a certain weapon or possessing a weapon that enables you to commit crimes is simply stupid. Similarly, just because I have the tools to commit copyright infringement doesn't mean I will do it. I used to download songs from Napster that I already owned on CD just because it was a pain to rip them all.
4. Code is Speech. If you claim that it is not, please explain how RSA encryption was exported as a book, or how DeCSS can be printed on a T-shirt. Anything that can be written in a book or on a T-shirt is speech, and is protected (as long as it isn't a death-threat or a threat to national security).
5. The DMCA sucks. :-) The above are most of the reasons. It is a law that was passed after huge lobbying efforts by enormous corporations for one purpose only: their own bottom line. It was not passed to protect the artists or writers, give me a break. It was passed to protect the publishers. They need to get the message that if widespread pirating is being done, they need to focus on quality of service and ease of distribution. Why didn't the VCR kill television or movies? Because it is easier to pay for cable and a better experience to go to the movies. Plus you can RENT tapes. As long as a CD costs $18 there will be a poor college kid trying to pirate it because he DOESN'T HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY.
Those are most of the reasons I could think of off the top of my head.