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Sklyarov Bail Hearing Monday
mr_don't writes: "I just saw that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has just posted an Action Alert entitled "What YOU Can Do To Help Set Dmitry Sklyarov Free"
... Around 11am on August 6, 2001, at the San Jose Federal Building, Dmitry is set to have another bail hearing in front of Magistrate Judge Edward A. Infante. Protests are planned to coincide with the hearing. I hope as many people as possible can come to the demonstration... Help the EFF pack the courtroom during the hearing." A short article in the Mercury News mentions the hearing too, as well as the half-million dollar, five-year penalty that could be imposed.
The U.S. Constitution lays out clearly the process for something to become law. It also gives a specific set of powers and a specific set of limits to what things can become law by proclamation of the U.S. congress.
Some of the things in the DMCA are outside of what the U.S. congress has the power to declare law.
This is misleading. The DCMA is a law. Once congress passed it and the president signed it, it became law. It is not up to congress or the president to decide if the law is constitutional or valid; that is left for the courts to decide. The Skylarov case could be a test case for the DMCA, if the charges are worded correctly. But if it ends up being just a dispute over whose laws have jurisdiction (Russian or US), it won't be a test case. It seems on the face of it that this second option is the most likely.
The Economics of Website Security
Second, it should be made very clear that the original complainant, Adobe, has stated that they don't feel he should be charged.
The third point that should be made is that this tool only works for people who have purchased the book, and it allows them to remove certain restrictions, e.g., reading their book on a different computer.
Perhaps what this movement needs is a blind person who uses the tool to enable the read-aloud function of adobe reader to work...
Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
As angry as people may be, understand that while showing up and showing support is great, doing so improperly will only hurt Dmitry, the EFF and the cause you may be trying to support. Don't provide ammunition for companies like Adobe, no matter how tempting it is. Be civil, be courteous and be well spoken if given the opportunity to speak on television, radio or even to the public. Don't alienate the public. Most of them couldn't care less about this case. If people can appear as reasonable citizens then the publics support has a better chance of swinging our way.
Ultimately this is a case for the courts I suppose, but public opinion is important.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
What this means for Dmitry Sklyarov is that it will be very hard for him to get out of jail pending trial unless he can come up with some real ties to this district and/or some other means of ensuring he remains in the U.S. for trial can satisfy the District Attorney and the court (e.g., electronic location-tracking bracelet, house arrest, etc.)
How about the fact that I'm certain they have confiscated his passport? Now sure, that doesn't mean he couldn't get out of the country, but it certainly would make it more difficult not only to leave the USA, but to enter into any other country. Doesn't seem like much of a flight risk to me...
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Where are the slash-groupies? I distinctly remember being promised slash-groupies!
Skylarov has become an unwilling pawn in a political game. In two earlier posts, I talked about why Skylarov shouldn't be made into a posterboy for the anti-DMCA lobby. A bunch of people replied, saying that no such thing was happening, and that the protestors were just trying to get him free.
Then I see this post, moderated up to 5, Insightful, saying that we shouldn't free Skylarov early, because he's more valuable as a weapon against the DMCA if he's in jail. Don't you just love all these people are willing to sacrifice an individual in the name of "individual rights"? What a bunch of fucking hypocrites.
DMCA isn't (or shouldn't be) Skylarov's problem. He's Russian, not American, and he didn't vote for the politicians who passed DMCA. Sacrificing him to fight it is just plain wrong. Maybe, if he was American, we could justify such a sacrifice as "his duty to the country" or some such other nonsense, but this is just sickening.
To all those fighting to free Skylarov, keep up the good work. To the rest of you, maybe it's time you gave things a good long thinking over.
Seeing as how these hearings will be held in San Jose, and what with all the recent industry blood-letting, I'm sure it will be no difficulty whatsoever gathering as many geeks as possible with time to spare on a Monday morning to go fight the power.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
It is said that if you like law or sausage don't watch either one being made.
The following will work best for those of us that are citizens of the US and are registered to vote.
A technique that works to find out if your lawmakers are listening to you is to write them a letter (snail mail) or to e-mail them.
The US House of Representatives has a page where you can send your memeber an e-mail and even help you find out who your representative is. The URL is:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
For the Senate go to:
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index.cfm
The Senate does not have as much information about writting your senator as the House pages do but at least it is a way to contact them.
To assist them in replying to you always include your e-mail address, home address, and if you feel like it a phone number. If you know what precinct, parish, or whatever the number of your voting district is in your state/county/parish or whatever include that as well. Be brief but thorough enough to get your thought across. No more than a page and shorter if possible.
They do like to hear from you and I have yet to have my representative or senators abuse me giving them my information. Using the system when possible at least gives it a chance to fail and who knows, it might actually help.
"I want to know God's thoughts...The rest are details." Albert Einstein
I am rather ashamed to be associated with folks that want to paste slogans onto a living person as if he were simply a name long dead.
Sklyarov's deeds speak for themselves in a practical sense- he proved, as a thousand cryptographers and analysts have proven before, why DMCA-like laws don't work on a practical basis.
That is his statement against the DMCA- and it's actually far more powerful than most protests. This isn't to say that protests lack importance (in fact, they are the brute muscle of social change,) simply that it's the direct, practical activism of people like Sklyarov that keep this movement in the realm of reality.
Remember that there is a significant percentage of "radicals" out there that just envy the opposition, and aren't exactly for real change. They are what Hakim Bey calls "police-without-power". Such people cannot be trusted in any sense, and I'd advise those who would wish to use Sklyarov as a playing-piece to examine their own motivations- and make certain that they really mean what they say.
Tactics are fine when it's all in your hands and on your neck, but don't ask someone else to die for your cause. Bottom line.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
> But c'mon - a protest? I would have expected something a little more creative from the /. commnunity.
/. commnunity.' is a bunch of hackers melted with a bunch of wankers.
You seem to have more ideas abnout what not to do than about what to do.
Where are your grand creative ideas ? Runnning around and sarcastically demotivating people ?
Of course protestr are useless, but when protesting, people meet each other. When they meet they talk. And when they talk, they may have creative ideas.
You also need to know that 'the
I sortof think that most of the ideas from here are better left unimplemented:
1133t> let's do a fr33 dmtiry outl00k virus !
h4x0> hehe. dude, u put a msgbox saying "do you agree with the DMCA ?"
ll33t> cool. luser clic yes, we eipe hard drive.
ll33t> eipe -> wipe. lol
f4gg0t> put other msgbox "next time, sayz NO to DMCA"
h4x0> hehehehe
soop3rc0p> f4gg0t u rulz
ll33t> lol
Is that what you want ?
Cheers,
--fred
I'm sure the Feds have handpicked the judge in question to do this hearing, and it will just be a whitewash hearing to "justify" his incarceration.
I'm sorry for being so pessimistic, but that's the likely truth. They will never let him out on bail because he's a foreign citizen. Remember, the so-called US "justice" system is all about the byzantine SYSTEM, not in meting out justice, else this case would never have MADE it to a court. In fact, the prosecutor should be the one in trouble for even BRINGING this case, and for lying to the court.
The charges are disproven by these facts:
1. Skylarov never wrote, or sold the program in any place where the DMCA is law.
2. Sklyarov never SOLD the program to anyone, he did it as a work for hire for his company. If they used a US company for billing and distribution, that was the actions of the CEO (who was there and wasn't arrested) and others, NOT Sklyarov.
3. Sklyarov never broke any US law on US soil.
They have not charged him with the only thing that he DID do on US soil that was a violation of the DMCA: giving his talk at the conference where he explained how to circumvent E-book encryption. The prosecutors are lying to the court because they will not admit that THIS is the actual basis for the case, yet isn't a charge. It isn't a charge because as a charge it would immediately flunk the 1st Amendment test (statutory law ala DMCA cannot override or abridge Constitutional Law, such as the 1st Amendment free speech guarantee).
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"Unfortunately, the warrant for his arrest came out before he even gave the talk. The warrant was for importation and distribution of (blah blah blah). It seems the company he worked for sold and distributed the product to Americans through an American company."
Doesn't matter, the only reason why there ever was a warrant in the first place was the talk. It was giving the talk that got the fascist bastards Adobe worked up enough to have him arrested under the DMCA. The fact that Dimitry Sklyarov was the target, and not the CEO (who was there at the conference) and other officers at the company is proof positive of that.
Sklyarov was only A programmer who worked on the software, in Russia, under Russian law. He never broke a single American law in American jurisdiction.
The fact that the charges are about anything BUT the talk he gave is proof of what they really are about, and proof of just how vulnerable the DMCA really is to challenge.
BTW, I'm not one who is willing to forgive Adobe just because they now say they won't support the prosecution. They are still SOLELY to blame for this travesty, and the soul of whomever is responsible WILL bear this. It's important to boycott Adobe (I converted every PDF I use to another format and uninstalled every PDF reader on my PC's). I'm not willing to ever buy or recommend buying or USING ANY Adobe product for any reason until they publically apologize, AND start spending $millions on lawyers to defend Sklyarov. Until then they've done NOTHING to make good on what they did, that is even if they DO realize what they did was wrong.
We sysadmins, techs, engineers all are those trusted within our companies for advice on products. We ALL need to actively recommend agaist Adobe. Even a MS solution is preferable, as even they haven't stooped to the level of having someone imprisoned.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Doesn't matter, the only reason why there ever was a warrant in the first place was the talk.
Technically true, because without the talk they wouldn't have been able to arrest him. There's no way Russia would have cooperated to extradite.
Sklyarov was only A programmer who worked on the software, in Russia, under Russian law. He never broke a single American law in American jurisdiction.
And for this reason he will probably be found not guilty. But there is some evidence that he was involved in a conspiracy to sell the product, to US citizens living in the US, using a US company. Probably not enough evidence to convict, and probably not even enough to surivive a preliminary motion to drop the charges, if he has a good lawyer. But the fact of the matter is he probably was involved in a conspiracy to import the product into the US. Again, the charges have nothing to do with the talk, and if the government is smart they won't even bring up the talk in the trial, if there is one, and they can completely eliminate one source of possible appeal.
The fact that the charges are about anything BUT the talk he gave is proof of what they really are about, and proof of just how vulnerable the DMCA really is to challenge.
The fact of the matter is that the FBI was involved for a long time before the talk was even planned. They tried to shut the company down, and they failed. Then idiot boy decided he was going to come to the US and shove it in their faces. That's why idiot boy is now in jail. I'm not sure how this constitutes a challenge to the DMCA. Reality and legality are two seperate issues.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Dimitri broke no law, American, Russian or otherwise. One simple reason: the DMCA is not a law.
The U.S. Constitution lays out clearly the process for something to become law. It also gives a specific set of powers and a specific set of limits to what things can become law by proclamation of the U.S. congress.
Some of the things in the DMCA are outside of what the U.S. congress has the power to declare law.
Talking to Congress about repealing the DMCA is nonsense; they have no such jurisdiction either to declare the DMCA void or true. It is outside of the scope of their powers.
The judiciary branch is what should be concentrated on right now, because they are the ones charged with interpreting what is and what is not law. Clearly, several segments of the DMCA (either through vagueness or malice) go outside of the bounds of what the U.S. congress has the powers to do, and it is thus the jurisdiction and the obligation of the U.S. courts to strike the bill down.
Congress should be talked to, but mainly for the purpose of ensuring that they do not attempt to pass such non-legally-valid bills in the future. Not to undo the damage caused by the DMCA, because there is no damage. That isn't their business. There is no law.
And if the courts and the american people decide to lie to themselves and say that the DMCA is a law, then we are all doomed.
Oh well.
There is nothing idealistic about the reverie. This is very practical. Just because some of the folks ignore you doesn't mean they all will.
I used to think that writting your congressman was useless until I talked to several congress men and women from both the state and national level. They do listen. It is their choice to pay attention. One of them made comment that if they don't hear from us as to what is important to us, then they are making their decisions in a vacum. If we give them input and they ignore it, then we find a better candidate to vote for the next election. One retired member of the US House told me that he and his staff assumed that for each piece of information that a person sent to them, no matter what the form, there had to be at least a 100 people that felt the same way in the same area that person was from. It's simple math, nothing realy idealistic about it.
If I thought this was the only thing to do, I would be deluding myself. If I was in the area around where the hearing was taking place, I would be there. That not being the case, I will do what I can.
As an editorial comment that is not meant to offend, if you are a US citizen and are old enough to vote but are not registered to vote or don't vote, please register to vote and vote. End of editorial comment.
"I want to know God's thoughts...The rest are details." Albert Einstein