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Sklyarov Case Exposes DMCA Contradictions
aePrime writes: "This article on the New York Times describes how the case against Dmitri Sklyarov is bringing up some contridictions within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. One is allowed to bypass security measures to backup data, but one is not allowed to write the software to bypass the security. It mentions how this first case to be prosecuted under the law may indeed cause changes to the law." A lot of bad laws have stuck around for longer than the DMCA has yet, but the more this kind of analysis is seen, the sooner sanity can be restored.
What I'm wondering is, what exactly do they want with Sklyarov?
I mean, he broke *US LAW* whilst IN RUSSIA... and now they're prosecuting him in the US.
After taking that into account... what do they hope to achieve? Its unlikely that he has much money that anyone can sue him for... so they just want to keep a prisoner, basically?
What if Russia arrested and held an American for breaking a Russian law whilst in America?!? I bet there'd be a helluva lot of demands going on by the US.
The US seems to have a lot of double standards in terms of what it expects from other countries contrasted with what it allows other countries.
The DMCA is only part of the deal.
Dmitry's company made an extremely smart move in hiring Joe Burton for their lawyer here. He's the same one who represented Kelly Goen and Phil Zimmerman when they were being investigated by the Grand Jury for PGP.
Joe Burton is arguably the best lawyer in the world for this case. Not only is he experienced in this area, he's an ex-Fed prosecutor (IIRC) and knows all the people involved on the Government side of things. He also believed strongly in the rights of people to use strong cryptography, and represented Kelly and Phil for free.
IMHO he's a rare bird; and I wish we had more like him.
Here's another extremely little known fact about the PGP case. Joe wouldn't touch handling suing the Feds involved with a ten-foot pole for violating Phil and Kelly's constitutional rights on Freedom of Speech with PGP. Apparantly he's still a little too close to some of the Feds to do this.
But I still think he's the best person for handling the criminal case. I would personally choose another for handling the civil-rights violation countersuit against Adobe and the Feds though. It will be interesting to see who's the best lawyer for this one.
Dmitry must have had some clue he was in something of a grey area when he decided to come to America to present his work at a hacker convention (I mean, it's Def Con, not the O'Reilly Open Source convention, after all). If he was so completely unaware of the potential for his situation to go this way, then I'd have to ask who invited him here without giving him some background and pointing out some potential risks. He's Russian, he should have an understanding of what it means to go against the political will of the local secret police (in our case, the FBI). That the Russian secret police don't give a damn about copyrights (in part because their laws are different) doesn't mitigate the fact that the secret police in the USA do-- and are not known for how they treat Russian computer experts.
But he is a hero either way, because the definition of "hero" does not always require the subject to have high-minded, lofty goals at the outset. He is quite possibly going to be central in overturning this law, or he will be one of the most obvious victims of it-- in a way that Eric Corley can never be. I fully expect "Free Dmitry" to replace Mitnick references... at least the new rallying cry will have a more ethical foundation.
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