Slashdot Mirror
Newsweek on Sklyarov
Skavookie writes: "Newsweek has an article about the Sklyarov case that I'm sure a lot of Slashdotters agree with." Sort of preaching to the choir here, but in Newsweek it will reach a lot of people who wouldn't have known about the case at all otherwise. And yeah, Levy is the guy behind Crypto and Hackers.
My wife read this article without my prompting, passed it to me with a deeply concerned look and said, "Have you heard about this?" (Relatively) mainstream America doesn't like this kind of crap either when they hear about it.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
However, it's been 3 weeks since the guy's release from jail, and nearly a month and a half since his initial arrest. I can understand waiting until a point where Adobe, the EFF, and the FBI & DOJ have made their comments, but that was still weeks ago and this is the first mention of the case at all in the magazine.
Furthermore, if you note how this story is presented, it's on the second-to-last leaf page (or 4 pages back) from the back cover, right before their typical op-ed piece. In a typical NW magazine, there's usually "You and Your Health" type of news rigth before this; "Entertainment" and "Science and Technology" are usually in the front part of the second half of the magazine. In addition, it's presented as a full-page (larger font, not necessarily more text) 'piece' instead of the normal format used for news stories.
So, IMO, this is just one of the Newsweek's editors' op-ed piece on the situation and not necessarily reporting facts. (Note that there's very little discussion of 'the other side' - RIAA, MPAA, BSA, etc). I'm glad to see such an article that hopefully will make the common man realize something's amiss, but this is a not a good news article, and if it were to be one, it comes very late after things have happened.
IMO, it feels like the NW saw that papers like the NYTimes and others were sitting up and taking notice of this story shortly after the bail (possibilty waiting for an interview with the guy), and someone on the editing staff felt they had to address it. It's certainly not too little, too late, but for an article that seems to strongly believe something is seriously fscked with the DMCA, it's very late and poorly placed to be effective.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
From the article:
One publisher, Eric Corley of 2600 magazine, has been hauled into court for providing a Web link to a site that held a program called DeCSS. This brief piece of code was written by a 15-year-old in Norway; it breaks the industry-standard DVD copy protection to allow movies to run on Linux-based computers. Instead of firing the wizards who stuck them with a system so weak that a teenager could crack it, the recording industry initiated lawsuits to ban access to the code, and Corley's magazine was cited.
It's the climate of the world today; something goes wrong, so blame the other person instead of examining your own faults and flaws in your work.
I suppose they use the term "wizards" loosely, since it was a teenager who cracked the code.
This article really is a great summary of the whole Sklyarov scandal. And what's more: it's in Newsweek! This makes the evils of the DMCA clear to more and more non-geek people.
It's a terrible deal for Dmitry, but I'm starting to believe that at least something good may be resulting from his suffering.
Don't pist in frost, your weenie may freeze.