Sklyarov Indicted

Nutcase was the first to write with news from the AP that "Dmitry Sklyarov, 27 and ElComSoft Co. Ltd. of Moscow were charged with five counts of copyright violations for writing a program that lets users of Adobe Systems' eBook Reader get around copyright protections imposed by electronic-book publishers." Here's a link to the AP story at the Washington Post. Here is the story at Salon as well. Update: 08/29 01:57 AM GMT by T : Here's the EFF's release on the indictment, too -- including information about where to go if you'd like to demonstrate your reaction publicly.

Comments

Re:Guess we're in for the long haul

[Ridge2001]

could spend 5 years in jail if convicted

They added a few conspiracy charges against him. It's up to 25 years now.

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[Anonymous Coward]

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Another story at news.com

[A Commentor]

The news.com site also covered the story.

Re:Perfect Target

[psych031337]

First off, he isn't a US citizen. He is a visitor from a foreign country. This leaves him with fewer resources, fewer rights, and little understanding of the rights he does have.
IANAL, and I don't know exactly what rights an accused foreigner has in the USA, but I'm sure that the feds are less inclined to play by the rules they have to when dealing with a citizen.

Please take a look at http://www.thedailycamera.com/news/worldnation/28a cort.html for a recent case of the US authorities denying rights of "alien" citizens. In this case the right to consular advice has been denied, and also declined postponing the execution of the convicts. The UN court actually found the Americans *guilty*. If you find this disturbing or hard to believe, feel free to search google with the terms "us deny consular rights". Quite a bunch of results. Granted, these people were convicted of murder, but this makes it a more clever stunt to me. If they were engaged in a "victimless crime" the american masses might have cried out. But in a murder case...

This also might strike fear into citizens of other nations, and convey the message that no country is as powerful as the US, which will FIND a way to subject everyone world wide to its laws.

Well, power stems from the barrel of a gun, it is said. The United States are always very prone to show theirs. No matter who is/was president.

As a Citizen of the US, I am very angry about this. Dmitry should be freed and sent home immediately, and then the White House should send an apology to the Russians for this behavior.

A beautiful thought at all. But unfortunately it won`t happen. Even admitting that they were just *a very little bit wrong* might draw reimbursement claims from Dmitry, Elcomsoft, Russia, probably all thinking forms of homo sapiens.

I know that they'd demand the same for one of our citizens cought up in a BS situation like this in another country.

If this was an american sitting in a dark russian jail exposed to killers and the risk of catching tuberculosis, they'd already have an armed-to-the-death rescue squad standing by.

This is just purely insane. Wrong as the Berlin wall. And probably nothing you can do to avoid or eliminate it...

DMCA makes a crime out of a contract breach

[Xahmish]

The difference should be important. But only in terms of educating the lay public about what is going on here. The point is really moot as far as Sklyarov's case goes. Copyright protection is a matter of civil law, not criminal law. Copy protection should be a matter of contract law and civil law because that is what software licenses are for.

This is why the DMCA is so draconian; it has made a crime out of the violation of a private agreement to not copy a piece of software. If the license for the software says, "thou shalt not copy and distribute this software" and you accept the license, you have entered into an agreement with the software manufacturer and are liable for civil damages should you violate that agreement. Then the DMCA comes along and says that if you invent a way to defeat built-in copy protection of a given piece of digital data you have committed a crime. It doesn't matter what you do with your invention; just the act of inventing it is a crime. This seems a little bit like thought-crime. So this issue really has nothing very much to do with Copyright and has more to do with cracking an encryption scheme -- regardless of whether or not you actually copy the software or distribute it.

So if you want to argue the fine points of semantics, don't lose sight of the real issue; that the mega-corp lobbies of Amerika have pushed through a bad law that makes a crime out of a civil breach.

Law Confusion

[Darth_Burrito]

IANAL
Someone may have mentioned this before, but after reading the charges in the indictment, and referencing the applicable law (Title 17, Section(b)(1)(A)), it appears that inumerable people are guilty of this crime.

"No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner..."

To me there are a coupe details that leap out at me here. First the use of the words component and part. Software design is filled with reused parts and components. Does this mean the author of Tree.h commited a crime when his component object was used in the decryption software?

Secondly, the phrase "effectively protects a right of a copyright owner" is unclear. If a person like Dmitri breaks an encryption scheme then that encryption scheme did not effectively protect the rights of the copy right owner.

Finally, Fair Use (Title 17 Section 107) allows for the copy of copyrighted works for specific purposes. Since the Exclusive Rights (Title 17, Section 106) are "subject to Subject to section(s) 107", I don't see how his software violates any right. Under Fair Use Copyright owners do not have the right to prevent their work from being copied.

Am I making some colossal error in my interpretation of these laws?

Indictment: PDF
Copy Right Law: Cornel / US Code

He broke no law

[Hilary Rosen]

Developing the alternative ebook reader is not a crime in the country in which it was developed. He should be freed because of lack of juristiction.

Trafficking in the reader, is a crime in the US, and the effects are felt in the US (until the govt. firewalls us like China). However, it was Elcomsoft (codefendants) who were doing this, and not Sklyarov.

What Sklyarov is guilty of is the long-abhorred practice of being $NATIONALITY in vicinity of $CRIME. He's going to get nailed to the wall.

Re:Department of Defense getting in on the fun?

[Platinum Dragon]

Since I can correlate her hits with actually talking to her on IM I know it's not DoD spooks or anything like that.

Do her hits contain an "Inktomi Search" user agent?

The thing that gets me about this is that it's not an individual visiting the same data, including robots.txt, every day. Unless some people have faked user-agent strings of "Inktomi Search", these aren't humans retrieving defcon.ppt every day. As well, the hits are only to robots.txt, adobe.html, and defcon.ppt! main.css isn't even being retrieved, which it would be if a real person were viewing it - in which case, that person wouldn't be looking at robots.txt or defcon.ppt.

See what I'm getting at? There's more than just an interested individual here. Maybe just a little more, but it's something enough to use (probably expensive, paid for with taxpayer dollars) searching and indexing software to keep tabs on sites about copyright and Sklyarov.

Heh, maybe I should stick in something like "Overthrow the US Government!" and see if I get a visit - a honeypot for law enforcement, as it were:)