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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.
The news.com site also covered the story.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
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
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.
Yes, the nick is flamebait
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:)
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.