Slashdot Mirror
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.
How the hell can Elcomsoft be indicted for breaking a U.S. copyright law when that firm is in RUSSIA!?
How many of us would, say, create a company whose purpose it was to distribute Free Tibet materials, travel to China, give a speech on freeing Tibet, and then be surprised when we got arrested?
This is probably a bad analogy to be using when I'm taking the side of the US in this, but each country has a right to autonomy. Unless you're given diplomatic immunity, you abide by the laws of the country you're currently in. If doing something in one country is illegal in another country, you may be tried & prosecuted when you try to enter said country (drug & crime lords or terrorists who enter the US but don't engage in criminal activities while here)
Just because you think its a bad law doesn't give you the right to ignore it. I acknowledge civil diobedience as a form of protest, and part of that is paying the penalty, which Sklyarov is currently doing.
But to see why, you have to first know the reason the DMCA exists to begin with. I talk about that here.
Now, it's important to realize that the corporations behind the DMCA want to use it as a terror weapon. How else can you prevent people from creating and trafficking in copyright circumvention devices (software or otherwise)? A law which nobody behaves is a useless law. But a terror weapon isn't effective if people don't believe you'll use it.
If the prosecution were to drop this case, it would make it clear that the DMCA is a law that the government isn't willing to enforce (after all, if they're not going to enforce it against a foreign national, what chance is there that they'll enforce it against a U.S. citizen?).
So they'll take this case as far as the defense is willing to go, hoping that the defense runs out of resources or time before this gets to the Supreme Court.
And trust me, the government will put a lot of money and resources into this case. They want to get and keep a conviction as long as possible, because that's what the government's masters (the corporations) want. so expect to see this case drag on for years, if not decades.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
RTFA, "Adobe dropped its support of the case on July 23." IOW, it's now the US government that's persuing the case. Adobe's realized that the US is over-eager to apply the DCMA, and has backed off. Perhaps we should boycott the US instead?
No, it doesn't. It can still be plea-bargained or dropped at any point. This just means that the grand jury has found that enough evidence exists for him to be charged with a crime.
I hate to say this, but the grand jury indictment doesnt suprise me one bit. As much as we hate it, the DMCA is the law. And there's plenty of evidence that Dmitry violated the DMCA. Right now the most important thing is to get Dmitry home to his family right now. If that sets a precedent for the DMCA, that's great, but let's not make Dmitry a martyr at his own expense (yes I realize that's an oxymoron). The DMCA can be challenged later, probably in the Supreme Court. Unfortunatly, this means that there will have to be more and more Sklyarov/Felton/2600-esque cases untill the DMCA is gone for good.
That's right, friends. Apparently they think they can send you to prison for five years for EACH COPY of infringing software that you sell (plus one for "conspiracy"). It doesn't take long to build up a life sentence that way...
Consider too that many of the best minds are not from America, and this sort of bullshit will easily dissuade them from ever touching on American soil.
The DCMA and disgustingly similar concepts are going to box the United States in, and slowly but utterly stagnate it.
Summary:
Prosecution for Speaking (thought police) =
Fewer bright citizens immigrating (or just plain aiding) for fear of prosecution =
Fewer innovations in the USA =
The eventual demise of an empire.
Quite the leap, but you know... I ain't the only one saying it.
I questioned early on whether the ACLU would risk their hollywood gravy train by coming out in support of Sklyarov. Several Slashdot posters indicated they would use the feedback page to see why the ACLU was totally silent (try searching for "Sklyarov" -- absolutely nothing). Still nothing, though.
Those of you who are ACLU supporters should take careful note of this.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You are seeing the creation of the new drug war. You can expect to see the following features of DW-I in instant replay
- criminalization of perfectly ethical behavior that powerful segments of society happen not to approve of,
- draconian penalties for these supposed crimes,
- justification of this nonsense on the basis of huge ass-pulled numbers purporting to show how much damage the "crime" is doing to the economy,
- legislators and public prosecutors fanning the fire to further their careers,
- courts that will set aside your traditional freedoms because the wankers in the FBI can't get their convictions in a free society,
- ultimately, absolutely no impact on the behavior that Drug War II was supposed to control, and
- a new eco-niche for genuine crime, created by the new legal system and exploited by punks who will ultimately be the next generation's Organized Crime (cf. prohibition, Drug War I).
Fear for your freedoms.Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Never have I seen such negative speaking of the DMCA from a "real" news source, even the Associated Press:
Is it just me, or is that the most neutral, almost pro-Sklyarov paragraph you've ever seen? It even continues:
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
So, after the arrest Adobe got email-bombed by us guys (&gals) trying to voice our protest (see http://www.boycottadobe.com or .org - too lazy to check)
As it seems now, the protest has to be taken to higher ranks in the legal system.
Can anyone supply email adresses of the people involved? I mean lawyers, consulars, attorneys, judges, congresscritters, whatever?!
I think about the only way this could lead to a conviction is the sheer ignorance of a lot of the involved people (see Microsoft Antitrust case). Well, ignorance can actually be a form of violence. And there is only one cure for it, so who can i tell what is going on, what the real-life analogy is, and how i am feeling about this (even as a foreign citizen... i think, i hope actually that every voice counts!)
+++ath0
I guess I'll take this opportunity to link to this entry in my Smokedot diary. I encourage webmasters to read it, because I'd like some assistance.
The short version: if you're a webmaster, and have pages on your site related to digital copyright issues - especially Sklyarov's case - check your logs for hits from the 198.25.0.0 - 198.26.255.255 netblock, which is controlled by NIPR (DoD Network Operations - a quick whois of 198.25.0.0@whois.arin.net will confirm this) containing a user agent of "Inktomi Search". A pair of machines at Kelly AFB in Texas with that user-agent have been the source of regular hits to my page on Sklyarov, about once a day. The hits are regular and targeted enough to convince me it's not a case of kiddiez spoofing, and I've had at least one report of very similar behaviour toward another site; targeted hits from a couple DoD boxen using a web spider. I'm doing some light investigation of the activity, and would be very interested in any logs documenting this type of behaviour.
If nothing else, I'd love to know why DoD machines are being used to search for copyright-related pages.
Side-note: some of the information I've gathered on NIPR implies that the group has constructed a firewall around the DoD workstations and servers; hence, any hits from NIPR.mil addresses may be the firewall/border routers and not the actual boxes performing the searches. However, at some point, DoD boxes are involved, and I'd like to know just what they're up to.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I see you kind people know he is should free. Bad law and he make everyone know about. I hope that make him free and make thing better for America. I read that he is hero here, is true, no. 'If this happens, then with any luck the plight of this poor Russian will come to an end and his sacrifice will have served as a catalyst to awaken a broader spectrum of America to the injustice of this law. If in doing so it leads to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act being suitably revised, he will become the latest, if somewhat unwilling and accidental, champion of the First Amendment and a somewhat unusual protector of the U.S Constitution. ' Make free, please. Love Iva
Why isn't the reverse happening now? My girlfriends (who speaks Russian) tells me that the case is being covered in the Russian press, but its very much a 1/4 column on page 6 type of story. Perhaps Russia wants the big US corporations to invest in their country and doesn't want to upset them?
Anybody seen any comment from the Russian government?
This US justice shit has gone too far, kidnapping foreign people for no reason (Adobe retreated) and promoting US as the last country where one could find fair trials. It's a circus, paid clowns babbling whatever bs that makes'em most money and making general public somewhat content about the show.
I can tell what's fair when I see such actions. Maybe Adobe and other corporations should understand not to treat individual people as they treat other corps. It may backfire other ways than to what they are prepared for.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
how about staging a book burning (or old adobe software burning) in front of Adobe offices..
Since that basically is what the DMCA fight is all
about anyways.. control of thought, expression and writing in the digital age.....ie book
burning in the modern acge a la Fairenheit 451..
This is a type of action that might make it clear to the mainstream press what this fight is really about... control over our expression, and companies attempts to control press, throw people
in jail for thoughtcrime...etc..
And why Adobe? Well, they started it, and as far
as I am concerned, it was companies like these
that lobbied/bribed/pressured our congress people
to get this law.. so now they can use all that
political power and money to get Dmitry out, and
then get rid of this law, or suffer the
consequences publicly in the street from us.