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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.
Now let's all concentrate on getting the guy home to his wife and kids, and not use him to further our political ends. If someone volunteers to be a test case for the FSF or others, that's fine; he did not, and is a unwitting victim of our police state.
Peace, or Not?
Why, in this country of supposed freedom, do we allow companies to control not only specific markets, (in the case of Micro$oft monopoly) but also allow them to lobby towards laws that take away freedoms, such as freedom of speech.
I know that ElComSoft Co. Ltd made mistakes when they started selling a program designed to defeat a specific type of encryption. I feel that this is wrong. Unfortunately, arresting a programer for giving a speech about how he broke the encryption is hogwash as well. (did I really say hogwash...)
This country (the USA) was founded upon ideals that one man can speak his mind, and express himself in whatever way that he chooses, as so long as it doesn't detriment others. (thus, yelling "fire" in a theater is wrong) I see no reason why showing an encryption to be faulty and how to circumvent it AS A ACADEMIC STUDY wrong. As I said before, I think that the company was at fault, but can the "oh so mighty" hand of the US touch a company in Russia? Nope, we can't, at least legally anyway. So the goverment uses a poorly worded law to push the corporate views on American people. What will be next? Will I be arrested because I point out a security hole in Microsoft's hotmail site? No, but if I start selling a product that will allow it's user's to read other's email, I can and I should be arrested. I don't believe that Sklyarov ownes this company, he is just a programmer.
This person has been arrested for violation of the DMCA. I don't believe in the DMCA, and unfortunately, I cannot make my congressman or senator understand why. (The breaking of encryption is over their heads, and copyrights and patents lasting forever is very vague to them as well.) They are too pressured my lobbyists throwing bags of money at them to listen to something that would blackball them in the lobbyists eyes. So what happens? More rights are taken away from all Americans, and 85% or more of Americans don't know of don't care.
It is a sad state.
Ben Franklin ( I think ) said that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." But Americans have become to apathetic to even care about there government, much less the actions that the government has been taking. And because of this more and more skewed laws have worked there way in the the US Code. Sadly, today, they could arrest almost anyone with the inordinate amount of laws on the books. They chose here and now to arrest Mr. Sklyarov. I hope that he wins, and I hope that the court system invalidates this very askew law. It would help put more freedom back into the individuals hand, and away from the greedy corporate entity.
Blah Blah Blah.
The software doesn't "get around copyright protections." Copyright is a legal protection, the software merely allows you to get around copy protections. Does anyone else think the difference is important?
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.
Secondly, he isn't just any foreigner, he's Russian. If the general public is going to take notice of the DMCA, the feds want a good impression. Lots of people (sadly and surprisingly) still view the Russians as "the enemy" and will view Dmitry as an "evil communist." Thus they might see the DMCA as something that fights the evil commies.
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.
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.
I know that they'd demand the same for one of our citizens cought up in a BS situation like this in another country.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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.
Well, how about:
Every one of these includes a line like "first prosecution under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act". So I guess the mainstream media is noticing the case and they're even using the name of the "said act".
Those are just the ones I pulled off the page I'm keeping following the case. It's hardly an exhaustive list, either.
My point is, all this bellyaching -- "No one is paying attention" -- is simply not true. It's just an excuse to sit on one's behind and do nothing, because "the System" is allegedly ignoring the issue and "the people" allegedly don't care.
Fact is, people do care. Copyright law is arcane and obscure, so perhaps it's understandable that there aren't mass protests in the streets. Yet. But the allegation that the mainstream media is completely ignoring this is hooey.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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
The news.com site also covered the story.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
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.
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?