Sklyarov, Elcomsoft Plead Not Guilty

squared99 writes: "I'm sure it has already flooded slashdot, but Dmitri has entered his plea, not guilty. This NYTimes article talks about it. Not sure I like the mention of bumper stickers, as opposed to the real people who have been protesting, but at least it talks about the support he has been getting. It even appeared as one the main newsworthy item on my daily NYTimes newsletter, Yay! Let's keep up the support and protests. As my brother said to me the other day, "The only way to beat bullies is to stand up to them."" See also Elcomsoft's statement about the case, a story in the Boston Globe, and this cute fable about a DMCA future. Update: 08/31 19:37 PM GMT by M : one more link - the Russian Foreign Ministry has warned its programmers not to travel to the United States.

Comments

The "law" is not always important

[fcd]

An unjust law does not demand being followed simply because it is the law. Our country has a history of unjust laws. Take for example the Jim Crow laws in the south. You state that you agree with the people who put MLK in jail. The people who turned dogs and hoses on protestors, civil protestors, not violent ones, simply because it is the law?

It is our duty as Americans to protest and commit acts of civil disobiedience when we believe a law is unjust. We must, of course, expect to be punished for our actions, but we must never fall blindly into the belief that we should obey and accept people punsihed under unjust laws, to do so is to sign away our freedoms one by one, because as many of you know waiting and writing to Congress to get something done, is not the most effective thing you can do.

Someone who is being punished under an unjust law is being unjustly punished, and you should not support punishing him, if you do not believe the law is just, to do so is hipocrasy.

Re:law and guilt

[furiousgeorge]

Please explain how is is guilty of doing work in another country where this activity isn't illegal? When did the US's jurisdiction become international.

There's probably fifty things you've done today that are crimes in other countries (read much about Afghanistan lately) - keep things in perspective.

ALSO - if you plead guilty, then this doesn't go through the courts with the potential result of the DMCA being declared unconstitutional. If everybody pleads guilty there is ZERO chance of the law being struck down.

Don't be obtuse.

You've got to admire his boss...

[brulman]

for showing up in court yesterday to stand by his employee. He certainly didn't have to come all the way from Russia, and risked getting arrested himself to do so. It impressed me a great deal, and hopefully it will have a similar effect on the court.

Professional Repsonsibilies and DMCA Awareness

[guygee]

The sixth principle of the IEEE/ACM Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice states:

6 PROFESSION - Software engineers shall advance the integrity and reputation of the profession consistent with the public interest.

One implication of this principle is that we all need to stay informed on events related to the intergrity and reputation of our profession in order to defend ourselves against unjustified external attacks. Clearly, the Sklyarov case represents an attack of unprecedented ferocity on the profession of software engineering. Iam currently teaching 2 sections of a graduate-level software engineering course, and in an informal poll last week Iwas shocked to learn that less than five out of sixty students had heard of the DMCA or Dmitri Sklyarov. I emphasized that it is our professional duty to keep informed and to speak out against the persecution of software engineers. Besides linking to information on this and related cases on my course webpages, Iam considering some type of assignment that will encourage students to respond in some way to the threat represented by the DMCA. Letter writing campaign? Protest actions? I am writing slashdot to solicit recommendations.

This is exceedingly humiliating.

[JeremyYoung]

My country has humiliated me. My country, the United States, has deeply embarassed me. How is it that the country that stood for freedom of speech has now gone so low as to begin warping laws that it's citizens granted artists to restrict civil rights? Worse yet, we're not restricting the civil rights of our own citizens, WE'RE RESTRICTING THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF CITIZENS FROM COUNTRIES WHOM WE ENCOURAGED TO EMBRACE FREE SPEECH. In fact, we're doing such a good job of it, that now Russia is warning it's citizens not to travel to our country, just like our country constantly warns us not to travel to China.

This is exceedingly humiliating and depressing. It was less than 15 years ago that we encouraged Gobachev to tear down the wall, to enact change in a totalitarian regime that completely restricted freedom of speech.Now that same country is warning it's citizens against our lack of freedoms.

Words fail.

Re:The Cyber Archipelago

[ErikTheRed]

Speed monitoring has already been tried by car rental agencies, albeit without legal success.

One of my biggest beefs with law in general is that there is far, far too much of it. Many laws are routinely disregarded by the population - underage drinking, speed limits on freeways, and especially taxes - because they are far too restrictive, to the point where they defy common sense. Because we (Americans, and I'm sure plenty of others) live in a land rife with dictu absurda, we have developed a sense that we only have to follow laws that makes sense to us.

We also have a population largely willing to throw away its rights in order to combat the trendy social concern of the day. Of course, this is largely abetted by those with a political agenda that doesn't trust the common citizen to go about their day-to-day business without infinite hand-holding from big brother.

In order to develop respect for the law, we need to have a set of laws worth respecting.