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

law and guilt

[Proud Geek]

Sklyarov is clearly guilty of violating the DMCA. The not guilty plea is stupid nonsense.

I'm not saying he should be charged or jailed or such. God forbid I support the government's actions here. Thing is, the issue isn't his guilt (as he is clearly guilty) but why the DMCA exists in the first place.

Don't proclaim Sklyarov's innocence, because he isn't. Instead, proclaim the injustice of a law that imposes draconian punishments for things that should not be illegal in the first place.

Re:law and guilt

[technos]

If he'd just given his crack away, I'm not sure he'd have been prosecutable. But he sold it. Profiting from a crime. However we might feel about the constitutional validity of the DMCA, right now it's a law. Breaking it is a crime.

Doesn't matter. This is a criminal action against an employee of ElcomSoft. ElcomSoft paid him to do programming for the eBook processor. He did not place the program on a US server, he did not engage a US company to handle credit card orders, he did not sell the product. He just wrote code.

Think about it this way; I, in the normal course of my employment, am instructed to make a program to aid the mastering of an inhouse DVD/VCD video product. As part of the program, I write a decryption algo to reduce our pre-mastered DVD discs to plain files so they can me shuffled, re-encoded, etc. The company finds this acceptable, and in fact good enough it thinks it can get some of its partners to use the software for a fee.

What I did, as a programmer, was legal. Even if I had knowledge that the company may decide to sell it as a commercial product, the burden is on them to acquire the relevant permission. Licensing for sale the CSS IP, the MPEG encoder, etc. Their problem. Not mine. If they are called up on the carpet for IP violations, contributory infringement, DMCA violation, etc, only the company and its officers are legally responsible. Not me.

Same with ElcomSoft. They are liable if their sale of the product violated law, not DS..

Re:The Cyber Archipelago

[sdo1]

But, while speeding doesn't leave a record of itself, ebook copying does and so leaves a legacy, a record of the crime

The way things are headed, I can GUARANTEE you that things like speeding WILL INDEED be monitored. It starts slowly, but we're already on that slope. Put a toll transponder in your car. We've already seen these transponders used to track people. Next up, you'll get a ticket if you jump on a toll road and get from Exit A to Exit B in an average time that would exceed the speed limit.

But why stop there? These things are cheap enough. Make them mandatory in all cars. Monitor your car speed through GPS. Violate the speed limit, get a ticket in the mail. Plus tracking devices can help the cops find any car at any time because they're ALL being tracked. That's a GOOD thing, right? Fight crime, right?

This country is going to hell quickly. I fear for the life that my son is going to have.

-S

Re:The Cyber Archipelago

[locust]

It won't be the police that demand it. It will be the insurance companies. They have a profit incentive to know if: you are driving regularly through a bad nieghborhood, driving too fast, driving farther than you tell them you drive to work. All of these things impinge upon the chances they will have to have to pay you if your car is stolen, crashed, etc. Further as large scale computing power becomes cheaper it will be come more practical to generate much more detailed actuarial tables that reflect these changes. These will translate into higher profits in the reinsurance market (insurers get insured against having to pay claims).

Finally, when it comes down to having an extra 20 bucks a month to feed your kids, or having that extra bit of privacy, I'm pretty sure where most people will come down.

--locust

Re:This is exceedingly humiliating.

[Xerithane]

For what it counts, this sentiment is sadly shared by myself. I do not understand how so easily consumers have lost their voice to corporations, and the masses. It's sadly growing into a nebulous entity no longer controlled by the government, a government established by the people for the people.

I have paid my taxes, and my dues. I'm strongly considering re-rooting myself into a true free economy and country. I know nothing is perfect, but there are many countries that are much better than what we're finding here. I try to relate this to the automobile industry, and the rail road industry. It takes a while for thought transition to change. For individuals to accept the new innovation into daily life and then a balance will occur. Unfortunately, through all those "revolutions" we have kept our speech. Here, we have lost our voice. Our freedom of speech has been abolished and placed into the hands of other individuals, not appointed by state, to determine what is ok to say.

I feel useless to change this, but I will never stop protesting. I'll never stop sending emails to everyone I know. I believe in freedom, sadly enough I don't believe in America anymore.