Slashdot Mirror
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.
This is not to say I won't be campaigning against the DMCA, however.
I think I am in line with the more controversial commentators on this issue, but I feel it is the only honest line.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
This article on WIRED shows what is probably the general level of concern for most Americans. Especially the final quote.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
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.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Maybe they got confused and meant "The only way to beat bullies is bullets." Remember, ranged weapons are here for the scrawny guys like us.
The Russian Foreign Ministry is warning programmers not to go to the US or they could be arrested. Check out the story here.
I like this Tom Clany quote better:
There are two ways you can deal with bullies
You can shock them; or
you can kill them.
Needless to say there are at least 50000 bullies (ie, industry lobiests) in washington alone, so killing is out. Any great ideas on how to collectively shock them? The sheer logistics are mind bogling, but it would be fun to try 8)
Maskirovka
I don't care that my spelling stinks.
What about: "The only way to beat bullies is asymmetric warfare"?
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.
It may (and should) outrage all Europeans, but within a year, Dmitry's actions are going to be made illegal in Europe too. Yes, that's right - they've put together a DMCA in Europe called the European Union Copyright Directive. It bans circumventing encryption in the same way. In a year's time, all governments in Europe are obliged to enact it as law.
We can still stop this! Check out here and if you're in Britain, write a letter to your MP. You can and should make a difference.
"The Gods made us all, but Armour-Piercing Discarding Sabot rounds made us all equal."
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.
If all that was needed to institute change was people "proclaiming" against immoral unethical laws then you folks in the US of A would still be a colony of the Brits. The fact that actions speak louder than words and that action is often the only way to effect change *was* the whole point of the Boston Tea party I believe..
As I see it, the only unfortunate aspect is that it's a non-US citizen involved; an American in his place would have been a much better symbol of how slippery the slope has become.
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.
"the best safety of the frontier...will be secured by total annihilation of the few remaining indians" L Frank Baum 1890
To those who were criticizing the not-guilty plea and saying he is guilty, this needs to be said. Had he went ahead and pleaded guilty, there would be no legal examination of the DMCA. He would have been fined and sentenced to prison, end of story. The United States NEEDS this examination of the DMCA, if for no other reason than to bring the flaws in the law to light in an official manner. It will be up to the courts to make the decision, and in the mean time, the issues surrounding the DMCA will hopefully become more public knowledge.
I'm really saddened that Russia had to issue its advisory, but again maybe that will be a wake up call to everyone that there is something very very wrong with the way the DMCA is being enforced. One would hope that we can settle the issue internally before it becomes more of an international issue than it already is. The US preaches so much about "human rights" and begs for other countries to "do the right thing" even though their laws are written differently. It's time we practice what we preach.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
>>despite the fact that he knowingly and >>willfully comitted an act of copyright
>>infringement.
Don't be obtuse.
First - the 'crime' occured in another country.
Second - he didn't commit copyright infringement. He developed a tool. If i go down to the library, take a book and photocopy it, does that mean Xerox (and it's engineers) are guilty of 'copyright' infringement. No it doesn't. For the same reason a gun manufacturer isn't guilty of murder if i shoot somebody in the head. For the same reason if i take a hammer and break into your house, Sears isn't guilty of break and enter. If i burn a copy of a friends CD, HP (the manufacturer of my burner) isn't guilty of copyright infringent.
Don't confuse a tool and the use of a tool. Why should this case be treated differently because it deals with bits instead of physical objects. It's EXACTLY the same as the Xerox example.
And i won't even go into the agument about how the DMCA tramples other established rights.
Ok, the above comment is an obvious troll, but I'm curious about how American law actually works. Do they really think they can enforce their own laws globally? This strikes me as really bizarre. I know the French did something similar with Yahoo, but presumably Yahoo at least has an office or something in France (I don't really know, I'm just guessing).
Any lawyers who know better?
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Sorry, but if it was a non-american involved, he would still be ignored by the public and the media. Any little attention he would manage to receive would be with the accusation that he is a rampant cracker and criminal spawned by bullying through his highschool years and society's general lack of morality, yadda yadda yadda.
American's don't care about things unless it affects their religion, the children or their cable television prices.
He came here and spoke about his program, hence he trafficked his information here, which is illegal under the DMCA.
Dmitry violated our law on our soil and has been locked up for it. I hate the DMCA as much as any of us, but he is guilty, and proclaiming him as innocent merely makes one look uninformed.
Not necessarily the case. If it is the case that
-in Russia, it is legal to copy software and its content for backup purposes
-in Russia, it is legal to sell software to create said backups
-Elcomsoft made no sales of circumventing software to US companies
then in fact, it's pretty hard to enforce a US law, because it doesn't take place in the US. If this had happened to a US programmer in a US company, the case would be much cleaner...because it WOULD be illegal. In fact, it's surprising that they aren't choosing a local to hold up as an example. It would be much easier to convict an American who broke the law in the US.
Granted, Slashdot creates cult heros, but I think this is the wrong example to pick on them for. In this case, it's not a matter of someone not getting their free-as-in-beer stuff. It's a much more complicated scheme of making an example of someone who didn't necessarily break the law.
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.
Surely this is a troll?? Well just in case, here's the "Skylarov for Dummies" explanation:
The guy has NOT been charged with infringing copyright (or if he has that's not what's being complained about) - it's the charge of "creating a circumvention device". This is prosecuting him for creating a tool which MIGHT be used to infringe copyright, but has other legitimate uses as well. If someone uses a hammer to break into my home, I say prosecute the guy breaking in, not the guy who designed the hammer. I bet you use copiers from time to time - what if Xerox were forced to stop making copiers because someone MIGHT use them to copy the pages of a copyright protected book?
Madness.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Without action to raise public awareness, people will think laws are being passed to "protect intellectual property" rather than to take away constitutional rights for the convenience of industry.
This is not a troll. I'm quite serious.
.au or .wav file of it.
How does one pronounce Dmitri Sklyarov's last name?
There used to be the controversy of Linus' first name (and of Linux), and Linus thankfully provided us all with a
Spasibo.
A company selling a product in America is subject to American laws prohibiting the sale of that product. Very simple really.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
That story about Derek was funny, and it reminded me of the book I am currently reading, The Gulag Archipelago, by Solzhynetsin (sp!). That non-fictional story is an account of how power can corrupt, basically. The problem in Stalinist Russia was that the Reds were, if I have this right, basically trying to create a new society the ideology of which was vulnerable to the thoughts of objective people who could see the shortcomings of it. In their effort to control thought, the officials found it necessary to root out all possible instances of anti-communist behavior; unfortunately this included such things as not reaching the party farm production objectives (ten years in prison for not growing enough grain!) and not surrendering to German armies in WWII (when the POWs were returned to the SU in '45 - by Churchill, incidentally, against the soldiers' wills - rather than being welcomed back as heroes, they were arrested, tortured, and given 10-yr sentences, since they must have been spies to have survived the German camps!). Basically, Stalin, in his paranoia, and by extension the entire nation, found it necessary to control behavior by draconian means.
My point (and I do have one) is that the enforcement of infinitesimally minute behaviors requires the rooting out and punishing of the majority of the citizens of a nation: the mother country goes to war on its citizens. The way to do this is to put each and every citizen at risk of loss of liberty; i.e., each citizen is breaking some law or another. In this manner, the State gains control over the behavior of its population, and in a greater degree than just copying ebooks. Once you have copied an ebook, or, taken to the logical extreme, say, exceeded 55 mph (or snuck a beer into a college football game), you are a criminal.
But, while speeding doesn't leave a record of itself, ebook copying does and so leaves a legacy, a record of the crime. It can be likened to arresting you for a failed drug test; you are not doing a crime now, but there is proof that you once did.
For these reasons, the framers of the Constitution would wisely refrain from endorsing the bastardization of their concept of protection of Science and Arts through copyright. The prosecution of the law requires that we become Stalinist in the degree to which we must root out the crime. Napster points this out effectively, in my opinion: the only way to catch all those crimes is to monitor each and every terminal 24/7. And that gives away too much power to the government for freedom to be guaranteed, even in a Democracy.
If you didn't follow that, feel free to email me with any questions you might have...
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I've seen a number of posts suggesting that there is no doubt about Dmitri's guilt. Here is a list of conceivable ways that Dmitri could be found not guilty.
1) The DMCA is unconstitutional. No valid law to break means not guilty.
2) No jurisdiction over whatever activities Dmitri did commit. I don't think Dmitri can be prosecuted for writing or using the program in Russia. He must be implicated in the sales activity.
3) Although Dmitri is the copyright holder, the government does not establish that he colluded with Elcomsoft to sell the product in the US. Most countries don't have the same kind of "work for hire" copyright laws as the US, so it is perfectly plausible for a Russian employee to be a credited with the copyright and yet not be the motivating factor in his employer's sales strategy.
I haven't read the latest charges so I don't know what evidence the government has other than what was alleged in the original affidavit.
For those people who want to see the whole thing played out to the end, there is this encouraging news from Dmitri's lawyer:
Mr. Burton said Mr. Sklyarov would not plea-bargain. "That is out of the question," he said.
For the exact same reason that the actual copying and distribution of digital material should be treated differently than that of physical material. They are very distinct beasts. It's not exactly the same as the Xerox example. With a Xerox, I can't make a perfectly bound soft cover (much less a hard cover) book. With e-books, copying the material is both trivial, and EXACT.
Don't get me wrong. I am all against the current practices of hassling the makers of software that enable the unauthorized copying of proprietary information (commonly known as "pirating"). If it's main purpose is "pirating", it's bad. If it allows "pirating" as a side effect, then those who use it to pirate are bad.
I just don't feel comfortable with people claiming that digital music should be "sold" with a different business model (because it is different than physical media) while stating that digital tools are the same as physical tools.
Seems to me if Skylarov was only interested in promoting better security he wouldn't have tried to sell his product. This looks to me like someone trying to make a buck off an insecure product.
Look at it another way. I come up with a key that can open and start any Ford vehicle. I have a couple of options. I could contact Ford and show them the tech that allows anyone to break into their vehicles. Or, if I don't want to deal with Ford directly I could publish the findings in an academic journal without trying to sell the key.
Instead of doing that, however, I decide to market and sell keys that can break into every Ford. Now, don't you see what's wrong with that? I could have taken the high road, but instead I tried to make a buck. This is pretty much what Dmitry did.
I can assure you, that if anyone tries to market a key that will unlock any Ford, that person will get thrown in jail if caught. Why should software be different?
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
It follows that:
These sound crazy, don't they? But, really, what's the difference between a South Carolina doctor being convicted of practicing in South Carolina, without a California licence, and some Russian geek being convicted of DMCA "violations" arising from work in Russia?
Well, other than Russia is a lot further away, isn't even part of the US, and other such details. The doctor example I gave would actually be far more reasonable. At least the alleged events would have happened on the same Continent!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What he did was legal, because the DMCA is unconstitutional. Of course it'll take a trial to establish this, but his claim is perfectly valid.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
Go Lakers!
Time Magazine
Newsweek
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The USA does not own or run Russia. So why are we trying to enforce our laws there?
How about making Russia a full fledged member of the USA so that the US can really make them obey USA laws. Sorry, there is that small detail on democracy. They might take over the USA that way.
What else is the US going to go after?
y'know, Adobe should PAY for Dmitri's defense. It is only fair.
- - -
Radio Free Nation
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Has anybody noticed that the U.S. has the DMCA and nobody else has anything similar? (rhetorical) :)
How about that most of the entertainment industry is based in the U.S. and/or targeted towards U.S. audiences? (Not trying to be U.S.-centric here ... there IS plenty of foreign entertainment, I just think that it is bigger here).
Then, is it so hard to believe that the U.S. would have the most oppressive laws regarding copyright protection? Much like France and Germany have the most oppressive laws regarding Nazi's? I'm sure middle-eastern countries bend over backwards to suit oil production. (etc.)
We still need to get rid of the DMCA :). I just dispute the idea that the U.S. is a bastion of totalitarianism because we have bad laws for understandable reasons :)
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
I'm pretty sure the target of copyright protection is the words, not the perfectly bound soft cover.
From CNN:
The U.S. Attorney's office brought charges against ElcomSoft after purchasing a copy of the software over the Internet from ElcomSoft's Web site, which is hosted in the U.S. and uses a U.S.-based payment services provider, the indictment said.
So, the way that they knew about the crime was to commit the crime of purchasing, and thus owning "illegal" software? I guess they probably think that this is like the cop who poses as a buyer for crack on the street?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
The software was sold in the us, through a US distributer. This isn't a case where no laws were broken on US soil.
To keep with your analogy. Your person who jay-walked (created the software) in Podunk, then drove to new your and ran a red light (distributed illegal software) in New York. He got cited for running a red light, and your complaining that jay-walking isn't illegal in Podunk.
Dimitri's writing the software in Russia may not be within the jurisdiction of the United States, but distributing that software in the US sure is.
...When Russia has to tell it's citizens not to vist the United States because they might be thrown in jail for something they did in their own country. It's just too ironic.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Well, he certainly manages to make Slashdot stories look much better.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
"Not-Guilty" does not imply that the person did not actually commit a crime, just that the person does not fit the legal definition of "Guilty." That's exactly why O.J. Simpson is walking the street a free man today. They could not say that Orinthal J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldmann beyond any reasonable doubt.
That said, even Sklyarov's arrest and imprisonment is definately against the grain. He is being treated at Guilty without a trial. He entered a plea of "Not-Guilty," because while he may have committed a crime, he and his legal team belive that he is not accountable to the law (under the law) for his actions. Specifically, they belive the DMCA is flawed and inherently unsupportable.
My personal view of this should be quite obvious. For clarification purposes, I think the law is asinine. I don't think anyone has pointed out to the Justice Department that everyone who has a Web Browser (nay, a text editor, for that matter) is violating the DMCA. Section 117 of the law gives no exception for that kind of technology. The law specifically states that any computer program capable of displaying copyrighted material against the rules of the copyright is illegal. It makes no provision for the level of protection afforded. It could be argued that HTML is a form of copyright protection (i.e. META tags) as it obscures the text of the material. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that all it takes to make a copyright is to say "copyright 2001" and it's legally binding.
From the perspective desk, think of this: I can legally obtain, sell, and distribute the components to make nitrogen tri-iodide (a highly unstable explosive, don't try this at home kids). All I need is to go to my local Osco Drug, buy some Iodine crystals, househole ammonia and coffee filters, and bingo, I've got a HIGHLY explosive chemical that requires no fuse mechanism other than a rock, BB or anything else that'll impart a kinetic shock to the material (including fingers). I cannot go to jail for that. However, I can be fined up to $500,000 and get 25 years in jail for writing:
"UNLOCK COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS FROM SUBMITTED DOCUMENT" as soon as I write the compiler for this new language. Note, it's not illegal to write the compiler, just the words above.
Of course, under the DMCA, slashdot will be guilty of violating the DMCA for distributing that code, and everyone reading this message will be guilty too. Just as soon as I write that compiler.....
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Many of the issues here are discussed in a recent report:
M. Skala. "New Media Copyright Extensions Would Harm Canada", Aug 2001
It is a long read for the weak, but it clear and to the point as to why "laws" such as the DMCA is a bad idea, giving a short history of copyright and a summary of recent events in the world of IP/DRM. I believe it can help people focus their arguments.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I am not certain of that Sklyarov will have a jury trial but I would think that a jury or a judge would share many of the same guidelines for the determination of guilt. That being the case I would just like to point out this site. which outlines many of the powers that a jury has. Note this fourth bulleted item.
When they believe justice requires it, jurors can refuse to apply the law. Jurors have the power to consider whether the law itself is wrong (including whether it is "unconstitutional"), or is being applied for political reasons. Is the defendant being singled out as "an example" in order to demonstrate government muscle? Were the defendant's constitutional rights violated during the arrest? Much of today's "crime wave" consists of victimless crimes--crimes against the state, or "political crimes", so if you feel that a verdict of guilty would give the government too much power, or help keep a bad law alive, just remember that you can refuse to apply any law that violates your conscience.
By these guidelines I would say a jury (or judge) would be perfectly justified in declaring Dmitry not guilty.
I love the United States, I really do. I think a lot of the reason why it's such a great place to live has to do with the government. But more and more I'm starting to think that it's getting seriously out of sync with modern life that I wonder if we're not headed for catastrophe.
I'm part of a citizen's reform group that is working for change on an unrelated issue (website). But the things I see in the Skylov case are strangely similar to my group's fight: politicians that don't understand the trappings of modern life (in Skylov's case, technology), blindly make laws without consulting with what the people want, and then they afraid that they will look stupid if they back down on something they were obvious wrong about.
What they don't seem to realize is that they look even dumber for not acknowledging that a mistake was made, that they misunderstood the situation, and that there are situations that they failed to forsee which were not fairly covered under the legislation they created.
To a certain degree I hold the American people at fault for not being more proactively involved with their government, keeping a close eye on the things their representatives are doing. Hell, pretty much the whole purpose of the Neoteric website is to try to get people to contact their representatives. But I still think there's a failing to the entire system, something that is getting worse, and not better.
I think we need to find a new way of doing things, and fast. Technology, and society as a whole, are changing too fast for our current government (good as it has been for the last 200 years) to keep up. And a government out of sync with its people is a dangerous thing indeed.
Why is the DMCA a threat?
Because it goes beyond mandating what I may do, it mandates what I may know, and limits what I may legitimately and peacefully tell others in words, pictures, symbols, or their digital (electical, magnetic, optical) equivalents.
That is why.
sig fault
"Seems to me if Skylarov was only interested in promoting better security he wouldn't have tried to sell his product. This looks to me like someone trying to make a buck off an insecure product."
If it takes someone with a financial interest to stand up for our rights then so be it. I don't particularly care for Larry Flint but his fights for free speech affect all Americans from puritans to perverts.
"Instead of doing that, however, I decide to market and sell keys that can break into every Ford. Now, don't you see what's wrong with that? I could have taken the high road, but instead I tried to make a buck. This is pretty much what Dmitry did."
No he did not. He made it so that we could, to properly use your Ford analogy, loan the Ford to someone else to use for a period of time, or even sell our Ford to someone else whenever we want to without the vehicle needing to do a DNA test on the driver before it allows the owner to use it.
The only way we can adequately inform the uninformed about this travesty of justice is to have the correct information in the first place.
A photocopier can be used for several legitimate purposes that are not illegal. Ditto with a gun or hammer.
(I might be wrong here - and correct me if I am - because I haven't really bothered reading much about the case)
He sold a program to specifically break the copy-protection mechanism on ebooks. The fact that he wrote the program in another country is not relevant because he (or his company) sold the program in the US.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Imagine driving on the freeway at 65 mph, and getting pulled over because the speed limit in the alley behind your house is 10 mph.
This concept used to be called jurisdiction--that a law has certain an area of geographical effect beyond which it doesn't apply. The 10 mph limit is only in effect on streets designated as 10 mph zones. Apparently the IP Patrol of the US feels it can enforce it's 10 mph limit on other country's freeways.
What we're learning (that military types always knew) is that a law's jurisdiction has nothing to do with it's claimed geographical borders, and everything to do with sheer ability to enforce the law. All the explicit and implicit limitations on laws stand only until a more powerful will chooses to ignore them. To say that the 10 mph limit only applies to the alleyway is just an empty promise, not a physical certainty. If an enforcement body chooses to enforce the laws of one jurisdiction on another, only political or physical resistance would stop them.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
>I'd also advise any Dutch people who may have
>legally smoked pot not to enter the USA as
>you're logically as much a target.
Not as far fetched as you might think. Smoke pot legally in Holland or anywhere else where it's legal, and get on a plane to Reno NV. Nevada, where it's against the law to be under the influence of MJ, could prosecute you on the
basis of a drug test weeks afterwards.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
From the article on yahoo -
"Sklyarov, 26, spent 21 days in prison before being freed on bail amid noisy protests by advocates of free speech and other supporters. He pleaded not guilty." (my emphasis)
I wasn't aware that the U.S needed any advocates of free speech.
This space intentionally left blank.
Unfortunately, a plea of not guilty will not lead to a legal examination of the DMCA either, at least not directly. The court's duty is to enforce the existing law, not to ratify or amend it. As I understand American law, the judge is not at liberty to simply say, "Well, this law is clearly unfair. Therefore we'll just have to release Mr. Skylarov." His only duty is to determine whether or not Skylarov violated the DMCA, and issue an appropriate sentence.
n /j ury_nullification.shtml
i on /
Perhaps the judge can't just proclaim the law as unfair and set Skylarov free, but the jury can refuse to convict him for any reason - even if they just don't like the law in question. If the trial is in Frisco, then there's a good chance that there will be some geeks on the jury (especially since there are so many out of work geeks there these days)
http://www.erowid.org/freedom/jury_nullificatio
http://www.fija.org/
http://civilliberty.about.com/cs/jurynullificat
(please disreagard the previous psudo post, I accidentally hit return when the focus was on the "Submit" button)
- bridgette
So how do you explain that democracy only ever appears in capitalist societies??
I don't deny the growing corporatist problems in the US, but remember that a country run by corporations is not capitalist, it's fascist.
Study history. Don't believe all the cool charismatic rebellious people tell you. Nor, for that matter, whining old men like me.
Fair use is entrenched in the concepts behind copyright. It's a concept which makes copyright good for society and not a special protection for the authors of a work.
Of course Adobe, RIAA, MPAA, etc. will argue that copyright is their special protection as publishers and facilitators for publishers... These companies do not believe that copyright is supposed to be good for society except in an economic sense.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Ironic thought.
Xerox copies are imperfect, and making copies of copies will result in a degraded copy. The way to do it is to convert it to a digital form, then make copies. An Adobe PDF file is very capable of this.
(offtopic, but pretty funny)
A friend of mine got on a plane in South America, which was heading towards Europe. With him, he brought a nice big space-cake (=hash cake), knowing that the customs/police wouldn't check anything until he landed. While in air he ate the sucker and had one hell of a flight home.
-Kraft
Live and let live
-- Martin Luther King
In more detail - the Supreme Court does not render advisory opinions. That is, you cannot simply ask the court to judge whether a law is constitutional or not. To have a law declared unconstitutional, one must actually violate the law and pursue one's defense to the highest court in the land.
The benefit of having unjust laws struck down by the Supreme Court comes at the cost of risking one's freedom if one's attempt proves unsuccessful - or even one's life, in the event the law in question provides for capital punishment.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
They're oppose DMCA.
I mean, what other way is there to get rid of DMCA right now? Have Congress repeal it? Yeah right.
OTOH, if he were convicted and the convicted was overturned on grounds that the DMCA was unconstitutional, that'd be good...
Maybe that explains why DoJ is so headstrong on "convicting" an easily popularized guy? They know the case will eventually lose and they want it to because that's the only way to get rid of it.
Of course, it's inconvienent for Dmitri, but then again, someone's gotta be the martyr and it might as well be someone who isn't an American.
The *smart* thing to do, is pardon Sklyarov.
That way, your corporate masters get to keep this blatantly unconstitutional bludgeon around to threaten anyone else who seeks to expose their incompetence. The longer you keep the DMCA out of court, the more damage it can do to the constitution your sock-puppet took an oath to uphold.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Senator Feinstein sent me a form response (see below) to my DMCA letter, and I find it unsatisfactory in the extreme. So I sat down to write her back, and thought some of you might find the result worth reading.
Dear Senator Feinstein,
First, thank you for considering the Digital Millennium Copyright Act issue important enough to develop a response for it.
When I first wrote you, I implored you to become active in seeking appropriate adjustments to address the worst excesses of the DMCA. I am sorry to say that I have been hoping for a more substantial reply than the one I received.
Yes, everyone agrees that a digital economy requires legal protections. But in any effort there is always the question of how much is enough, how much is too much, and what is lost by doing too much. News developments since I first wrote you make it more and more clear every day that the DMCA went too far, and, now that criminal enforcement has begun, that it is beginning to trounce the legitimate activity and normal relations of the technology ecosystem, is chilling public speech, and is distorting markets. Russian grad student Dmitry Sklyarov is facing 25 years in a US prison, plus a $2.5 million fine for writing a computer program in another country. I'm sure you're aware that today the Russian government issued a warning to Russian computer technologists that they should not travel to the US because they risk imprisonment! Encryption researchers have begun to resort to anonymity when publishing their results, even in other countries. The situation is quite drastic, global in scope, and I must say requires closer examination and more action than your reply would indicate you plan to take.
The constitutional copyright mandate is for Congress to provide laws to ensure adequate compensation for creators to bring new works forth -- not to guarantee every possible compensation for every imaginable use of every copy of every work. You analogize intellectual property rights to physical property rights, but any copyright scholar will tell you that intellectual property rights have never entailed the same kind of rights as physical property rights, and for good public policy reasons (see for example the writings of Jefferson). I should be able to listen to the CDs I buy on my computer and in my car without paying again. I should be able to watch a DVD I buy in England when I get home without paying again. I should be able to watch a DVD I buy on my computer, even if it's a Linux computer without a CSS player. I should be able to back up my e-books without having to pay again. When the DMCA went too far, I lost those rights. I also lost my ability to protect myself against the objectionable practices of the copyright industries, whose interests are, after all, different from mine as a consumer. If I were to try to regain my rights, simply by using my ordinary computer industry skills, I could go to prison for 5 years per each copied item. This is not piracy. This is not bootlegging. This is not mass duplication. Let those stay illegal. This is basic consumer rights.
To my mind, the most egregious aspect of the DMCA is that by criminalizing the circumvention of access control technologies even for media that the consumer has bought and paid for (and no matter how flimsy the protection), the Act requires the American people's own government to act against them, as enforcer of the copyright industries' purely self-serving business initiative to get them to pay for every movie, program, song, and book over and over and over again -- ultimately, to pay for every single access. Imagine your home library with a coin-operated lock on every book. That is our future if the DMCA is not amended.
So I respectfully ask you again, at a minimum, to clarify your position as to whether you will help to adjust the areas where the DMCA is clearly excessive, or whether you will oppose such efforts. I would like to think that you can appreciate the gravity of the situation, and the depth of the discontent of your technically-minded constituents, and will act in the people's interest.
In considering this question, please don't accept at face value the copyright industry's self-serving assertion that only perfect protection will prevent economic collapse in movies, music, publishing, and software. In the DMCA, America traded away the rights of consumers and the free speech rights of technologists in order to achieve a 'perfect protection' scenario by inventing draconian criminal penalties for otherwise ordinary and accepted activities. But cryptographers know very well that perfect protection is impossible, and always a red herring. 'Pretty Good Protection' -- meaning relying on ordinary civil copyright protection, and reserving draconian criminal penalties only for those who mass-distribute copies that could replace sales -- is good enough to keep the copyright industries in business, and just as profitable as they have been, without requiring us to trounce consumer rights and throw our brightest programmers and researchers into prison.
I know that the studio heads in Hollywood are your constituents, but please keep in mind that you also represent the young technologists who work in Silicon Valley. Please, reconsider adjusting the anti-circumvention aspects of the DMCA.
Sincerely,
--- Snogwozzle
Bay Area, California
Dear Mr. Snogwozzle:
Thank you for writing to me about the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.
I have always believed that the protection of intellectual
property rights is as important as the protection of any other
property right. Moreover, the protection of intellectual property is
vital to a flourishing economy -- particularly in California.
America's music, movie, and software industries are second to
none, and we export far more intellectual property than we import.
This is good for employment, and good for consumers.
Without strong copyright protections, the incentive to
innovate would be diminished. In fact, this issue was so important
to the Founding Fathers that the ability of Congress to protect
copyrights is actually written into our Constitution itself.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was Congress'
attempt to address the issue of copyright protection in a new,
digital age. As new technologies have developed over the past few
years, it has become increasingly difficult to protect intellectual
property from illegal copying and distribution. It is a delicate
balance, to be sure -- nobody wants to restrict the development of
new and exciting technologies, but we must work to prevent the
creation of perfect, digital copies of copyrighted works which can
be illegally distributed throughout the world.
Please be assured that I understand your concerns, and I
will keep your views in mind.
If you have other questions or comments, please do not
hesitate to write to me again, or contact my Washington, D.C. staff
at (202) 224-3841.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
A better one might be that if replicators of physical objects existed, we would likely see restrictions on what objects we could copy. And, someone who provided a way to defeat those restrictions would probably face jail time.
I don't think Skylarov belongs in jail. However, I think that people who create digital things like software or music should be able to limit the amount of free copying that happens to their creation. In my opinion the only real way of doing that is to build a culture of respect - respect for the authors of software, music, movies, etc. Its likely that NO lock, encryption method or other security device is 100% secure. Therefore the only way to really have things be secure is if the vast majority of people respect laws and copyrights.
If the vast majority of people do not respect the law, then we have a serious problem. I'm not talking about unjust laws like the DMCA. I'm talking about the copyright laws that get broken every day by people who wouldn't even consider shoplifting. We have to build a culture of trust and respect, or else we may have to watch our digital society be replaced by something far more draconian.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I would say that the requirement to immediately remove material immediately upon the accusation of infringement somewhat defeats the intention of "innocent until proven guilty" as well. It's more like "punished even if eventually found innocent."
*sigh*
sig fault
There's actually more to it than that. Slander, as you correctly point out, as well as it's brother libel are not protected under the aegis of the First Amendment.
Additionally, if your speech can be considered a form of conduct, it too may be unprotected. E.g., you can say "The US government ought to be overthrown," and that's speech. But something more specific such as, "Let's start by killing that guy over there, right now," is a little too close for comfort, particularly if people follow through with it. So we don't really want people who arrange a murder, incite a riot, etc. to be able to get off for not having in fact performed any action when they so clearly brought that action about intentionally and specifically. The courts aren't really stupid, you know.
Additionally, copyrights are directly opposed to the First Amendment. This is skirted around by claiming that 1) the First Amendment did not amend Congress' power to establish copyright if they choose to do so; 2) that as a function of copyright, people have consented through the government to a small infringement of their free speech in return for the benefits of having the material produced (for which the copyright is assured to go away after a time anyway) but that this is generally pretty narrow. In short, the courts have not found there to be, for their purposes, an actual tension.
Lastly there are issues revolving around self-accepted limitations. E.g., if you reveal a trade secret you were given in confidence, if you breech a contract requiring you not to say something, etc. the First Amendment doesn't work so well.
So you can see where this is going... the government can claim that his speech induced action, and is therefore unprotected, and that the action was to induce copyright infringements and those are also (generally) unprotected.
Hopefully the courts will put the smackdown on the prosecution, and the law.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
If there are any good comments on this, I will personally compile them and send her a response letter.
Some hints on various places to attack:
I have always believed that the protection of intellectual
property rights is as important as the protection of any other
property right. Moreover, the protection of intellectual property is
vital to a flourishing economy -- particularly in California.
America's music, movie, and software industries are second to
none, and we export far more intellectual property than we import.
This is good for employment, and good for consumers.
This paragraph is Feinstein basically saying that $$$ is more important than her constituents freedom. While this comes as no surprise, don't you think its interesting that she has enough cahones to actually come out and say it?
Without strong copyright protections, the incentive to
innovate would be diminished. In fact, this issue was so important
to the Founding Fathers that the ability of Congress to protect
copyrights is actually written into our Constitution itself.
This completely ignores T. Jefferson's many misgivings over IP law (do a search on google, this is quoted plenty by others quite a bit). Not only that, but the wording in the Constitution itself is VERY weak. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that Corporations' monetary interests should be protected at all costs with PERMANENT monopoly status (see also Congress' affection for extending copyright/patent durations every few years)
but we must work to prevent the
creation of perfect, digital copies of copyrighted works which can
be illegally distributed throughout the world
This illuminates a fundamental flaw in her understanding of information theory. Bits are bits. They are by definition "perfectly copiable" No amount of wrangling is going to prevent them from being copyable. The only thing that will prevent copying of bits like this is a complete police state, which she seems to think is a small price to pay to protect the California entertainment industry's enormous profits.
What should happen, is if the jurors find Sklyarov not guilty due to the DMCA being unjust, we should seek punishment of the senators who passed this law. They should be made accountable for it. After all -- they said it was legal and worth passing in the first place.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Ignore the hideous first amendment violations.
If he'd broken the law while he was in the country, then you'd be absolutely right. However, he's actually charged with creating the software. Nobody claims he did this inside of the USA's borders-- even the FBI stipulates that he did it in Russia. So if he's not charged with breaking any US laws while inside of the US, then why is he in jail??
Yes, and a program that breaks the copy protection on an e-book can be used for several legitimate purposes that are not illegal also.
This includes, but is not limited to, making personal, fair-use copies for purposes of backup or space-shifting.
Another is to simply prove that such a program can be written, and that the copy protection is not perfect.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Do you really think that the software sold in the US had it's menus and help in Russian? He obviously knew the software was being written for export outside of Russia.
He wrote the software. His employer paid him to write the software. If the law was broken (that's for the court to decide), he profited from the crime. I also don't think he was unaware that it would be sold in the US. I curious how US laws address this, I'll definately be watching this case carefully. I've just found that in the past when something seems as unreasonable as Mr Sklyarov being charged with a crime in the US, there is usually more to the story. I also know that prosecuters don't like to prosecute high profile cases unless they've got a good chance of winning. I'm going to wait until I hear more about the evidence before I decide if I think Mr Sklyarov is a innocent victim.
[IANALE]
That sounds to me like the method of gaining access needs to have a secret process or information (i.e., key); otherwise the "with the authority of the copyright owner" bit fails.
That is, I can't release a version of gv that checks whether you're the authorized person, release a normal PDF document, and sue Adobe because their program breaks my scheme. Although, in the normal course of operation (of my program), you need my permission to access the document, you don't need to use information or a process or a treatment that requires my permission.
It's not so much that eBooks are easily broken as that there's nothing particular novel about the way to do it. Breaking CSS, for instance, requires a specialized program, whereas eBooks can be broken without anything specialized.
Funny how politically unpopular postings are "offtopic" and "trolls". Dmitry works for a company that sells spam tools. He's not a virgin. We can tell, because he's fucked us.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist