U.S. To Drop Charges Against Sklyarov

Schmerd writes: "The New York Times has a story saying that charges will be dropped against Dmitry Sklyarov in exchange for his testimony against his employer ElcomSoft." Si adds: "It looks like Dmitri might be home for Christmas. This is not the end of the trial, but it appears Dmitri has been freed, pending certain stipulations." jij adds this breaking news article on the Associated Press wire as well. (The AP story is also at Wired). Update: 12/13 22:23 GMT by T : sam@caveman.org links to a slightly more in-depth AP report at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Comments

Re:A Positive Step?

[JScarpace]

The case is continuing in court, but it won't be against Dmitry, just Elcomsoft.

This really is the best of both worlds. We get the opportunity to see the DMCA blown out of the water, and Dmitry gets to go home for the holidays.

DOJ is biding their time....

[Bonker]

The fact that it was a good test case is probably amoung the foremost of the reasons it was dropped.

Say what you will about evil crackers and hackers who restlessly violate people's property. Dmitry was obviously not one of these people. He wrote a tool to do something that is still quite legal in Russia, and is considered to be quite a scholar and expert by many. Any competent lawyer would have been able to present him as such. He would have a huge chance of getting

The U.S. has zero chance to uphold the DMCA unless they get precident behind it that come from using it to prosecute someone who they can present as having evil purposes... such as any of the alleged DoD crackers arrested this week.

As long as the people who get involved in lawsuits are fairly upstanding individuals, they can't afford to prosecute. Once they come across someone who would probably be sent up the river even without the DMCA, then they'll prosecute.

Just watch...

DMCA will never get to the US Supreme Court

[JungleBoy]

I doubt that the DMCA will ever be tested in the US Supreme Court, especially in a criminal case. The corporations who put the law in place won't risk lost profits by letting the DMCA be test against the Constitution at the highest level. They will continue to beat people (and small companies) with it, then they will either get the case dropped or thrown out.

There is something severely wrong with the check and balances system of the US Gov't. Laws don't have to be constitutional to be passed. Corporations (or AG Ashcroft) just have to keep the nconstituional laws from being tested all the way up to the SC. What we really need is a judiciary review of new laws (before they go into effect) which pits them against the constitution.

-JungleBoy

Re:Legal Advice for foreigners

[(void*)]

What do you mean, he demostrated an action that broke US law?What did he demostrate? He GAVE A TALK. That TALK has, as a subject matter, how to crack ebook encryption. Is that a demostration?

By that peculiar logic, Hollywood should be jailed and locked up by DEMOSTRATING how to hijack airplanes. I would say that is more appropriate example of DEMOSTRATING, than giving a talk.

Say what you want about legality. The whole point is that this piece of legality is immoral, unconstitutional.

Poor reporting

[booch]

The AP article says:

He lives with his wife and two children in an apartment in San Mateo and was working on a doctorate in computer science.

Which makes it sound like he was living in the US before he was arrested. The only reason he's living in San Mateo is that the US won't let him go home to Russia. His family had to be flown here to live with him.