ElcomSoft Back For More

graveyhead writes "Most everyone here should remember the Dmitri Skylarov fiasco last year. Apparently ElcomSoft, the company Dmitry works for, is not intimidated by Adobe or the DMCA. Wired is running this story that describes ElcomSoft's upcoming products, most of which could be interpreted as a violation of the DMCA. What's particularly interesting is that this announcement comes right at the beginning of the trial which is scheduled to begin on August 26."

Comments

They won't ever care

[ehiris]

Their business is in Russia. Russia doesn't have anything to do with the DMCA neither will they ever.

Maybe that's the reason there are so many financially poor scientists in Russia.

Re:They won't ever care

[mcc]

Maybe that's the reason there are so many financially poor scientists in Russia.

Hmm.. and here i thought it was because russia is an economically devastated country that hasn't completely recovered from 40 years of autocracy in which an absolutely powerful government accountable to no one (and rife with corruption at all levels) purposefully tried to engineer an agrarian culture, while mismanaging funds and the economy and covering up the damage it had done by arresting anyone who dared to speak out about anything that was wrong with the country. I had also thought that the reason the economy hadn't yet gotten back on its feet was a combination of a total lack of basic infrastructure, and the fact that what capitalistic infrastructure there was in russia at the time of the fall of the berlin wall was controlled entirely by organized crime syndicates-- organized crime syndicates who still administer and control significant amounts of the country's economic infrastructure to this day.

But now that i have read your eloquent and intelligent post, i have seen the light. Clearly, as you have shown to us, the fact that russian scientists are poor has nothing to do with the fact the bulk of the country is living on bare subsistence wages to the point that doctors and college professors are making absolutely minimal amounts of money, and the government cannot afford to pay the wages of the troops in its army; it's because Russia's intellectual property laws aren't stringent enough. Thank you for opening my eyes. I understand now that my view of Russia's needs at the moment was misguided; after all, what good would having enough food to go around be, if corporations cannot exercise direct control over the way in which their customers use intellectual property they have purchased?

----
GM: Make a Sarcasm roll, d20.
MCC: I am exercising my "shooting fish in a barrel" feat and adding +5 to this roll.

corruption imlies violence

[aminorex]

When a corrupt goverment exploits the people for
the benefit of their patronage, the inevitable
result is violence. Injustice is the primary
cause of violence. When injustice is
institutionalized, vigilantism and revolution
are the only recourse.

I know this will bite me in moderation, but
the truth will out.

About copyrights in Russia

[Ektanoor]

Russia has a law on copyright. It has some good and bad points. But it is particularly weird on what concerns software copies. It seems that the guys who wrote this part had a pretty good knowledge on how programs work and interact.

Let me note a few important points:
1. You can reverse engineer a program for private purposes.
You can use the results of your "hacks" on a product you distribute/sell if:
The "hack" does not contain parts of the original software.
The "hack" adds a functionality not contained on the original software or allows third party programs to interact with the original software.
The "hack" does not create a situation where the original author suffers a significative material loss.

There are also a few things in Russian laws that concern protection and privacy and which are related to software products. Frankly, in the whole there are some chances to distribute programs that circumvent copy protection mechanisms if these mechanisms are too dumb and made by nerds. No court will hear you if you cannot prove that you did made a good effort to protect your program, system or network.

The case with ElcomSoft is quite interesting. Even under Russian law they are beating the very edge of the law. But if they can prove in court that Adobe's security does not cost a penny, then Adobe has no chance to shut up these guys. The judicial system is not perfect but in some cases, dumb security is no more than dumb security. Besides Russian law is quite rough on what concerns certain things like licenses. If a software publisher brings a license like Microsft's EULA (even old ones), then court session might end just on reading that EULA. As they do not conform to the copyright laws in Russia.

Not long ago, somewhere around here there was a tremendous copyright scandal between two companies. One company accused the other of stealing their proprietary designs on some web application. When in court, the thing ended in a few minutes. Why? Well these two companies had an agreement to produce a common product. However when things went bad the agreement was torned off and the defendent just grabbed the whole product and started to use it somehwere else. The accusant brought the case to court on the grounds that they broke in the their site and stealed the thing. There were lots of mumblings as what part of the work belonged to whom as the two companies didn't make an effort to clarify its authorship on the project. However, when the court discovered that the defendant had a read/write Internet connection offered by the accusant for their work and that account was still open, the judge just replied with a "case closed" declaration. The accusant tried to protest but the judge explained that if you are so dumb to produce a work and not making anything to protect it, then no court in Russia would hear them. After this the accusant retired its claims and even didn't try to appeal.