Slashdot Mirror
Sklyarov Tells U.S. Court, 'I'm no hacker'
DaytonCIM writes "Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer at the centre of the first Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prosecution, yesterday delivered his long-awaited testimony in the trial of his former employer, ElcomSoft." There are also stories at The Register and on CNET.
It seems like this case shouldn't even be happening. Adobe just wants to make an example out of someone. The problem is, they picked the wrong guy. As seen earlier on Slashdot, they haven't found a single eBook decrypted with his software, and if it isn't on (I assume they use) KaZaA, then it really doesn't exist freely. He also appears to have said all the right things in court. There is such a thing as catching a drift, and I think Adobe missed it, and is now trying to drown Sklyarov.
"the company's password retrieval programs have been purchased by the FBI, the IRS, U.S. district attorneys and U.S. police departments, as well as by private companies like Microsoft and Motorola."
It should be interesting to hear what the "legitimate uses" sited by these people are.
Why isnt anyone really stating that this is about a blind person's ability to read the book they bought.
While the seller doesnt have to guarantee that his books can be read by the blind, the seller cant keep the blind from reading the book, ie using the software to 'open' the book and let him read it.
I would like to hear a valid argument against this statement?
thanks for reading.
Sigs are dangerous coy things
Oh, oh ... haven't you read the jargon file? No true hacker calls himself a hacker, it's a title given to you by the community. Now you've really made a boo-boo.
Look a monkey!
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Does Adobe give users the ability to print out copies of their e-books? If so, then they need to prosecute every manufacture of OCR software that exists.
In fact, they need to prosecute every manufacture of OCR software anyway because it could be used to read the characters directly off of a screenshot of an open e-book.
They also need to bring lawsuits against anyone with data entry skills because theoretically someone could read text from a screen and input it into a word processor.
Wait, that means word processors are a circumvention device for e-book protection, but that's ok: everyone uses Microsoft Word anyway and Microsoft has more lawyers then Adobe.
The list goes on, but the point is that data will be copied one way or another when people want to copy the data.
Pick your favorite fix to the copyright system we have today, but it had better deal with two parts of reality:\
Encryption can and will be decrypted.
Content must be cheap or people will copy it.
Hell, he might just have lied, when he said "no"; I would certainly label him as a hacker, using definition 1, and he might also be a golf hacker for all we know.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I would give anything to be able to killfile posts based on included phrases.
The connotation of hacker is bad. You don't want to create a "bad impression" in court.
I'm still not sure why Sklyarov is being prosecuted in the U.S. The alleged "crime" took place in Russia where his actions were perfectly legal. Why is an act, which may be in violation of US law, but which took place completely outside US jurisdiction being tried in a US court?
Suppose that the Kingdom of Tuva passes a law making it a crime for any politician to accept a campaign donation from any corporation or individual who receives any benefit from a vote cast by that politician. Can the Kingdom of Tuva then try the entire US Congress? Is this any different than the US trying Dmitry?
Oh, but don't you get it? A gun, while lethal, is extremely unlikely to deprive big corporations of great sums of money. A couple of dead people is nothing compared to (potentially) lost profits.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
He didn't violate US law on US soil.
He violated a US law on Russian soil.
That is the key point people SHOULD be upset about.
You can't argue that you shouldn't have to follow a countries laws while you are in that country. The origional issue was that a Russian citizen in Russia, working for a Russian company, shouldn't have to worry about US law.
Guns are old technology that everyone understands. Elcomsoft's software is a new one that people think is somehow magic. Magic new things are scary.
How ya like dat?
Illegal in the USA. Sklyrov is Russian.
The problem is one of enforcement.
If someone uses a gun to commit a crime, there is a fair probability they will be caught. The more effective a society is at catching illegal uses of guns after the fact, the fewer restrictions it needs to impose on guns before the fact. Though it should be mentioned that even if we have perfect after-the-fact enforcement, some restrictions on guns should remain thanks to the irreversibility of murder.
The difficulty of tracking down acts of copyright infringement, combined with the suddenly huge frequency of such acts thanks to the popularization of the Internet, creates a problem. While any individual act of copyright infringement is practically harmless, when they occur in the millions they can unfairly hurt producers of content.
There are two categories of approaches to deal with this, both of which should be employed to some degree.
One is to ask everyone to "think outside the box" and adapt their business models to the new reality of effectively zero cost of data duplication. In the long run, this should be done in as many contexts as possible. However, the transition is not always easy, if possible at all. In the cases where it is difficult or not possible, it needs to be decided whether the old class of business model should still be kept around for the time being. While some zealots would deny it, the truth of the matter is that sometimes the answer to this last question is "yes".
That's where the second type of approach comes in to play. Put restrictions on the tools that change what would be tens or hundreds of copyright infringements into millions of them, in a manner that's otherwise minimally disruptive. This is not a simple thing to do. The DMCA was the first attempt, and frankly I don't think it was that bad of an attempt, but clearly it could be improved. We need to find ways to let it do its job while constantly brainstorming ideas to better achieve "minimal disruption", and help society evolve to the point where few business models still need to be protected. We need to ensure that this law, in the long run, "withers away", rather than let it be like most real life Communist regimes which do not speak highly of Marx's ability to predict history.
What we shouldn't do is retreat into a hole and ignore the problem entirely.
... didn't have the DMCA. Otherwise a lot of our shared history may have been lost forever. What are our decendants 100 or 500 or 1000 years from now going to know about us?
Our creative output is going to be slowly locked away in copyright protected files never to be seen again... except to the person who originally bought the rights to view it. But they (we) will be long since dead... and the content, which will be as helpful to them in understanding their history as hiroglyphics are to us, will be lost.
Bottom line... the DMCA, and everything it stands for, sucks. It is the epitomy of government "of the people, for the people, and by the people" gone terribly wrong.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
They got what they wanted, and decided to sit back and let the feds be the bad guys.
I personally make a point of showing everyone I encounter who's interested in making PDFs the beauty of Ghostscript and Ghostview. Every sale I can cost Adobe makes me feel that much warmer inside.
I look forward to the day when the DMCA wielding jackbooted thugs cease to be relevant, and their stock becomes worthless.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
No kidding, but completely orhogonal to the point. I have plenty of copyrighted works still in my head, unpublished, of course I don't have to provide anyone the means of accessing it. However, If I publish it, I sure as hell shouldn't be able to tell people who legally purchased it how they can view it.
Copyright is another issue entirely, even though that's supposedly what the DMCA is supposed to protect.
Did you know that, under the DMCA, it is not illegal to circumvent copy protection mechanisms for the purpose of making fair use of a work? [17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(B)]
Yes, what's your point?
Did you know that this case rests on the DMCA's prohibition of the importation or sale of devices whose sole purpose is to circumvent copy protection? [17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2)]
Exactly, this is entirely contradictary to the previous statement, unless exceptions are allowed for devices that circumvent copy controls for the purpose of making fair use of a copyrighted work, eg. the software in question. This is a large part of what makes the DMCA such a bad law. Another reason is that it puts the burden of proof on the accused.
Did you know that most people who complain with zeal that the DMCA is a bad law have never actually read it, or indeed any part of Title 17?
Is that so? Does everyone here also know that you speak from your asshole, it's just as valid a statement. I myself have read most of the DMCA, further, the basics of the DMCA are easily compressed into a few sentences. So, really, it matters little if everyone has read the whole damn thing, pages upon pages of legalese.
Just some legal trivia for y'all to chew on
Trivia? Taste more like shit...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
AH. Next we'll have the Saudi's here at the beaches of the United States, monitoring who's wearing a swimsuit.
Such clothing is illegal in Saudi Arabia.
Who knows, they might jail a few tourists for crimes never commited on their soil... hmm?
Where does it end?
"I cared about not violating the law of the country I am operating in," Sklyarov said.
Sklyarov should not have had a responsibility to know or obey the laws of the United States, as a Russian doing work in Russia. What his employer does with the product he makes is none of his concern.
Putting the fact that I don't agree with the DMCA (I believe it is Unconstitutional) aside, the company sold the product in the USA, and should be the one held responsible.
Holding Sklyarov accountable is just plain wrong. US citizens wonder why foreigners hate our guts. One of the reasons is that our government feels that its laws should forced upon everyone worldwide.
If you are a foreign programmer who deals with security issues, I'd be cautious about stepping foot in the US, at least while Bush and his administration hold power. As you can see, our government is out of control right now, and it'll take a lot of US citizens to wake up to that fact before things can really change.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Your objection doesn't apply at all. Dmitry didn't go to the US to sell his company's software, he went there to give a talk. So not only did Adobe attack a Russian student for completely legal work he did in his home country, but they also purposefully accused the wrong person. If they had been serious, they would have gone after the *servers* in whatever US colo they happened to reside.
Where US corporations change CIVIL cases into CRIMINAL cases. What the FUCK is wrong with building a tool to decrypt something?! Now I guess they'll have to take the decoder rings out of cereal boxes now, huh. Or like, stop hammer makers from making hammers, 'cause like, they could be used to pound someone's head in.
:-/
*smirk* I hate the DOJ. I can't wait until we (the generation/group of people that has two braincells to rub together) get into seniority. I'm sure that once people get the message that this is fucking STUPID (and people with a bit more integrity [if that ever happens]), these kinds of actions and these kinds of laws will be outlawed.
Or maybe I'm just being idealistic. I just can't apathy get the best of me, 'cause I know if it's just that easy for Skylarov to say something and go to jail, then I might be next for something stupid. Oh well.
"This is the first time a case involving a violation of the law has gone to trial, and if ElcomSoft is found guilty, the constitutionality of the DMCA will be tested on appeal" It seems that the biggest threat to the DMCA is if Sklyarov is actually found guilty. I really doubt that the constitution can really support prohibiting the writing of software to allow paying users to USE the books they buy! That is like saying it's constitutional to arrest the inventor of the copy machine for creating a means to copy print a feature that happens to not be included in books.
Even if he did it, it should depend on the terms on which he was granted entrance in the US. We European can shortcut the visa procedure by signing a visa waiver, that allows US administration and justice to handle us as they see fit. For instance, if a citizen of the Netherlands is found in possess of marjuana, it can be arrested in the US even though this is legal in the Netherlands.
If Sklyarov signed something like that and then violated the american law (even not knowing it), bad luck to him. But if he came in the US with a real visa, I believe that the only legal act for the US authorities was expulsion. Anything else, in a country less powerful than US, would have raised one hell of an international case.
Ciao
----
FB
Ahh, nothing like a zealot PHB to fuck up one's work life. I'm sure the poor schmuck just trying to do his job appreciated your insipid political antics.
You should keep your personal battles out of the workplace. You wouldn't like it if your employer involved itself in your personal life.
It's called a company having ethics.
At my company before last the management landed a large tobacco account. They had to cancel the contract because the team refused to work on the account on ethical grounds. It happens. Some of us care. We don't submit to the cowardly excuse "if we don't do it someone else will".
Final point. It's not our "personal life", this guy is a fellow software engineer and the outcome will affect what we can and can't do professionally.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
When people use the term "hacker" to mean whatever the Jargon File associates with the term, they're using an MIT-ism. Look at all the people associated with the original Jargon file: Steele, etc. All from MIT. Try to find an early example of the term used outside of MIT: you'll find it difficult (although I'm not dismissing the possibility - perhaps I just haven't looked hard enough, but I have looked).
People are very quick to apply the term to things outside of the MIT, Unix and FSF cultures, but this means introducing the term into a new environments. At this point, it's difficult to introduce the term into new environments because another meaning for the term is in common usage.
It doesn't matter which definition came "first." The popular definition is the de-facto definition, by definition of the terms "popular," "definition" and "de-facto." The script kiddie culture has no qualms about calling themselves "hackers," and the word "cracker" already has a pejorative meaning in certain contexts, so nobody's going to convince the general public or the mass media to switch terminology.
Analogy: "Skinhead" can refer to two things: either young Neo-Nazis or the original Skinhead movement, which is this English Punk subculture. If you say "All my best friends are Skinheads," you'll have a lot of explaining to do. This explanation may make for an interesting conversation between your friends at the pub, but it has no place in a journal interview or a trial. Somehow, nobody really cares about the distinction between the two meanings of "Skinhead," since few people have the time or motivation for these semantics arguments. You have to understand that most people don't care for linguistics and wordplay - most people want to get their jobs done, and communicate in order to do so.
When asked "Are you a hacker?" Dmitry responded correctly. If he tried to explain about the Jargon File and how the MIT-centric usage has come into vogue among the "Free Software" community (another term with which I take issue), he would have gotten nowhere. It would have been just as useful if he responded: "What do you mean by 'you?'"
>It ends when people get mad enough about their liberties being taken away and vote.
:-) For a healthy exchange of ideas, you need MORE than two viable parties.
:-)
Unfortunately, the opposite is true. There is a *direct* connection between the public's disguist with government, and declining percentages of the public that actually vote.
The kind of people who don't vote are EXACTLY the kind of people some fear to vote. So we're stuck in a downward spiral of corruption, apathy, resignation and deliberate ignorance. I vote to escape criticism that I don't vote.
I certainly believe a "two party" system is crap. There are a lot of barriers preventing third parties from gaining credibility (reasons other than themselves of course
I don't see much difference these days between Democrats and Republicans, especially post-September 11: I can choose between having my liberties taken away with zeal, or allowed to happen by resigned defeat. Not much of a choice.
Of course, I can vote my consciensce and not vote either. But *without* a "runoff" elections there's about as much chance of a third party major win, as seeing Linux on the desktop in the White House.
The Electoral Collage is was never necessary and is only kept in place for racist reasons (let's dillute the city vote the cities are full of you-know-who). Districting is a cruel joke. We need run-off elections when no one gets a majority.
That would certainly stimulate the two parties into ideas more original (and mainstream) than constant class warfare.
Isn't voting mandatory in Australia? That would certainly inject some needed spice into the American voting system. >:-D