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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.
This isn't insightful, regardless of what the moderators would like you to believe. This is childish and wrong.
The DMCA acknowledges that some software may be used to break protection measures, but targets those that have no legitimate uses. OCR and word processing suites have many, many legitimate uses, and this one example of an illegal use. The Elcomsoft program had one use: to break encryption. Indeed, there were other uses AFTER that step, but the first step is always illegal, and thus, has no redeeming qualities.
Regardless of the flaws of the DMCA, this type of software will ALWAYS be illegal (even if the DMCA is repealed and replaced with soemthing else), beacuse it's PRIMARY USE is to circumvent copyright protection measures. This is clearly wrong to anyone with a conscience*.
Realistically, Elcomsoft published code meant to illegally break copyright protection. This is unethical. Period.
*: Yes, I realize that some people will claim you must use this code to enable blind to read the Adobe ebooks, or to transfer certain material from reader to reader, but be realistic: a blind person will not buy material they can't use, and there's already transfer mechanisms built into most ebooks and ebook readers. This code was meant primarily to allow piracy, period.
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Too bad he came to this country. He could have stayed in russia and nothing would have ever happened. To me it seems like he thought of himself as a martyr, coming to this country to give a speech about his program blah blah. Guess he forgot what went into being a martyr.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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.
If, on the other hand, he opens your freezer and finds the head, that's a search, and it requires a warrant in order to be legal.
That's no longer true. Thanks to HR5710, any law enforcement, local, state, or federal, may come into your home and search without first obtaining a warrant. Furthermore, you never need be informed that your home was searched. The same goes for wiretapping, digital and otherwise.
Why bother.