Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ElcomSoft Verdict: Not Guilty

Posted by michael on from the merry-christmas-adobe dept.

truthsearch writes "From News.com: 'A jury on Tuesday found a Russian software company not guilty of criminal copyright charges for producing a program that can crack anti-piracy protections on electronic books.' HUGE legal win against the DMCA. Thank you Lawrence Lessig."

4 of 433 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Huge legal win? I think not. - a moderate win by garyrich · · Score: 5, Informative

    "After much wrangling among attorneys over the definition of the word "willful," the judge told jurors that in order to find the company guilty, they must agree that company representatives knew their actions were illegal and intended to violate the law. Merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction, the jury instructions said."

    In this case the jury instructions are probably more important than the actual verdict. This establishes a key point that a product that has both legal and ilegal potential uses is not in and of itself ilegal.

    --
    -- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
  2. Intent is everything by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Informative
    After much wrangling among attorneys over the definition of the word "willful," the judge told jurors that in order to find the company guilty, they must agree that company representatives knew their actions were illegal and intended to violate the law. Merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction, the jury instructions said.
    That's the positive side. Basically, to move the argument to the other "big" DMCA-related case, if you want to produce a DVD player, as long as your intent is "clean" - ie your application is intended to provide fair use of content, such as the ability to watch it - you are not violating the DMCA by doing so.

    Intent is something that, in this case, was determined by a jury, presumably on the balance of evidence rather than on a reasonable-doubt basis, so someone producing something that allows you to make copies of DVDs for friends, or of DVDs you've rented, would appear to be unlikely to get away with doing so if there's any suggestion that they saw that as being the major application of the program.

    Disclaimer: IANAL, but my mother is.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. Congratulations Joe Burton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Much of the accolade goes to defense attorney Joe Burton and his dogged determination to defend Dmitry and Elcomsoft at considerable burden to himself. As a senior partner in the San Francisco office of Duane Morris LLP, he had to get the firm to buy into the importance of this case, because I believe they were paid very little. He sold it to the firm because he believed in this case, and that it was unfair to apply the DMCA criminal charges against this company. Well done Joe! And thanks for taking up this fight! And thank you Duane Morris for picking up much of the tab. Who said big law firms have no heart?

  4. Re:so now... by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Slander actually, as it was of the spoken word, not the written. Also the girl can face criminal charges, should he choose to press the issue. It is illegal to knowingly falsely accuse someone else of a crime.