One last bit of TTTH, for those, under rocks, who didn't know the story by now... Cheers, RAH http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45342,00.html Hacker Arrest Stirs Protest By Declan McCullagh 2:00 a.m. July 19, 2001 PDT WASHINGTON -- When the FBI arrested a Russian programmer this week on charges of criminal copyright violations, the government unwittingly ignited a powder keg of outrage. Web pages immediately sprouted to demand the release of Dmitry Sklyarov, who was visiting the United States to describe his work at the Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas. Newly minted activists set up a mailing list, launched a defense fund, and trashed Adobe Systems for urging the U.S. government to arrest Sklyarov on charges of circumventing its copy protection methods. See also: Everybody's got issues in Politics Dmitry Sklyarov, a lead programmer for Russian software company ElcomSoft, was arrested Monday morning for distributing the company's Advanced eBook Processor. This high-visibility prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act seems to have focused the kind of anger not seen since the days of the 1996 Communications Decency Act or the Secret Service raid of Steve Jackson Games -- two defining moments in the development of civil liberties online. >From the federal government's point of view, it's merely enforcing a law enacted by Congress in October 1998 that punishes anyone who distributes "any technology, product, service, device, component or part" that, like Sklyarov's software, bypasses copy-protection mechanisms. Sklyarov is facing a five-year prison term and a fine of $500,000. Matthew Parrella, a federal prosecutor in Las Vegas, said a judge on Monday decided to hold Sklyarov without bail until his hearing in California some time in the next two weeks. "The court deemed him a risk of non-appearance, which is not uncommon with white collar criminals," Parrella said. This is the latest round in an increasingly nasty battle between Russian firm ElcomSoft and Adobe, which fired off a stiff letter a few weeks ago claiming "unauthorized activity relating to copyrighted materials," and requesting that the $100 e-book decoder be taken off the market. Yet from a programmer's perspective, Sklyarov was simply following the venerable hacker tradition of exposing weaknesses in a security system -- in this case the often-flawed security of e-books -- in a smart, clever way. He received even higher points for documenting his research and publishing a paper (PDF) at Defcon last weekend on behalf of ElcomSoft. "The U.S. government for the first time is prosecuting a programmer for building a tool that may be used for many purposes, including those that legitimate purchasers need in order to exercise their fair use rights," said Robin Gross, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. What Gross calls "fair use rights" are part of modern copyright law. They permit people to use copyrighted products legally in a certain way without permission -- for instance, by excerpting a short portion of a work. But what if the content is in a digital wrapper, such as the one used by Adobe? What about fair use then? With the exception of it being a criminal prosecution, Sklyarov's case is remarkably similar to a civil lawsuit filed by eight movie studios against 2600 Magazine. They claim the underground hacker zine was distributing DVD-descrambling software in violation of the DMCA, and urged the trial judge to reconsider. That didn't work, and 2600 is now waiting for a verdict from a federal appeals court. (At the time the studios filed suit in January 2000, the criminal portions of the DMCA had not taken effect. In October 2000, they did.) The cases are parallel because the DeCSS utility that 2600 distributed allowed Linux users to watch a DVD on a machine for which it was not authorized by the encryption designer. Similarly, Sklyarov's utility allows Adobe Acrobat customers to read a file on computers for which it is not authorized. Rene Valladares, a federal public defender in Las Vegas, said he appeared with Sklyarov around 3 p.m. in court Monday for an extradition and bail hearing. He said that his client would be moved in the next two weeks to the San Jose and San Francisco area where a judge would determine if he needs a public defender. In the meantime, pro-Sklyarov protests are underway. In San Francisco on Wednesday evening, campaigners met at the home of one outraged activist to plan strategy. Some cypherpunks have created BoycottAdobe.com, which blames Adobe for "abusing U.S. copyright law to protect their cash-flow," and others are hunting for San Francisco-area natives who can vouch for Sklyarov's character -- so he can be released on bail. The danger for Adobe is that rather than dissipating, online anger could instead focus on how the company likely lobbied the U.S. government to take up its cause with regard to the ElcomSoft utility. In an affadavit (PDF), FBI agent Daniel J. O'Connell tells of a series of meetings with Adobe engineers and technicians in which the company provided him with all the information he needed. "We did bring the case to the attention of the FBI, but it was the U.S. government that investigated and acted upon what was found," said Susan Altman Prescott, marketing vice president at Adobe. Prescott predicted this would be the first in a series of cases: "You will see continued support of the U.S. government for enforcing such material and you will see an ongoing effort to incorporate better technology into products to make occurrences such as these few and far between." Have a comment on this article? Send it. Printing? Use this version. E-mail this to a friend. 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