[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Russian hacker's arrest sparks online protests not seen in years

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:56:08 -0400
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
Subject:        	FC: Russian hacker's arrest sparks online protests not seen in years
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com


http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45342,00.html

   Hacker Arrest Stirs Protest
   By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
   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.
   [...]

   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. [...]

   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 presenting his work at Defcon last weekend on
   behalf of ElcomSoft. [...]



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