O O Ø O O O O
Death Of The First
This one is so evil, I don't know where to start...
On July 16, Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested after giving a talk at DefCon on e-book security. Dmitry, you see, works for a Russian company called ElcomSoft that distributes software for removing the copy protection on e-books. Among other things, this allows visually impaired computer users to purchase an e-book, and use it with a text-to-speech reader. Under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), however, Dmitry is a hardened criminal.
Let me get this straight. A Russian citizen enters the US to speak at a conference. After doing so, he is arrested under the covenants of a US law for a product that was written and is distributed in another country? This is like arresting him for speeding, because he was seen doing 180 on the Autobahn.
Let's turn the tables for a minute. An American scientist attends a conference in Russia. After giving his talk, he is arrested for a paper he wrote in a scientific journal in the United States. Can you spell I-n-t-e-r-n-a-t-i-o-n-a-l I-n-c-i-d-e-n-t?
Write a piece of software, go to jail. That's the law.
Even more ludicrous is that the crime here is creating the tool, not using it. If you are the owner of an Adobe e-book, it is within your fair use rights to make a copy, print it out, and so forth. Fifty years after the author's death, it is within your rights to strip all copy-protection entirely, and place the book in the public domain. So long as you own the e-book, using this software is totally legal. These fair use doctrines are law in both Russia and the US.
Build a gun, no problem. Produce and sell a set of lockpicks, no problem. Write a piece of software, go to jail. That's the law.
And this happened in the United States of America. Land of the Free. Home of the Brave. You can own a gun to protect yourself from neighbours and tyrannical governments, but don't you dare write software. There's no amendment for that, right?
Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian citizen, came to a conference in the United States of America to speak about e-book security, and was arrested for what he spoke about. First Amendment be damned.
It would appear that intellectual property in the digital age is the back-breaker for your constitution. Protect Free Speech or protect Copyright with the DMCA. You can't have both.
Kjell Wooding
Tuesday, July
24,
2001
PD DV