FC: Russian hacker's arrest sparks online protests not seen in years

[Declan McCullagh <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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