© July 20, 2001
wiaflw

Well, it's happened again! The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) claims another victim by punishing him for expressing his First Amendment rights.

On July 16, 2001, Russian programmer and security researcher Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested by the FBI in Las Vegas after presenting a paper on major security flaws in Adobe's PDF and e-book software at the annual Def Con convention.

Dmitry now faces up to 5 years in prison and a penalty of up to $500,000 if convicted under one of the provisions in the DMCA. The provision states that it is a felony to circumvent a security protocol. So by writing a program that showed how simple it was to defeat Adobe's security features in their PDF and e-book software and then presenting his findings, Dmitry "has therefore been charged with trafficking in a product designed to circumvent copyright protection measures."

As I write this, Dmitry Sklyarov is now sitting in a federal detention center in Las Vegas, Nevada awaiting transfer to San Jose, California where he will be tried before the Northern California Federal District Court.

Major protests had originally been planned for Monday, July 23, 2001, in San Jose, CA; Chicago, IL; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; Denver, CO; Reno, NV; and Moscow, Russia in opposition to Adobe Systems, who filed the complaint, and the U.S. Department of Justice, who will be prosecuting it. But in light of recent developments, the demonstrations have been put on hold.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Adobe has agreed to meet with representatives from the EFF on Monday, July 23, 2001. "If Adobe does not agree to withdraw their complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice regarding Dmitry Sklyarov and to refuse to pursue further prosecutions under the DMCA for cases that should be prevented under fair use provisions of US copyright law," then protests will be re-ignited.