Politech archive on U.S. v. Sklyarov: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sklyarov ******** http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45484,00.html Sklyarov Release in Fed's Hands By Declan McCullagh (declanat_private) 2:00 a.m. July 24, 2001 PDT WASHINGTON -- America's geeks want Dmitry freed. Hundreds of hackers, programmers and system administrators decamped from their cubicles on Monday and took to the streets to argue, in dozens of different ways, that Dmitry Sklyarov should not be in jail for creating code-breaking software. Some geekavists, who turned out in at least 10 cities, targeted FBI and Justice Department offices. The largest crowd, with about 100 demonstrators, marched on the San Jose headquarters of Adobe Systems, whose copy protection scheme Sklyarov has been charged with penetrating. Adding additional drama to the day was a high-stakes meeting taking place inside Adobe's headquarters while protesters outside were chanting "Code is speech" and "Hey, hey, ho ho, DMCA has got to go." Board members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has taken up Sklyarov's cause, were meeting behind closed doors with Adobe to try to broker a deal that would let the 27-year-old Russian avoid a trial. It seemed to work. After over two hours of tense talks that began at 11 a.m. PDT, Adobe and EFF negotiators struck a deal: Adobe would agree to recommend Sklyarov's release. [...] But what happens next is unclear -- and victory celebrations may be premature. Since this is a criminal matter and not a civil suit, Adobe's abrupt reversal doesn't automatically get Sklyarov out of jail. That requires the U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco, which filed charges against Sklyarov earlier this month, to abandon the prosecution. "The only thing I can tell you is that this is a criminal matter brought by the United States against the defendant, and Adobe is not a party to that action," says Matt Jacobs, an assistant U.S. attorney in the San Francisco office. "If they back off, it will not be because Adobe has changed its mind," says Andrew Grosso, a former assistant U.S. attorney who's now a lawyer in private practice. "If they back off, it will be because politically the people in the U.S. Attorney's office who are handling this feel they are unacceptably exposed and therefore have decided not to go forward." Grosso is active in the Association for Computing Machinery and has criticized the DMCA. But he admits that federal prosecutors like to be the first to try cases under new laws, and proudly says that he was the first prosecutor to use money laundering laws to gain a conviction in a white-collar case. [...] ********* Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:38:55 -0600 (MDT) From: security curmudgeon <jerichoat_private> Subject: Unethical defacement of "ethics.org" On July 20, 2001, a (presumably) Russian defacer known as 'RyDen' compromised the machine hosting "ethics.org", the "Ethics Resource Center". Given the unethical nature of defacing web pages, the act alone had a bit of irony to it. More interesting this time was the content of the defacement. Instead of the usual crap seen from most defacers, RyDen chose to replace their page with a "Free Dmitry" message, in reference to the recently jailed software programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, who was detained shortly before returning home after attending Defcon (www.defcon.org). More ironic is the ethical considerations of the set of events surrounding Sklyarov, Adobe and the FBI. Russian Adobe Hacker Busted http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45298,00.html FBI becomes Copyright '911' http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/20548.html This defacement was part of a 'mass hack' in which RyDen defaced 18 domains. A copy of the defacement can be seen courtesy of the SafeMode mirror: http://www.safemode.org/mirror/2001/07/20/www.patientcard.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jul 24 2001 - 08:38:43 PDT