I asked a friend who learned Russian in the military. A reasonable approximation of what he said would be skill-yuh-roff -- except you pretty much leave out the short "i" in "skill". His first name's a snap though, di-me-tree, the "di" pronounced as for "dip". Here's an easy one to yell: boy-cott uh-dough-bee The DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is bad, dangerous law that Adobe Corporation endorses and wields. So, "What's the big deal about a Russian hacker getting busted?". That's the popular media, fifteen-second-attention-span spin of the story. It's about a lot more than that. *Please* visit one of the websites and read about what's happened. Please also consider attending the protest Saturday -- it's a very nice library if you need an excuse :-) This isn't just about getting Dmitry out of jail although that's the immediate concern. It's about the first amendment - free speech. It's about intellectual freedom, and it's also about the security and quality of software and systems. Dmitry isn't a "cracker". He's a professional programmer whose company pissed off and embarrassed Adobe Corp. He didn't pirate any ebooks, or encourage anyone else to, and there's no evidence presented to suggest that anyone ever has as a result of his work. In Russia his program is legal, and the Adobe ebook protection scheme is illegal since it doesn't allow the purchaser to make a legitimate backup copy. According to the U.S. government, Dmitry "...willfully and for financial gain imported, offered to the public, provided, and otherwise trafficked in a technology, product, service, and device that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work.". It's getting easy for computer professionals, particularly those involved in security research, to become "felons" in the course of their legitimate work thanks to laws like the DMCA and UCITA (another huge mess worth learning about). In 1992, one of my tasks was installing software on a Netware server for students to use. One challenge of that job was getting programs to run from a read-only volume. We didn't want students deleting or adding files to the application directories or infecting them with viruses. Most software wasn't a problem. The worst were the one's that were supposedly "network aware". I wrote a tiny DOS TSR that intercepted file opens. If it was an "exclusive open with write" to drive G:, I changed it to a "friendly" file open. That was so the network version of Lotus 123 would work (safely) in our student labs despite their lame attempt at copy protection. We owned licenses for everything we ran and used our own homegrown software metering. My program was "primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work.". Oops. I guess I wouldn't do that today. Under UCITA I'd be a criminal just for having investigated why Lotus required write access to the server. Too cute. The U.S. is close, and Europe is even closer to having laws making it illegal to write or posess "hacker tools". Lawmakers are pondering how to take into account the intent of the author. Did the author write it to test the security of his own network, or to break in somewhere? Suppose you can't prove you have a tool to legitimately test security? Gosh, I guess you must be a dangerous criminal. "First they arrested the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. They arrested the trade unionists, and I did nothing because I was not one. And then they came for the Jews and then the Catholics, but I was neither Jew nor Catholic, so I did nothing. At last they came and arrested me, and there was no one left to do anything about it." - Pastor Martin Niemoller The are coming for the programmers now. L8r Chris Cowan wrote: > > Anyone know how to pronounce his name exactly... I don't want to run around > shouting the his name if I can't say it correctly? > > Chris > > on 7/31/01 1:37 PM, Michael March at march@indirect.com wrote: > > > http://www.dmcasucks.org/free.html > > > > > > ________________________________________________ > > See http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/navigator-mail.shtml if your mail doesn't post > > to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail. > > > > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us > > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > > > > ________________________________________________ > See http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/navigator-mail.shtml if your mail doesn't post to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail. > > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss