Publish and Perish

[Kevin Brown]

He wrote a program that decrypts about 25% of a file encrypted for use with the
Adobe Ebook software as a proof of concept to show how weak the protection was. 
That is a violation of the DMCA (Digital Millenium (not Music) Copyright Act). 
The program is available to US citizens and he came to this country, so he is
affected by US laws.  Hopefully cases like this and the one with East Coast
professors about the SDMI will get the part of the law regarding reverse
engineering being illegal reversed and make it legal and protected again.

> > Everyone has read about the Sklyarov arrest by now.  What is interesting is
> > that the FBI met with Adobe personnel and were convinced to arrest a Russian
> > national for what Adobe terms violation of the DMCA.
> >

> anybody know exactly what he was charged with?  Usually, to make something stick in court, you have to have committed the crime within
> the court's jurisdiction.  Seems odd to arrest a foreign national here (presumably) on a turist visa, who did nothing but exercise his
> freedom to speak (or are foreigners left unprotected by American Constitutional rights) while within US borders.  I mean, if it was that
> easy to prosecute somebody for something they did that was maybe legal in their own country but illegal in this country, why has it been
> so difficult getting people like Milosovec and others into court to try them for war crimes?  Seems that Germany or Poland or wherever
> he was hanging out could have tried him if it was just a matter of "we've got him so we're gonna try him".
> 
> I predict that this guy will ultimately be released and nothing will come of the case.  I believe it's pure political posturing.  In the
> process, he might get jailed for a while until an appellate court overturns something.  If Adobe and other members of the "US Software
> Cartel" (like Microsoft) don't want Russia and other CIS countries to totally thumb their noses at American software (and sw firms),
> then they'd better find a more diplomatic way of solving this.