[DeCSS Mirror] [Why You Should Use Encryption]
Last night I sent the following letter to some friends and family. Here is the original email in text format that you may forward to your own friends and family if you like.
Come back after I've done a little legal research on legal precedent regarding computer programs as free speech, and you'll find the informative letters I plan to send to my congressional representatives from the state of Maine.
The background section of The Chicago Free Sklyarov Protest: Pre-Protest Packet discusses the issue in a more thorough way than I have here.
News Flash Adobe, Electronic Frontier Foundation Call for Release of Russian Programmer . Note that while Adobe has withdrawn its support for the criminal complaint, Dmitry remains in jail, and as this Wired article points out, it is commonplace for the Feds to continue prosecuting someone even after the parties are no longer angry.
While this is a small victory in battle, the war is not won, and won't be until Dmitry is home safe and the DMCA is ruled unconsistutional by the Supreme Court.
I think an appropriate action for Adobe to take at this point would be to fund the EFF's legal defense of Dmitry, and to send his wife a substantial check to support his family during the time he is out of work defending himself against this outrage.
From: "Michael D. Crawford" <crawford@goingware.com> Organization: GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting Subject: Free Dmitry Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 00:52:06 -0400Friends,
I have long held the belief that computer programs are constitutionally protected free speech. They are, after all, how us programmers communicate with each other. This is also the opinion of at least one federal court, although it is yet to be tested by the Supreme Court.
However, on July 16, Russian computer programmer Dmitry Sklarov was arrested by the FBI for writing a computer program and presenting a paper on it at a security conference in Las Vegas.
His paper, "eBooks Security: Theory and Practice", exposed the woefully inadequate security schemes used to copy protect Adobe eBooks ("secure" electronic publications, basically encrypted PDF files).
If you have PowerPoint, you can get his presentation here:
http://www.download.ru/defcon.ppt
You can purchase, and download a free trial version of Advanced eBook Processor here:
http://www.elcomsoft.com/aebpr.html
Rather thank thanking him for revealing their engineering flaws, Adobe made a complaint to the FBI, and the FBI arrested him under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. He is being held without bail, out of communication with his wife and children, in a foreign country, facing a $500,000 fine and five years in federal prison.
The digital millenium copyright act is clearly unconstitutional, not just in that it violates free speech for programmers, but that it violates fair use - the right of citizens to make limited copies of copyrighted materials for certain uses such as backup and academic research.
If you want to know more about Dmitry's case, please visit:
You'll find pictures there of Dmitry, and of his wife and children, who I am sure miss him greatly.
And please consider joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is pressing two other court cases to try to have the DMCA ruled unconstitutional and will lend his support to Dmitry once the U.S. Marshalls tell them where he is, you can do so here:
I leave you with the following words of wisdom, spoken 100 years ago.
Make a Bonfire of Your Reputations
http://www.goingware.com/reputation/It's hard for me to write this letter as I just applied for a position as Photoshop Software Engineering Manager at Adobe Systems, the creator of eBooks. Times have been hard for me and my little family for quite some time, and that would be a good job for me for which I feel I am quite qualified, but I know it would be wrong to fail to speak out on this abuse of Dmitry's constitutional rights, and the rights of software engineers everywhere.
Please pass this mail on to anyone who might be interested to hear it.
Ever Faithful,
Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ crawford@goingware.com Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.