Welcome to Vegas, You're Under Arrest (fwd)

[Eugene Leitl]

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBMTO  : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204
57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:50:30 -0400
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt at coil.com>
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt at coil.com>
Subject: Welcome to Vegas, You're Under Arrest

Welcome to Vegas, You're Under Arrest

According to "Midnight Express," hashish trafficking can earn you a
few decades in a Turkish prison. And according to U.S. law, making
software that decrypts Adobe's eBook format can get you up to five
years in an American one. Maybe Dmitry Sklyarov, who was busted by the
FBI for "trafficking in software to circumvent copyrighted materials,"
can recoup some of his legal costs by selling the movie rights.

Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas a day after giving a speech on
digital book security at the hacker conference Def Con, but we think
that's just a coincidence. Free speech is still legal in America, but
his company's software defies the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The Moscow-based company ElcomSoft makes the Advanced eBook Processor,
a program that cracks the encryption on Adobe eBooks and converts them
to the Adobe PDF format. This is all squeaky clean in Russia, but
since some of the software made it to the U.S., Adobe wasn't amused.
The New York Times and Wired detailed the recent back-and-forth
between Adobe and Elcom, including Adobe's successful attempts to get
Elcom booted from several ISPs - and get the feds involved..

ZDNet's Robert Lemos appeared to be the only writer to credit
Planetebook.com with breaking the story. Planet eBook also posted the
affidavit (ominously referring to "United States of America v. Dmitry
Sklyarov"), court documents indicating that Adobe itself bought and
tested a copy of the forbidden software, and other tidbits for the
legal-minded.

A few outlets noted that Sklyarov is being held without bail; some
pointed to the rarity of criminal charges for copyright infringement.
"I thought maybe I would be arrested because I am the owner and the
president of the company, but not Dmitry," said Elcom's head honcho,
who also attended Def Con. "But I think this is the easiest way to
send a message that it is a single Russian hacker at work, but really
it is the entire encryption that is flawed."

If Adobe or the FBI intended to plant hysteria about a "Russian
hacker," it didn't work too well. Journalists usually referred to
Sklyarov as an expert, cryptographer or programmer. True, one Wired
News headline called him a hacker, but from those folks, that's a
compliment. - Jen Muehlbauer

Index of ElcomSoft, Dmitry Sklyarov, Adobe, US Government and
DMCA-related articles from around the Web
http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=170

FBI nabs Russian expert at Def Con
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5094266,00.html

U.S. Arrests Russian Cryptographer as Copyright Violator
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/18/technology/18CRYP.html
(Registration required.)

Russian Adobe Hacker Busted
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45298,00.html

eBook security debunker arrested by Feds
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/20444.html

Hacker Arrested at Def Con
http://www.techtv.com/cybercrime/digitaldisputes/story/0,23008,3337541,00.html

FBI Arrests Russian Creator Of E-Book-Decoding Software
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168042.html

###
Excerpted
=====================================================================
                         THE INDUSTRY STANDARD'S
                           M E D I A  G R O K
             A Commentary on What the Press Is Reporting and Why
=====================================================================
                                         | http://www.thestandard.com |

Wednesday, July 18, 2001


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