[free-sklyarov] The American Association of Publishers issues a press release

Derek Balling dredd at megacity.org
Sun Jul 22 15:12:12 PDT 2001


At 6:48 PM -0700 7/22/01, Doug Lay wrote:
>I notice that the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE are also
>listed as AAP members.

Just sent to <acmhelp at acm.org>, their member services e-mail address:

To: acmhelp at acm.org
From: Derek Balling <dredd at megacity.org>
Subject: ACM and the AAP

I notice, with some horror, that the ACM is a member of the 
Association of American Publishers, as noted at:
     http://www.publishers.org/home/abouta/members.htm

The AAP has come out in favor of Adobe's request to the FBI (and the 
FBI's fulfillment of that request) to have a Russian programmer, 
Dmitry Sklyarov,  arrested and imprisoned for writing and selling 
software while in his native Russia. That's all it is. They're 
confusing the issue by bringing up the DMCA, but it doesn't apply as 
no act was committed on US soil.
     http://www.publishers.org/home/press/index.htm

Obviously, this is distressing, and having wide-reaching effects. 
Alan Cox has resigned from Usenix's Atlanta Linux Showcase committee, 
fearing what broad-reaching net the US Government will sling across 
foreign programmers for what they do in their native lands.

It distresses me that a professional organization which I pay dues to 
annually in turn pays dues to an organization that is proud to 
imprison foreign nationals for made-up crimes.

Please tell me that the ACM will be withdrawing its membership from 
the AAP forthwith. Given that ACM's membership in the AAP has been 
noticed by the growing movement protesting Sklyarov's imprisonment, I 
cannot be the only one making this request of you, so I hope that the 
ACM will do the right thing here.

Thank you for your time,

Derek Balling







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