[free-sklyarov] Letter to the ACM

[tom moore]

This is an email I just sent off to the ACM.  I urge all other ACM members
to make their feelings felt on the issue.

Sirs,
    As a member of the ACM, I urge you most strongly to voice opposition to
the DMCA.  The recent actions by Adobe Systems, Inc., has brought to the
forefront what should have been obvious all along - that the DMCA is bad
law, that it intentionally and maliciously restricts free speech and
research, and that it represents a clear and present danger to the computer
science community.
    Current copyright laws allow corporations to protect their intellectual
property by allowing for the prosecution of copyright violations.  The DMCA
goes far beyond this.  In an effort to secure their own positions at the
expense of traditional freedoms (both civil and academic), the corporations
behind the DMCA have outlawed not the act of piracy (itself already well
covered by existing law), but rather have attempted to alter widely held and
traditional notions of ownership and fair use.
    As a vital organization in academia and industry, it is important that
you as the ACM take a stand against this law.  As a publisher, your words
would carry additional weight in the community of publishers who feel
(mistakenly) that they most directly benefit.
    The DMCA will stiffle research and development, and will ultimately
damage everyone, even the corporations who lobbied for the legislation.
Please, take a public stand against the DMCA.  In doing so, you will be
supporting and defending the freedoms that make the work your members do
possible, you will aid the cause of innovation and freedom (without which
innovation cannot exist), and you will have shown that long term perspective
and moral reasoning can win out over ill-concieved short term gains.  You
will be doing the right thing.

Sincerely,
    Thomas Moore