[free-sklyarov] Elinor Is the Rock

[Paul Callahan]

--- Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:

> http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/010730/n303480_2.html
> >
>
> And if you do read this, and like it, use the
> "e-mail this article" feature.
> Even if it's just to yourself, it'll show up on
> Yahoo's top-ten rating.

That's good advice. I hadn't thought of that. I
just used Yahoo's feature to mail the link to a
friend that I was going to mail to by copy-paste.

So this must be a first: a mainstream news story on
Sklyarov that doesn't have "Russian hacker" in the
headline. Seriously, those two words are killers.
The average reader equates "hacker" to a software
pirate, website vandal, or worse. And frankly not 
all Americans are aware that the cold war ended,
so "Russian" doesn't help. I would like to see more 
stories without those two words!

I can think of a lot of reasons behind my outrage,
but most are complicated to explain.  I'd rather
leave that to legal experts such as Lawrence Lessig. 
I 
think the story with the most popular appeal--which 
is also a legitimate cause for outrage--is quite easy
to
explain to everyone and might be a way to start on
non-tech friends and family:

  There are two software corporations, one Russian and
  one American, involved in
  an international dispute over an esoteric provision
  of a recent and controversial IP law. As a result of
  this, one of the employees of the Russian firm is
  being held in US custody out of contact from his
family
  http://ezhe.ru/elcomsoft/sklyarov_family.jpg
  The American company has since backed off, but
  unfortunately, our own government isn't as
reasonable.

  Do we want to live in a country where we settle 
  corporate disputes by persecuting non-managerial
  employees of these companies?

Anyway, I really like the picture of Skylarov with
his family.  The kid in the foreground is cute.
His wife looks very worried, though obviously it
was taken long before this incident.  It goes a long
way in countering the "Russian hacker"
characterization. 
This picture could be used a lot more for gaining
sympathy. I have only seen
it on the boycottadobe.org site and the Russian site
above.

--Paul



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