[free-sklyarov] Adobe ackbowledges effect of boycott and protests

Roger Sperberg rsperberg at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 31 04:51:46 PDT 2001


A story appeared in the San Jose Mercury News regarding Adobe's financials
for the quarter, "Adobe's Sales Lag...". The interesting part was at the
end, where the company president acknowledged the effect of the protests on
their actions:

http://www0.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/depth/adobe073101.htm
The economy was not Adobe's only worry in July. The company's image took a
beating after Adobe encouraged the federal government to prosecute Elcom, a
Russian company that had distributed code to crack the security features in
Adobe's software for electronic documents. On July 16 at a hacker convention
in Las Vegas, the FBI arrested Dmitry Sklyarov, a young Russian programmer
who works for the Moscow-based company.

The grass roots response in the software developer community was quick and
furious. A Web site, www.boycottadobe.org, sprung up, and developers began
planning protests. A week after the arrest, Adobe was calling for Sklyarov's
release. The U.S. Attorney's office has said it still plans to prosecute
him.

``That was a good learning experience for me personally,'' Chizen said.
``All we were trying to do at the end of the day was protect the copyright
and the intellectual property of the people that use our products. It wasn't
even about protecting Adobe's software.''

Chizen quickly learned that Adobe had stepped in something unpleasant.

``Last Monday, which was the height of the activity, I think I counted up to
1,700 e-mails that I had gotten throughout the week,'' Chizen said. Since
Adobe began advocating for Sklyarov's release, he said the number has come
down to a couple per day.


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