[free-sklyarov] Hacker

[Greg Broiles]

At 02:48 PM 8/6/2001 -0700, Austin Hook wrote:

>     (Correct me if I am wrong, reading the, only $50K bail being granted,
>as a good sign of what that judge is thinking.)

The $50K bail was a joint recommendation from the defense and prosecution, 
who had obviously negotiated and coordinated their efforts several days 
prior to today's hearing, which led to Sergei Osokine's being present in 
court (for examination and the judge's approval as custodian for Dmitri) 
and Elcomsoft being prepared to post $50K cash (well, probably a cashiers' 
check) bail on a few minutes' notice.

So, sure, it means that the judge has some chance of being reasonable, but 
that's mostly because the federal prosecutor was recommending $50K bail. We 
would have learned a lot more about Magistrate Infante if the prosecutor 
had opposed bail and they'd had extended discussion about its 
appropriateness. Today's hearing was pretty much a rubber-stamp process for 
a pre-negotiated deal. The next appearance will be in front of a different 
judge - I think he'll be the judge who actually hears the case, if there's 
a trial.

I think Dmitri's attorney is doing a good job for him - that may not lead 
to a big showdown on the merits of the DMCA this time, but I think it will 
mean that Dmitri gets to sleep in his own bed again pretty soon. (But that 
doesn't mean people should stop caring about the case, or writing, or 
showing up at hearings, etc.)

>     Now I think it's time to start deprecating the word hacker where
>Dmitry is concerned.   Although Dmitry's work is of interest to hackers of
>both the good and bad types,  when major media uses the work hacker, we
>know what they mean.  They mean it as in "criminal".

Yeah. When I've talked to people about this case, I've described Dmitri as 
either a programmer/employee or as a student, because those roles are easy 
for people to identify with. If you ask, "Should hackers go to jail?", it's 
a lot more likely people will say "yes" than if you ask that question about 
"students" or "loyal employees doing their jobs".


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at well.com
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids