[free-sklyarov] Focus.

[Jon Callas]

I've been reading this (while trying to do a security review of something
in another window), so I apologize if this is too terse.

There are several issues there:

(1) The DMCA.
(2) What Sklyarov allegedly did.
(3) The way the FBI handled it.

If you want to get Sklyarov out of jail, you need to focus on (2) and (3),
and forget about (1) for the time being. (1) has been around for years, and
it will be around for years more. It's going to be a long fight, folks, and
the issues are complex.

The place to focus, in my opinion, is (3). Sklyarov may have done something
that is illegal in the US. But he did it in his native land, where it is
not illegal.  His company even cooperated with the complaint against them,
by removing the offending program from their site. That shows that they're
not being mere pirates.

Next, the FBI acted heavy-handedly. They *could* have denied him entry into
the US. They *could* have just put him on a plane and said, "Don't come
back." Instead, they prepared an arrest in anticipation for him to come to
the US to present a paper. *That* is scary for all people -- if countries
start arresting travelers for things they did in their native land, we're
all in trouble. This is a very bad precedent. On a larger scale, this sort
of thing weakens our ability to chastise places on human rights issues.
There have been times when Americans visiting abroad have been arrested,
and the US government usually considers these to be human rights
violations. It makes it hard for us to get our own people out of other
prisons if we run around jailing grad students for not being up on US law.

I also mention here that if you are one of the people who like the DMCA,
you should still be upset. One reason is that these procedural things take
away from the merits of the case. Making an example out of a foreigner who
happened to travel to the US only plays into the hands who oppose the DMCA.
(And as one of those, I have to say thanks, guys!) Another is that this
will probably blunt further implementation of the WIPO treaty in other
countries; you really wanted your test case to be a real criminal, not an
academic. Those of us who have been opposing WIPO brought up things like
this, and we were assured that legitimate researchers won't be harassed.
Well, guys, the first two people bothered were a full professor at
Princeton, and a grad student from Moscow. And you should also be worried
about the issue below.

Lastly, it appears that the government has not followed accepted
international procedures. We don't really know, since we're sitting here in
an information vacuum. The much bigger issue is whether the DMCA is so
important to the US that we're going to make an international incident over
it.

Stressing *these* things may get Sklyarov out of jail, and you may even get
the pro-DMCA forces to help.

	Jon