[free-sklyarov] Re: Sklyarov meets Copyright, East meats West

Michael L. Love proclus at iname.com
Fri Jul 20 11:38:41 PDT 2001


For what is worth, I'm in agreement with the general thrust of this 
message, althought it is somewhat severe in tone.  There are two major 
problems though, which needs to be understood.  First, Dmitry was almost 
certaing _not_ arrested for his scholarly work or presentation.  Rather, 
he was probably arrested for selling the program on US soil for $99 in 
violation of the DMCA.

Finally, like it or not, by his actions, Dmitry has graduated to 
uber-geek status and hacker par excellence.  This will not change, and 
it is not necessarily a bad thing.  In this connection, you should read 
an essay by Eric Raymond (ESR), who is similarly an uber-geek, hacker, 
author, and a board member of an important American corporation, 
VA-Linux.  Here is a link to the most pertinent section of the essay.

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#WHAT_IS

If you read it, I think that you will find that Dmitry much in common 
with the wonderful hacker ESR.

It is unfortunate that the media has painted the H-word so bleakly, but 
we are working to change that, and despite early indications, we are 
succeeding.

Regards,
proclus

http://www.gnu-darwin.org/







igor at locosun.com wrote:

> Dear Peter,
> 
> I'm greatly disappointed by the article
> http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=177 you posted on
> planetbook.com (which otherwise provides a good coverage of the story so
> far).
> 
> The article is full of speculations about "Eastern mentality" and
> contains a number of factual errors.
> 
> The saddest of them all is a fact that Dmitry is referred as a "hacker
> who raised from the rudimentary and relatively low-key "Here's a neat
> little cracking program I've posted" profile" to declaring "a alliance
> along with the West Coast technos against software tyranny".
> 
> I have known Dmitry for about 10 years. 
> 
> Dmitry's an extremely talented researcher working at one the best
> Russian Universities (Bauman Moscow State Technical University) as well
> as a Senior Cryptoanalyst (his official position) for Elcomsoft. 
> 
> He has been known as a lawful citizen who is supporting his wife and two
> children. He has never had any connections with any hackers/crackers
> groups as nor he has ever participated in any illegal activities. 
> 
> As I believe, his appearance at this year's DefCon conference was based
> on his natural for any researcher desire to share his discoveries with
> the world.
> 
> The controversy over the program developed and distributed by Elcomsoft
> which lead to Dmitry's arrest should not be used as a sufficient ground
> for a criminal prosecution of an individual. 
> 
> As far as I know there is no precedence of that nature, in fact, quite
> opposite: e.g. during the recent case related to copyright infringement
> involved Napster no Napster's employees were arrested as the case was
> settled between the companies not via imprisoning the employees.
> 
> To sum up:
> 
> -- Dmitry has not solely developed nor distributed or sold the
> controversial software his was arrested for, therefore the issue should
> be resolved between Adobe Inc and Elcomsoft(developer and distributor of
> the product) and not by imprisoning a security expert.
> 
> -- Dmitry's research underlines certain weaknesses of one of the
> products of Adobe Inc. Arresting him for announcing the results of this
> work is equivalent of arresting tv reporters from a car reviewing
> program for discovering that an alarm/immobiliser does not work as
> promised by the manufacturer.
> 
> I would appreciate it very much if you can help to draw public attention
> to the fact that Dmitry is NOT a HACKER/CRACKER (in common terms) but an
> exceptional SECURITY EXPERT and help him to return to his wife Oksana,
> son Egor (2.5 year)and daughter Polina (3 months).
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Igor Drokov
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> free-sklyarov mailing list
> free-sklyarov at zork.net
> http://zork.net/mailman/listinfo/free-sklyarov
> 
> 
> 



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