[free-sklyarov] DMCA flyer
Paul Gowder
paul at paultopia.net
Fri Jul 20 23:23:49 PDT 2001
Draft of flyer about DMCA, Sklyarov in plain text below (see the .doc
format one in previous message, if it ever makes it past list message size
limits).
PG
About the Digital Millenium Copyright Act
What is Copyright?
Copyright, in the United States, is an attempt to maximize the intellectual
resources available to all. People who are create works literature, art,
software programs, music, and others are given a limited monopoly they
are permitted to keep people from making some unauthorized copies of their
work, so they can sell them for a profit and stay in business to create
more works.
In exchange for this, the public (who used to be represented by the U.S.
Government) demands certain concessions. There are three main concessions
the public gets from copyright.
1. Fair use is the right to make unauthorized copies of works for
certain protected purposes mainly for academics, reporting, or
criticism. When a student quotes a book in a high school paper, she is
making a fair use, and can't be stopped by the copyright owner.
2. First sale is the right to sell a copy over and over again, once it
is made, as long as you don't make any new copies. When you read a book,
then sell it to a used book store to be bought and read by someone else,
you're exercising your rights under first sale.
3. Limited time copyrights are granted for a limited time. After
that time expires, the work goes into the public domain it can be copied
and used by anyone, for any reason.
Unfortunately, a new law, called the DMCA, threatens all of those important
rights.
What is the DMCA?
The DMCA is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, passed by the U.S.
Congress in 1999 [WAS IT 1999??], supposedly to update copyright law for
electronic commerce and electronic content providers. Unfortunately, this
law is very poorly written, and is now regularly used to crush free speech,
and to eliminate those three rights explained above.
The DMCA has one particularly bad section, called the anti-circumvention
provision. This makes it a crime to break encryption used to prevent
someone from getting access to electronic content. This also makes it a
crime to "traffic" in a tool used to break that kind of encryption. This
is written so broadly, that, in theory, decoding the sentence E-thay
mca-day eally-ray ucks-say from the Pig Latin could be a crime. It doesn't
matter why, either. Suppose you're a professor who wants to publish a
paper criticizing, with excerpts, an encrypted e-book. Under normal
copyright law, you would be free to do so under the fair use
doctrine. Under the DMCA you can't, because you'd have to break the
encryption to do so.
Needless to say, the DMCA also raises huge concerns about free speech.
What happened to Dmitry Sklyarov?
Dmitry Sklyarov is a Russian cryptographer. In order to expose the
childishly simple encryption used on a e-book reader made by the Adobe
Corporation (not much more difficult than pig latin), he wrote a program
used to decrypt e-books encrypted with Adobe's program. A company he works
for then sold it over the internet. All this programming was done in
Russia, where the DMCA does not apply.
Mr. Sklyarov then came to the U.S., to discuss his work at a convention in
Las Vegas. Adobe, aware he would be coming to the U.S., ordered the FBI to
arrest him.
He is now being held in an undisclosed location, awaiting arraignment.
What can I do?
Protests are being held across the country, and across the world, on
Monday, July 23, 2001, to protest the abuse of the First Amendment and the
rights of Russian Sovereignty. Come to the Portland protest at {time}
meeting at {date} to add your voice to the hundreds, or even thousands, who
will be coming together to speak out against this abuse of Mr. Sklyarov's
rights.
Protests are also going on in {cities}. Go to {web page} for more information.
This flyer is hereby in the public domain. Please copy and distribute it
widely. We won't put you in jail.
--
-Paul Gowder
"It's because they're stupid. That's why everyone does everything."
- Homer Simpson
<paul at paultopia.net>
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