[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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