[free-sklyarov] Protest strategy & goals

Tim Sweeney tim at epicgames.com
Sat Jul 21 16:38:58 PDT 2001


Folks,

The most important thing we can achieve in protests is to educate people about the DMCA and show that it's being used to suppress research and take away consumers' rights to access their data.  Most people don't realize this yet.

Corporate lawyers see the DMCA as a way of preventing piracy, and most politicians see it as a way of helping American publishing companies to succeed in the Internet age.  They don't understand the chilling ramifications the law.  Certainly the vast majority of Americans, and I bet even most Adobe employees and most FBI agents, would agree that the DMCA is an oppressive law that is being used to clearly violate personal and academic freedom -- if they fully understood the DMCA how it's being abused.

However, "Free Sklyarov" isn't necessarily the right message to send here.  As much as it pains me to say this, the mainstream media is likely to label this as "Whining Geeks Protest Arrest of Russian Hacker".  Why do you think they chose him as a DCMA test-case rather than an American professor?  It's all about mainstream media credibility.

Therefore, the best message to send in any protests, in my opinion, is that the DMCA is being used to suppress academic research (the Felten case), and to deny consumers access to the data they've paid money for (the DeCSS cases, which prevented free DVD players from being developed for Linux; and the Sklyarov case, prosecuting the distribution of a tool enabling people to back up and modify their eBook's).  Don't focus on Sklyarov, show everyone the big picture -- because the big picture is about academic freedom and consumers' rights to access their data.  Freedom is a winnable cause.  Let The Russian Hacker Go isn't a winnable cause on its own.

Draw an analogy with Rosa Parks, who was also jailed for violating a law that suppressed her civil rights.  Most of the headlines from the white-controlled media were along the lines of "Colored Woman Arrested for Refusing to Sit In Proper Section of Bus".  How do you counter that?  The successful protests weren't just about "Free Rosa", they were about ending the oppressive laws, and restoring everyone's freedom and civil rights.

Adobe in this case is just the bus driver.  They're not the root cause of the problem, nor are they the solution, but it's not in our interest to let Adobe save face.  Let them stand with the RIAA as the guy who called the cops to arrest the lady who stood up for her rights.  Protests should continue, with or without the EFF.

How we present the protests and arguments is of tantamount importance.  The publishers' groups and RIAA and incredibly media-savvy; they will spin this as "Geeks Protest Arrest of Russian Hacker For Helping Pirate eBooks" and they have enormous resources at their disposal.  The only way to win this is to be just as media-savvy and counter that with: "DMCA Law, Supported By Corporate Interests, Suppresses Academic Freedom and Deprives Consumers of their Rights" -- not just "Free The Russian Hacker"!  It has to be this way in order to win.

Be idealistic in goals and motives, but pragmatic in strategy and tactics.

-Tim
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