[free-sklyarov] Protest strategy & goals

[Izel Sulam]

Tim Sweeney tim at epicgames.com wrote:

>"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.

I agree with you insofar as we need to state why we want to free Dmitry.

I disagree with how you are trying to justify why we need to free Dmitry.

We all know on this list that Dmitry is a security professional, also known 
as a hacker, and being a security professional aka hacker is an honorable 
profession. But the sheeple do not know this. They hear hacker, and they 
think "Swordfish" and other Hollywood garbage.

In an ideal world, under ideal conditions, this could be a great time to 
protest the DMCA. (Yes, I know, in an ideal world, we wouldn't have the 
DMCA to begin with. But bear with me.) However, in the aftermath of a worm 
attack on whitehouse.gov allegedly by communist hackers from China, the 
public is negatively predisposed to all things communist and hackerlike. At 
this juncture, it's pretty disingenious to try and repeal a US law because 
it was used to convict a hacker from a country with a strong communist 
heritage.

I believe we need to state that Dmitry needs to go free because he is a 
consumer advocate and a scientist who exposed flaws in Adobe's product, and 
exposed Adobe's fradulent claims about this flawed product. See my earlier 
post to this effect.

This frames the issue in a way that avoids the dangerous hacker references. 
This may not be to everyone's liking, but at a time when the public is wary 
of all things communist and hackerlike due to the Chinese worm, we cannot 
expect to compel the favor of public opinion by having a communist hacker 
poster boy.

Thanks.
- izel