[free-sklyarov] Press Release: Electronic Publishers Coalition Condemns Criminal Use of DMCA

[Len Sassaman]

Someone should send this to the AAP, and ask them why they disagree.


On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 noring at olagrande.net wrote:

>
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> July 22, 2001
>
> Contact information:
>
> Connie Foster, eBooksonthe.net, publisher at ebooksonthe.net, 207-667-6515
> Jon Noring, Blue Glass Publishing, noring at olagrande.net, 801-253-4037
> Roger Sperberg, Watchung Plaza Books, roger at e-bks.com, 973-744-7802
> URL: http://www.epccentral.org/dmca.html
>
>
> Electronic Publishers Coalition Condemns Criminal Use of DMCA
>
>
> While all publishers are concerned about professional copyright
> thieves, the Electronic Publishers Coalition condemns the use of the
> criminal provisions of the DMCA against Dimitry Sklyarov, a Russian
> programmer and cryptanalyst visiting the United States.
>
> "Persecution of an individual shouldn't be any company's response to
> a commercial disagreement, especially regarding copyright," Connie
> Foster, the EPC executive director said Sunday.
>
> "All members of the EPC -- not just a small portion of them as with
> print-oriented groups like the AAP -- work with the Adobe and other
> electronic formats to publish their e-books, and we recognize that the
> same technology that benefits publishers with lower production and
> distribution costs also aids copyright violators."
>
> "We also recognize from our close experience working with electronic
> books, that readers need and deserve greater leeway with the e-books
> they purchase than the current limited DRM and security technology
> provides," Foster stated. (Note: DRM -- for digital rights management
> -- provides permissions control with e-books, disallowing [or
> permitting] such things as copying text to a computer's clipboard,
> printing of the content, and lending the e-book to another computer's
> reading system.)
>
> Foster continued, "In this case, readers' interests should be
> paramount, and the leading e-book formats -- Adobe's among them --
> slight them by making it impossible to open an e-book when upgrading
> to a new computer or when suffering a number of all-too-common
> computer woes, such as virus infection and hard-disk failure."
>
> "At this point in e-books' development, we think it's just too early
> for companies such as Adobe that have nascent content-delivery systems
> to think they have solved all their problems and to resort to criminal
> charges against a programmer who discovered and discussed serious
> flaws in the program's security structure."
>
> Foster went on to note: "Some people think Adobe has to pursue this
> type of action to reassure publishers their content is safe. But what
> publishers need to know is that Adobe understands the technology and
> its current limits, and the problems with its own software, and that
> it understands what our customers -- that is, readers -- need and what
> the immature e-book industry needs in order to grow."
>
> Sklyarov, a graduate student at Bauman Moscow State Technical
> University, reported at a Las Vegas conference on his research on
> e-book security performed for his dissertation. His research was later
> incorporated into a permissions-removal program called Advanced E-book
> Processor, or AEBPR, by ElcomSoft, a Russian software company that now
> employs him. The program apparently sold fewer than ten copies before
> being pulled from the market at Adobe's insistence. It had not been
> available commercially for more than two weeks before Sklyarov's visit
> to America.
>
> AEBPR allows users to make backups of legally purchased Adobe eBooks
> that ignore the eBooks' restrictions on copying, printing and lending,
> if any, and permit the eBook to be read on a replacement copy of Adobe
> eBook Reader if the initial installation no longer functions or if the
> user upgrades to a new computer. It does not work with eBooks sold to
> another user. Since under Russian law, such backups are mandatory for
> data sellers, Adobe eBooks contravene the law and AEBPR is legal in
> Russia, as well as in Germany and Scandinavia, and other countries.
> Its use in the U.S. is not permitted under the DMCA, the Digital
> Millennium Copyright Act.
>
> The Electronic Publishers Coalition was founded by a group of
> publishers committed to furthering the growth of the e-book community.
> It is the largest trade association of electronic publishers in the
> world. A primary role of the EPC is to follow through on its
> commitment to develop a healthy marketplace for digital content as
> well as to take a leadership role in setting minimum standards in
> order to encourage quality within our industry. The EPC is located on
> the web at http://www.epccentral.org/ .
>
>
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>

--

Len Sassaman

Security Architect            |
Technology Consultant         |  "Let be be finale of seem."
                              |
http://sion.quickie.net       |           --Wallace Stevens