[free-sklyarov] Generic reply to the "Dmitry is a criminal" comments

[tom moore]

[note to list: Feel free to use, make suggestions, correct spelling
mistakes, or delete...]

Dmitry helped to create a tool that can be used to circumvent digital
encryption technology.  As many people do not have the technological
background to understand what this means, I'll make an analogy to the
physical world, with which we are all familiar.

In the physical world, we secure our property stored in physical boundaries
with physical locks.  Laws exist that demand that these boundaries be
respected with or without the locks, but the locks are put in place to
discourage those who might not respect the law.

Circumvention devices are devices that may be used to bypass these physical
locks.  This definition can include (among the more obvious examples)
lockpicks, skeleton keys, crowbars, credit cards, and coat hangers.  Any of
these items may be used to bypass locks, but the items themselves are not
illegal.  Bypassing the locks themselves is not illegal, either.  Actually
violating the property that the locks were put in place to protect, on the
other hand, is.

Dmitry's software can best be thought of in these terms.  Existing law
addresses the question of theft of intellectual property.  Dmitry is not
accused of pirating intellectual property, but rather with creating a
circumvention device.  In fact, the software in question was not created in
the United States, but rather in Russia.  Russian law does not only permit
the use of Dmitry's code, it explicitly grants people the right to create
backup copies of computer files, which is impossible on Adobe's files
without the use of his software.  It is questionable whether the DMCA
applies to Dmitry's case, for these reasons.  Dmitry's company, not Dmitry,
marketed the software in the US. Dmitry's role was simply to talk about the
software, and its broad implications for the technology of electronic books
in general.

The DMCA, which Dmitry is accused of violating, attempts to make illegal the
investigation, creation, possession, and use of these devices.  In our
real-world analogy, it is like prosecuting someone for breaking into their
own car with a wire coathanger.  The DMCA would make the coathanger illegal,
and make anyone discussing how to employ one subject to arrest.  Note that
the DMCA does not make actual car theft illegal (it already is).  Rather, it
makes illegal any item, action, or discussion that would make getting past
the locks on a car illegal.

Note also that violations of the DMCA are considered a criminal act, rather
than the subject of a civil lawsuit.

In the United States, we have always respected freedom of speech.  Knowledge
itself has never been considered a crime.  You are free to buy books on bomb
building, free to discuss drug use, and free to talk about how to rob a
bank.  The only time you may be subjected to prosecution is if you actually
bomb something, use drugs, or rob a bank.  The DMCA seeks to change that,
and, by doing so, threatens the values we hold most dear.

Dmitry's case should be immediately dismissed, even under the DMCA.
However, it must not stop there.  The DMCA itself is bad law that
fundamentally seeks to change the traditional rights of consumers and bypass
the First Amendment.  It does nothing to further laws that safeguard
intellectual property, which already exist and are actively enforced.  It is
a dangerous first step into the Orwellian world of thought-crime.  It was
pushed past the American people as an obscure technological measure that
most would never have noticed.  Now that we see what it really is, though,
it is up to us to make sure that the law is repealed, and that no other such
law is ever passed.