[free-sklyarov] Re: He's free....

Jason H Clouse jhclouse at juno.com
Tue Jul 24 17:15:56 PDT 2001


1. The concept of "Intellectual Property" is unconstitutional and is a
twisting of the Copyright and Patent clause of the Constitution.  Article
I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress has the power to
pass laws granting authors and inventors the rights to their works and
inventions for "limited times".

        1a.  The original Copyright law that was passed granted a period
of 14 years and was NOT renewable.  What kind of property do you know
that works that way?  Would George Washington have been agreeable to have
his farm become public property after 14 years of owning it?  Somehow, I
doubt it.

        1b.  Why didn't they simply say that authors and inventors
"owned" their works, if property is what they had in mind?

        1c.  Third, we have discussions of this clause between Jefferson
and Madison where it becomes clear that they considered Copyright and
Patent to be an "artificial monopoly right" rather than a "property
right".  Jefferson was even afraid that Copyright and Patent could be
used to create long-term monopolies or general monopolies.

        1d.  Finally, in Western jurisprudence, only tangibles can be
owned as property.  In other words, you can own a book but not the words
inside.  Instead, you have a government-granted time-limited monopoly on
the copying of the information.  Copyright and Patent laws have been
twisted into "property laws" over the years and the term has become
extremely long and renewable.

2. What Dimitry did was produce a tool that enables one to circumvent the
access (NOT copying) restrictions on eBooks.  Even ignoring the
fallacious "property" argument, it is STILL perfectly legal to sell
crowbars--why not circumvention devices?  Especially since they have
perfectly legal uses for those who have *legitimately* purchased a copy
of a work from an authorized publisher.

3.  Dimitry and the company he works for are in *Russia*.  Our laws (the
DMCA) don't apply in Russia.

4.  Despite this, Adobe demanded that they cease and desist sales of
their product and they have complied.  This software isn't even for sale
anymore!

5.  Dimitry came to this country to deliver a speech on the
ineffectiveness of Adobe's encryption scheme at an official security
symposium.  He did not come to destroy American businesses or engage in
criminal practices.

So no, this isn't even close to "stealing".

Jason Clouse
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