[free-sklyarov] Backlash

[douglay at relicorp.com]

I noticed two new articles in the Planet-Ebook bibliography this AM< 
both with a decidedly anti-Sklyarov tone.

The worst of the two, IMO, is from Business Week Online:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/010725/u2uwdgj7_smmdbiz41ntqa.html

The author, Alex Salkever, offers very little in the way of facts, 
excepting a citation of a 1997 case involving price-fixing by a 
Japanese conglomerate.  He makes no mention of the fact that Skylarov 
is an employee, not an officer, of Elcomsoft.  Some of his offhand 
and unsupported comments, like "Computer scientists have expressed 
the fear that Sklyarov's arrest will have a chilling affect on 
security research. That seems unlikely." are simply nauseating.  
Perhaps Mr. Salkever would like to tell us what he knows that Ed 
Felton and Alan Cox don't.  What a glib jerk.

The other article, by the Patricia Seybold Group, is unfortunately 
harder to attack, because it makes one good point.  This article is 
available at the Planet Ebook site:

http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=196

The point they make is that Elcomsoft was profiting off of the E-Book 
cracking software, which they believe undercuts the argument that 
Dmitry was engaging in academic research.  They also point out that 
the charges against Dmitry do not directly pertain to his 
presentation at DefCon.

Hmmmm...I think there is a small point to be taken there, but the 
Seybold article has nothing whatsoever to say about (1) the fact that 
Skylarov is an employee, not an officer, of Elcomsoft; (2) the FBIs 
arrogant willingness to arrest foreign nationals for deeds that are 
not crimes in the nationals' home countries; (3) the fact that the 
Elcomsoft software does have non-infringing uses; or (4) the fact 
that even though Dmitry was not charged for his presentation, the FBI 
and Adobe opportunistically used his presence at a technical 
conference as a way to make an example out of him for their dirty 
little law...

Overall, I think the Seybold Group ought to be ashamed of themselves 
for triumphantly bleating at the end of their article that "Now that 
Dmitry Sklyarov is sitting in a jail cell in Las Vegas, perhaps 
others will start to take notice."  Yeah, hopefully when enough 
people do take notice, the DMCA and the values it represents will be 
sent conclusively to the trash-bin of history.

-Doug


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