Repression in cyberspace
'Boycott Adobe' say programmers outraged over arrest at
computer show
By Gary
Wilson
The FBI's July 16 arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov, a computer
programmer, at a computer show in Las Vegas, Nev., and his
immediate imprisonment prompted a storm of protests around
the world. The protests were both on the Internet and in the
streets.
One of the world's leading computer programmers, Alan Cox,
called for a complete boycott of the United States by all
programmers. Cox, together with Linus Torvalds, is the lead
developer of the Linux operating system.
The arrest was made at the request of Adobe Systems.
Sklyarov, who is Russian, helped create software that can
crack Adobe's security codes meant to stop people from
copying electronic books. His work is perfectly legal in
Russia. In that country and most others in the world, you
cannot prevent legal owners of software products from making
copies, as Adobe's software does. It is Adobe that is the
flagrant violator of law outside of the U.S.
In the U.S., however, Adobe's "copyright protection" is
made legal by a relatively new 1998 law known as the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA, which rewrote the
copyright laws, is designed to protect the monopoly profits
of software giants like Adobe and Microsoft. A New York Times
report on the law acknowledged that it is widely seen as an
unconstitutional restriction on personal rights in favor of
corporate controls.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on civil
rights related to technology, has been a leading opponent of
the DMCA. The EFF called protests on July 23 in 20 cities
across the U.S. At the biggest one, in front of Adobe's
headquarters in California, more than a hundred protested as
EFF representatives negotiated with Adobe officials.
Under pressure of the worldwide protests and after an
eight-hour meeting with EFF representatives, Adobe announced
that it would withdraw its demand to prosecute Sklyarov.
However, the FBI and the U.S. government did not release him
immediately. They continue to hold him in jail.
Alan Cox called for a boycott of the U.S. in a message to
Usenix, the sponsors of the computer show in Las Vegas where
the arrest had taken place. Said Cox, "With the arrest of
Dmitry Sklyarov it has become apparent that it is not safe
for non-U.S. software engineers to visit the United States.
While he was undoubtedly chosen for political reasons as a
Russian, [Sklyarov's arrest] is a good example for the U.S.
public [that] the risk extends arbitrarily further.
"Usenix by its choice of a U.S. location is encouraging
other programmers, many from Eastern European states hated by
the U.S. government, to take the same risks. That is
something I cannot morally be part of. Who will be the next
conference speaker slammed into a U.S. jail for years for
committing no crime? ... Until the DMCA mess is resolved, I
would urge all non-U.S. citizens to boycott conferences in
the USA and all U.S. conference bodies to hold their
conferences elsewhere."
The boycott of Adobe is continuing. The Web site for the
boycott is www.boycottadobe.com. The EFF
Web site is www.eff.org.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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