Earth to Media: This kid is still in jail
from the -using-copyright-to-undermine-free-speech- dept.
When reporters were threatened with law enforcement pressure and jail during the Watergate and Pentagon Papers cases, whole forests were felled in the pre-digital age with stories, books, even movies about courageous reporters fighting for the First Amendment against government oppression. Not a single reporter was jailed in those cases, not even for an hour, even though many broke federal and other laws in gathering the information they reported.
You won't see any discussion of Dmitri Sklyarov on Washington talk shows, the evening news, or the cover of the weekly newsmagazines. But he is stuck in jail.
He was arrested by the FBI two weeks ago for writing and selling a program that allegedly violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, just after giving a lecture detailing alleged weaknesses in Adobe's electronic book software.
There is hardly a single serious lawyer or constitutional scholar who doesn't see the dangers of this twisted use of the DMCA. "The DMCA outlaws technologies designed to circumvent other technologies that protect copyrighted material," wrote Lawrence Lessig in the New York Times this week. "It is law protecting software code protecting copyright. The trouble, however, is that technologies that protect copyrighted material are never as subtle as the law of copyright. Copyright law permits fair use of copyrighted material; technologies that protect copyrighted material need not. Copyright law protects for a limited time; technologies have no such limit."
Thus, cautions Lessig, a law professor at Stanford, when the DMCA protects technology that in turns protects copyrighted material, it can -- as in the Sklyarov case -- offer protection that is much broader than copyright law was meant to be. It criminalizes what would be legal under existing copyright law, including certain kinds of criticism and speech and research. This law is a top-to-bottom creation of entertainment companies working with their hired lawyers and lobbyists to curb the flow of information online for profit. It was not enacted in the public interest, or even in the best interests of copyright. Lessig and others have pointed out that Sklyarov's software violated no one's copyright, even if it runs afoul of the DMCA.
In the Sklyarov case, there are several noxious consequences. His arrest chills criticism of software, and of new technologies and the powerful companies that create them. It also undermines security -- one of the very things the DMCA is supposed to protect. How can weaknesses and flaws in security and encryption programs be discovered if they can't be shared, discussed or explored?
Example: a staple feature of newspaper reporters in big cities is to go to local airports annually and test security procedures by carrying toy guns, knives or unloaded weapons into terminals. Although they could technically be charged under federal laws prohibiting such behavior, they are not. These reporters are never prosecuted. That's because courts have repeatedly ruled that the reporters are carrying out activities that are protected by the First Amendment -- they are stretching or even breaking regulations on behalf of the public welfare. Within limits (most public safety grounds) courts have protected this kind of activity. Just because Sklyarov is a hacker doesn't mean he's not acting as a journalist, or entitled to journalistic protections.
This is a corporate perversion of the original intent of copyright law, meant to protect authors for a limited time so that they would have some financial incentive to generate ideas, which then entered the public domain so that they could receive the widest possible distribution. It was never the intention of the authors of American copyright law to sell ideas and intellectual property to greedy corporations in perpetuity, especially at the expense of free speech and the ability to criticize powerful institutions.
In April, Princeton Professor Edward Felten, an encryption researcher, received a letter from record industry lawyers warning him that a paper he was about to present at a hacker conference -- the paper described the weaknesses of an encryption system -- could subject him to criminal actions under the DMCA. Felten withdrew the paper, and is now the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the DMCA on First Amendment grounds.
None of this helps Sklyarov, who remains in jail. Were he a reporter for the Washington Post or New York Times challenging claims of Microsoft or Adobe or Disney, you can only imagine the media furor, and the pressure being brought to bear on politicians and federal officials to get him out. It would certainly be loud enough to help ensure his release while lawyers get to slug out what ought clearly to be a civil, not a criminal, issue.
The failure to connect his case with their own rights and traditions is a colossal media blunder, short-sighted and self-destructive. If the DMCA stands, and people like Dmitri Sklyarov are tossed into jail because they criticized the code, claims or procedures of powerful corporations or institutions based on research these institutions believe should remain private and proprietary, then the entertainment lobby will have done the unthinkable. They will have permanently altered the First Amendment and the protection it has always accorded free, controversial and offensive speech. And the Net will become a very different kind of place, not only for coders and hackers but for any person who loves the unique freedom it has offered for nearly a generation.
The DMCA does nothing for copy protection (Score:4)
Making these tools illegal won't stop people from violating copyright law.
Copyright law doesn't even stop most people from violating copyright law. Just because massive software piracy outfits are now violating TWO laws means that they'll stop? Give me a break.
The DMCA does not help a company defend it's copyrights at all. What it does is give them COPY CONTROL. With the simplest "encryption" algorithm you can now 100% put a stop to reverse engineering, totally eliminating your competitors if you happen to have created an industry standard protocol.
Think of it as patenting the most ridiculously easy algorithm without actually requiring a patent or an original idea. IIRC, Real Networks won a case based on the DMCA because they set 1 bit in their packet headers that means "ENCRYPTED", even though the rest of the packet is identitical to the unencrypted form.
It is meant to squelch competition. Be it from individuals in research, open source hackers, or other proprietary software giants. Retail piracy outfits (like the ones in China) will be affected in no way whatsoever by the DMCA. Everyone else will.
The public doesn't understand (Score:3)
For fsck sake the formula HAS been published (Score:3)
No one went to jail, the sun came up the next day, and the sky did not fall on our heads.
To compare something as far-fetched as the possible imprisonment of someone publishing a formula which is already out there to the real imprisonment of Dmitry is irresponsible.
How can you somehow justify the fact that he is locked away as some sort of reward for his behaviour by contructing this 'equivalent' scenario which is not even vaguely related?
Question -- where is the Russian Embassy? (Score:3)
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You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
Re:Yah, but ... (Score:3)
Also, consider an editor's take on the issue; even if the editor does understand the technology and law nuances, does he think that his audience will understand well enough to make a story worthwhile or newsworthy?
The bottom line is that YOU, the audience, need to start writing more letters-to-the-editor and op-ed submissions to make the editors and reporters realize the importance of the issue instead of laying back and producing conspiracy theories as to why the issue has not appeared in mainstream media.
I can cite all sorts of foreign (to Americans) news, including civil wars in Central and South America, kidnappings of American citizens abroad, etc. that never even make it to the "World Summary" columns of your major newspapers because the editors do not seem to think that it is newsworthy. There are stories about it; you can go to the Voice of America [voanews.com] and read a lot of the wire copy that the major media outlets certainly get as well, but the bottom line is it is deemed "un-newsworthy" for Joe Public.
Well let's let them know! (Score:3)
Re:This is nothing new (Score:3)
Yah, but ... (Score:4)
Re:Why haven't any reporters... (Score:4)
At any rate, to answer your original question, anyone in the software biz right now (save for Adobe), and publishing industry want him in jail. The types they want to know about his arrest (he's an example to be made of) will know it from reading the trade sites (like
Draconian Medieval Copyright Act (Score:4)
In 1377, John Wycliffe was brought before the Roman Catholic Church because he had the audacity to declare that the common man had the right to read the bible, which he had translated from the Church's sanctioned latin into English. The position of the Church on common vernacular translation was known from the time of the Spanish inquisition. Spanish bible translators were often beaten, tortured, and burned alive. Spanish clergyman Alfonso de Castro gave the opinion of Church in these words: "the translation of the scriptures into the vernacular tongues, with the reading of them by the vulgar, is the true fountain of all heresies." Wycliffe was lucky to merely be arrested and excommunicated. The church did eventually dig him up and burn his bones, however.
In 2001, cryptography and computer code have replaced latin, while eBooks take the role of the Bible. The "Copyright Industry" and the government agencies like the FBI that march to their drum have replaced the pre-reform Catholic Church as the organization that uses secret languages to control the thoughts of their "audience". After John Wycliffe asserted the right of the people to read, this principle became a central tenent of all church reformers and was strong in the protestant groups that eventually formed the United States of America.
Today, as then, the right of the people to access the thoughts contained in the media they obtain legally, without regard to "technological protection measures", such as latin, object code, cryptography or obfuscation, is inherent in the First Amendment and the fundamental human rights which transcend government.
Conversely, the supposed right to control access to copyrighted works against circumvention, asserted by the DMCA is a false right, and it must be facially rejected because it conflicts inescapably with the right to read. This "right" is completely distinct from the one it was supposedly created to protect, which is the right of authors to authorize the first sale of their works.
Citations:
http://www.whidbey.net/~dcloud/articles/johnwyc
http://www.whidbey.net/~dcloud/articles/spanish
The major news outlets are owned by big media (Score:4)
That's why most of the useful news I get these days comes from Slashdot and not CNN.
No Problem (Score:3)
The State of Texas executed a foreign national without giving him right to meet with his embassy. This is a right guaranteed to foreign nationals by treaty. The fact that someone could be held without access to their national ambassadorial staff is pitiful enough. The fact that they can be held without due process guaranteed under the Constitution is scandalous.
But the public just doesn't care....
It is fucking depressing.
Re:Scandalous?!? (Score:5)
1) He has the right to meet with representatives of the Russian Embassy. That has not happened. This is a right guaranteed by treaty.
2) It doesn't matter whether he is a US citizen or not, he has a right to due process.
Look at the hell the U.S. had to go through to get a convicted murderer(Ira Einhorn) extradited from France.
Not exactly apples to apples comparison, is it?
But the Einhorn case could have been sped up if it hadn't been for the idiots in Pennsylvania trying him in absentia. That was a screw up on their part, not France's.
Do you see the difference?
Why should the U.S. afford a foreign national the opportunity to escape?
Why have bail at all then? Anyone could flee from the jurisdiction they are indicted in, can't they? Take his passport.
Sorry, but the constitution just doesn't come into play in this instance.
Why, just because you've said so?
The Supreme Court has said otherwise. They still gave Cuban's the right to due process (it took forever, but they got their day in court) when Castro emptied his jails and sent the felons north. The Supreme Court just told the Immigration Service that they cannot hold foreign nationals without charging them - even when they have served their sentences.
Sounds like due process to me (derived, my dear colleage, from the Constitution).
Foreign nationals should behave themselves in any country they visit.
That is a given, isn't it?
Are you saying that we shouldn't assume he is innocent until proven guilty?
Just because the the U.S. appears to be more liberal with accused criminals than many other countries does not mean that the same liberal treatment can or should be extended to a foreign national.
Right; let's just jettison the Constitution when it becomes a problem.
I hope you're not running for an elected office.
Non citizens should be made fully aware that they neither deserve nor get the same priviledges as a citizen.
And on that point, as with so many others in this thread, you are just dead wrong.
I'M BLIND! (Score:3)
Are you sure he's been in jail for two weeks? I'm a little confused on that point.
To paraphrase Scott Adams, you've had a BLINDING FLASH OF THE OBVIOUS!
I don't know how to tell you this... but maybe if I shout way up into your ivory tower...the popular media aren't going to go running to Vegas and San Jose because this isn't the kind of news story that Joe AOL cares about.
Now quit ranting, strap your soapbox to your back, and go do something about it instead of ranting impotently. You're preaching to the choir here.
Zaphod B
I Agree, Here's What I'm Doing About It - Help Me! (Score:3)
I agree media coverage of the Sklyarov arrest has been a (non-existant) travesty. I have an idea, bear with me for a paragraph here. I noticed over the past few days that a USA Today reporter named Dennis Cauchon has written two stories on First Amendment arrests (although they were buried on the inside pages) here [usatoday.com] and here [usatoday.com]. To quote his story, "At the Justice Department's request, a federal judge jailed freelance writer Vanessa Leggett on July 20 on contempt of court charges after she refused to turn over notes, tape recordings and other material she collected while researching a book on the slaying of Doris Angleton in 1997. Angleton was the wife of Robert Angleton, a millionaire ex-bookie who was acquitted in 1998 of hiring his brother to commit the murder."
Seems to me 'ole Dennis might be interested in the current party going on in Dimitri's Las Vegas cell, if only he knew about it. And USA Today might print what 'ole Dennis dug up on the story. So I'm gonna email 'ole Dennis at dcauchon@usatoday.com and give him an earful of URLs. Why don't ya'll email 'ole Dennis, too, and show him what the Slashdot Effect is all about?
Re:Wake UP! (Score:3)
Really? Do you have experience in this area? I do. My company does a lot of work with prisons, and I guarantee that this does actually happen a great deal. I also have a family member who has a pretty checkered past and has done quite a few years in prison, and though he won't speak about it directly, he made it pretty clear that that stuff still happens. So, I'd like to see your evidence to support your case.
I have evidence. Check here [spr.org] and here [fsu.edu] if you want a lot of references. Or, try this on Google [google.com].
Then tell me that this is a thing of the past.
Re:The major news outlets are owned by big media (Score:4)
That's why most of the useful news I get these days comes from Slashdot and not CNN.
Not my experience at all. My father is an editor for a major newpaper owned by a major media company. Does that mean they avoid stories that put their parent companies in a bad light? Nope. Check out CNN's web site. I've seen plenty of negative coverage of AOL/Time-Warner. They always have the disclaimer at the bottom saying that CNN's parent company is AOL/Time-Warner, but they are happy to report anything negative about it.
Are they objective? No, nobody is objective. Computers are objective. Humans, by definition, are subjective, regardless of what some may say. Still reporters go to where the news is. They're salesmen/saleswomen. They report on what gets read. Remember, it's still a business, and if it's not getting them readership, then it's not worth printing. It has nothing to do with the ties of the parent company.
What does the average American know or care about the DMCA. Pracically none. We are in the minority. A very, very small minority. Unfortunately, people these days are more concerned with who the President is boffing, or who Condit is having an affair with, or misinterpreting the results of studies on children and the media. These are things that sell. Some Russian gets thrown in jail for breaking an American law? Not really big news. There's still a lot of cold-war anger. Russians are still seen as the "bad guys". One of them gets thrown in jail? Who cares? I do, you do, but honestly, are we part of the majority? Nope. That's why we come to Slashdot. When Slashdot becomes the voice of the majority (Warning: About 1 million years of evolution of the human species required), then maybe some of this will change.
What should people do? (Score:5)
Despite what many people think, your representatives aren't just there to serve the interests of lobbyists, though they make a lot of progress because they're persistant. They WANT to get re-elected, and you're the ones that elect them. They know that, and if enough people complain, they're going to do what you want because if enough of us complain, they're going to know their job is in jeapordy.
Remember, we live in a Republic (not a Democracy as everyone is fond of saying, read about the difference). You representatives are elected by YOU. That means that YOU can tell them they suck and if they don't straighten up and fly right, you won't vote for them the next time they're up for re-election.
Just my personal opinion, but I've written my representatives. I've e-mailed the president. They know my view. If enough people do the same, I guarantee you that this stuff, while not responded to personally, goes into a statistics sheet that tells them, at the end of the day, where their supporters stand.
I don't say this unknowing. I have an uncle who was a U.S. senator up untila couple of years ago, and e-mail was used heavily to gauge the opinions of the people in his office, and I'm pretty sure that he was the rule, not the exception. They all have software that makes this stuff (e-mailed opinions) pretty easy to quantify without having to read each and every e-mail in detail.
Lawsuits? (Score:3)
1. Declare the DMCA unconstitutional
2. Declare the 1st ammendment unconstitutional
Any bets onto which one?
Jon has learned (Score:4)
Or maybe they just ran the KatzBot on that NYT article. In which case I'm very disappointed in the KatzBot, I didn't see 'Corporate Republic' mentioned or even post-Columbine, maybe the KatzBot is broken.
--BEGIN SIG BLOCK--
I'd rather be trolling for goatse.cx [slashdot.org].
msnbc (Score:5)
Reporters on reporters (Score:4)
Think about it. (Score:5)
After the whole DeCSS thing, the public opinion swayed against the DMCA...
So it makes sense that the media isn't giving a nanosecond towards Dmitri.... they don't want any more bad press about their DMCA.
Once people realize that the DMCA is a violation of our US constitution - people will fight to get rid of it! The media doesn't want to lose their golden sword!
What about (Score:4)
KQED radio (San Francisco) had a bit on the Dmitry protests today also. Are stations in other markets covering this?
Journalism is not independent enough (Score:4)
Since the big news agencies answer to the same corporate masters that produce (other) copyrighted material, why would it be in their best interest to overturn a law that guarantees them more profit at the expence of the common good?
Let me say that again. Big news media is owned by big business - they don't want the DMCA overturned, so why should they report on how it is abusing the Constitution?
CBS got it (Score:3)
Steve Magruder
Maybe it's just as well (Score:4)
computer savvy person == suspicious
encryption expert == suspicious
person who wrote a decryption program without governmental or corporate blessing == hacker
hacker == evil
hacker arrested by FBI == no smoke without fire, therefore the hacker must be guilty
and for many in the US :
russian == communist
communist == evil
russian hacker == evil evil
russian hacker arrested by FBI == hooray FBI for saving the free world !!!
Most likely, if Dmitri's case receives press coverage, it'll probably be something like "Evil russian hacker arrested for attacking good US corporation Adobe's interests", not "Poor bastard in jail for 2 weeks without bail hearing". So maybe it's just as well if the press doesn't talk about it (the word you're looking for by the way is "biased").
Welcome to the politically corrected corporate America ...
Chomsky and Herman would disagree..... (Score:4)
Sadly, writing to your editor solves nothing more than venting your spleen *here* does--actually, probably far less, as at least SOME people beyond the Gatekeepers see your opinions here, whereas at the Times and Post the most likely recipient of your words is the Round File.
No, if you want to support Dimitry, send him and his lawyers money. If you want to stop the DMCA--and other repressive measures taken by the Elite, be prepared to help those on the front lines with your wallet. In this unjust society, money is the only force that can buy Justice.