02 August 2001

Jail Time in the Digital Age The Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov is sitting in a jail in Las Vegas. The FBI arrested him while he was visiting the U.S. for a conference two weeks ago after receiving a complaint from Adobe Corporation that he had committed offences against the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Lawrence Lessig comments on Sklyarov's imprisonment in this excellent critique of the DMCA at the New York Times: "Using software code to enforce law is controversial enough. Making it a crime to crack that technology, whether or not the use of that ability would be a copyright violation, is to delegate lawmaking to code writers. Yet that is precisely what the D.M.C.A. does. The relevant protection for copyrighted material becomes as the technology says, not as copyright law requires." Following the howls of outrage, it appears that Adobe now regrets having snitched on Sklyarov, and withdrew its support for his prosecution a week ago: "the prosecution of this individual in this particular case is not conducive to the best interests of any of the parties involved or the industry." Sklyarov's still in jail though. The Great Stock Hunt The HeadLemur, one of the many pissed off at Adobe, wanted to buy a share of Adobe stock: "simply to be eligible to attend shareholders meetings to let them know in person how I felt." This operation didn't turn out to be as simple as he had anticipated: "I am thoroughly confused at this point. I have legal tender which almost makes this guy break out in hives, business and personal checks, credit cards, a valid drivers license and this guy whose job is to sell stocks, won't accept any of the normal methods of payment." 4:03:59 PM