Sklyarov Discusses the ElcomSoft Trial

DaytonCIM writes "Dmitry Sklyarov talks openly about the ElcomSoft trial to CNET News. The 'Russian programmer thinks it was unfair of prosecutors to play his videotaped deposition at the ElcomSoft trial rather than calling him to the stand.'"

This is a sad story, people

[SteweyGriffin]

From the page: At the time of his arrest, Dmitry Sklyarov was a 27-year-old Russian citizen, Ph.D. student, cryptographer and father of two small children (a 2-1/2 year old son, and a 3-month-old daughter).

A man devotes his life's work to studying the fine intracacies of computer science. He obtains a doctoral degree through years of work mastering cryptographic algorithms.

He then gets sued unjustly and is ripped away from his children for months and months and months.

Where's the justice here?

The question I want answered is...

[Interrobang]

...how did they settle the jurisdictional questions? I mean, last I heard, Skylarov was working in Russia. One assumes the US government just did it by fiat, or was there more diplomacy involved than what I'm led to believe?

If the US just went ahead and did it anyway, that's kind of a scary precedent, meaning that now, no matter where you are in the world, the long arm of US law enforcement can come after you for doing something it doesn't happen to like? If that's the case, as sort of a quid pro quo, I would like some of the priveleges of US citizenship to go along with the burdens.

Re:The 5th amendmant

[crumley]

Part of Dmitry's "plea" agreement was a provision that required him to testify for the government. As he said on several ocassions he was perfectly willing to do that since he had nothing to hide. Dmitry was not the defendant in the case that finally went to trial - his company was. Dmitry did eventually testify for the defense, but it still was pretty sketchy for the government to use his taped deposition instead of calling him to the stand.

Re:This is a sad story, people

[DaytonCIM]

Where's the justice here?

The justice here was almost the same justice the DoJ dealt Kevin Mitnick; but ElcomSoft was found not-guilty and Sklyarov only spent a short time in custody.

What we need to do as a community is fight the DMCA and DRM Technology, in hopes that this doesn't happen again.

Re:If US laws apply in other countries...

[Zigg]

Well, if this case [nytimes.com] has anything to say for precedence, it wouldn't surprise me if China gained that right.

Scary, eh?

The most important quote

[deblau]

From the article:

Although jurors agreed the product was illegal because it was designed to crack antipiracy technology controls, they declined to convict because they didn't believe ElcomSoft intended to break the law.

Note to programmers: if you push the legal uses of your software, then should you ever go to trial, you increase your chances of getting just such a ruling.

On its face, this seems a paradoxical ruling: a product is illegal because it breaks the law (duh), and furthermore it was designed to do so, but the company that created it didn't intend to break the law! Nevertheless, it's possible to apply similar standards to any technology. Consider cars, for instance. There are many laws which are broken, using cars in the manner in which they were designed: criminal evasion, homicide, reckless endangerment, etc. Yet cars aren't illegal. Neither are guns, but that is a more controversial issue.

This example is important. If you build a tool (or write software), that tool could be used for good or ill. The crux of the matter is that it is up to the individual user of that tool to decide how to use it. Also remember that juries are swayed heavily by intent. If the user of your software has a good intent (exercising fair-use or property rights, for example) then that user should have nothing to fear from its government, at least on ideological grounds.