August 7, 2001
I don't care about Dmitry Sklyarov. That's right, you heard me. I don't give a shit about Mr. Sklyarov, who was picked up by the FBI two weeks ago after giving a talk at the hacker convention known as Defcon. I don't give a flying fuck about Mr. Sklyarov, who was arrested on charges (instigated by the Adobe Systems, who has since retracted their complaint) that he had violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. I really couldn't care less about Mr. Sklyarov, who is free on $50,000 bail but whose Russian passport is being held by the United States government pending his trial. I don't know Dmitry Sklyarov. Why should I care about him? The DMCA, on the hand, is a different matter. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1272-210-6797125-1.html I do not believe, as some reporters seem to think, that Dmitry Sklyarov is the computer geek's equivalent of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The latter may have been railroaded by the system, but I believe that Mr. Sklyarov walked into this with his eyes wide open. He was a programmer *presenting* at a *hacker* convention, for crying out loud. He had reverse-engineered a commercial encryption scheme and he was telling people exactly how he'd done it. He was plugged in to the geek community. He must have known about the DMCA and the whole DeCSS fiasco. And if he didn't, well, he's a complete moron and I have no sympathy. However, I don't think he's a moron. I think Mr. Sklyarov knows exactly what he's doing. I think he knows he's going to be a test case for the DMCA, and I think he's okay with being "trapped" in sunny San Jose. I do have some sympathy for Mr. Sklyarov's plight. But the thing that really annoys, irritates, and disappoints me is how a great majority of the "Free Dmitry" crowd keep mentioning that he's got a young wife and two small children back in Russia who love him and miss him and just want him to come home. Boo fucking hoo. It bothers me that the same people arguing against the DMCA with reason and logic would stoop so low as to stab others in their bleeding hearts. Dmitry Sklyarov is in jail because he broke the law. Whether the law is constitutional and prosecutable, doesn't matter. Whether the accused has a family, doesn't matter. If we're going to start judging people based on how cute their children are-- if we're going to disregard the judicial system in favor of irrational, emotional appeals to the lowest common denominator-- we should just *bomb* ourselves back to the Stone Age instead. It would be a lot less painful. You want a martyr? Try Kevin Mitnick. Dmitry Sklyarov is nothing. Forget Dmitry Sklyarov. He's not a political prisoner. He's a hacker who ran afoul of new law. What happens to him is contigent upon how the courts and the general public deal with the DMCA. If you really care about this case, you'll stop passing around baby pictures and start reading up on the new wave of copyright and intellectual property laws. http://anti-dmca.org/ I believe the DMCA will be struck down. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of the Information Age. The problem with the DMCA is that it's unilateral. It assumes that copyright holders will not build excessively restrictive controls into their devices. It also insinuates that most people are dirty crooks who take every opportunity to steal whatever they can, and who are barely held in check by the threat of imprisonment or fine. Bullshit. Anyway, we can't prevent new technologies from being invented. We can only legislate their use. The DMCA ignores this by making it illegal to even *create* "circumvention" technology. It doesn't distinguish between hacking a poorly encrypted, digital copy of a public-domain work like "Alice in Wonderland" and hacking into a hospital database to steal patient records. It doesn't separate motive from means, and that's just plain stupid. http://www.loc.gov/copyright/1201/1201a1text.html It's clear that the lawmakers don't understand modern technology. Their views have been tainted by bad analogies (hello, "information superhighway") and a computer industry that changes faster than Clark Kent in a phone booth. We've got to help them understand. Singing songs and carrying signs ain't gonna do it. If you're still reading this, chance are you're a geek who cares about this shit. You're smart. So put that brain to use. Do something more useful than playing video games and finding online pornography. Finally, here's something that should *really* scare you. The California Supreme Court just ruled that a gun manufacturer-- in this case, Navegar Inc., makers of the TEC-DC9-- cannot be sued by victims or families when the manufacturer's guns are use illegally. The court ruled five to one that the criminal conduct of a gunman who killed nine people, including himself, was not a result of the gun manufacturer's legal activities. So there you have it, folks: we live in a country where it's okay to own the tools of murder, but not to write a computer program that God help America. CKL