[Free-sklyarov-uk] Please help free Dmitry Sklyarov (fwd)

[Julian T. J. Midgley]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:10:08 -0400
From: Richard Kay <rich at copsewood.net>
To: ceo at xs4all.nl, mail at corporatewatch.org
Cc: free-sklyarov at xenoclast.org
Subject: Please help free Dmitry Sklyarov

As UK/Europe based corporate observers I am asking for
your urgent assistance to help us organise part
of a global protest against a misuse of multinational
corporate power. This has resulted in the wrongful
arrest and imprisonment of a Russian programmer, Dmitry
Sklyarov while he was attending a software conference
in the US.

The misuse of corporate power in question has resulted in
unfair US copyright legislation (The Digital Millenium
Copyright Act) in line with WTO objectives, which attempts
to deny long-standing freedoms of expression and withdraw
legally accepted fair-use principles associated with
copyrighted materials in the United States. If this
extension of corporate control over the democratic process
is allowed to go unchallenged, equivalent rights will
subsequently be denied within the UK and Europe.

The case against Dmitry is totally unacceptable.  Part
of this relates to Dmitry's work in technically interfacing
a DMCA-protected product marketed by Adobe, called
the "Ebook". Dmitry's Russian employer, Elcomsoft had
supplied an interfacing product to provide fair-use rights
to purchasers of the Ebook product, e.g. allowing access by
blind people. This work was carried out in Russia where
the DMCA does not apply.  This part of the charge
against Dmitry is logically equivalent to a US citizen
being arrested while on a business trip to Saudi Arabia
for the "offence" of selling alcohol in New York.

The second and only other charge against Dmitry relates
to his presentation of a security paper at an academic
conference. This exposed the trivial claimed "security"
associated with the Ebook product, which involves a form
of "encryption" which could easily have been circumvented
by a 10 year old. This is morally equivalent to locking up a
consumer product reviewer for providing comparative
reviews of defective domestic door locks, to prevent
potential customers of these locks from obtaining independent
advice about which product to buy.

I am sure you will agree with us that the actions of the
FBI and US prosecution authorities in locking up Dmitry
while he stands trial on these trumped-up charges should
not be tolerated by the anti-corporate movement within
the UK and Europe. With this in mind we are
planning a demonstration in London on Saturday Aug 4th.

We need to organise this very quickly, but we lack
experience and numbers. If you have or are aware of support
networks and mailing lists to which this message could usefully
be forwarded please do this urgently. The website for
organising UK-based activities associated with the Free-Sklyarov
campaign is at: http://www.xenoclast.org/freesklyarov/ .

Very many thanks in advance for your help.

Best regards,
Richard Kay
rich at copsewood.net
http://copsewood.net/