[Free-sklyarov-uk] Press Release: UK Free Dmitry Sklyarov Protest

[Julian T. J. Midgley]

Below is the text of the press release I intend to send to the Register
and other news agencies this afternoon.

If you have any criticism or comments, please let me know within the next
half hour, and I'll revise it before sending it out at around 1230 today.

Many thanks,

Julian




For Immediate Release:

There will be a protest held outside the US Embassy in London, on Friday 4
August, calling for the immediate release of Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian
programmer who was arrested by the FBI for creating software which
circumvented the copyright protection mechanism in Adobe's eBook Reader.

Adobe has since issued a joint statement with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation calling for Mr Sklyarov's release, but the US Department of
Justice still has Mr Sklyarov in custody, and appears to intend to proceed
with the trial.

The UK protestors strongly believe that Mr Sklyarov's arrest was unlawful
and unnecessary.  He is charged with trafficking in a copyright
circumvention mechanism, despite the fact that the software he wrote was
sold by the company he worked for (through a US reseller) and not by him
himself.  Furthermore, the law he is alleged to have broken, the DMCA
(Digital Millenium Copyright Act) makes illegal in the US activities
considered entirely lawful in most other nations, including Britain and Mr
Sklyarov's native Russia.

The DMCA destroys the right to fair use, and makes those who point out
flaws in the security algorithms and protocols of other companies liable
to prosecution.  It is clear that the DMCA needs revision (in a separate
case, a Professor Felten is suing to have parts of it declared
unconstitutional), and it is quite unreasonable to leave Dmitry Sklyarov
languishing in a US prison whilst the Americans resolve the problems with
this ill-thought law.  Dmitry Sklyarov should not be a test case, he
should be a free man!

Those interested in joining the protest on Friday will find more details
on the web at:

http://uk.freesklyarov.org/

and are encouraged to join the UK Free Sklyarov mailing list at:

http://mailman.xenoclast.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-sklyarov-uk

-- 
Julian T. J. Midgley                    http://www.xenoclast.org
Cambridge, England.                       PGP Key ID: 0xBCC7863F