[Free-sklyarov-uk] Press Release - for wider distribution

[Julian T. J. Midgley]

Anton, here's the release as I sent it to the Register - do you want to
send it on to Will Knight and Stuart Miller?

If anyone else has contacts to whom we ought to send it, feel free to
forward it to them.

All the best,

Julian




For Immediate Release:

There will be a protest held outside the US Embassy in London, on Friday 3
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,
which he helped to write, was sold by the company he worked for
(through a US reseller) and not by him directly.  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