[Free-sklyarov-uk] a win for sanity! and free speech

[Julian T J Midgley]

On Tue, 6 Nov 2001, phil hunt wrote:

> On Tuesday 06 November 2001  2:02 pm, Ian Firla wrote:
> > Agreed. But it was Elcomsoft, not Dmitry, who were distributing the
> > compiled source. Dmitry was the author of some thoughts, ideas,
> > that's all.
> >
> > Just as the author of the DeCSS code has been proved to be
> > violating no laws, copyrights or otherwise by writing code which
> > could be compiled and used 'criminally'.
> >
> > I maintain that this is an important judgement for Dmitry.
>
> This is a good point: Dmitry distributed source, even if Elcomsoft
> didn't.

This may be true, but Dmitry is being prosecuted under the DMCA, and not
trade-secret law, so the source-code is pure speech argument is less of
a killer (although, if his lawyers argue "academic research", or "fair
use", I agree with both Ian and you that Dmitry has a better chance of
being found innocent than he did before the DeCSS "code == pure speech"
finding).

And it remains true that if the FBI/Adobe ever had a case, it was really
against Elcomsoft (now named as co-defendents) rather than Dmitry.

As ever - we live in interesting times... ;-)

Julian

-- 
Julian T. J. Midgley                      http://www.xenoclast.org/
Cambridge, England.                          PGP Key ID: 0xBCC7863F
Beware the European Copyright Directive:  http://uk.eurorights.org/