Radical media, politics and culture.

Protests held nationwide to protest arrest of hacker

Anonymous Comrade writes: "On 16 July 2001, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested by federal agents in Las Vegas, Nevada.
His crime: pointing out major security flaws in Adobe
PDF and eBook software.

Sklyarov was in Las Vegas to present a paper at a
convention on eBooks Security: Theory and Practice. In
this paper, he disclosed that Adobe's security features
in their eBook and PDF software was woeful.
According to Sklyarov's paper, Adobe charges
upwards of $3,000.00 to secure
documents in this shoddy and
insecure manner.


Rather than thanking Dmitry
Sklyarov and sending him and his
company a healthy-sized check,
Adobe instead decided to call in the FBI to prosecute
him under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or
DMCA.

Find out more at www.boycottadobe.com
or check out photos of today's demo in NYC."


UPDATE 7/24: In the wake of worldwide criticism, Adobe Systems agreed Monday to withdraw from a case charging a 27-year-old Russian programmer with violations of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act.