During the Cold War, Dmitry Sklyarov might have seemed like a character out of a John Le Carré novel - a wily Russian who cracks the security of electronic capitalism. These days, though, some people are calling the 27-year-old arrested last week for allegedly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act a political prisoner for the electronic age.
Now being held in San Jose, Calif., without bail and facing up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted, Sklyarov has become the first person to face criminal charges related to the 1998 copyright law. As an employee of Moscow-based ElcomSoft, he created software that allows for the copying of e-books downloaded on an Adobe eBook Reader.
Prompted to act by Adobe Systems, the FBI nabbed Sklyarov in Las Vegas after he made a presentation on e-book security at the DefCon hacker convention. Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other online activists see the makings of an international cause celebre: "I think this will be the galvanizing arrest that brings down" the digital copyright act, wrote EFF founder John Perry Barlow on the group's Web site.
Adobe marketing VP Susan Altman Prescott says the company sent cease-and-desist letters to ElcomSoft before turning to the FBI. "It's not really an issue of Adobe vs. a hacker," says Prescott. "We want to make sure this issue is focused on copyright protection of digital content." So much for a good spy caper.
