The fate of a Russian programmer arrested last week by the FBI for breaking digital book codes was still undecided today as Silicon Valley protesters took up his cause.
Russian programmer Dmitry Skylarov was arrested last Monday in Las Vegas for allegedly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 US law that prohibits many forms of digital copying.
Mr Skylarov is accused of breaking the "E-Book" code, a format used by the Adobe Systems company to distribute digital books. Mr Skylarov, who works for a Russian programming company called Elcomsoft, was arrested after he delivered a weekend lecture in which he demonstrated he could break the code.
Adobe had said the format could not be copied.
A California programmers alliance and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an online human rights organization, have expressed concern over the arrest, and have called for demonstrations in front of Adobe's San Jose, California offices.
"This is a commercial dispute that should not be criminalized," said Don Marti, vice president of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group, which advocates the open exchange of software codes.
"Adobe is trying to use the federal government to protect what it should not be protecting. Books should be able to be passed along by those who buy them."
"We're trying to persuade Adobe will drop its case against the Russian," said EFF's Katina Bishop. "We don't think the digital copyright laws should be used to squelch free speech. And we see this as an issue of free speech."
AFP