For Position Only: Adobe Does the Copyright Thing
He’s hardly the stereotypical computer hacker — some hormone-addled, ultra-nerd 15-year-old who kills Saturday nights by breaking security codes. In fact, judging by the photos and bios posted on numerous Web sites, including www.freesklyarov.org, Dmitry Sklyarov is a gainfully employed Ph.D. student, a father of two, and an all-around good guy who’s being unfairly jailed and prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
And Adobe was apparently to blame — until last week, at least, when the company revoked its support for the prosecution of Sklyarov, the Russian cryptologist who developed a PDF password-pummeling application for the Russian company ElcomSoft. Though by now it’s jumped to the other side of the fence on this issue, Adobe originally called the FBI’s attention to Sklyarov’s software and to his presence in the U.S. Sklyarov was subsequently arrested, the fury of those who oppose the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was unleashed, and what will likely prove a pivotal test case for the law is now on the docket. Barring a miracle, we’re not going to hear the end of this for a long, long time.
Who, What, Where, and When
For those of you who have been in Bora Bora for the last few weeks (or just driving your U-Haul away from San Francisco, having sworn off technology when you left your Palm Pilot at your dot-gone desk), let me fill you in: On July 16 the FBI arrested 26-year-old Sklyarov in Las Vegas, where he was speaking at the Def Con 9 hackers conference. He found flaws in the security of PDF-based e-books, but instead of pointing them out to Adobe and helping them improve the security options in Acrobat, Sklyarov developed a product for ElcomSoft to exploit the weakness. The Advanced eBook Processor cracks passwords, thereby allowing licensed PDF-based e-books to be distributed for free, regardless of any protections that might have been encrypted in the file.
Adobe, as you might imagine, didn’t like the idea and eventually pressured ElcomSoft into taking the product off the market in the U.S. under threat of a lawsuit; its efforts were the basis of the Sklyarov’s arrest by the U.S. government. Sklyarov is being held without bail on charges of violating the DMCA by “trafficking in a product designed to circumvent copyright protection measures,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office. He faces a potential $500,000 fine and up to 5 years in jail.
Why?
I’m not a big fan of Mr. Sklyarov. I don’t appreciate the software he developed, or the attitude by his supporters that Adobe is a brutish bully and he’s an innocent victim of corporate and governmental exploitation. (The Boycott Adobe site brandishes a clever but extreme twist on the Adobe corporate logo: a hammer and sickle in the middle of a red Adobe-like “A”.) I’m not saying the DMCA is perfect, but it’s the best protection we have at the moment against digital copyright violations. And it seems pretty clear to me that Sklyarov and ElcomSoft violated the DMCA, which states, “no person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, or otherwise traffic in any technology …[designed to circumvent] a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner.”
Moreover to my way of thinking, the product Mr. Sklyarov helped develop is just plain wrong. There’s an analogy being drawn that seems apt: Image that a locksmith discovers that the lock on your front door can easily be picked, using a paperclip bent in just such a way. Instead of notifying you that the lock should be changed, the locksmith begins selling paperclips pre-bent for the purpose, along with instructions for using it, thereby facilitating illegal entry and theft. The analogy is hardly perfect, but the comparison is valid: Sklyarov helped make a product that breaks e-book passwords, which facilitates copyright violation.
I know there is a contingent of people who believe that outlawing Mr. Sklyarov’s lock-picking kit is an assault on free speech, but that’s really a stretch in my mind. And many who are upset about Mr. Sklyarov’s arrest paint the scenario as that of a big, bad corporation — Adobe, of course — persecuting a high-minded individual who dared to stand his ground. Nothing personal, Mr. Sklyarov, but it just doesn’t wash: After all, Adobe is giving away the eBook Reader; ElcomSoft stood to profit from its Advanced eBook Processor software.
About Face
As far as I can see, wrongs on both sides have been righted, at least by the involved corporate entities: ElcomSoft took the product off the virtual shelves, and Adobe has backed down. First Adobe held that the software was a threat to copyright holders, but then it reversed itself: Adobe has by now gone so far as to say that ElcomSoft’s software could do good things, too, like allow e-books to become accessible to visually impaired readers. One has to wonder: If the software doesn’t really violate copyright law and can actually do good deeds, why make ElcomSoft pull it? The reversal was as blatant a PR move as could be on Adobe’s part, propelled by purely selfish business reasons (threat of a boycott in a weak economy). But who cares? Adobe has seen the light and has asked the government not to prosecute.
So why is Ashcroft’s office refusing to let it go? Probably because it wants to make an example of Mr. Sklyarov to all those so-called Liberals-with-a-capital-L who oppose the 1998 DMCA. But prosecuting Mr. Sklyarov is what we call “negative reinforcement” in parenting circles, and it’s a big no-no. The preferred method of discipline is to reward good behavior, and ElcomSoft ultimately did the right thing, by ceasing to sell the Advanced eBook Processor.
I bristle at hackers like Sklyarov, and at the whole argument that somehow because intellectual property is now available digitally — from MP3 music clips to DVDs to e-books — we should be allowed to share it freely. Frankly, I think Sklyarov is less a principled academic with high-minded convictions about intellectual property and more an opportunist who’s using our free-market economy and our tolerance of free speech for his own ends.
But the longer the government drags this out, the more it puts Sklyarov on a pedestal not just for the copyright counter-culture but also for the mainstream public. And making an example out of one individual — and not even the founder and president of the ElcomSoft, who was also at Def Con 9 — sends the wrong message: that those who would safeguard digital-media copyrights are as petty as the hackers are. I’m all for protecting copyrights, but let’s do it maturely, responsibly, and with a level head.
For more information and points of view on this topic, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Association of American Publishers, Planet eBook, eBookWeb, and www.anti-dmca.org.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on August 2, 2001
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