Protesters Gather at Boston PL
As Sklyarov Pleads Not Guilty
Russian programmer Dmitri Sklyarov pleaded not guilty August 30 to a five-count indictment of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Sklyarov’s boss, ElcomSoft President Alexander Katalov, appeared alongside him in front of U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg in San Jose, California, and also pleaded not guilty. Katalov was named in the same August 28 grand jury indictment as Sklyarov and could be fined as much as $2.5 million, according to the August 31 Industry Standard.
Sklyarov faces charges that he conspired to traffic in tools designed to circumvent technologies preventing digital copying.
Some 30 protesters gathered outside the Boston Public Library at noon August 30 to hand out leaflets about the case. C. Scott Aranian, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student and organizer of the protest, told the Standard that the site was chosen because “the Boston Public Library is one of the institutions that will ultimately be harmed” by the DMCA. He added that e-books protected by the act cannot be lent, archived, or donated, three of the major functions of a public library.
At an August 29 fundraiser in San Francisco for Sklyarov’s legal defense, Lawrence Lessig, director of Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, said, “This is a war being waged by copyright interests who see each opportunity on the Internet as an opportunity to change the meaning of copyright law,” ZDNet News reported August 31. “This is the beginning of a revolution,” he told the crowd.
Posted September 3, 2001.
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