----- Original Message -----
From: "Kelly Pierce" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 8:34 AM
Subject: Russian Company Acquitted of Digital Piracy In Adobe Case


The program for which the company and at one time the individual
programmer were being prosecuted allowed blind computer users to access
PDF documents with security features.  Adobe's access solutions still do
not permit the blind to access PDF documents with security features.

Kelly

The New York Times

December 18, 2002

Russian Company Acquitted of Digital Piracy By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17 - In the first criminal court test of a law
intended to prevent digital piracy, a federal jury today acquitted a
Russian company accused of illegally selling software that permitted
users to circumvent security features in an electronic book.

The case, which was tried in San Jose, centered on the 1998 Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, a technology-era update to copyright law. The
act has engendered deep criticism from some legal experts who say it
goes
too far in protecting copyrights and, in turn, stifles innovation.
Today,
some of those critics hailed the jury's decision as a sign that the
government must choose its cases more judiciously.

The closely watched case began in unusual fashion for a copyright
matter.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Dmitry Sklyarov, the author
of the software, a decryption program that could modify or eliminate the
security protections on e-books made by Adobe Systems, in Las Vegas in
July 2001. Mr. Sklyarov testified for the United States government
against his former employer, ElcomSoft, which faced a fine if convicted.

Lawyers for ElcomSoft had said that the company's e-book decryption
software was legal in Russia. They also said the company's executives
and
programmers did not intentionally violate United States law.

Jennifer S. Granick, the director of the Stanford Center for Internet
and
Society, praised the outcome, saying it showed the geographic
limitations
of the digital copyright law. Ms. Granick said that the jury essentially
found that an overseas company could not be convicted of violating
United
States copyright law, assuming the company did not intend to break it.

"We don't want every country in the world to have to comply with how the
U. S. does copyright," Ms. Granick said. "This is good for democracy:
people in other countries can make determinations about what is right
and
wrong for themselves."

Kevin Ryan, the United States attorney for the Northern District of
California, said in a statement that he was "disappointed." When the
government brings cases under new statutes, he said, "sometimes you are
going to lose, and that's what happened here."

Even the law's strongest supporters, like software industry trade
groups,
said that the jury's decision had dealt a blow to the copyright act.

"The law does take a hit," said Keith Kupferschmid, the vice president
for intellectual property policy at the Software and Information
Industry
Association, an industry trade group. "This is the type of activity the
law was designed to prevent."

ElcomSoft, a company based in Moscow that specializes in
password-retrieval programs, was charged with five counts of violating
United States copyright law. In June 2001, Adobe alerted the F.B.I. that
the Russian company was selling its software over the Internet for $99.
A
month later, Mr. Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas when he was
scheduled
to speak at an annual computer hackers' convention, called Defcon. Mr.
Sklyarov spent several weeks in jail before agreeing to testify for the
government.

The issue of copyright protection in the Internet age has deeply divided
legal scholars, policy makers and the technology community. Supporters
of
the digital copyright law say that it is necessary to prevent the theft
of intellectual property that can be downloaded and copied with a mouse
click- whether music, books or other art. The Business Software
Alliance,
a trade group that says the software industry loses $11 billion a year
to
piracy, urged the government today to continue to aggressively pursue
violations of the law.

But some legal scholars say the copyright law goes too far, in part
because it offers broader protections than are permitted for nondigital
works. For instance, Ms. Granick of Stanford noted, the law could permit
a company to preclude the fair use of a work, like copying something for
personal use.

Pamela Samuelson, a law professor at the University of California at
Berkeley who also praised the jury's decision, said the government, in
bringing the case, had sought to apply the law too broadly. She said the
law should apply to individuals and companies whose products are clearly
used to make illegal copies. The evidence in the ElcomSoft case, she
said, showed that its program helped people make legitimate copies and
manipulate their e-books in appropriate ways, such as using them on
different hardware platforms.

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