Adobe accuses Russian programmer of copyright violations

By Ann Harrison
Network World Peer-to-Peer Newsletter, 07/23/01

News from the recent DefCon hacker conference suggests that yet another company is attempting to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to shore up weak encryption technology for copy protection. The DMCA, which took effect last year, outlaws the " manufacture " of tools that circumvent copy protection technology and is being used as a blunt instrument against fair use copying and file swapping.

While visiting Defcon, which took place in Las Vegas earlier this month, Dmitry Sklyarov, a programmer for Russian software company ElcomSoft, gave a talk on flawed e-book security. A number of security experts have noted that an e-book copy protection system, using Acrobat PDF can be broken if it is running on insecure hardware. Nevertheless, Adobe Systems prevailed upon the FBI to arrest Sklyarov for distributing ElcomSoft's Advanced eBook Processor while he was waiting for a flight out of the U.S. He has been transported to California for prosecution.

This form of corporate kidnapping seems to be the latest volley in an ongoing fight between the two companies. A few weeks ago Adobe demanded that ElcomSoft take its $100 e-book decoder off the market claiming that the Russian company was engaging in " unauthorized activity relating to copyrighted materials. " Adobe also has pressured ISP Verio to yank ElcomSoft's Web site.

ElcomSoft has responded by simply moving to a Russian service provider that is not subject to the provisions of the DMCA. If Adobe persists, ElcomSoft says it may publish its source code on the Internet and make its software free under the GNU license.

However, Adobe's action will only encourage the compromising of its already weak copy protections system and encourage more lawsuits against these interpretations of the DMCA. At the very least, it may encourage security conferences to move off U.S. soil.

This latest incident follows the recording industry's attempt a few months ago, to use the DMCA to pressure Ed Felten, a Princeton University computer science professor, from presenting his research on a watermarking copy protection scheme. Felten had successfully broken the antipiracy systems on all four of the watermarking technologies in a challenge presented by the Secure Digital Music Initiative last September.

After being threatened with a civil suit, Felten joined with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to file a lawsuit attempting to establish that the DMCA violated his First Amendment rights.

Elsewhere, eight movie studios are also attempting to use the DMCA to compel hacking publication, 2600 Magazine to remove DVD decoding software from its Web site.