Home, but Not Home Free

SERGEI GUNEYEV for TIME

Sklyarov: A cybercause célèbre

Every cause needs a poster child and every new law a test case. For electronic freedom and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the all-in-one package was Dmitry Sklyarov. The FBI arrested the Russian programmer at a Las Vegas conference last July, filing charges against him and ElcomSoft, his Moscow-based employer, for selling the Advanced eBook Processor, a program designed to disable copyright protection on Adobe eBooks.

The arrest set the "Free Dmitry" band-wagon rolling. Even Adobe hopped on; perhaps compelled by a boycott called on its products, it dropped its support of Sklyarov's prosecution (though not ElcomSoft's). Heartening...

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