Press Release

Electronic Publishers Coalition Condemns Criminal Use of DMCA

July 22, 2001 -- While all publishers are concerned about professional copyright thieves, the Electronic Publishers Coalition condemns the use of the criminal provisions of the DMCA against Dimitry Sklyarov, a Russian programmer and cryptanalyst visiting the United States.

"Persecution of an individual shouldn't be any company's response to a commercial disagreement, especially regarding copyright," Connie Foster, the EPC executive director said Sunday.

"All members of the EPC -- not just a small portion of them as with print-oriented groups like the AAP -- work with the Adobe and other electronic formats to publish their e-books, and we recognize that the same technology that benefits publishers with lower production and distribution costs also aids copyright violators."

"We also recognize from our close experience working with electronic books, that readers need and deserve greater leeway with the e-books they purchase than the current limited DRM and security technology provides," Foster stated. (Note: DRM -- for digital rights management -- provides permissions control with e-books, disallowing [or permitting] such things as copying text to a computer's clipboard, printing of the content, and lending the e-book to another computer's reading system.)

Foster continued, "In this case, readers' interests should be paramount, and the leading e-book formats -- Adobe's among them -- slight them by making it impossible to open an e-book when upgrading to a new computer or when suffering a number of all-too-common computer woes, such as virus infection and hard-disk failure."

"At this point in e-books' development, we think it's just too early for companies such as Adobe that have nascent content-delivery systems to think they have solved all their problems and to resort to criminal charges against a programmer who discovered and discussed serious flaws in the program's security structure."

Foster went on to note: "Some people think Adobe has to pursue this type of action to reassure publishers their content is safe. But what publishers need to know is that Adobe understands the technology and its current limits, and the problems with its own software, and that it understands what our customers -- that is, readers -- need and what the immature e-book industry needs in order to grow."

Sklyarov, a graduate student at Bauman Moscow State Technical University, reported at a Las Vegas conference on his research on e-book security performed for his dissertation. His research was later incorporated into a permissions-removal program called Advanced E-book Processor, or AEBPR, by ElcomSoft, a Russian software company that now employs him. The program apparently sold fewer than ten copies before being pulled from the market at Adobe's insistence. It had not been available commercially for more than two weeks before Sklyarov's visit to America.

AEBPR allows users to make backups of legally purchased Adobe eBooks that ignore the eBooks' restrictions on copying, printing and lending, if any, and permit the eBook to be read on a replacement copy of Adobe eBook Reader if the initial installation no longer functions or if the user upgrades to a new computer. It does not work with eBooks sold to another user. Since under Russian law, such backups are mandatory for data sellers, Adobe eBooks contravene the law and AEBPR is legal in Russia, as well as in Germany and Scandinavia, and other countries. Its use in the U.S. is not permitted under the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The Electronic Publishers Coalition was founded by a group of publishers committed to furthering the growth of the e-book community. It is the largest trade association of electronic publishers in the world. A primary role of the EPC is to follow through on its commitment to develop a healthy marketplace for digital content as well as to take a leadership role in setting minimum standards in order to encourage quality within our industry. The EPC is located on the web at http://www.epccentral.org/.

Contact information

Connie Foster, eBooksonthe.net, 207-667-6515
Jon Noring, Blue Glass Publishing, 801-253-4037
Roger Sperberg, Watchung Plaza Books, 973-744-7802
http://www.epccentral.org/dmca.html