Adobe and Electronic Frontier Foundation Want Dmitry Sklyarov Released

Meeting and lack of public support appear to sway Adobe

July 23, 2001

An extraordinary turn of events has occurred over the past few hours which has seen Adobe change its position from support for the U.S. Government's decision to arrest Dmitry Sklyarov over copyright circumvention, to the announcement that Adobe believed the Russian programmer should be released from federal custody and that it no longer supported the government's criminal complaint.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties organization which focuses in particular on technology, and Adobe have agreed to work together to secure Sklyarov's immediate release. The announcement came shortly after Adobe met with members of the EFF to discuss the case.

While Adobe still maintained its support for the DMCA and the enforcement of copyright protection, the announcement quotes Colleen Pouliot, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Adobe as saying, "the prosecution of this individual in this particular case is not conducive to the best interests of any of the parties involved or the industry. ElcomSoft's Advanced eBook Processor software is no longer available in the United States, and from that perspective the DMCA worked."

Earlier today

A news item posted earlier today on Planet eBook linked directly to Adobe's first public announcement on the arrest, however this announcement was soon removed from the company's site. In it the company said that, "Adobe fully supports the U.S. Government's decision to investigate the potential violation of U.S. copyright laws by ElcomSoft and has cooperated with their investigations with their investigation. Adobe's goal is to help protect the copyrighted works of authors, artists, developers and publishers, and to stop the sale of this cracking software in the U.S."

In response to the question of why a criminal action was pursued, rather than civil, Adobe had the following to say, "As with many parts of Asia, Russia is a nation where civil-based anti-piracy measures have little effect. Once Adobe had exhausted the few civil steps likely to have success, we forwarded the case to the U.S. authorities. The government is pursuing the case as a criminal violation."

MORE INFO

Planet eBook & Planet PDF has a regularly updated index of all articles online related to this issue.