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Underground > Laboratory >

DMCA & Sklyarov

11:21 / 20.07.01

No one seems to have mentioned this yet

http://www.boycottadobe.org/

13:23 / 20.07.01

quote:Sklyarov was in Las Vegas to present a paper at a convention on eBooks Security: Theory and Practice. In this paper, he disclosed that Adobe's security features in their eBook and PDF software was woeful. In one case, the child-like 'Rot13' (a simple letter substitution cipher where every letter is shifted 13 places. The letter 'a' becomes 'n', 'b' becomes 'o', and so on.) method of encryption was used to protect documents. According to Sklyarov's paper, Adobe charges upwards of $3,000.00 to secure documents in this shoddy and insecure manner.

Rather than thanking Dmitry Sklyarov and sending him and his company a healthy-sized check, Adobe instead decided to call in the FBI to prosecute him under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

quote:If you are an American citizen, go here, type in your ZIP code and express your displeasure with the DMCA and Adobe's abuse of it.

quote:Spread the Word. We've made sticker templates for your ordinary inkjet printer: A B C D E. Also, you can stick our logo on your web sites.

13:33 / 20.07.01

my letter to congress (following the above link):

quote:I've been reading up on the Dmitry Sklyarov case, and it ticks me off.

Here's a computer security expert who traveled around the world to go to an industry conference in Las Vegas where he pointed out the flaws in Adobe's software security protocols (which were fairly egregious) and for his trouble, gets thrown in jail. Others in his line of work have been rewarded for the same behavior -- he never exploited the weakness, merely brought it to the industry's attention.

This ain't right.

Resorting to criminal prosecution rather than fixing broken security hurts Adobe's customers, who have paid good money only to find out their intellectual property is protected by 4th-rate security. Adobe's short-sighted attack on Elcomsoft has also hurt Dmitry Sklyarov, a skilled security specialist who is now locked up in the company of murderers, rapists and other assorted common criminals.
Sincerely,
Rev. Grant Balfour

Feel free to cut and paste, chilluns.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

20:39 / 20.07.01

Protests have been organized for Monday 23rd July.
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010719_eff_sklyarov_alert.html