Dmitry Sklyarov

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Dmitry Sklyarov (Дмитрий Скляров) (born December 18, 1974) is a Russian computer programmer known for his 2001 arrest by American law enforcement over software copyright restrictions. He was later released and the charges were dropped.

[edit] Arrest

Sklyarov was a PhD student researching cryptanalysis and an employee of the Russian software company ElcomSoft, where he created "The Advanced eBook Processor" (AEBR) software. On July 16, 2001, due to a complaint from Adobe Systems, a US company, that copy prevention arrangements in its e-book file format were being violated by ElcomSoft's product, Sklyarov was arrested after giving a presentation called "eBook's Security — Theory and Practice" at the DEF CON convention in Las Vegas. He was charged with distributing a product designed to circumvent copyright protection measures, under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and arrested by the FBI as he was about to return to Moscow.

The day after his arrest several web sites and mailing lists were started to organize protests against his arrest, many of them under the slogan "Free Dmitry" or "Free Sklyarov". The main point of these campaigns was that no DMCA violations were committed at DEF CON, and the DMCA does not apply in Russia, so Sklyarov was being arrested for something that was perfectly legal in his jurisdiction. A campaign to boycott Adobe products was also launched[1].

On July 19, 2001, the Association of American Publishers issued a press release announcing their support of his arrest. Adobe initially supported the arrest, but after a meeting with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, they issued a joint press release on July 23, 2001, recommending his release. However, Adobe still supports the case against ElcomSoft.

After Sklyarov was arrested he was held briefly in a local jail in Las Vegas; then he was held in the Oklahoma City Federal Prisoner Transfer Center until August 3, 2001, when he was transferred to the Federal building in San Jose, California.

On August 6, 2001, Sklyarov was released on a US$50,000 bail and was not allowed to leave Northern California. The charges against Sklyarov were later dropped in exchange for his testimony. He was allowed to return to Russia on December 13, 2001.

On December 18, 2002 following a two-week trial in San Jose, California, a jury found that Elcomsoft had not wilfully violated the U.S. law.

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