Russian Hacker Indicted

Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, arrested in July for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (News, Aug. 6), has been indicted in a San Jose, Calif., court on four counts of trafficking in technology designed to circumvent the rights of a copyright owner and one count of conspiracy. Moscow-based ElcomSoft, Sklyarov's employer, was charged in five similar trafficking indictments.

The charges stem from ElcomSoft's sale over the Internet of a program, based on Sklyarov's e-book security research, that allows users to make copies of Adobe Acrobat e-books. Sklyarov, a Russian citizen, was arrested in Las Vegas when he gave a talk at the DefCon hacker convention concerning his findings. Although Adobe first brought the complaint to the government, the company then called for Sklyarov's release because it became convinced that Sklyarov was not a proper target of legal action in this instance.

If convicted, Sklyarov faces up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine for each of the trafficking charges, plus five years and $250,000 for the conspiracy charge. ElcomSoft could be hit with a $500,000 fine on each charge.

The stiffness of the indictments surprised many observers, who had expected some kind of plea bargain after Sklyarov's arraignment was postponed by a week (to August 30) while his lawyers negotiated with the U.S. District Attorney.

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford University professor of law and a copyright expert, noted that the government was likely forced into proceeding, despite the slim chance of convicting a foreign citizen for doing what was legal in his own country. "The government first acted because of Adobe's complaint," Lessig said. "Now that Adobe has backed off, the FBI doesn't want to appear to be the tool of corporations, so it has to go forward."