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| Technology is neither evil nor good. It just is. If people use technology
| to commit illegal acts (aiding and abetting criminals is illegal), then
| those people must be punished. If you manipulate a technology in such a
| way that it can freely allow people to violate copyright laws, then you
| are aiding and abetting criminals.
There's just one problem here. The technology Sklyarov and Elcomsoft created
is legal in Russia, where they live and do business, and is also legal in
all EU countries. In fact, AFAIK, it's legal everywhere except in the U.S.
The laws in other countries grant consumers the right to make a backup copy
of any eBook they purchase. The eBook software produced by Adobe enables
publishers to confiscate this legal right. Who should determine the rights
of, say, French citizens? The French government or Adobe? The software
produced by Elcomsoft enables consumers to exercise their legal right to
make a backup copy. The technology is illegal only in the U.S. and only
because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a recently passed and
highly ill advised piece of legislation. In the future, tools like this will
have to be sold through off-shore operations, and the authors will simply
have to avoid attending conferences in the U.S. Who wins here?
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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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