WHAT should we be allowed to know? This question lies at the heart of the
arrest of a young Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, the first person to be
charged under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Sklyarov works for Elcomsoft, a Russian software company which sells the
$99 utility known as Advanced eBook Processor. This bypasses the
encryption that stops people copying Adobe’s eBooks, and converts them into
ordinary Acrobat files (PDFs).
In June, Adobe complained to the FBI, who duly arrested Sklyarov, the listed
copyright holder for the Advanced eBook Processor, when he appeared at the
Defcon…
