| Sumario: | In 2001, Dmitry Sklyarov, a young Russian computer scientist, was arrested by the FBI under a 1998 American law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that bans any attempts to bypass software that protects copyrighted digital files. Although the against Sklyarov were dropped, the case against his employer, Moscow-based ElcomSoft, proceeded in early December 2002 in California. The company is charged with selling in the U.S., over the Internet, a program developed by Sklyarov that allowed users to bypass the copy-protection features of Adobe's popular e-book software. This case marks a vital stage in the growing battle between industries supplying content and those arguing that overly strict enforcement of copyright could stifle the creativity of cyberspace. Lawyers for ElcomSoft argue that the DMCA is so unclear that it is unconstitutional, that it goes against the first-amendment free-speech rights of computer programmers, and that it ignores the “fair use” rights of consumers protected by mainstream copyright law.
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